Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game (TOX) is a hidden gem that deserves more attention. This tabletop game comes with a robust digital toolkit, similar to D&D Beyond, and it’s built on the Cortex system found in Cortex Prime Game Handbook. Despite being tied to a popular TV show, TOX offers a lot to players who aren’t fans. In fact, I believe it’s the perfect system for running Curse of Strahd (COS), even better than D&D itself. Let’s dive in and see why.

A Different View of Curse of Strahd

Curse of Strahd is often misunderstood as a dungeon crawl. While the original module, I6 Ravenloft, focused on Castle Ravenloft itself, the modern campaign expands far beyond its walls. With over a dozen locations and countless NPCs, the focus shifts from mindless combat to intricate social interactions and political maneuvering.

At its core, Curse of Strahd is a story about control. Strahd, the vampire lord, has dominated Barovia for centuries, manipulating its inhabitants through fear and isolation. His obsession with Ireena, a mortal woman, complicates this power struggle, but it doesn’t change the fundamental dynamic: a tyrant holding a tight realm in his grip. And like all such things, the tighter he squeezes, the more things slip between his fingers.

Instead of a traditional hero’s journey, players become entangled in a web of relationships and power plays. The key to defeating Strahd isn’t brute force, but influencing the people of Barovia. By building alliances, uncovering secrets, and understanding the intricate social fabric of the land, players can turn the tide against the vampire lord.

This is a campaign where a dinner invitation from Strahd can be more valuable than a dragon’s hoard, and perhaps more dangerous than a dragon guarding it. A winery becomes a battleground for morale, where libations are weapons of influence. The hags’ pastries aren’t just treats, but tools of manipulation. And the power struggle within the werewolf pack mirrors the larger conflict for control of Barovia.

Tales of Xadia‘s Tech

TOX character traits are a perfect match for the intricate social landscape of Barovia. Rather than focusing solely on combat prowess, the game emphasizes attributes like Awareness, Influence, and Spirit, which are essential for navigating a world dominated by fear and manipulation. Rather than “hiding” some of these traits by tucking them into attributes that pull double duty like D&D’s Wisdom (both perception and willpower) or Charisma (influencing others, but also sense of self), TOX’s attributes are much more on-the-nose for COS.

Values, a unique TOX mechanic, add depth and complexity to characters’ moral stance, making them ripe for drama and tensions, possibly even among the player character party members. Instead of simple alignments, players define their moral compasses through personal statements like “Devotion: I will protect the innocent at all costs” or “Liberty: I will never submit to another’s will.” This is a significant departure from D&D’s Bonds, Ideals, Personality Traits, and Flaws, offering greater flexibility and impact on character development. Not to mention the mostly-forgotten, vestigial remains of D&D’s alignment system.

Signature Assets and Specialties function similarly to D&D’s equipment and skills, but TOX places a greater emphasis on social abilities, with specialties like diplomacy, gossip, and stewardship proving invaluable in a campaign centered on relationships and courtly intrigue.

TOX’s stress system is a standout feature. Rather than simply tracking hit points, it measures emotional and psychological strain, perfectly capturing the horror and paranoia of Barovia. The stress tracks are Afraid, Angry, Insecure, Corrupted, Exhausted, and Injured. When they fill up, you’re out of the scene and then recover slightly (or fully if you get active help). You also can gain trauma, which is a much more “sticky” version of each type of stress that’s harder to recover from, and takes longer. Nothing could be better for playing into the sort of emotional degradation, corruption, and even overt supernatural poison of dealing with Strahd, the Dark Powers, hag curses, and so on. The mechanics for pushing stress and recovering from it create dramatic tension and foster character interdependence. Unlike D&D’s sanity or madness mechanics, TOX’s stress system offers a more nuanced and flexible approach to character adversity.

By emphasizing social interaction, character depth, and the psychological impact of adversity, TOX offers a compelling framework for exploring the complexities of Curse of Strahd.

Contests, Challenges & Catalysts

TOX introduces a flexible conflict system that goes beyond traditional combat encounters. Tests, contests, and challenges provide diverse ways to resolve in-game struggles, catering to the varied pace and intensity of different situations.

• Tests are simple checks against a difficulty, suitable for quick decisions or overcoming minor obstacles.
• Contests are dynamic interactions between two or more opponents, whether it’s a physical confrontation, a verbal duel, or a social maneuver. They can be resolved with a single roll (one character declares “I want this!” and any challengers quickly realize they can’t or aren’t interested in stopping them from taking it) or through multiple rounds of back-and-forth exchanges.
• Challenges are more extended conflicts, similar to traditional combat encounters but with a greater emphasis on narrative pacing. Rather than individual character stats for the antagonists, challenges use a pool of dice representing the overall difficulty, allowing for more cinematic and dramatic encounters: it could be hordes of monsters, outrunning a boulder through a trap-filled corridor, crossing a failing rope bridge over a river of lava while getting peppered with arrows, and so on.

This system allows for seamless transitions between different types of conflict, reflecting the ebb and flow of a story. For example, a tense social interaction might escalate into a physical confrontation, or a seemingly straightforward task could become a complex negotiation. The dinner at Castle Ravenloft could start as roleplay, and swiftly turn into a contest if Strahd tries to extract information on where the party hid Ireena. Or perhaps it becomes a challenge when Strahd unleashes the brides or some vampire spawn on them for affronting them. A different type of challenge might be Strahd and his brides simply heckling the party, drawing them into conversation that turns their anger against them, potentially forcing them to storm out…or to turn the tides on Strahd, and prove they’ve got the willpower and social wit to undermine his authority.

