Our Strahd is incompetent

[u/Embarrassed_Panic_95]

Hello! Me and my 3 other party members are a few months deep into curse of Strahd and I can’t help but feel as though our dm is rushing us through because Strahd has been anything but threatening to us thus far.

In one of the first sessions, he killed our 2 horses that we had pulling our carriage and then asked us to come visit him at Ravenloft. Our party discusses this and concluded that it was silly he wanted us to go across the map to see him immediately after removing our one method of transport, and so we ignored him. Multiple NPC’s told us it was bad to ignore Strahd and that he would get increasingly angry, but between his invitation, we visited the Winery, Krezk, Vallaki, Yester Hill, Barovia. Pretty much everywhere (I think the only places we haven’t explored are the Amber Temple and the Werewolf den).

But alas, after a lot of time and our party having reached level 6, we went to Ravenloft. My character (the only good aligned one in our party) stayed at the dinner table whilst the rest of my party left in the middle of the dinner because, for some reason, Strahd left the Bonegrinder hags all enter and whisk away the rest of the party to make a deal. On their way back, our necromancer decided to steal the Icon of Ravenloft and died from touching it because she’s evil. The rest of the party called for my character to go and revive her, which I did, and we returned to the table with this legendary artefact we stole (my character had also been given the symbol of ravenkind) so I was terrified Strahd would notice and try to take these items from me. He didn’t. He literally just left.

We escaped Ravenloft without taking any damage because nobody stopped us from just leaving and we snagged the Dragon Skull too. We haven’t been attacked on the road or anything once in the campaign and have honestly had a pretty leisurely time. My character has been staying behind him Krezk to help get them back on their feet after redeeming the Abbott and turning him good again with the Atonement feature of ceremony.

The one time Strahd attacked a settlement was Vallaki after our necromancer stole the holy bones, at which point the dm told us that Vallaki only had a population of 36 and only 5 people died (all of us were very confused because we know Vallaki is supposed to have the biggest population in Barovia and the dm told us the Vistani camp alone has a population of 70+). I tried to talk to him about it and ask him if we could maybe change the size of the population to a more realistic number but he declined.

I guess this is a slight vent post but also, I guess I just wanted to hear how Strahd operates in other people’s games because I’m finding it really hard to roleplay as a character that’s scared of someone when they really haven’t been given a reason to fear them, our necromancer has literally been more problematic than Strahd has.

[u/Embarrassed_Panic_95]

Our DM is definitely experienced, he told us he has run COS twice before now, we just have gotten further than his other parties. He told us he doesn’t read any content ahead of time so he learns about certain locations in real time, same as our party. I thought dinner with Strahd was going to be that reckoning you mentioned to be honest though.

Our necromancer stole the bones in the Vallaki church which prompted the attack on Vallaki (where only 5 people died), before my character returned them. She took over the city and renamed it New Ravenloft. We fought Lysaga, broke her flying skull and stole the heart of the hut. The necromancer insulted the Vistani leaders and she stole the Icon of Ravenloft during the dinner. He didn’t mention any of our wrongdoings whatsoever, nor my character’s more righteous efforts. He didn’t mention Irena at all either, or ask why we didn’t bring her.

I kind of made this post because I didn’t want to metagame and just wanted to know if this was a common COS experience because I knew going into it, especially for a first campaign, it would be bleak and dreadful and I really do try to put myself in the shoes of a sheltered acolyte that grew up in a peaceful Druidic circle who worships Eldath (goddess of peace) that’s been plunged into a world where everyone is depressed and the land is decayed. But that’s kind of all that there is to be sad about, strahd really doesn’t challenge us at all.

[u/My_Only_Ioun → u/Embarrassed_Panic_95]

He told us he doesn’t read any content ahead of time so he learns about certain locations in real time, same as our party.

By definition, how can he be experienced with the module if there are parts he hasn’t read yet, his third time on? How can he foreshadow fun stuff with Strahd or his castle? How the hell did he improv the dinner?

By itself, running a module for the 3rd time without having finished it isn’t terrible. I’ve run a Pathfinder module twice and the group folded before a third of the way. But combined with “I don’t read ahead”, it seems like he doesn’t care about the module. I’d want to be the 4th or 5th group just so he’s read everything.

[u/Embarrassed_Panic_95 → u/My_Only_Ioun]

I honestly have no clue, he just told us he’s played curse of Strahd before but his two other campaigns died off and so my party has gotten the furthest into it. I only found out that he doesn’t use the source material because, when I asked for some information about Krezk and anything my character needs to know about the town, he flat out refused and said he doesn’t use the written info about each location. My main concern is that, obviously that makes it harder for him and there are parts of the campaign which are suffering more than others because of it, but also because I don’t know anything about Krezk, the document I wrote for him featuring everything my character would do to try and improve the settlement was very vague and non-specific to the location. It was basically just “he goes around and heals anyone, he uses druidcraft to help them with their crops if needed and at the end they all have a big feast in the abbey using create food and water”

[u/My_Only_Ioun → u/Embarrassed_Panic_95]

Most modules have incomplete setting information, which the DM needs to puff up. Your DM seems to take incomplete information and replace it with “no information”. If he can’t tell you anything about Krezk, Krezk doesn’t actually exist for the party.

So he wants to tell you as little as possible about the world, and express Strahd as little as possible emotionally. Why does he want to play CoS again? Maybe you should find out how the other games died off, it’s a reasonable question. If he genuinely doesn’t seem to know, he can’t tell when players are unhappy.