Dragna's Blog: The Madam Eva Problem

In my previous developer blog, I discussed my proposed replacement for Reloaded's then-current plot hook to Tser Pool (and the Tarokka reading). The previous hook went as follows: On the players' first night in Barovia, Madam Eva appears to them in a dream, warns them that they're in grave danger, and tells them to come to her camp, where she can read her fortunes. This was problematic because, as a subsequent Discord server poll confirmed, more than half of parties don't really take Eva or her Tarokka reading particularly seriously.

Why? Generally, it came down to two things. First, by both inviting the players and doing the reading, Eva risked appearing shady and/or self-interested. Second, because Eva was not yet an entirely credible authority, her vague warning of “grave danger” felt relatively amorphous compared to the immediate plot hook of escorting Ireena. The dream invitation, in short, sometimes made Eva feel like a side-quest at best and a potential trap at worst.

This wasn't an acceptable situation, largely because - unlike RAW and the original I6 Ravenloft adventure - Reloaded requires the players to receive and fulfill the reading in order to beat the campaign. So I needed to change the hook to Madam Eva to make the players take it seriously while also making sure they remembered and prioritized the reading after receiving it.

My first proposal, as detailed in my prior blog post, changed two key things to accomplish these goals. First, instead of having Madam Eva invite the players to Tser Pool, I had Sergei's ghost appear incognito in a similar dream sequence to point them in her direction. Second, instead of giving them vague warnings of Doom, I used the March of the Dead as an explicit plot device to show the players their fate if they failed to defeat Strahd.

I was pretty happy with this, as were a few others in the server. However, a good friend of mine (whose opinions I deeply trust) didn't vibe with it. He pointed out that the dream sequence felt fake and contrived, and that Sergei basically felt like a non sequitur with no relation to the plot who now showed up once at the beginning of the campaign and then vanished for the next fifty sessions.

Thus began the great Dream Reshuffling of July 2024. Ultimately, I reasoned, someone had to tell the players to talk to Madam Eva. But who?

Ismark the Great? The players had already seen his statue and met his descendant, so he wouldn't be coming out of left field. But this still felt weird and contrived, I was told. Plus, it raised another problem: How did he learn that Madam Eva might be able to help?

Not having an answer for this, I tried again. Someone in the Discord server suggested the March of the Dead deliver the message itself. That was a fun idea, but I couldn't think of any reliable way to convey such a message other than through a dream, and we still didn't know how to justify the March having knowledge of Eva’s ability to help in the first place. (After all, she evidently wasn't able to help them.)

So I took a step back and asked: Who had reason to know that Eva could help the PCs defeat Strahd? Other than Eva herself and other Vistani (who currently had no credibility or reason to want to help the PCs), the only possible candidate was the roc of Mount Ghakis, the Seeker's familiar (but in raven form).

This also had problems, though. I could have the roc show up in a dream like Eva or Sergei, but how would it communicate? (Also, the dream sequence still felt fake and contrived, at least according to its critics—and, gradually, me.) I could have the roc deliver a message by the eastern Barovian gates - or even right outside of Death House after the players escaped - but, as some members of the Patreon Discord helpfully pointed out, that risked pushing the players to deprioritize or ignore Ireena's questline while also removing some of the alienation and isolation that are so key to the tone of the early campaign.

I took a step back and tried to figure out the root of the problem: Why did Madam Eva's invitation fall flat?

In my work on dramatic questions, I've always tied goals and stakes to inciting incidents: “When a group of goblins ambushes the players, can the players defeat them to survive?” In doing so, I defined “inciting incidents” simply as “the events that make the players aware of the goal and stakes.” Eva's invitation seemed to fit that mold: “When Madam Eva tells the players they're in grave danger in a dream, can the players get her to read their fortunes to prevent their untimely deaths?”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that something was off. Eva was offering a solution, yes (“Come get your fortunes read”), but it was a solution to a problem that the players didn't already think they had. Eva felt like a telemarketer, trying to convince her target that they had some terrible flaw or dilemma that could be fixed only by purchasing the Turbo Vacuum 3000.

When you think about it, the definition “an inciting incident is the event where the players learn of the goal and stakes” is so obvious as to be a meaningless truism - the players have to learn about the goals and stakes sometime. This definition was missing something critical.

What Madam Eva's dream taught me was this: An inciting incident isn't merely the moment when the players learn about (i.e., are told to pursue) the goals and stakes. It's the moment when the players personally decide to pursue the goal.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, “The Hero's Journey” is a common narrative structure found throughout mythology and stories. (Once you learn to recognize it, you'll start seeing it everywhere.) I won't go into great depth here, but it starts with the following five steps:

• The Ordinary World. The protagonist begins in their ordinary life, establishing a status quo.

• The Call to Adventure. The protagonist receives some sort of invitation to go on an adventure.

• Refusal of the Call. The protagonist refuses to go on the adventure, often due to a fear, a flaw, or simple comfort with the status quo.

