Tips needed for continuing curse of strahd after death house - Dungeon Masters Only - Dungeons & Dragons Discussion - D&D Beyond Forums (2024)

When my group were teleported through the mist i teleported them to the village of barovia to the death house.

My group completed death house and I want them to now continue on to curse of strahd campaign

How do I get them to madam Eva for the fortune?

Do I bring her to the village of barovia, or do I send them to her?

Any suggestions on which direction to get them started in the curse of strahd ?

I recommend you allow the party to explore and make their own choices, rather than worry about directing the story too closely. Players usually prefer to have choices and make decisions they feel are their own. There are plenty of NPCs and plot hooks that await them and will introduce sub-plots such as visiting Madam Eva.

I suggest keeping Madam Eva where she is. If the party doesn't find her immediately, that's ok. They can meet her and get a reading later in the campaign, if needed. A number of NPCs would suggest they seek her out eventually. Esmerelda and even Arabelle can also do card readings, if need be.

After Death House, what usually happens in campaigns is theparty will find its way next to the village of Barovia. They will want a safe place to recover from the house. In the village,they will be drawn to the tavern quickly, meet Ismark, and then the story is underway. In the unusual case that your party makes different choices, the open "sandbox" nature of Barovia will take their to one sub-plot or another soon. The adventure doesn't need to be a linear sequence. That's one of the interestingthings about Curse of Strahd. Have fun!

Curse of Strahd doesn't have a whole lot of stuff to specifically lead the PCs around; it's entirely possible to go through the adventure without ever having the Tarokka read, for example.

The assumed initial flow is that you'll poke around in the town of Barovia for a while, come across Ireena's storyline, and agree to escort her to either Vallaki or Kresk. On their way they'll pass by the path to Tser Pool, so if they're curious they might go there. You could also put some sort of creepy hint at the River Ivlis crossroads to direct the PCs to Tser Pol

It's pretty hard for players to get full off track

There are a few references to the camp around barovia.

• Vistani in the tavern will mention it if players get in their good books
• Morgantha the pie seller will mention it if the party threatens her. She should be pretty obvious as the characters enter town. It can actually be entertaining to the have them flee the death house to see just this old lady walking down the street.

There are also other paths to progressing the story

• Ireena at the mansion is in an obviously, recently attacked mansion
• Ismark at the tavern wants to move ireena
• Donavich at the church has the story of his son and is friends with Ireena and Izmark

Few other characters really talk andthey don't really have any where to go other than west. The fog, the cold of the mountains and the castle walls will stop them from going any where they shouldn't. They can wonder the woods and maybe deal with some random encounters many of which lead to other locations.

Quote from Stryk_official >>

I recommend you allow the party to explore and make their own choices, rather than worry about directing the story too closely. Players usually prefer to have choices and make decisions they feel are their own. There are plenty of NPCs and plot hooks that await them and will introduce sub-plots such as visiting Madam Eva.

I suggest keeping Madam Eva where she is. If the party doesn't find her immediately, that's ok. They can meet her and get a reading later in the campaign, if needed. A number of NPCs would suggest they seek her out eventually. Esmerelda and even Arabelle can also do card readings, if need be.

After Death House, what usually happens in campaigns is theparty will find its way next to the village of Barovia. They will want a safe place to recover from the house. In the village,they will be drawn to the tavern quickly, meet Ismark, and then the story is underway. In the unusual case that your party makes different choices, the open "sandbox" nature of Barovia will take their to one sub-plot or another soon. The adventure doesn't need to be a linear sequence. That's one of the interestingthings about Curse of Strahd. Have fun!

The death house is actually in the village of Barovia. The house is surrounded by a supernatural fog which makes it seem like nothing is nearby but as soon as the fog clears they'll see they're actually surrounded by houses and basically in the middle of town.

CoS is a sandbox. There are places the characters can choose to go which will kill them and it is part of the story.

For some reason, and by some method, the characters were transported to Barovia and the mists guided them to the Death House so that the mettle of these interlopers could be tested. If they survived then there is the barest possibility that they might be of interest to Strahd. The demiplane of Barovia is mostly part of Strahd's mind though he is probably unaware of that. Most of the people in Barovia don't have souls, they are figments of Strahd's mind that populate the world. The only ones that Strahd can get any satisfaction from feeding on are the ones with souls.

After they leave the Death House, they are in the village of Barovia in the land of Barovia. Most likely the characters want to find a way out but they will quickly discover that the mists won't let them leave. In the village, there are several quests/interactions. There is the priest at the chapel, the mayor, the inn, the Vistani, and Strahd's latest target and her brother. ALL of these are plot points and some of them will likely advise the party to seek the advice of Madam Eva, the seer found at the Vistani encampment below the falls. There should be enough info from the NPCs that the characters will likely decide on their own to visit Madam Eva.

However, even if they don't, you as the DM will have already figured out what the reading WOULD be - you know where the items can be found and you will know who the likely allies will be. Feel free to change the reading you get at random since there are quite a few results that can be obtained that aren't that much fun or make the adventure more or less challenging or worse boring (you could get a result where all of the items are in Castle Ravenloft - if the party finds Strahd before any of the items their chances of success are much reduced - with the items, for a group of level 10-12 characters which is easy with the level milestones available, Strahd as written can be far too easy so depending on how it goes you may adjust Strahd and his allies to make the encounter more interesting when the time comes).

Anyway, as long as the DM knows where everything can be found then the meeting with Eva is entirely optional. The characters can get everything they need simply by blundering into it.

TL;DR :) ... No. There is no need to put Madam Eva in the village of Barovia, CoS is a sandbox, let the characters run into her when they choose to go there but there are more than enough hints available that will encourage the party to go to the Vistani camp.

P.S. My first suggestion would be to read over the adventure, ideally the whole thing, but at least start with the village of Barovia as well as the Vistani encampment and the areas on the road to Vallaki. The adventure includes hooks leading the party to Madam Eva so your question only really makes sense if you haven't actually read it (or at least have only read over the first chapter that start with the card reading).

Warning about going to the castle early:

Leading to Madam Eva