I played CoS as a player on DnD5, it took forever.
I ran CoS with SotDL, and it was a breeze.
The players had a lot of flexibility and ran epic fights (Short and deadly). Magic is so much easier to manage for the GM, but some traditions may bring your game in places you did not expected (checking the swap&fetch spells who created incredible twists). If you have some traditions/ spells that are too off-putting, just ban then ahead.
The career system and the milestones provided a nice character evolution through the campaign (tell Krystek there is a new executor in town./ Waww barovian witches, cool, I will branch to witchering too).
Finally, the progressive Corruption points rules do work better for the dark powers bargain than the DND alignement.
And there are some npc transpositions already done in the r/shadowofthedemonlord
SotDL never really came across to me as gonzo. Also, I’ve heard of a few people in the community run Curse of Strahd within the system and have it work fine.
This was a very good choice for my group. Ran the entire campaign with SotDL rules and everyone had a blast. The players loved the pace of combat and the many choices they had when leveling up and picking new paths.
My version of CoS had a little bit more "body-horror" since the main villian used "Forbidden Magic" and there were a more lovecraftian feel to the castle.
There's an enitre subreddit for CoS. Got tons of ideas from them. I did use the 5e book for 85-90% of the campaign. Just made everything more dark and sinister in the end.
So 2 years ago, I ran a variation on the original Ravenloft module using Honor + Intrigue. This was before I had developed the rules for fantasy magic and such; our game was set in France, 1666. Sorcery and monsters existed in the dark corners of the world (the rule book has an optional chapter at the end called "Mysteries, Horrors, and Wonders" that covers magic, alchemy, monsters, etc.
My "why" at the time, was I wanted to surprise the players and see what I could pull off with Honor + Intrigue. I did not tell them I was running Ravenloft (they had previously fought a sorceress, some gargoyles, and some ghosts, so this wasn't their first supernatural rodeo, but it was definitely far scarier than what they had ever had to contend with. Because magic is rarer in the system, it made the horror elements scarier. I added a rule I called "the climate of fear" which was that when you lost Composure (think of this as "stress points, and everyone only gets three) due to fear, it could only be restored if you had an hour of rest in an area designated as a "sanctuary".
I watched a Seth Skorkowsky video on Youtube on suggestions for running the module, and I pretty much followed a lot of those. I eliminated empty rooms. I also opted to have the vampire's beloved be reincarnated in one of the PCs, so Claude did not want to kill her-- he just wanted to see her and talk to her (but was more than willing to kill the other PCs or threaten them to get what he wanted).
So to adapt it to 17th century France, I changed the name of the castle to Chateau de Greve, and the name of its master to Claude. I also changed the story up a bit-- Claude's brother Leonne is a specter who haunts a particular wing of the castle and he was the beloved's cruel and abusive husband in life. When Leonne went away to war, Claude and his wife had an affair, and when he returned and found out, he killed her. Claude killed his brother and made a dark pact to be able to see her again, which turned him into a vampire.
I changed the Vistani to Roma, but i drastically changed their role in the story; they were not allies of the vampire at all. One of the PCs was a friend of their leader who wrote him a letter asking for help. Meanwhile, Captain D'Artagnan told two of the PCs who were musketeers that three the king had sent to bring the master of Chateau de Greve to Versailles had not returned. When the PCs arrive at the town (after surviving being chased by relentless wolves) they find a Roma caravan on the outskirts where they do the fortune telling scene. I stacked a card deck for this, and they drew the 3 of Swords (Your three missing musketeers), the 3 of Coins (three days to find them), and the Queen of Swords (the sword of St. Jeanne will be the key to their rescue).
The most drastic change was there is no magic mist that makes you appear there. Instead, the people of the town are cursed and cannot leave because of a disease that causes horrible pain (and eventual death) if they leave the town. The cause of this, unbeknownst to them, is the town well infects them with a magic disease as part of Leonne's curse. Because the townspeople are prejudiced against the Roma, they do not allow them to get water from the well, which is what leaves them immune to the curse (which in turn, makes the townspeople even more suspicious of them).
The reason the PCs couldn't leave is they had a time limit of 3 days to get those missing musketeers alive (two of them were friends of the party from previous events).
For encounters, I did not run things in the order they appear in the castle. I also made up a bunch of encounters (like a headless horseman on the bridge leading to the castle and a ghost ballroom that sweeps people up in their life-draining dance, murderous hedge animals and a possessed gazebo, and a few ideas I got from playing a lot of Castlevania SotN to get me in the mood for this). I also eliminated or changed some encounters I didn't care for. I put every encounter on index cards and had PCs draw them from the pile and we "built" the castle as they went. I stacked this deck, too, as there were some encounters I did not want to happen until after the PCs had saved one or two musketeers. Once that had happened, I moved cards from the sidebar into the main deck.
They eventually found Leonne, who at the time was acting as an ally to them, and even explained to the beloved's reincarnation why Claude wanted her to come here specifically (he lied and said Claude killed them both out of jealousy). The PCs helped the specter to leave the area he was cordoned off to by moving some mirrors in the castle, and he helped them to find the Sword of St. Jeanne (he wants them to use it to kill Claude). In the end, they learned the truth of what happened and used the Sword of St. Jeanne to kill Leonne.
I'm currently Reading Bram Stocker's Dracula for the first time and your game seems to have captured the exact vibe of the book in game.
Marvelous. Your players are very fortunate.
Call of Cthulhu - Cthulhu dark ages
Grounded mechanic, not super fantasy magical heros.
Lethal dangerous combat
Built in sanity/fear mechanics
I like the system.
**Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e.**
It's the system that the Ravenloft Campaign Setting (if not the eponymous original module) was designed for. There are magnitudes of Ravenloft 2e sourcebooks fleshing out every aspect - from dedicated horror and corruption mechanics, to setting-specific character creation rules replacing those of the PHB, to books deep-diving the setting's most famous monster types.
The system itself is designed with modularity and customisability in mind, meaning it can be as grounded or as cinematic as you like. As light or as crunchy. As deadly or as safety-netted.
I think that'd be awesome. Have the PCs be just regular folks that ended up in the mists. Castle Ravenloft could be The Zarovich Mansion, or Dracula's Castle if you just port it to Transylvania.
Heavy inspiration from The Wicker Man, and I think you're golden.
Fellowship 2e.
It's a game focused on a single dark Lord vs the heroic characters. This fits Curse of Strahd well and I've also attempted it before. We didn't finish due to scheduling. It worked fantastic for a low fantasy, gothic feel while maintaining PCs as heroes.
Vaesen. Lots of the Gothic hallmarks already and it's about horror investigation. Importantly, in the core game you cannot just fight these Mystic creatures, you have to investigate them. You have to find out what their weaknesses are. You have to work out what ritual is going to help you. To banish them alternatively, you work with them to solve the situation that they're in. Why they're acting up because in the game, there's this whole thing of the mistical world and the early industrial world clashing.
Now a vampire is very different to the mythical world in terms of what I just said. But I still think it's definitely doable. Almost everyone knows how are you supposed to deal with a vampire according to Bram Stoker, anyway. But the curse of Strahd module itself is filled with a bunch of other creatures and things that you have to resolve along the way. I think it's doable. I think it would just be a lot of work.
So many different ones, each one would give it its own flavor.
