Curse of Strahd, Tarokka Deck, Predetermined Gameplay vs Chance

When it comes to D&D, It can be a very fickle fine line for a DM to walk between what is fun and what is fair. Your party of 5 crit walking all over 3 Skele-mans is not what anyone would call an encounter. At most it’s a mild inconvenience for the sake of time filler, and that can be emersion breaking. For times like this, it doesn’t hurt to just wink at them and say that 12 more Skele-mans or Zom-bolognas crawl out of their dank, dusty graves behind them. Now it’s a party!
But we all know that in times like this, we never planned the encounter to be 15 skeletons, we were just getting our ass kicked too fast.

The same is true with the Curse of Strahd module. The setting drops your players into the land of Barovia, a plane of existence somewhere next door to Vecna in the Shadowfell.

Strahd and Vecna having a neighborly BBQ. Image by Gemini.

Once in the country of Barovia, your party lands immediately in the town of Barovia, a town that is heavily oppressed by the dark ruler himself. Everything from ghastly ghouls and haunted mansions reside in this ghost town. Despite the numerous buildings, the population count is somewhere in the single digits. This is where I begin altering the story. I do run them through the plot hooks described in the book, though sometimes I allow the more adventurous groups to find out the hard way that abominations and ghouls hide in these boarded up houses. One idea I especially enjoy is the opening of Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Ravenloft-Heir-Strahd/dp/0593599772 by Delilah S. Dawson. She describes her party wondering senselessly into the butcher’s shop and they quickly find themselves overrun and outnumbered by the mere isolation of being a new adventuring group with a lot of trust issues. Great book by the way!

Your setup in this module matters, my current group take Strahd von Zarovich as an Incel who is stuck on a girl he can never have. And the more they play into this notion, the more I continue to punish them for it. Let your DM God complex play out here, scare the shit out of them, remind them that Strahd is their God whether they accept this or not. Just don’t go too crazy, you do have an objective of getting them to that final fight.

Though most notably in my own runs in this setting is that I abuse the Tarokka Deck. The interesting part of Curse of Strahd is that a tarot card deck determines where your party will go, and what they will see. It does this by telling them where the artifacts can be found to kill Strahd. While some locations are certainly better than others, most are pretty mid. Its this reason that I choose the same cards every time I run this setting. This gives my party the best possible experience of the module.

Call it what you will, but I believe that giving my players the best experience is far better than traveling for days and not understanding how these cards tie into the actual plot besides just pointing to items.

How about you? Did I convince you to cheat your players in the draw of the cards?