Catalysts, special NPCs with their own goals and motivations, are built with most of the same stats as a character (notably Values with statements), replacing Attributes with a Catalyst Die that rates their dramatic importance to the story. The PCs’ actions throughout the campaign will influence these NPCs through their Catalyst Die rating, which in turn affects the NPCs’ Values. By interacting with catalysts, players can influence the course of the story and create new opportunities for conflict and cooperation; the catalyst mechanic encourages player agency and strategic decision-making. The PCs’ actions throughout the campaign will influence these NPCs through their Catalyst Die rating as well as the NPCs’ Values. This is where the players can cause loads of havoc by swaying Vallaki’s folk to their cause, playing one side against the other in the werewolf pack’s leadership struggles, helping or hindering different factions of Vistani or other groups active in the region, and so on.

(An aside: Tales of Xadia can run Strahd himself as a challenge. But I think if there’s one thing missing, it would be the rules for bosses from the Cortex Prime Game Handbook (CPGH) for Strahd. Throughout the campaign, he’s a catalyst but it’s hard to see his role diminishing in a way that some catalysts could. But he’s also the source of many challenges. In the final fight, he could be both contest and challenge…my point is that he’s a complex component to handle, and simply taking the rules for bosses from CPGH in many ways simplifies both catalyst and challenge into a single execution of game mechanics.)

Magic: A Corrupting Force?

Characters in a World of Shadows

TOX offers a flexible character creation system that aligns perfectly with the complex and morally ambiguous setting of Curse of Strahd. By focusing on character relationships, motivations, and flaws, TOX helps players create compelling characters who can thrive in this dark and oppressive world.

The system’s emphasis on Distinctions provides a solid foundation for character development. Kindred, Vocation, and Quirk distinctions offer a rich tapestry of possibilities, allowing players to craft characters with unique backstories and personalities. These distinctions go beyond the traditional D&D class and race system, offering greater flexibility and depth. Importantly, since there are only humans and dusk elves in Barovia, the simplest conversion is to use Moonshadow Elves as a template for dusk elves, and for the humans simply pick which nationality maps to which village and you have your human Distinctions.

The inclusion of Goals and Relationships further enhances character development. Goals provide characters with clear objectives, while Relationships foster connections with other characters and NPCs. These mechanics encourage players to develop complex and interconnected characters who are deeply invested in the world around them.

When you achieve a goal, add that die to your growth pool, which is the means of advancing your character in power, and/or changing their views on the world and such (such as changing their Values). COS already comes with some built-in goals that are obvious (find certain artifacts), some that are foretold in the Tarokka reading (find an ally), and others that are location or plotline specific (save the abducted kids from the hags, locate a missing Vistana, find out what happened to the winery). Keep a list handy, and work with the players to proactively create their own based on the NPCs they meet, items they find, and plot threads they start pulling at, and you’ll have an easy, endless source of goals to help the players get more growth dice. And if they abandon a goal? There’s a built-in mechanic for TOX characters to set aside a goal, and in doing so, can immediately make use of that goal’s die as an asset, acknowledging that it’ll never reach their growth pool.

PCs can establish a connection to a person or place with a die rating that they can then call on to benefit them for a scene. This is great for picking up a temporary animal companion (there’s a lot of random encounters with animals!), connect with a village or some of the locals, or pick up clues and emotional attachments from specific sites, in or outside of a town. These can inform steps along the way to achieving goals (clues, rumors, directions, a guide, a companion, emotional support), or can be the fulcrum from which a conflict occurs (fighting over whether a recently turned vampire spawn is potentially redeemable, determining if an NPC is a spy of Strahd’s or a potential mole for the party to insert into local politics).

We mentioned interparty conflict, specifically in terms of Corruption stress and magic, but have also hinted at it with the different types of stress and conflicts, particularly contests that could lead to angry and insecure stress. Well, goals can provide agendas that could have characters running at crosses purposes to each other. One of the best elements of TOX is that it handles PvP perfectly well in the form of (potentially, perhaps even likely, non-violent) tests and contests. Since PCs will almost certainly have conflicting Value statements, conflicting goals can easily lead to times when players will get to challenge their characters’ Value statements (which gives them more dice in the moment, and a chance to rewrite statements and redistribute Value ratings later), as well as achieve or set aside the goals that bring them into conflict, which means either growth dice or an immediate asset die. It’s almost too perfect for a campaign in which Corruption is a stress, emotions will run high, and relationships will be frayed.

By prioritizing character agency and relationships, TOX empowers players to create characters who are not merely heroic archetypes but complex individuals with their own hopes, fears, and motivations. This approach is essential for a campaign like Curse of Strahd, where the psychological impact of the setting is as important as the physical challenges faced by the characters.

Conclusion

The Dragon Prince is setup such that the main characters are often split along ideological lines, even when they are traveling together. Sometimes they are at odds, sometimes they come together to fight a greater evil, sometimes they are torn between their loyalty to their friends and their duty to a nation…or a corrupted but potentially redeemable family member.

Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game offers a unique and compelling approach to tabletop roleplaying that is perfectly suited for the challenges and complexities of Curse of Strahd. By emphasizing character relationships, social interactions, and the psychological impact of a dark and oppressive setting, TOX provides a rich and immersive experience for both players and GMs.

While D&D remains a popular choice for many, TOX’s focus on character-driven storytelling, flexible conflict resolution, and nuanced magic system offers a refreshing alternative. By embracing the core principles of TOX, GMs can create a Curse of Strahd campaign that is both terrifying and rewarding, filled with unforgettable characters and heart-pounding moments. And they can do so without having to change a single mechanic in TOX.