Curse of Strahd Reloaded Update: The Heist Begins

I've officially begun work on Arc P: Ravenloft Heist, and this arc is definitely looking to be a doozy! Still, thanks to a more regular and efficient writing schedule (plus a lot of pre-planning), the actual writing process seems to be chugging along smoothly.

I'm about 40% done with writing the guide content; once that's done, I've just got to make the new statblocks for the three Brides (plus tinker with Rahadin's for balance purposes), make some area maps to show how the castle fits together, and go through the usual song-and-dance of revising any existing arcs that need edits. The goal is to have the next big release published by or before the end of May.

If you'd like to read a more in-depth walkthrough of what I've finished so far, check out the Reloaded Preview section below! I've also got some exciting recent/upcoming other projects, so feel free to keep scrolling if you'd like to see what else I've got in the works.

Reloaded Preview

Since my last update, I've made the following additions to Arc P: Ravenloft Heist:

• Outlined the resources/allies/information the players can obtain/recruit/learn in advance of the heist as they prepare to infiltrate the keep
  
• Wrote Strahd's departure from the castle and the players' infiltration past the outer walls and courtyards
  
• Separated Castle Ravenloft into ten distinct self-contained regions for ease of DM navigation
  
• Designed an encounter with Ludmilla, leading from the illusory organ music in the main entrance to a final showdown in the chapel
  
• Reworked Strahd's accountant Lief Lipsiege, as well as the information he can provide the players
  
• Designed an encounter with two vampire spawn in the Servants' Hall, which leverages the elevator trap for additional danger and strategy
  
• Designed a battle with Anastrasya to rescue Gertruda from Strahd's chambers
  

Here's a quick sample of the players' first entrance into the castle, if they enter via the main entrance:

Main Foyer
The first time the players enter this area, a glyph of warding hidden among the dust on the ceiling activates, casting a major image spell originating from the organ in the K10. Dining Hall (p. 56). (The major image is the source of the “sad and majestic organ tones” described in K8. Great Entry (p. 55).

Shortly after the players first enter this area, the major image abruptly changes. Read:

A woman’s terrified shriek rings out from the dining hall—and the organ music abruptly cuts short.

Dining Hall
This area is largely as described in K10. Dining Hall (p. 56). However, there is no illusion of Strahd sitting at the organ. In addition, revise the area’s description to read as follows:

Three enormous crystal chandeliers brilliantly illuminate this magnificent chamber. Pillars of stone stand against dull white marble walls, supporting the ceiling. In the center of the room, a long, heavy table is covered with a fine white satin cloth. At the center of the far west wall, between floor-to-ceiling mirrors, stands a massive organ, its once-thunderous pipes now plunged into a deep, unsettling silence.

No food stands upon the table. Instead, a woman’s corpse lies limply across its surface.

The woman’s corpse is an illusion created by the major image spell, and resembles a nondescript Barovian woman in her twenties. If the players touch it or interact with it in any way, it vanishes. The events described in K10. Dining Hall (p. 56) following the illusion’s disappearance, including the “fierce, bone-chilling wind” and the ensuing events, then occur. Read:

A fierce, bone-chilling wind rises up and roars through the hall, extinguishing every open flame and plunging the majestic hall into darkness. Ancient hinges screech, and the air is briefly filled with the sounds of many heavy doors slamming shut, one after another, into the distance.

You can get full access to my in-progress drafts by joining the Patreon as a paid member. All working drafts and outlines for future arcs, as well as a changelog and Trello board of upcoming edits, can be found on the Patreon Bronze Masterpost.

Other Projects

Reloaded v2.0.7 Design Notes. Approximately twice a month, I publish "developer blogs" for paid members of my Patreon, which discuss my design process as I plan, develop, and revise Reloaded. This past month, I began publishing formal design notes for the most recent update, which explained in greater detail every change listed in that release's changelog.

If you become a Silver member of the Patreon, you can read the first installment of those design notes here (covering general changes, the Introduction, the History of Barovia, the Act summaries, and Arc A: Escape from Death House) and the second installment here (covering all arcs in Acts I & II).

Challenge Rated. A bit over two years ago, I began an exhaustive, deep-dive analysis on my Substack into the theory and mathematics of 5th Edition encounter-building. After discussing why 5e is generally a resource-management game, not a tactical game and proposing a (very rough) unified theory of 5e combat design, I then spent about ten weeks in a fevered haze surrounded by spreadsheets as I tried to mathematically analyze how, on a fundamental level, 5th Edition combat actually works.

When I finally came back out to rejoin civilization, I had learned that 5e's official combat-building method is fundamentally broken—and emerged with the first iteration of the Challenge Ratings 2.0 (CR2.0) system to replace it.

Substantial playtesting by Redditors and members of the Patreon Discord has confirmed that CR2.0 is a far more accurate method of predicting how many hit points players will lose and how many resources they'll spend in a given encounter, thereby allowing DMs to precisely tune the difficulty they want in each fight. However, CR2.0 has still remained somewhat clunky, requiring DMs to do math manually in order to figure out exactly how tough a given fight might be—until now.

Meet the prototype version of Challenge Rated, the official CR2.0 encounter-building calculator, built courtesy of several generous open-source developers:



The site is still a work-in-progress, and there are still a few kinks to be worked out, but we're fast approaching Launch Day. Keep an eye on this newsletter for the tool's upcoming release!