Except, no, at his table, if a character dies, that player is out of the group. They can't roll up a new character, they just aren't welcome at the table again until the next campaign. Basically he's treating his campaign like a reality show. Several people tried to explain to him why this was a bad idea, at least if he enjoys having friends, but he would not be swayed.
Oh well. Hopefully they had fun. At least he wasn't proposing to kill the players in real life.
Here's the thing, though. Curse of Strahd is a horror campaign. Some DMs think this means they're supposed to make it as difficult as possible, but that kind of difficulty is just math. I'm not afraid of numbers. I haven't had bad dreams about math since high school. Anybody can design a D&D monster with high damage dice, but that alone doesn't make it frightening.
The Curse of Strahd book devotes an entire page to tips on ramping up the creep factor ("Marks of Horror", page 7), and none of their suggestions involve making the module more deadly. Instead, it concentrates on being extra descriptive, recommending that the DM point out any smells, shadows, and claw marks that might give greater depth to a scene. If I ran it, I'd even have us play by candlelight and have some gothic music playing in the background.
One of the things that makes CoS scary is the utter lack of hope. Early in the campaign, the PCs should discover that once you enter Barovia, escape is impossible. If they try to leave the edge of the map, the fog becomes so thick that they can barely breathe. Even if they manage to press on through the exhaustion, no matter what direction they go through the fog, they'll just pop out somewhere else at the edge of Barovia's boundries. Strahd's domain is inescapable.
But you really don't get a sense of just how screwed you are until the first time you die. It's not until then that you witness the totality of Strahd's power - even in death, your spirit can't escape his cursed lands. And this is why, IMO, it's important that you allow at least some manner of resurrection in CoS.
The first time a PC dies in your CoS campaign, try reading the following:
You find yourself floating in the air, looking down at your own body. You can’t feel anything. No heat, no wind, it’s as if you’re not there. You suddenly find yourself compelled to look up toward the sky. Most of it is obscured by thick fog, but as you watch, a hole opens up in the clouds, revealing a bright, blue sky behind it. A beam of light shines on you, and you can feel the warmth of that beam. You feel yourself being pulled towards the light, helpless to stop it. You start hurtling towards it, faster and faster. Something about the light makes you feel at peace, happy even. Instinctively, you know you are being pulled toward your eternal reward.
But suddenly, black clouds start to coalesce, in the shape of giant skeletal hands. The hole closes, and the beam of light vanishes. A ghostly pair of giant red eyes opens up behind the fog. One of the misty hands points at you.
You hear a voice. “Leaving so soon? But we were just getting started! I have so much more fun planned for the days ahead. *sigh* But I suppose, in the spirit of fairness, I should give you a choice. Accept my dark gift now, and I will return you to your body. Otherwise, I will scatter the remains of your soul, eliminating all traces of your existence forever. Make your choice.”
If the player rejects Strahd's offer, their soul is obliterated forever, and they might as well tear up their character sheet. If the player chooses to come back to life, they have no memory of their deal with Strahd, but those red eyes haunt their nightmares until Strahd is defeated. The other PCs didn't see anything that went on in the sky, and they're completely surprised when their fallen friend regains consciousness. Even if the dead character had been torn to pieces, their body is now whole again.
Give the revived player one of the random gifts from the Adventurer's League "Expanded Dark Gifts" table. Most of these curses contain both a benefit and drawback, along with a bit of body horror. It keeps the game going, and it hints that in Barovia, there are fates worse than death.
This doesn't mean you have to keep resurrecting them this way. I'd say Strahd is willing to revive a PC twice before he gets bored with that character and ignores their fate. After that, they're on their own. Maybe the rest of the party can get them to a cleric, but if not, their soul bounces around Barovia, still unable to escape to their own afterlife. Maybe they'll be reborn as an infant to a Barovian family, or maybe they'll become a restless spirit wandering one of the area's many haunted sites.
All I'm saying is, if you use permadeath in CoS, you're robbing the module of one of its greatest horrors. And that would be a shame.
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