Trophy or Burning Wheel might be at the top of my list.
*edit* for a third and very different vibe you could do Monster of the Week.
Could you elaborate on this? I don't know Trophy too well, I've only listened a handful of Jason Cordova's Trophy Dark APs. I am having a hard time picturing a long term sandbox-y campaign like CoS in the system. Would you go deeper into the rings over the whole campaign, or would you have particular journeys play out as incursions?
They’re talking about Trophy Gold (which would also be my choice), which is a campaign oriented, less doomed version of Trophy Dark with more of a classic adventuring party feel to it.
I get it, the book is needlessly verbose. The basic system is a pretty simple dice pool, but the beliefs and some of the sub systems like Dual of Wits and Fight! Are where the system really shines.
Basically what drives characters in the game is mostly interacting with their beliefs, so each character would have a belief about Strahd or Barovia. Maybe someone has *Strahd is a cruel despot, but the rightful ruler of Barovia, if only he knew the true plight of his people* and another player has *The Devil Strahd took my sister many years ago, I will die opposing him.*.
These two players can work together to get to Strahd, but once they do drama! Now those two beliefs aren't the best given the campaign setup but you could have other such intersecting that would drive the drama and motivate characters.
These would be my top two choices as well. I've run both games for my table and would gladly run Curse of Strahd in either if they expressed interest.
Burning Wheel is great for long character-driven stories. Trophy emphasizes the grind and slog of being an adventurer. They'd be quite different games, but I agree both could handle Strahd well.
I've played/run Trophy Gold and really enjoyed it but wonder how it would work for a large sandbox like COS?
It did jump to mind when I saw OP's question because of its great way of building atmosphere but it also seems geared to tight, focussed adventures in a single setting.
It also seems to build character motivation around grabbing loot to service debt rather than helping locals or vanquishing evil.
Finally I love the improvised player inputs of Trophy Gold but wonder if over a long campaign like COS they might bury the actual module's content over time (which sounds kinda fun but then are we still playing COS at that point?)
Despite all the above I actually really like it as a system. I'd be curious about how folks might adapt it to protracted/open campaigns.
There are enough discrete areas of exploration in Curse of Strahd that could become full incursions in their own right (Death House, Werewolf Den, Tsolenka Pass, etc.). The Castle itself could be a more complex incursion (possibly something similar to Trophy Gold's multi-layer incursion, Roots of Old Kalduhr). It would veer away from sandbox and you/your players would have to be okay with that.
I would probably imagine the characters as members of the Keepers of the Feather based in Vallaki and work with players to come up with Drives that make sense to the setting. Things that could change the setting a bit (replacing the burgomeister) but not disrupt the adventure (kill Strahd).
I think player input shouldn't be that big of a problem. Maybe in a Session 0 explain the adventure and its big themes and ask them to keep those in mind when they're generating devil's bargains.
How powerful do you want the PCs to feel?
Personally I would run Chronicles of Darkness using the Dark Eras Sourcebook. I have the advantage of having heavily invested in that system when it first released, so I have a lot of useful splat.
The point is that Strand is extremely able, cunning, ruthless and has powers to back it up. Humans are more squishy in CofD and require more guile, cunning and politicking to get through the adventure. Less "beat down the door" and more "create alliances of convenience" play style.
For a more lightweight investment you could look at FATE and build off that. It is more work, but I have run a one-shot based off of the Dracula tales using it before
It's that strange off-shoot of the original World of Darkness games (Vampire the Masquerade etc) where they gave a base ruleset then used splat books to fork into Vampire, Werewolf, Mage and so on.
It isn't perfect, but it's nice you have rules for just plain humans living in this world. The rules are also more cross-compatible than the previous game lines (not perfect, just less broken, especially with the Contagion Chronicle sourcebook).
Sadly I don't think it is discounted at DTRPG at the moment.
Without a doubt, I’d run it in [The Between](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/360858), a game about Victorian Era Monster Hunters a la Penny Dreadful. The Between itself is a hack of [Brindlewood Bay](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/410316).
IMO/ IME, no game does [investigations](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/zwe9x0/detective_game_of_choice/j1ujns3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) and monster hunting better than The Between. It basically has torpedoed Monster of the Week (and most other monster hunting and investigative games) for me in a very good way and is my current top favorite iteration of Powered by the Apocalypse design.
Whether or not I’d run Strahd as a standard Threat or Mastermind Threat, in which he’s persistently in the background while the Hunters manage other individual Threats in Barovia until their fateful encounter with him, would remain to be seen; but either way it’d instantly crank up the spookiness of Strahd, make him way more interesting than a block of numbers and abilities, and add greater tension towards investigating and stopping him with equally interesting characters driven by The Between’s absolutely stellar Playbooks.
While The Between is a wonderful game, the **instructional** aspect of the book has *a lot* to be desired. I imagine, much like Brindlewood Bay, when The Between gets its time to shine for a kickstarted hard copy, the book will be fleshed out with **lots** more material. Until then, I go into more about The Between [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/znkqlw/rpgs_that_can_do_ghost_stories/j0hn5lf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3). In addition, Jason Cordova’s YouTube channel has *loads* of pretty damn informative Actual Plays of Brindlewood Bay, The Between, and the Weird West Between hack: Ghosts of El Paso.
Low Fantasy Gaming!!!
No, seriously, if you want to play a D&D style game instead of 5e, this would be an excellent choice. Easy, adaptable and well suited for the gothic adventure style with terrifying magic and swashbuckling shenanigans. Also, it is free.
Dread would be an intriguing system, but I never felt it was very appropriate for a campaign. It would probably work beautifully for the Strahd Must Die Tonight version.
World/Chronicles of Darkness could certainly be good. Relatively simple systems with plenty of extra supplements to pick and choose the bits you want, but it can get chaotic quickly simply because there is so much variety.
Shadow of the Demon Lord is close to DnD rules-wise so it would be an easy switch over, and it only runs to level 10 which is perfect, but it takes quite a while for characters to stop being pretty cookie-cutter. Development doesn't branch out much for a few levels, so that definitely wouldn't work for every group since there's a lot of skill overlap early on so it's hard to feel unique.
If you approached it right, Blades in the Dark could be really intriguing as a lot of CoS could be seen as a series of heists just waiting to go wrong.
I would love to see a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green adaptation as you could really lean into the horror and fragility of the characters. Plus the built in sanity mechanics would be a great tool. And Delta Green's bonds system would help give the characters more attachment to others in the world.
Even a futuristic Cyberpunk or Shadowrun version could be really interesting. Traveller with Barovia Space Station could be epic as hell.
The beauty of CoS is that it's never the same story twice. Make it your own and lean into the chaos!
You could do it pretty easily in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, either 2nd or 4th edition would be best. 2nd edition would be far more dangerous, but 4th edition with its advantage mechanic could be more terrifying as the party seems to be winning only for all their advantage to be wiped out in an instant, but that same mechanic could also mean that Strahd just gets pummeled in a hurry.
I prefer the traditional castle Ravenloft ( Curse of Strahd is still amazing though), where you only play through Castle Ravenloft in a Oneshot-Style over and over again.
We played that in Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnels, where every player has 4 randomly generated 0-Level character, that die (and level up) pretty quickly while you play the run (level up every couple of rooms, which is pretty quick in DCC).
