Today I’m continuing discussion about guidelines for converting the epic 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign Curse of Strahd to Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game, a game powered by the Cortex Prime system. If you don’t know why, check out Part 1, and if you want to talk mods (AKA rules hacks), check out Part 2 and Part 3. It’ll help if you have thorough knowledge of Curse of Strahd and probably a good sense of how Catalysts in Tales of Xadia work for this article to make sense.

After a long wait, here are the Catalyst character sheets for a few of the major Game Moderator Characters (GMCs, the Tales of Xadia term for NPCs). I’m gonna hit you with the “big ones” first, Ireena and Strahd, since they form the basis of the whole campaign. After that, I’m going to show of Volenta (one of Strahd’s brides) since I plan to use her very early on. Finally, we’ll close out with GMC stat blocks for the village of Barovia, with a focus on Ismark the Lesser, just to juxtapose what an “important” GMC that isn’t a Catalyst might look like, and why I chose going in that direction with him as opposed to making him a Catalyst.

I’ll probably tackle the big artifacts in the next article, but as of this writing I haven’t started outlining anything yet. Feel free to hit the comments and tell me what (else?) you want to see!

So grab your Tarokka deck and figure out who your Fated Ally card reveals, because we’re headed into Barovia!

Please note that I still consider these to be in an advanced draft state. There may be some flourishes and final touches yet to be made before I consider them finalized.

Ireena Kolyana

She/her – Catalyst d6

Values:

• Devotion d8 – My family always kept me safe.
• Glory d4 – It’s not about me, it’s about lifting the darkness.
• Justice d8 – In this dark world, someone must be the light.
• Liberty d6 – Are we all slaves to someone…or something?
• Mastery d8 – My sword is my defense.
• Truth d8 – We can only help one another if we are honest with each other.

Distinctions:

• Barovian Adopted Noble d6
• Idealistic Swordswoman d8
• My Scars Are My Armor d6

Specialties: Singing d6, Sneaking d6, Swordplay d8, Tracking d6

Signature Assets: Elegant Rapier d8, Wood carved Cameo of Kolyan Indirovich d6

Behind the Scenes

Despite some ink spilled on the topic, we don’t really get a very detailed look into what makes Ireena tick in Curse of Strahd. Burying her (adoptive) father is important, and she’s a skilled fighter, so Devotion and Mastery were pretty much set in stone right away. The rest of her values were pretty much played by ear, with the interesting thing coming out being her Liberty statement: it’s not that it’s not important to her, it’s just that she thinks there’s a scope that goes way beyond her…and that’s funny because for Strahd, she pretty much is the entire scope of his world when he is focused on her. Some of that’s arguable and depends on Strahd’s changing priorities based on the actions of the PCs, but you get my drift.

Since I had room to explore her personality a bit, and because Catalysts are meant to interact with the PCs a lot — at least until the players stop showing interest in them — I figured I’d give her some useful Specialties and some personality-based Specialties, too. Singing is neat; kind of shows off that she’s got an artistic streak, which plays up the fact that she has a soul, unlike many of the denizens of Barovia. (Incidentally, I’m not going to do anything with the “souls and shells” plot line, but I will let it guide me simply in terms of “which Barovians feel depressed versus which ones have hope.”)

Strahd von Zarovich

He/him – Catalyst d6

Values:

• Devotion d4 – My only curse is that my playthings are so limited.
• Glory d8 – Your tribute is required.
• Justice d8 – Do not break my laws lest you wish to suffer — perhaps endlessly.
• Liberty d8 – You are all MY subjects.
• Mastery d8 – There is naught else to do but exercise my power.
• Truth d6 – Do not let me catch you in a lie.

Distinctions:

• I Am the Ancient, I Am the Land d8
• Unrequited Love for Tatyana d8
• Conqueror, Master of My Own Fate d8

Specialties: History d8, Literature d8, Mathematics d8, Politics d6, Sneaking d10, Strategy d10, Swordplay d8, Tracking d10, Unarmed Combat d12

Signature Assets:

Vampiric Powers d10

• Charm: Inflict Corrupted stress via interaction. Upon inflicting Corrupted trauma, they are susceptible to charm. On subsequent successful interaction Contests, Strahd may use his effect die to do one of the following: add/rewrite a Goal at the effect die’s rating, or rewrite a Value statement for a Value of a lower rating than the effect die.
• Regeneration: Spend Doom to recover Injured stress.
• Shapeshifting: Strahd can spend a Doom to shapeshift into the form of a bat or swarm of bats, a dire wolf, or a cloud of mist. (Changing back doesn’t cost Doom.)
• Spawn Vampire: Inflict Corrupted stress via bite. Upon inflicting Corrupted trauma, victim begins transforming into a vampire spawn; mark 1 immediately, and again each New Moon. On the third mark, they become a vampire spawn under Strahd’s control.
• Wallclimbing: Can move along walls and other surfaces normally.

