This article originally appeared on 10/13/2017 @neuronphaser.com. I’m reposting it here inspired by two articles on D&D Beyond by James Haeck: Strahd Must Die Tonight! and Strahd Must Die Again (And Again And Again). Both articles offer fantastic insights complementary to (and greatly improving upon) some of of the same ideas in what I wrote, below.

The idea of boiling down the iconic adventure Curse of Strahd is one that isn’t exactly promising for a few reasons: Strahd works best when he shows up several times, there’s a lot of backstory conveyed through locations and NPCs in Barovia, and there’s several artifacts spread out across the realm that even the odds against Strahd and present their own sidequests. Castle Ravenloft itself is a big place, with hundreds of areas to explore.

But Strahd’s been around for decades, so literally thousands of players have already played through some edition’s version of the adventure surrounding Ravenloft’s key adversary, or they’ve read about his exploits and power-level. The iconic status that makes him the perfect enemy for a party is also what makes him so cool for players to challenge head-to-head over and over again. In fact, that’s a key element of the campaign: Strahd, as a Dark Lord of a domain in Ravenloft, may have no way of being permanently defeated, and so he will play out his torturous, unrequited love story for all of time.

For Halloween, I’ve attempted to boil down Curse of Strahd to its barest elements, and I think I’ve created something that can be finished in 4-6 hours of play while still revealing the story of Strahd. Let’s see what you think!

This whole thing assumes you’re familiar with Curse of Strahd.

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