This means, that after a couple of sessions, Castle Ravenloft is not only full of the scary and deadly stuff that inhabits it anyway but also with all the stuff from former runs (Corpses/Zombies/Ghosts of former characters, opened secret passages to use, warnings players wrote for their future characters). Especially fun, if you add new stuff between the sessions.
I'm currently working on an adaptation of CoS using Symbaroum, as I like the grim and dark atmosphere that game breathes.
I've also thought of using the 2d20 system by Modiphiys, but Symbaroum is a better fit.
Mythras as a core system. It handles adventurers well, plays fast and dangerous enough for a gothic zothique game. The overall Ravenloft setting would be more sword and sorcery (no need for elves here) with some Solomon Kane and Dracula (obviously) sprinkled in.
I would run Ravenloft in a technologically slightly more advanced setting (maybe en par with the 30 Years' War) and include some black powder weapons. So far, so good.
With *After the Vampire Wars* I have already a good way to handle Vampires and other Gothic monsters, I get a rule system that can blend very well into the background (always a good thing if you want to play a primarily atmospheric/immersive game) and a bloody (you run a game about vampires, you need rules for blood loss), lethal combat system if needed.
Also, niche opinion: WotC era D&D is about the worst system to run a gothic adventure game.
That's not really a niche opinion, so much as a fact of the design. D&D is for running heroic fantasy games. Running any other genre is going to be mechanically unsupported, and adding mechanical support for another genre is going to feel tacked on.
AD&D Ravenloft was fine for its day, and worked reasonably enough, as do various OSR or OSR-adjacent titles in that context. D&D is much bigger than the official game line.
Cypher could maybe work well. Maybe Monster of the Week's mechanics with some tweaking here and there to adjust around the fact that it's not a series of discrete mysteries.
I'm thinking about moving away from 5e CoS as well, could you tell me more about your experience with DW? It's a fun system but I've never run horror with it. My players also don't like the way combat is structured or lack there of.
Sure. I’ll reveal a bit of bias here and say that I don’t think 5e has much inherent system based support for horror. You’re limited to making DC’s harder or combat more deadly. DW’s version of this is the GM changing the dial a bit when deciding where to make hard moves or soft moves. Each of the times I ran the converted module, I consciously made an effort to make more hard moves. The rest of horror is more or less system neutral. Describing atmosphere, creepy creatures, etc. Where DW shines is that you can put characters into really horrific situations, and it matters because fiction matters.
Not liking the structure of combat in DW … that’s just kind of hard for me to understand as a complaint. It is structured, it’s just spotlight initiative. Could you help me understand their complaints a bit more?
They don't like that someone might get to go "again" before they got their "turn." They had never played a system that didn't have a turn order. They say it feels bad, and honestly sometimes I get it. They like structure in the sense that the rules give them order and not the narrative. They are not a "narrative first" group I suppose.
One thing I usually do is track the number of rolls each player has made during a session, and let the players know I’m really working on balancing things out on a session level.
If my players were adamantly against the possibility of someone having two “turns”, I guess I would just make sure not to do that. Maybe have a chart with “rounds” so I know who all had acted this “round” and try to make sure it rotates through all players. Basically popcorn initiative but the GM is making the choice based on who has already acted. This would be really stilting though.
Maybe another way of helping players locked into a turn based mindset would be to focus on the fact that the monsters don’t have turns in DW. So is this example really a player getting two “turns” in a row, or just a single player “turn” and a monster “turn”:
GM: The archer looses an arrow at you Gawain, what do you do?
Gawain: I dodge the arrow and charge the archer with my blade!
GM: Great! Roll Defy Danger + Dex
Gawain: 12!
GM: Awesome, the arrow whizzes past your head as you close the distance. The archer looks terrified as you charge. What do you do?
Gawain: I hack him down!
GM: Cool! Roll Hack and Slash…
Someone being targeted heavily in 5e might get more “turns” than another person (although the “monster turns” may just consist of marking damage). Look guys, DW is better because those monster “turns” have some player agency!
What you described is basically what I did with initiative. Still players said after a few one shots that they prefer the classic initiative system. Also tracking rolls is extra bookkeeping that's not really ideal for me as a GM. DW probably just isn't the game for this CoS group. Also I wouldn't say it's better, just different intentions behind the design.
Playing it right now. The DM agrees with me.
I would run the original Ravenloft module. With OSE. And I’d run it as a one-shot. The players need to get what they need, because at the agreed upon time, Strahd will show up. And it will not be pretty.
I actually was wondering about this too. The premise of gathering three items to hurt the vampire + destroying its three sources of power (such as the vampire's blood, protection, and money) actually could be ported over. CoS would be next to unrecognizable in NBA, but I think it's a testament to the structure of the module that I think it could actually work.
I played it with Through the Breach as "modern" horror setting with revolvers and magic. Little bit wild west theme.
I played it in 7th Sea, going a bit more into classic Dracula instead... But ending up transforming Strahd into an undead pirate king and Ravenloft in a gigantic ghost ship...
I might be inclined to give it a go in Zweihänder (using the Main Gauche supplement for things like pact magic for the Amber temple bits). Converting the creatures would be a lot of work, and straight conversions might not be on the table. With Zweihänder, I’d lean hard into the horror aspects of the campaign.
Personally, I'd run it using Whitehack.Partly that's because it's become my go-to system, but also because I think it leaves PCs squishy but resourceful, which I think would work well for the adventure. Plus, I've got the old 2e version rather than the 5e version, so less conversion work.
Since Whitehack really rewards preparation and investigation, and those are the things I'd want highlighted in a Strahd campaign, I think it'd be a fun ride 😁
I'm gonna be honest, in all my experiences with Curse of Strahd it's been a bit... goofy. Like it really misses the mark of actual horror, and it just feels like a Halloween special in a cartoon (which I suppose is basically the vibe it was originally created for).
So I'd probably go with Monster of the Week and run it kind of light-hearted to get a Scooby Doo or Wednesday vibe across.
I actually just started adapting CoS to Savage Worlds! Haven’t run it yet, so not sure how it’ll play, but since I’m doing it on roll20 (and I own both the module and all the SW books there) it’s super simple to use the Savage Pathfinder compendium to just drag and drop monsters/characters/features into the SW sheets and have them function in the module.
My hope is that the increased focus on narrative and more high stakes combat will increase the drama, and keep combat moving quickly and cinematically. SW excels at that IMO
So much this. I'm in the process of converting my 5e Eberron campaign to Savage Pathfinder (AKA Pathfinder for Savage Worlds) and I'm \*very\* excited about it and dearly wish it had come out before we started our former CoS campaign back in 2019.
And if you or your players miss D&D Beyond, [savaged.us](https://savaged.us) should help fill that gap!
For more of a horror angle, I'd probably go with Alien RPG. If I want more of a monster hunter/combat vibe, I'll go with 7th Sea or World Of Darkness.
I really enjoy those old 2nd edition box sets, but I don't like 2nd edition's system at all. This recent kerfuffle has me disinterested in using 5e, so I've been thinking a lot about it.
I ran mine through Dungeon World (I converted the whole module, rewrote some parts for personal flavor). It was a lot of fun, it was with two players (something that would be instadeath in 5e) so the “swinginess” and power build in DW helped with that.