• Meeting the Mentor. The protagonist meets a mentor figure who offers guidance and prepares them for the challenges ahead.

• Crossing the Threshold. The protagonist begins their adventure, leaving their ordinary world behind and embarking upon their journey.

Fans of Star Wars will recognize this structure immediately - this is the exact structure of Episode IV: A New Hope. Luke begins in his ordinary life on Tatooine (The Ordinary World), discovers Leia's message on R2D2 (Call to Adventure), and initially declines to join Obi-Wan on the journey to Alderaan (Refusal of the Call), then later accepts Obi-Wan’s offer of Jedi training (Meeting the Mentor) and travels to Mos Eisley to hire Han Solo as a ride off-planet (Crossing the Threshold).

But there's a big event in A New Hope that isn't represented on this chart: the death of Luke's aunt and uncle, which forces him to answer the call to adventure after initially refusing it. What is this but the inciting incident - the event that incites (i.e., forces or encourages) the protagonist to undertake their quest?

Put simply, the inciting incident is an event that changes the status quo, destroying the Ordinary World and forcing the protagonist to move forward or (symbolically/metaphorically) perish. It creates the stakes, making them manifest in the protagonist's mind.

In other words: The goal doesn't emerge when the inciting incident occurs. Instead, the goal emerges after the inciting incident occurs.

(Another great example: in Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the true inciting incident is when the protagonist's mother is kidnapped around a fifth of the way into the book, thereby forcing him to undertake the rest of the journey in order to rescue her.)

(Another fascinating example: in A Song of Ice and Fire, the inciting incident for the series as a whole arguably comes at the end of the first book, rather than its beginning - the moment when Ned is imprisoned, Arya flees the Red Keep, and Sansa is taken hostage by the Lannisters. This is the moment when the status quo is permanently shattered, preventing these characters from ever returning to the life they had before.)

Importantly, there must be a strong and clear connection between the inciting incident, the goal, and the stakes. In Star Wars, for example, following R2D2’s message allows Luke to take vengeance against the Empire for killing his aunt and uncle while ensuring that their deaths were not in vain. The inciting incident instills in the players an intrinsic and powerful desire to achieve the goal, while also preventing them from returning to the status quo that came before.

What about in Curse of Strahd?

The original module has four hooks: Plea for Help, Mysterious Visitors, Wolves in the Mists, and Creeping Fog. Of these, Visitors and Wolves both lack inciting incidents - the players choose to enter Barovia to fulfill a goal, so there's no moment that leaves them cut off and adrift from the previous status quo. In Visitors, this kinda works in theory because the players have the goal “kill Strahd” anyway, but it often fails in practice because the players feel upset that they were “fooled” into getting trapped in a nightmare realm with a CR 15 vampire (rather than, say, being escorted to the tomb of a CR 3 wight).

Plea and Fog come the closest to providing a true inciting incident, in that the players are spirited away to a mystical realm that they're unable to escape. However, these aren't true inciting incidents in practice because the players have no immediate desire to escape; they know OOC that they're going to be stuck in Barovia for the next few dozen sessions anyway, and figure they might as well sightsee and experience the Content™️ that the DM has prepared for them.

Reloaded changes this by introducing a new hook - Death House - which largely suffers the same flaws as Plea and Fog: The players have no urgent reason to want to escape, and no immediate desire to do so. If players are using the Barovian Relics hooks, you also have the same problem as Wolves in the Mist - the players came here intentionally to do their own thing, which doesn't necessarily involve killing Strahd.

So I needed a proper inciting incident - one that made them realize that Strahd is a problem that they need to solve, thereby setting Eva up as the solution to a problem that they've already decided that they have. I needed something to clearly shatter their status quo - something that conveyed the real peril and tragedy of the new land they had found themselves in.

And then I remembered the siege - specifically, Strahd's siege of the village of Barovia. What better way to convey the need to remove Strahd than defending against an attack by his undead forces? You wouldn't even need to change anything about the dinner at Castle Ravenloft or Strahd's Gentleman phase because any hostilities would be primarily directed at the Barovians themselves - the players would just be caught in the crossfire!

And so I began to wonder if I could move the players' arrival backward in time, such that, rather than arriving several days after the siege has ended and Ireena has been bitten, the players arrive on the last day of the siege.

Picture this: The players arrive in Barovia and meet Ismark and Ireena. They help fend off an attack by Strahd's undead horde that night. While they're busy, Strahd charms his way into the burgomaster’s mansion, kills Kolyan, and bites Ireena for the first time. The following morning, Ismark asks the players to escort Ireena to Vallaki and ask Madam Eva how Strahd can be defeated, since he can't leave the village to do it himself. The players are no longer spectators to old, stale events, but living through them, strengthening the resonance of the NPCs and story beats around them and clearly framing the core narrative storylines of the campaign.

Sounds much better, no?