Character Creation

apologies. I have been quite absent. I don't think I will be able to keep up. I will let you know I should bow out. Just hit my busy season with club soccer and high school soccer starting, and I rarely remember to check GamersPlane board.

Apologies and Best Wishes.

Anton Zanovich. He's a native of Vallaki but spent so much of his youth hanging around Vistani camps that he almost thinks of himself as Vistani. He learnt to be a knife-throwing performer at the camps and is proud of his skills with a blade.

He styles himself after the charmingly roguish travellers, but his recycled soul lives in dread of breaking rules. So he likes to affect that he's a devil-may-care chaotic neutral, but really he's goody-two-shoes lawful good. He is always ready with an excuse when he hears about misdeeds that any Vistani people might have perpetrated.

I'd like to re-flavour the crossbow expert feat as his knife throwing prowess. So mechanically everything is the same as hand crossbows, it's just flavoured to be throwing knives:
His throwing knives are basically like crossbow bolts and can't be used as daggers.
The 75gp cost is in the fancy leather sheathes he wears that allow him to quick draw his throwing knives.
Y'know, stuff like that.

I did toy with the idea of rogue, but I think a dex fighter with battle master so he can use precision shot might be more interesting.

cool.
So you are throwing thise kinds of "bolts"

I don't know what they look like, but they're definitely blacked with soot! I was thinking that they'd be like throwing stars, or thin double-bladed knives. I wanted someone who could wang throwing knives - without needing to throw full daggers. Reflavouring crossbow expert seemed the easiest way.

I'm not sure he'll be super effective in combat, esp as I've put more points into cha than con (he's a lover, not a fighter, who's... um... a fighter). But he should be fun to play.

I think he's ready. Submitting.

I am totally okay with all of this, Adam. Approved.

This is not a critique of Naatkinson but I don't think a horror adventure like Curse of Strahd works for pbp.

With pbp slow pace it is tough to make horror work as the sense of dread easily evaporates.
I also find the adventures plothook weak. Why are we doing this? We have a vague proficy hinting about some way to defeat the big-bad Strahd. Other than he is clearly the badguy why should the characters fight him? I think I have some metainformation that once he is defeated our characters can return home, but I don't think our characters know this. So what is our character's motivation to move forward?
Is the motivation just to Be the heros and defeat the bad guy?

When I compare with other games like [Pathfinder 2e] Strength of Thousands or 🔥 Hellrider I don't feel the same engagement in this game. I would like to change that somehow, I just don't know how.
Ideas?

I know, right? CoS is generally regarded as WotC's best adventure. I have no idea why because I've never got it to work, and I'm not alone in my failure. That's not just a PbP problem - it's a problem IRL too. Without a clear and urgent threat, it can feel like "A Tourist's Guide to Barovia".

What's the threat? A short conversation with Anton (or the Vistana we shall shortly meet) will tell you that:

* We're trapped here by the mists. The village of Barovia, under the shadow of Ravenloft, is oppressive and claustrophobic. Vallaki will brutally punish you if you don't feign happiness. And in Krezk, the Frankenstein abbot is several wafers short of a communion. Every place sucks in its own horrific way.

* But that's not really the problem. It's not just our bodies which are trapped here - it's our souls. Even death is not the end here, your soul will be recycled into a new body to endure the recurring misery over-and-over until what remains of your personality is ragged and threadbare. The only respite from the eternal misery is a glass of crap wine, but not enough to get drunk because then the wolves will eat you.

But even if you can get the players to feel this, it's difficult to inject the feeling of urgency, isn't it? This place has sucked for ages, what's the hurry? I don't know. Strahd is supposed to be a BBEG and inspire terror, but as written, he kinda just comes across as a pathetic goth incel with a thing for gingers.

I like CoS for what it tries to achieve and for clever psychological horror (especially Vallaki's enforced "all will be well"), but I don't really know how to fix it as an adventure.

Maybe we could add our own urgency? Like, perhaps Oberron has a bond who will die if Oberron doesn't get back to them with medicine or something?

I think that this is actually a problem with a lot of 5e adventures. Most of them have really cool ideas, but provide very little incentive to actually participate in this cool adventure.

Generally, CoS and LMoP are considered the best of 5e and even they aren't immune to this problem. CoS has a clear bad guy and the players know that they have to defeat him, but the characters really have no reason to believe that defeating him will fix any of their problems. I will admit that I definitely could have done better giving the characters themselves this knowledge.

This is actually where I'm taking this Abbot conversation if you don't mind some meta knowledge. He's clearly in the know about things here and, Adam may have noticed, but he's not quite how he's portrayed in the actual book.

From a meta standpoint, here's how I'm seeing it:

1. Madam Eva gave you knowledge to help defeat Strahd
2. The Abbot is going to provide the reasons for why you should even give a shit. The "What's in it for you" portion. I realized some time ago that the motivation wasn't there and now I'm trying to correct it.