I’ve started running Curse of Strahd and have been having a ton of fun making wacky homebrew things for my party and tweaking the module. Unbeknownst to the players so far, I have made them all a secret Dark Power trying to use them to usurp Strahd and Vampyr, and they’re just waiting to offer their dark gift.

For example, I have a druid with some fire giant ancestry who loves Produce Flame and is their front line, so he’ll be offered a slightly weaker Rage with the Path of the Storm Herald desert feature to use once per long rest. The celestial warlock would get charges to boost his Eldritch Blast damage and some secondary healing in exchange for sapping his life.

Giving my players powerful upgrades alongside typical class advancement can make some encounters harder to balance around, but as long as we’re all having fun who cares about balance??

  • @[email protected]
    4•1 year ago

    I love when players start putting clues/lore together and figuring things out.

    It shows they care about my setting and they’ve been paying attention.

    • GregOP
      1•1 year ago

      So rewarding when they engage with it like that! I’ve been trying to plant foreshadowy bits so they have a few “oh damn” moments coming up.

    • @Hafler
      1•1 year ago

      I wish I could have this. Two of my players take notes, but only one takes them in enough detail to piece things together. I recently gave a the not-so-great note taker a dream (full text was provided in a message) with a bunch of bread crumbs for their character to follow. It was to encourage them to talk with the other player characters and try to solve this mystery together by utilizing connections that the other players have. In this dream, I gave them:

      • A very uncommon first name of an important NPC they can seek out. The NPC is the Empress of one of the opposing countries.
      • A description of an area, including geographic markers that they could use to pinpoint its location. This place is very unique. If they ask someone in game that studies any sort of geography, they will likely be told where to go
      • A description of another set of the mcguffins that the team had just gathered. This is literally their main quest right now

      The response I got back from the player was “Yeah… i don’t know what i need to pull from this”. This is from the player that keeps contacting me after the game saying that they want to interact more with the world and do more RP. When pressed with “well you could ask one of the other characters for help” I got a “nah, I want to do this on my own”.

      Please send help…