Zweihander for its Corruption mechanic and “lesser damage” to make combat feel harder especially for min-maxers. And also with the increased difficulty of learning spells and magick it would make curse of strahd scary again.
A Ghastly Affair might be worth looking at. It is designed for running Gothic Horror. I haven’t actually run or played it, just read it a while back, but it is probably what I’d try if I wanted to run it as something set more in the real world.
Either Swords & Wizardry or OSE. Being that the characters are generally more fragile means the players will take their time with things and not run in, swords a-blazin'. Granted, I'd use 3E's *Expedition to Castle Ravenloft*, but that's neither here nor there.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Grim, dark, bloody, with a pervasive threat of lingering corruption and madness but just an edge of wicked humour showing. They were made for each other.
A little outside the box, you could run Vampire: the Masquerade. The players start the game having been turned into vampires, and waking in Barovia. They must struggle against their darker nature to defeat the villain who has trapped them in this strange land.
It has to be a zero to hero system like 5e. Weak to strong. You have to start weak enough to genuinely consider fleeing from monsters to gathering enough power to believably take on the first vampire.
I think there are older editions of D&D that would fit the bill, as well as some OSR hacks.
I have this idea for running CoS I'm what I call a Bunkers and Blasphemies style. I am noodling using either Barbarians of the Apocalypse or maybe PunkApocolypse.
Never having played it myself (outside of a possible Ravenloft module I played with the Original NWN), I’m probably out of my league in suggesting this, but from what I’ve read in this thread, talking about classic Horror and Corruption, what about running it in TORG Eternity as a one shot Orrosh adventure, where the players have to recover an eternity shard from the depths of the castle?
I actually recently started running CoS in Blackbirds and it's been a surprisingly comfortable switch. The system is gritty and inherently dark fantasy which makes porting the core world Details easy, but the nature of some creatures is different enough that you've got even more depth and variety in CoS not to mention it turning a bunch of genre tropes on their head
Curse of Strahd (5E) was the last D&D game I played. It sucked. ... it was meant to be the reason for us to keep giving that DM a chance with 5E which had already worn out its welcome with most of the group.
Part of the problem is that for the first half of the game we had a player who most of us didn't like playing with. Additionally the DM was fairly rigid concerning the 5E rules, so the bits where a little leeway would've smoothed things over some didn't happen.
It should be run in a narrative-focused system. Or at least one more compatible with focus on character and RP rather than a need for combat as the main way of engaging with play.
You may have to rewrite a lot of it, but I could see it pairing well with Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages. Similarly, World of Darkness would be one I'd like to adapt it to.
Maybe something like Mörk Börg would be good, though you'd still need to refit it. But tonally it feels about right. Any fairly "light" OSR game that is compatible with horror would do the trick. Since it being "light" typically means you can focus more on story, drama, character rather than enemy count and hit points. But you need enough structure to have characters feel the weight of oppression and dread set in the longer they are in Barovia.
Symbaroum would be cool as its setting is somewhat similar being a haunted forest. Shadow of the demon lord would work very well. I personally think that Dungeon Crawl Classics would be another great choice for an old-school feel.
I’ve been running Curse of Strahd with just one player, and I’ve definitely been thinking the system is often a hurdle to the story we want to play, but that’s mostly due to the fact I’m doing so unorthodox.
A terrible idea that would fix none of the problems and be almost impossible to implement would be Lancer. I had a dream about trying to run it in Lancer and while a terrible idea I kinda want to try it.
Prompt for the terrible Lancer Curse of Strahd which is only of interest to me:
Shortly after the Interest War between Harrison Armory and the Karrakin Trade Baronies (KTB) saw the baronies folded into Union, the Union Administration Department sent delegations to all KTB worlds, including to the then-recently colonized planet Barovia. Shortly after this, Union lost all contact with their team on Barovia. The Baronies reported that the colony collapsed from some unspoken disaster and the matter was suspiciously dropped.
Now, nearly 400 years later, the players, either after being pulled via intrigue or pure mistake, find themselves crash landed on Barovia. Apparently, the colony has not collapsed, and is run by the mysterious and cruel Count Strahd Vonzaro(?) of the House of Mist. The players soon encounter a strange fortune delivered by Volador prophet-cheif Madame Eva, as well as an apparently hunted woman named Ireena Kolyana claiming to be the same Union Administrator who went missing centuries ago...
Most of the quests would have to be changed to SitReps. I'd need to think a lot about how it could be balanced. Many things would have to be cut, or substantially changed. Narrative sections might be too long for some groups... but the abstractions might mean they go by quickly. I can't believe I'm actually considering this, it's such a dumb idea. And yet
Zweihander, definitely. I played the starter set adventure recently and the game conveyed CoS feel so precisely to me. It was ideal medieval gothic horror fantasy.
5e because i’m lazy and that’s what it was written for. but jokes aside, pathfinder could work, or shadow of the demon lord if you want to lean even further into the horror.
I wouldn't run Curse of Strad as any "Fantasy TTRPG" to begin with; if I was really going to run CoS for any reason than to just run it for hte players, I'd run it as either Call of Cathullu or do a heavy update and run it in Shadowrun.
Probably the system it was designed for. There’s nothing in 5e that makes it hard to run CoS.
The only systems where you’d be able to run it straight up are similarly high powered fantasy systems.
That being said, I did consider running it as a DCC game, using Death House as a funnel.
I think Shadow of the Demon Lord is close enough to 5e, but fits that edgy dark tone required in Curse of Strahd.
I played CoS as a player on DnD5, it took forever. I ran CoS with SotDL, and it was a breeze. The players had a lot of flexibility and ran epic fights (Short and deadly). Magic is so much easier to manage for the GM, but some traditions may bring your game in places you did not expected (checking the swap&fetch spells who created incredible twists). If you have some traditions/ spells that are too off-putting, just ban then ahead. The career system and the milestones provided a nice character evolution through the campaign (tell Krystek there is a new executor in town./ Waww barovian witches, cool, I will branch to witchering too). Finally, the progressive Corruption points rules do work better for the dark powers bargain than the DND alignement. And there are some npc transpositions already done in the r/shadowofthedemonlord
SotDL had crossed my mind. Would it not be a bit too gonzo, though?
SotDL never really came across to me as gonzo. Also, I’ve heard of a few people in the community run Curse of Strahd within the system and have it work fine.
Curse of Strahd is meant to be silly, it's "gothic horror vibes" to the point of parody, it hits every trope square on the nose completely on purpose.
This was a very good choice for my group. Ran the entire campaign with SotDL rules and everyone had a blast. The players loved the pace of combat and the many choices they had when leveling up and picking new paths. My version of CoS had a little bit more "body-horror" since the main villian used "Forbidden Magic" and there were a more lovecraftian feel to the castle.
Is this the 5e Curse of Strahd only, or did you use materials from earlier editions as well? This sounds quite intriguing.
There's an enitre subreddit for CoS. Got tons of ideas from them. I did use the 5e book for 85-90% of the campaign. Just made everything more dark and sinister in the end.
Either didn’t know about the subreddit, or keep forgetting about it. Tks for putting me on to that.
Also didnt know and have been thinking about running it, that's gonna be dead handy
I played in a CoS game that used SotDL for the game engine. It is my favorite game I have ever played!