Limit: Vampiric Weaknesses

• Running water causes Injured stress every minute of submersion.
• Sunlight causes Injured stress every minute of contact.
• Destroyed if staked through the heart in her coffin.

Dark Magic d10

• Focus: Scrying mirror (Ch 4 p 18, area K38. False Treasury) for scrying, otherwise: Barovia.
• Spells: animate skeletons, fog cloud, mirror image, scrying, sleep, summon bat swarm, summon wolves.

Behind the Scenes

I tried as hard as I could to use actual quotes from Strahd to fill in his value statements and distinctions, and to be honest, I think I did a good job. Because of that, though, I don’t really think there’s much to discuss there, or even in his specialties: yeah, he’s a scholarly sort thanks to endless amounts of free time, but he’s also a warmonger and a combat-monster. That Unarmed Combat d12 specialty is going to show off that he’s capable of stressing out a PC real fast.

So the fun stuff comes through in his Signature Assets. This is where I both lean into Tales of Xadia‘s setup in the form of his Dark Magic, but also veer way off by including what is effectively a Power Set (Vampire Powers) and a Limit (Vampiric Weaknesses), which are things from the Cortex Prime Game Handbook (CPGH for short). That said, they shouldn’t take anyone playing Tales of Xadia by complete surprise: the included text explains how they work, so it’s not like they actually pull in mods from CPGH that are indecipherable.  The powers give him ways to directly inflict Corrupted stress (see my previous article on the conversion for how that’s important!), and allows him to interact with the Doom Pool. Meanwhile, his Limit gives him some weaknesses that can be exploited mechanically, but aren’t exactly game-changers without special artifacts or extremely unlikely circumstances; you know, the end-game kind of stuff. Is it ever sunny in Barovia? No. Is Strahd going to meet at Tser Falls Pool and take a dip in the water? Unlikely. But the stuff is there, at least.

Finally, his Dark Magic is…a thing. It works like any magic, based on the rules covered in previous articles. The thing to note here is that Strahd has some pretty obvious spells that don’t require much (or for me, any) text to understand. He can’t make minions. He can make himself hard to hit. He can enchant others to feel sleepy (all the better to Charm them with, my dear!). And he needs a specific mirror in a specific room of his castle to scry on the party. I removed all the specifically D&D-ness spells: fireballs and stuff like that. I’m going for strictly vampire stuff, here.

A final note on Strahd: I think for the “final fight” I might actually rebuild Strahd as a more Marvel Heroic-style character, and go with the rules from that game for combat (Action Order Initiative, Action/Reaction dice rolls). If I go that route, I’ll share that sheet later, but to be honest, I think the biggest change will simply be using the Boss dice rules from CPGH.

Volenta Popofsky

She/her – Catalyst d6

Values:

• Devotion d8 – Everything for the Devil Strahd.
• Glory d8 – All in the name of the Devil Strahd.
• Justice d8 – Do not cross His will lest you are willing to pay with your life’s blood.
• Liberty d4 – Freedom? The torment of existence is eternal.
• Mastery d8 – Not even Rahadin could be an assassin of my caliber.
• Truth d6 – Lie when one must, but it is sometimes more effective to say nothing at all.

Distinctions:

• Barovian Exile d6
• Unyielding Assassin d8
• No Rest for the Wicked d8

Specialties: Sneaking d8, Thievery d8, Unarmed Combat d10

Signature Assets:

Vampiric Powers d8

• Regeneration: Spend Doom to recover Injured stress.
• Spawn Ghoul: Inflict Corrupted stress via bite. Upon inflicting Corrupted trauma, victim begins transforming into a ghoul; mark 1 immediately, and again each New Moon. On the third mark, they become a ghoul under Strahd’s control.
• Wallclimbing: Can move along walls and other surfaces normally.

Limit: Vampiric Weaknesses

• Cannot enter without an invitation.
• Running water causes Injured stress every minute of submersion.
• Sunlight causes Injured stress every minute of contact.
• Destroyed if staked through the heart in her coffin.

Behind the Scenes

A lot of my view of the Brides comes from the DMsGuild release Real Housewives of Ravenloft, which does an excellent job of adding personality to them. So Volenta as we see her here is absolutely obsessed with Strahd…but she’s also a homicidal sociopath. This gives her values that contradict, which is a fantastic source of drama in the Catalyst rules. She’s almost, but not quite, blindly loyal, and that small space where she isn’t loyal will lead to immediate and direct confrontation with the players (as she goes after Ismark and Ireena; more on that below) and with Strahd (who expects and demands that blind loyalty). Drama!