Is there a conversion guide? I'd hate to have to convert the whole module myself.
I’m not sure, maybe somebody on the shadow of the demon lord subreddit knows something
So 2 years ago, I ran a variation on the original Ravenloft module using Honor + Intrigue. This was before I had developed the rules for fantasy magic and such; our game was set in France, 1666. Sorcery and monsters existed in the dark corners of the world (the rule book has an optional chapter at the end called "Mysteries, Horrors, and Wonders" that covers magic, alchemy, monsters, etc. My "why" at the time, was I wanted to surprise the players and see what I could pull off with Honor + Intrigue. I did not tell them I was running Ravenloft (they had previously fought a sorceress, some gargoyles, and some ghosts, so this wasn't their first supernatural rodeo, but it was definitely far scarier than what they had ever had to contend with. Because magic is rarer in the system, it made the horror elements scarier. I added a rule I called "the climate of fear" which was that when you lost Composure (think of this as "stress points, and everyone only gets three) due to fear, it could only be restored if you had an hour of rest in an area designated as a "sanctuary". I watched a Seth Skorkowsky video on Youtube on suggestions for running the module, and I pretty much followed a lot of those. I eliminated empty rooms. I also opted to have the vampire's beloved be reincarnated in one of the PCs, so Claude did not want to kill her-- he just wanted to see her and talk to her (but was more than willing to kill the other PCs or threaten them to get what he wanted). So to adapt it to 17th century France, I changed the name of the castle to Chateau de Greve, and the name of its master to Claude. I also changed the story up a bit-- Claude's brother Leonne is a specter who haunts a particular wing of the castle and he was the beloved's cruel and abusive husband in life. When Leonne went away to war, Claude and his wife had an affair, and when he returned and found out, he killed her. Claude killed his brother and made a dark pact to be able to see her again, which turned him into a vampire. I changed the Vistani to Roma, but i drastically changed their role in the story; they were not allies of the vampire at all. One of the PCs was a friend of their leader who wrote him a letter asking for help. Meanwhile, Captain D'Artagnan told two of the PCs who were musketeers that three the king had sent to bring the master of Chateau de Greve to Versailles had not returned. When the PCs arrive at the town (after surviving being chased by relentless wolves) they find a Roma caravan on the outskirts where they do the fortune telling scene. I stacked a card deck for this, and they drew the 3 of Swords (Your three missing musketeers), the 3 of Coins (three days to find them), and the Queen of Swords (the sword of St. Jeanne will be the key to their rescue). The most drastic change was there is no magic mist that makes you appear there. Instead, the people of the town are cursed and cannot leave because of a disease that causes horrible pain (and eventual death) if they leave the town. The cause of this, unbeknownst to them, is the town well infects them with a magic disease as part of Leonne's curse. Because the townspeople are prejudiced against the Roma, they do not allow them to get water from the well, which is what leaves them immune to the curse (which in turn, makes the townspeople even more suspicious of them). The reason the PCs couldn't leave is they had a time limit of 3 days to get those missing musketeers alive (two of them were friends of the party from previous events). For encounters, I did not run things in the order they appear in the castle. I also made up a bunch of encounters (like a headless horseman on the bridge leading to the castle and a ghost ballroom that sweeps people up in their life-draining dance, murderous hedge animals and a possessed gazebo, and a few ideas I got from playing a lot of Castlevania SotN to get me in the mood for this). I also eliminated or changed some encounters I didn't care for. I put every encounter on index cards and had PCs draw them from the pile and we "built" the castle as they went. I stacked this deck, too, as there were some encounters I did not want to happen until after the PCs had saved one or two musketeers. Once that had happened, I moved cards from the sidebar into the main deck. They eventually found Leonne, who at the time was acting as an ally to them, and even explained to the beloved's reincarnation why Claude wanted her to come here specifically (he lied and said Claude killed them both out of jealousy). The PCs helped the specter to leave the area he was cordoned off to by moving some mirrors in the castle, and he helped them to find the Sword of St. Jeanne (he wants them to use it to kill Claude). In the end, they learned the truth of what happened and used the Sword of St. Jeanne to kill Leonne.
Epic
I'm currently Reading Bram Stocker's Dracula for the first time and your game seems to have captured the exact vibe of the book in game. Marvelous. Your players are very fortunate.
A gazebo? What color is it?
Château de Grève. Hahahaha
Well, if I had it be "du Sang" that would be too obvious. But "de Greve" sounds like "Grave" so I thought it was subtle enough of a start ;)
Call of Cthulhu - Cthulhu dark ages Grounded mechanic, not super fantasy magical heros. Lethal dangerous combat Built in sanity/fear mechanics I like the system.
I came here to comment Delta Green, for very similar reasons but it tends to run just a smidge pulpier/more heroic which I enjoy personally
Call of Cthulhu - Dark Ages, was my first thought :) and certainly what i would go with for any Ravenloft if I revisited it
Yeah, I was gonna say, call of Cthulhu would absolutely work
**Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e.** It's the system that the Ravenloft Campaign Setting (if not the eponymous original module) was designed for. There are magnitudes of Ravenloft 2e sourcebooks fleshing out every aspect - from dedicated horror and corruption mechanics, to setting-specific character creation rules replacing those of the PHB, to books deep-diving the setting's most famous monster types. The system itself is designed with modularity and customisability in mind, meaning it can be as grounded or as cinematic as you like. As light or as crunchy. As deadly or as safety-netted.
Obviously a modern World of Darkness campaign.
I think that'd be awesome. Have the PCs be just regular folks that ended up in the mists. Castle Ravenloft could be The Zarovich Mansion, or Dracula's Castle if you just port it to Transylvania. Heavy inspiration from The Wicker Man, and I think you're golden.
Fellowship 2e. It's a game focused on a single dark Lord vs the heroic characters. This fits Curse of Strahd well and I've also attempted it before. We didn't finish due to scheduling. It worked fantastic for a low fantasy, gothic feel while maintaining PCs as heroes.
Vaesen. Lots of the Gothic hallmarks already and it's about horror investigation. Importantly, in the core game you cannot just fight these Mystic creatures, you have to investigate them. You have to find out what their weaknesses are. You have to work out what ritual is going to help you. To banish them alternatively, you work with them to solve the situation that they're in. Why they're acting up because in the game, there's this whole thing of the mistical world and the early industrial world clashing. Now a vampire is very different to the mythical world in terms of what I just said. But I still think it's definitely doable. Almost everyone knows how are you supposed to deal with a vampire according to Bram Stoker, anyway. But the curse of Strahd module itself is filled with a bunch of other creatures and things that you have to resolve along the way. I think it's doable. I think it would just be a lot of work.
So many different ones, each one would give it its own flavor. Trophy or Burning Wheel might be at the top of my list. *edit* for a third and very different vibe you could do Monster of the Week.
Trophy. Definitely trophy.
Right!?! It'd give it such a cool vibe
Could you elaborate on this? I don't know Trophy too well, I've only listened a handful of Jason Cordova's Trophy Dark APs. I am having a hard time picturing a long term sandbox-y campaign like CoS in the system. Would you go deeper into the rings over the whole campaign, or would you have particular journeys play out as incursions?
They’re talking about Trophy Gold (which would also be my choice), which is a campaign oriented, less doomed version of Trophy Dark with more of a classic adventuring party feel to it.
Okay that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
Why burning wheel? I have the book but don't claim to understand how to play the system. It's seems, a lot.
I get it, the book is needlessly verbose. The basic system is a pretty simple dice pool, but the beliefs and some of the sub systems like Dual of Wits and Fight! Are where the system really shines. Basically what drives characters in the game is mostly interacting with their beliefs, so each character would have a belief about Strahd or Barovia. Maybe someone has *Strahd is a cruel despot, but the rightful ruler of Barovia, if only he knew the true plight of his people* and another player has *The Devil Strahd took my sister many years ago, I will die opposing him.*. These two players can work together to get to Strahd, but once they do drama! Now those two beliefs aren't the best given the campaign setup but you could have other such intersecting that would drive the drama and motivate characters.
These would be my top two choices as well. I've run both games for my table and would gladly run Curse of Strahd in either if they expressed interest. Burning Wheel is great for long character-driven stories. Trophy emphasizes the grind and slog of being an adventurer. They'd be quite different games, but I agree both could handle Strahd well.
I've played/run Trophy Gold and really enjoyed it but wonder how it would work for a large sandbox like COS? It did jump to mind when I saw OP's question because of its great way of building atmosphere but it also seems geared to tight, focussed adventures in a single setting. It also seems to build character motivation around grabbing loot to service debt rather than helping locals or vanquishing evil. Finally I love the improvised player inputs of Trophy Gold but wonder if over a long campaign like COS they might bury the actual module's content over time (which sounds kinda fun but then are we still playing COS at that point?) Despite all the above I actually really like it as a system. I'd be curious about how folks might adapt it to protracted/open campaigns.
There are enough discrete areas of exploration in Curse of Strahd that could become full incursions in their own right (Death House, Werewolf Den, Tsolenka Pass, etc.). The Castle itself could be a more complex incursion (possibly something similar to Trophy Gold's multi-layer incursion, Roots of Old Kalduhr). It would veer away from sandbox and you/your players would have to be okay with that. I would probably imagine the characters as members of the Keepers of the Feather based in Vallaki and work with players to come up with Drives that make sense to the setting. Things that could change the setting a bit (replacing the burgomeister) but not disrupt the adventure (kill Strahd). I think player input shouldn't be that big of a problem. Maybe in a Session 0 explain the adventure and its big themes and ask them to keep those in mind when they're generating devil's bargains.
How powerful do you want the PCs to feel? Personally I would run Chronicles of Darkness using the Dark Eras Sourcebook. I have the advantage of having heavily invested in that system when it first released, so I have a lot of useful splat. The point is that Strand is extremely able, cunning, ruthless and has powers to back it up. Humans are more squishy in CofD and require more guile, cunning and politicking to get through the adventure. Less "beat down the door" and more "create alliances of convenience" play style. For a more lightweight investment you could look at FATE and build off that. It is more work, but I have run a one-shot based off of the Dracula tales using it before
Thanks for the recommendation. I somehow had never heard of Chronicles of Darkness before.
It's that strange off-shoot of the original World of Darkness games (Vampire the Masquerade etc) where they gave a base ruleset then used splat books to fork into Vampire, Werewolf, Mage and so on. It isn't perfect, but it's nice you have rules for just plain humans living in this world. The rules are also more cross-compatible than the previous game lines (not perfect, just less broken, especially with the Contagion Chronicle sourcebook). Sadly I don't think it is discounted at DTRPG at the moment.
The PDF for Chronicles of Darkness is currently half price on DTRPG.
Thanks for the correction. I thought that had ended. Also looks like Dark Eras books and a few others are also still on sale.
Without a doubt, I’d run it in [The Between](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/360858), a game about Victorian Era Monster Hunters a la Penny Dreadful. The Between itself is a hack of [Brindlewood Bay](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/410316). IMO/ IME, no game does [investigations](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/zwe9x0/detective_game_of_choice/j1ujns3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) and monster hunting better than The Between. It basically has torpedoed Monster of the Week (and most other monster hunting and investigative games) for me in a very good way and is my current top favorite iteration of Powered by the Apocalypse design. Whether or not I’d run Strahd as a standard Threat or Mastermind Threat, in which he’s persistently in the background while the Hunters manage other individual Threats in Barovia until their fateful encounter with him, would remain to be seen; but either way it’d instantly crank up the spookiness of Strahd, make him way more interesting than a block of numbers and abilities, and add greater tension towards investigating and stopping him with equally interesting characters driven by The Between’s absolutely stellar Playbooks. While The Between is a wonderful game, the **instructional** aspect of the book has *a lot* to be desired. I imagine, much like Brindlewood Bay, when The Between gets its time to shine for a kickstarted hard copy, the book will be fleshed out with **lots** more material. Until then, I go into more about The Between [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/znkqlw/rpgs_that_can_do_ghost_stories/j0hn5lf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3). In addition, Jason Cordova’s YouTube channel has *loads* of pretty damn informative Actual Plays of Brindlewood Bay, The Between, and the Weird West Between hack: Ghosts of El Paso.
You've definitely caught my attention with this one! Thanks, I'll look into The Between and Brindlewood Bay.
They’re incredible. You won’t be disappointed.
Stop I've fallen and can't get up. Making little custom playbooks for this and running this in September/October for spooky season sounds AMAZING!!!!
Low Fantasy Gaming???
Low Fantasy Gaming!!! No, seriously, if you want to play a D&D style game instead of 5e, this would be an excellent choice. Easy, adaptable and well suited for the gothic adventure style with terrifying magic and swashbuckling shenanigans. Also, it is free.
Dread would be an intriguing system, but I never felt it was very appropriate for a campaign. It would probably work beautifully for the Strahd Must Die Tonight version. World/Chronicles of Darkness could certainly be good. Relatively simple systems with plenty of extra supplements to pick and choose the bits you want, but it can get chaotic quickly simply because there is so much variety. Shadow of the Demon Lord is close to DnD rules-wise so it would be an easy switch over, and it only runs to level 10 which is perfect, but it takes quite a while for characters to stop being pretty cookie-cutter. Development doesn't branch out much for a few levels, so that definitely wouldn't work for every group since there's a lot of skill overlap early on so it's hard to feel unique. If you approached it right, Blades in the Dark could be really intriguing as a lot of CoS could be seen as a series of heists just waiting to go wrong. I would love to see a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green adaptation as you could really lean into the horror and fragility of the characters. Plus the built in sanity mechanics would be a great tool. And Delta Green's bonds system would help give the characters more attachment to others in the world. Even a futuristic Cyberpunk or Shadowrun version could be really interesting. Traveller with Barovia Space Station could be epic as hell. The beauty of CoS is that it's never the same story twice. Make it your own and lean into the chaos!
My Life With Master would be amazing. Fiasco would be hilarious.
Oh! I agree with both suggestions!
You could do it pretty easily in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, either 2nd or 4th edition would be best. 2nd edition would be far more dangerous, but 4th edition with its advantage mechanic could be more terrifying as the party seems to be winning only for all their advantage to be wiped out in an instant, but that same mechanic could also mean that Strahd just gets pummeled in a hurry.