You can see she carries over some (but not all!) of Strahd’s Vampire Powers and Vampiric Weaknesses. The big changes are…

• No Charm
• No Shapeshifting
• Can’t create vampires, but instead creates ghouls
• Must get an invitation to enter a building/abode

So what’s up with these changes? As a vampire spawn, and a cold-blooded killer, I don’t want Volenta to have Charm or Shapeshift, because that takes away all the difficulty of “the hunt” that she probably envisions herself on when she’s pursuing new prey. Not being able to create new vampire spawn gives all the Brides an interesting power in that they can inflict a different version of Corrupted stress from Strahd, but they also never get a “loyal buddy” — it’s just a flesh-hungry monstrosity. And the invitation thing is just so fun; having just watched Sinners, there’s a lot of fun to be had with that. And the fact that Strahd will eventually reveal he doesn’t play by that rule is just a golden opportunity for an “Oh shit!” moment from the players.

Finally, purely on the roleplay side, I’ve established Volenta’s goals at the start of the campaign as follows:

• Remove Ismark from the board…for good.
• Let Ireena know that she is favored by Strahd…but she’s not the only one.
• Keep Ireena in the Village if at all possible.

This puts her in a much more direct confrontation with Ireena and Ismark in ways that Strahd won’t approve of…which is perfect for getting Strahd to appear early on, revealing that his both uber-powerful but also at odds with his own servitors on some level. He gets to look the “hero” to Ireena by possibly saving her (and maybe Ismark) from Volenta, and he gets to establish his dominance, and maybe even the fact that he’s not bound by the need of an invitation to enter somewhere. It’s great roleplaying fodder, and even better, it gets to the core of what makes Catalysts so interesting: they have cross-purposes, and the PCs have a lot of room to maneuver the situation in ways that will affect each Catalysts’ values differently.

GMCs of the Village of Barovia

1. Bildrath Cantemir — Prideful d6, Stubborn d8
2. Parriwimple (Parpol Cantemir) — Simple d6, Strong d8
3. Arik the Barkeep — Barkeeper d6, Dour d6, 
4. Alenka — The Quiet One d6 (throwing knives), Vistani Spy d8
5. Mirabel — The Innocent One d6 (cane-sword), Vistani Spy d8
6. Sorvia — The Deadly One d6 (dual daggers), Vistani Spy d8
7. Ismark Kolyanovich — Hotheaded d6, Protective of Ireena d10; Broadsword d8, Heavy Crossbow d8
8. Ireena Kolyana
9. Father Donavich — He’s My Boy! d10, Priest of the Morninglord d8
10. Doru — I’m Starving! d8, Vampire Spawn d6
11. Mary Bondar — Despondent d6, Spiritual d8
12. Morgantha

Behind the Scenes

First, what’s the purpose of this list? I won’t go into the details of my procedure unless people are truly unfamiliar with “loaded event/hazard dice”, but I will simply say that there are opportunities where I’ll need to roll up a random NPC from each settlement, and so this is the list for the Village of Barovia — pretty self-explanatory. Since I use these sorts of lists (in D&D and any fantasy RPG, for the most part), it made a lot of sense to use this space to have stats for the Minor GMCs that appear; keep it all central, since it’s just a list of 2-6(ish) traits.

You’ll note Ireena and Morgantha don’t have stats. This is very intentional: Ireena’s a Catalyst, so you can find her stats above, and Morgantha was setup as an optional Challenge if the party confronted her. Which they did, as the very first thing they did upon arriving in the village! It turned into a fight real quick, and the players absolutely dominated with good dice rolls, so Morgantha was forced to flee, despite having a pretty wild dice pool (I think I gave her a pool of 4d10 as a Challenge, with a spare d12 that wasn’t part of the Challenge pool but was there to represent her turning into a hag and wrecking them with spells). Well, they cut down most of her dice right away, so I just had her flee, and it really gave me pause as a GM, re-thinking how challenging she should’ve been. But the fact was simply that the players had extremely good dice rolls, and that’s it. Under literally any other circumstances they would have probably had their asses handed to them, but the dice wanted to tell a story, and so now my players are feeling extremely overconfident. Their (eventual) loss, I suppose!

Now, let’s focus on Ismark Kolyanovich (AKA Ismark the Lesser). He’s got the most traits because he has the potential of being with the party for a while. Because of that, I also wanted his traits to run the gamut of dice, so different rolls would “feel” very different and show off his personality in somewhat sizeable swings. Perhaps most importantly, though, because he’s a minor GMC, it’s really the case that his dice will almost always get subsumed into rolls the players make, since he’ll rarely be at odds with them: he’s not a Catalyst, so I’m going to say he either goes with whatever the PCs say or he straight up leaves, either taking Ireena with him or fuming elsewhere. No reason to overburden myself with GMC party members, after all.

Next Time

Hopefully that’s pretty illuminating discussion of my thought processes on how to lean into Tales of Xadia‘s Catalyst and GMC rules, and where I worked in a few mods that don’t really change the game in a huge way, but showcase how you can pull different elements of Cortex games together to customize the experience. But that leaves me with only a couple more topics: the various magical artifacts important to Curse of Strahd, and actual session reports. Unless I’m missing something.

What do you want to hear about?