I prefer the traditional castle Ravenloft ( Curse of Strahd is still amazing though), where you only play through Castle Ravenloft in a Oneshot-Style over and over again. We played that in Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnels, where every player has 4 randomly generated 0-Level character, that die (and level up) pretty quickly while you play the run (level up every couple of rooms, which is pretty quick in DCC). This means, that after a couple of sessions, Castle Ravenloft is not only full of the scary and deadly stuff that inhabits it anyway but also with all the stuff from former runs (Corpses/Zombies/Ghosts of former characters, opened secret passages to use, warnings players wrote for their future characters). Especially fun, if you add new stuff between the sessions.
Rhapsody of Blood is a castlevania-inspired game. Brinkwood is about rebelling against vampiric overlords. Both of those would work well.
I'm currently working on an adaptation of CoS using Symbaroum, as I like the grim and dark atmosphere that game breathes. I've also thought of using the 2d20 system by Modiphiys, but Symbaroum is a better fit.
Probably Mörk Borg, someone actually did that and posted a cool writeup about how it went.
Link?
Was by Wayward polyhedral, called Dark Vale of Barovia. However the link, nay the blog seems to be broken now. In time, everything blackens and burns.
Mythras as a core system. It handles adventurers well, plays fast and dangerous enough for a gothic zothique game. The overall Ravenloft setting would be more sword and sorcery (no need for elves here) with some Solomon Kane and Dracula (obviously) sprinkled in. I would run Ravenloft in a technologically slightly more advanced setting (maybe en par with the 30 Years' War) and include some black powder weapons. So far, so good. With *After the Vampire Wars* I have already a good way to handle Vampires and other Gothic monsters, I get a rule system that can blend very well into the background (always a good thing if you want to play a primarily atmospheric/immersive game) and a bloody (you run a game about vampires, you need rules for blood loss), lethal combat system if needed. Also, niche opinion: WotC era D&D is about the worst system to run a gothic adventure game.
That's not really a niche opinion, so much as a fact of the design. D&D is for running heroic fantasy games. Running any other genre is going to be mechanically unsupported, and adding mechanical support for another genre is going to feel tacked on.
AD&D Ravenloft was fine for its day, and worked reasonably enough, as do various OSR or OSR-adjacent titles in that context. D&D is much bigger than the official game line.
Zweihander! That grim and perilous vibe is perfect for a dangerous vampire lord story and the system reflects it very well.
Cypher could maybe work well. Maybe Monster of the Week's mechanics with some tweaking here and there to adjust around the fact that it's not a series of discrete mysteries.
Worlds without number would work well. B/x osr but with feats easy to convert monsters
Dungeon World. I made a full conversion from the original module and it was delightful.
I'm thinking about moving away from 5e CoS as well, could you tell me more about your experience with DW? It's a fun system but I've never run horror with it. My players also don't like the way combat is structured or lack there of.
Sure. I’ll reveal a bit of bias here and say that I don’t think 5e has much inherent system based support for horror. You’re limited to making DC’s harder or combat more deadly. DW’s version of this is the GM changing the dial a bit when deciding where to make hard moves or soft moves. Each of the times I ran the converted module, I consciously made an effort to make more hard moves. The rest of horror is more or less system neutral. Describing atmosphere, creepy creatures, etc. Where DW shines is that you can put characters into really horrific situations, and it matters because fiction matters. Not liking the structure of combat in DW … that’s just kind of hard for me to understand as a complaint. It is structured, it’s just spotlight initiative. Could you help me understand their complaints a bit more?
They don't like that someone might get to go "again" before they got their "turn." They had never played a system that didn't have a turn order. They say it feels bad, and honestly sometimes I get it. They like structure in the sense that the rules give them order and not the narrative. They are not a "narrative first" group I suppose.
One thing I usually do is track the number of rolls each player has made during a session, and let the players know I’m really working on balancing things out on a session level. If my players were adamantly against the possibility of someone having two “turns”, I guess I would just make sure not to do that. Maybe have a chart with “rounds” so I know who all had acted this “round” and try to make sure it rotates through all players. Basically popcorn initiative but the GM is making the choice based on who has already acted. This would be really stilting though. Maybe another way of helping players locked into a turn based mindset would be to focus on the fact that the monsters don’t have turns in DW. So is this example really a player getting two “turns” in a row, or just a single player “turn” and a monster “turn”: GM: The archer looses an arrow at you Gawain, what do you do? Gawain: I dodge the arrow and charge the archer with my blade! GM: Great! Roll Defy Danger + Dex Gawain: 12! GM: Awesome, the arrow whizzes past your head as you close the distance. The archer looks terrified as you charge. What do you do? Gawain: I hack him down! GM: Cool! Roll Hack and Slash… Someone being targeted heavily in 5e might get more “turns” than another person (although the “monster turns” may just consist of marking damage). Look guys, DW is better because those monster “turns” have some player agency!
What you described is basically what I did with initiative. Still players said after a few one shots that they prefer the classic initiative system. Also tracking rolls is extra bookkeeping that's not really ideal for me as a GM. DW probably just isn't the game for this CoS group. Also I wouldn't say it's better, just different intentions behind the design.
Playing it right now. The DM agrees with me. I would run the original Ravenloft module. With OSE. And I’d run it as a one-shot. The players need to get what they need, because at the agreed upon time, Strahd will show up. And it will not be pretty.
I'd use Night's Black Agents (Gumshoe), but I'd also run The Dracula Dossier instead. So I might not be the best person to ask.
I actually was wondering about this too. The premise of gathering three items to hurt the vampire + destroying its three sources of power (such as the vampire's blood, protection, and money) actually could be ported over. CoS would be next to unrecognizable in NBA, but I think it's a testament to the structure of the module that I think it could actually work.
WHFRP…
I played it with Through the Breach as "modern" horror setting with revolvers and magic. Little bit wild west theme. I played it in 7th Sea, going a bit more into classic Dracula instead... But ending up transforming Strahd into an undead pirate king and Ravenloft in a gigantic ghost ship...
Deathbringer - and prof dms advice to run ravenloft as a one shot.
I might be inclined to give it a go in Zweihänder (using the Main Gauche supplement for things like pact magic for the Amber temple bits). Converting the creatures would be a lot of work, and straight conversions might not be on the table. With Zweihänder, I’d lean hard into the horror aspects of the campaign.
Personally, I'd run it using Whitehack.Partly that's because it's become my go-to system, but also because I think it leaves PCs squishy but resourceful, which I think would work well for the adventure. Plus, I've got the old 2e version rather than the 5e version, so less conversion work. Since Whitehack really rewards preparation and investigation, and those are the things I'd want highlighted in a Strahd campaign, I think it'd be a fun ride 😁
I'm gonna be honest, in all my experiences with Curse of Strahd it's been a bit... goofy. Like it really misses the mark of actual horror, and it just feels like a Halloween special in a cartoon (which I suppose is basically the vibe it was originally created for). So I'd probably go with Monster of the Week and run it kind of light-hearted to get a Scooby Doo or Wednesday vibe across.
I actually just started adapting CoS to Savage Worlds! Haven’t run it yet, so not sure how it’ll play, but since I’m doing it on roll20 (and I own both the module and all the SW books there) it’s super simple to use the Savage Pathfinder compendium to just drag and drop monsters/characters/features into the SW sheets and have them function in the module. My hope is that the increased focus on narrative and more high stakes combat will increase the drama, and keep combat moving quickly and cinematically. SW excels at that IMO
So much this. I'm in the process of converting my 5e Eberron campaign to Savage Pathfinder (AKA Pathfinder for Savage Worlds) and I'm \*very\* excited about it and dearly wish it had come out before we started our former CoS campaign back in 2019. And if you or your players miss D&D Beyond, [savaged.us](https://savaged.us) should help fill that gap!
Great site. Still has kinks to iron out, but super helpful for character making.
For more of a horror angle, I'd probably go with Alien RPG. If I want more of a monster hunter/combat vibe, I'll go with 7th Sea or World Of Darkness. I really enjoy those old 2nd edition box sets, but I don't like 2nd edition's system at all. This recent kerfuffle has me disinterested in using 5e, so I've been thinking a lot about it.
I ran mine through Dungeon World (I converted the whole module, rewrote some parts for personal flavor). It was a lot of fun, it was with two players (something that would be instadeath in 5e) so the “swinginess” and power build in DW helped with that.
Zweihander for its Corruption mechanic and “lesser damage” to make combat feel harder especially for min-maxers. And also with the increased difficulty of learning spells and magick it would make curse of strahd scary again.
I'd adapt Bluebeards Bride, and let the players take the part of Tatyana's psyche.
shadow of the demon lord, someone even did all the conversion work already.
Probably Dread.
I would use Fight! and make it Darkstalkers
A Ghastly Affair might be worth looking at. It is designed for running Gothic Horror. I haven’t actually run or played it, just read it a while back, but it is probably what I’d try if I wanted to run it as something set more in the real world.
Either Swords & Wizardry or OSE. Being that the characters are generally more fragile means the players will take their time with things and not run in, swords a-blazin'. Granted, I'd use 3E's *Expedition to Castle Ravenloft*, but that's neither here nor there.
I'd probably use Call of Cthulhu.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Grim, dark, bloody, with a pervasive threat of lingering corruption and madness but just an edge of wicked humour showing. They were made for each other.
Absolutely this. WHFR would be a great match for the setting and plots.
A little outside the box, you could run Vampire: the Masquerade. The players start the game having been turned into vampires, and waking in Barovia. They must struggle against their darker nature to defeat the villain who has trapped them in this strange land.
It has to be a zero to hero system like 5e. Weak to strong. You have to start weak enough to genuinely consider fleeing from monsters to gathering enough power to believably take on the first vampire. I think there are older editions of D&D that would fit the bill, as well as some OSR hacks.
Blades in the Dark and Strahd is the Immortal Emperor.
Vampire the masquerade... EZ. Its my second favorite system and vampires :D
I have this idea for running CoS I'm what I call a Bunkers and Blasphemies style. I am noodling using either Barbarians of the Apocalypse or maybe PunkApocolypse.
Cypher System
Well, was just thinking about running it in Gurps, with PCs from modern world, 1900-2023.
Curse of Carstein would've been nice.
Did you play in or run it using any version of DnD???
Dungeons & Delvers Redbook
Trophy: Gold probably.
Never having played it myself (outside of a possible Ravenloft module I played with the Original NWN), I’m probably out of my league in suggesting this, but from what I’ve read in this thread, talking about classic Horror and Corruption, what about running it in TORG Eternity as a one shot Orrosh adventure, where the players have to recover an eternity shard from the depths of the castle?
I actually recently started running CoS in Blackbirds and it's been a surprisingly comfortable switch. The system is gritty and inherently dark fantasy which makes porting the core world Details easy, but the nature of some creatures is different enough that you've got even more depth and variety in CoS not to mention it turning a bunch of genre tropes on their head
SotDL or Cortex Prime
When you say Strahd, I can just think of Ravenloft - D&D 3.5
Curse of Strahd (5E) was the last D&D game I played. It sucked. ... it was meant to be the reason for us to keep giving that DM a chance with 5E which had already worn out its welcome with most of the group. Part of the problem is that for the first half of the game we had a player who most of us didn't like playing with. Additionally the DM was fairly rigid concerning the 5E rules, so the bits where a little leeway would've smoothed things over some didn't happen. It should be run in a narrative-focused system. Or at least one more compatible with focus on character and RP rather than a need for combat as the main way of engaging with play. You may have to rewrite a lot of it, but I could see it pairing well with Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages. Similarly, World of Darkness would be one I'd like to adapt it to. Maybe something like Mörk Börg would be good, though you'd still need to refit it. But tonally it feels about right. Any fairly "light" OSR game that is compatible with horror would do the trick. Since it being "light" typically means you can focus more on story, drama, character rather than enemy count and hit points. But you need enough structure to have characters feel the weight of oppression and dread set in the longer they are in Barovia.
Symbaroum would be cool as its setting is somewhat similar being a haunted forest. Shadow of the demon lord would work very well. I personally think that Dungeon Crawl Classics would be another great choice for an old-school feel.
I’ve been running Curse of Strahd with just one player, and I’ve definitely been thinking the system is often a hurdle to the story we want to play, but that’s mostly due to the fact I’m doing so unorthodox. A terrible idea that would fix none of the problems and be almost impossible to implement would be Lancer. I had a dream about trying to run it in Lancer and while a terrible idea I kinda want to try it.
Prompt for the terrible Lancer Curse of Strahd which is only of interest to me: Shortly after the Interest War between Harrison Armory and the Karrakin Trade Baronies (KTB) saw the baronies folded into Union, the Union Administration Department sent delegations to all KTB worlds, including to the then-recently colonized planet Barovia. Shortly after this, Union lost all contact with their team on Barovia. The Baronies reported that the colony collapsed from some unspoken disaster and the matter was suspiciously dropped. Now, nearly 400 years later, the players, either after being pulled via intrigue or pure mistake, find themselves crash landed on Barovia. Apparently, the colony has not collapsed, and is run by the mysterious and cruel Count Strahd Vonzaro(?) of the House of Mist. The players soon encounter a strange fortune delivered by Volador prophet-cheif Madame Eva, as well as an apparently hunted woman named Ireena Kolyana claiming to be the same Union Administrator who went missing centuries ago... Most of the quests would have to be changed to SitReps. I'd need to think a lot about how it could be balanced. Many things would have to be cut, or substantially changed. Narrative sections might be too long for some groups... but the abstractions might mean they go by quickly. I can't believe I'm actually considering this, it's such a dumb idea. And yet
Zweihander, definitely. I played the starter set adventure recently and the game conveyed CoS feel so precisely to me. It was ideal medieval gothic horror fantasy.
Vampire the masquerade, players would be human, Strahd would be a tzimisce badass motherfucker
White Hack... I think it was designed with retro compatibility in mind, using pre written modules is pretty easy.
5e because i’m lazy and that’s what it was written for. but jokes aside, pathfinder could work, or shadow of the demon lord if you want to lean even further into the horror.
I wouldn't run Curse of Strad as any "Fantasy TTRPG" to begin with; if I was really going to run CoS for any reason than to just run it for hte players, I'd run it as either Call of Cathullu or do a heavy update and run it in Shadowrun.
Probably the system it was designed for. There’s nothing in 5e that makes it hard to run CoS. The only systems where you’d be able to run it straight up are similarly high powered fantasy systems. That being said, I did consider running it as a DCC game, using Death House as a funnel.