If we were to run a poll asking who is the most famous Dungeons & Dragons character, I’m pretty sure that it would be a close finish between Drizzt Do’Urden (the renegade drow ranger) and Strahd Von Zarovich (the undisputed vampire ruler of Barovia). The key difference here is that, unlike Drizzt, Strahd has not benefited from 39 novels to consolidate his fame. Instead, he earned it fair and square in the game, alongside the respect and admiration from players and DMs.
Strahd is an iconic character whose origins are tied to the evolution of D&D over the years. He was created by tabletop legends Tracy and Laura Hickman in the late 1970s. At the time, the game was in its infancy. The original boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published in 1974, and the first version of the Basic Set came out in 1977. For the most part, D&D did what it said on the box: It let you explore dungeons and kill dragons (and other assorted monsters). Dungeon crawling wasn’t just an aspect of the experience, it was the whole deal.
In 1978, a young Tracy Hickman came home disappointed after a D&D session where his character encountered a vampire while exploring a dungeon. “I groaned and rolled my eyes,” Hickman writes in the introduction to Curse of Strahd, as such a mythical creature was “just another monster in the dungeon.” What’s a vampire doing in a damp room, hanging out with lowly creatures such as goblins and kobolds, waiting for adventurers to show up and steal their stuff? “I remember thinking at the time: What are you doing here?” That simple question would change D&D forever.
The Hickmans developed their own adventure module inspired by gothic horror and featuring the sinister, charming vampire lord that would become known as Strahd Von Zarovich. They playtested it with a group of friends every Halloween for five years, before they were both hired by TSR, the publisher that owned D&D at the time. Ravenloft was published in 1983 as an adventure module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition, and it remains one of the most important and influential products in the game’s history.
The adventure is centered around Strahd, a melancholic and powerful vampire who rules over the small country of Barovia, separated from the world by magical mists. Strahd is currently obsessed with a local woman, Ireena Kolyana, who reminds him of his long-lost love. At the start of the adventure, the DM has to randomly determine (by drawing cards from a tarot deck) Strahd’s motivation, his location, and the location of some important magic items. Strahd’s possible motivations include killing and replacing one of the characters, mind-controlling them to attack Ireena so he can sweep in to save her, creating an evil magic item, or destroying the Sunsword (one of the items the characters are after).
Guided by one of these goals, the DM will have Strahd cross the characters at several points in the adventure, with the book instructing how to play the vampire smartly (for example, retreating if a fight doesn’t go his way). The idea of the tarot reading ensures each playthrough of the adventure feels fresh, and solves the problem of players who finished it spoiling the outcome for others (which was a real issue for linear, dungeon-based modules).
Another innovative element was the isometric maps designed by Dave Sutherland. At the request of the Hickmans, who wanted their dungeons to make architectural sense, Castle Ravenloft is designed as a three-dimensional structure with interconnected floors and areas.
The design element that stands out most is that, contrary to the majority of adventures published until that moment, Ravenloft put the “monster” at the center. Sure, the player characters have their own motivations, including destroying Strahd, saving Ireena, or fleeing Ravenloft, but the antagonist gets a level of agency unseen before. It encourages storytelling (and as a consequence, role-playing) to a degree unmatched by previous publications — an element of the game that was key to the modern success of D&D.
Speaking of which, D&D fifth edition has been the most successful since 1e, in terms of sales and popularity. Thanks to a simple-but-flexible rules system and propelled by massive mainstream plug-ins such as Critical Role, Stranger Things, and the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, 5e has become a success story for D&D and its current publisher, Wizards of the Coast (owned by Hasbro). Another important factor was the quality of some of the early products, and chief among those is Curse of Strahd, the 5e adaptation of the original Ravenloft module.
Released in 2016, authored by Chris Perkins as principal designer, Jeremy Crawford, Adam Lee, Richard Whitters, along with Tracy and Laura Hickman as creative consultants, Curse of Strahd remains one of the most appreciated 5e books. It is, in my opinion, the best product of D&D’s fifth edition, along with Rime of the Frostmaiden. Without Curse of Strahd, I don’t think 5e would have garnered the goodwill and “street cred” from players that it enjoyed for the majority of its run.
What makes that book so special? As he said in an interview with Polygon at the time of release, Perkins didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. He reached out to the Hickmans and brought them in to retell a story that already worked, while making it bigger and better (Ravenloft was just 32 pages long, while Curse of Strahd clocks in at 256). Perkins understood and loved the original adventure, and that’s why the result is so good. “Prior to the release of this adventure, D&D adventures kind of followed a format where they were basically location-driven dungeons that you went into in search of treasure,” Perkins explained. “Ravenloft changed that. It expanded your mind in terms of what a D&D adventure could be [when] driven by the machinations of a truly, truly horrible villain.”
Curse of Strahd maintains the same hook, with the characters drawn into the mists of Ravenloft and landing in Barovia, where they are pulled into Strahd’s twisted game. It also keeps the premise of drawing from a deck of cards, called Tarokka, to determine some elements of the adventure.
The beauty of Curse of Strahd is that it reaches a rare balance between being a focused adventure and a sandbox campaign setting. There is a main, guiding plot, which still has some random elements granted by the draw from the Tarokka deck. However, players are free to explore Barovia and take on the quests in any order they wish. Still, Strahd’s threat always looms over them. The vampire will manifest to hunt the party, mock them, or send minions to do his bidding.
The lands of Barovia also feels alive regardless of Strahd’s involvement. There are many subplots to follow, interesting NPCs to interact with, and overall the book does a great job of presenting a setting filled with gloom, despair, and horrors that don’t always take the shape of monsters. When the monster shows up, however, it’s always meaningful. Strahd has a complex and tragic history that players have to uncover by finding clues scattered across the land, if they want to best him during their final confrontation.
In the true spirit of modern D&D, Curse of Strahd has a bit of everything. There is plenty of hardcore dungeon crawling, especially in Castle Ravenloft and the Amber Temple, but roleplaying opportunities are also everywhere. It’s not a perfect module, and by all means you should look for ways to improve it and adapt it to your style and experience. You’ll find it’s actually pretty easy to customize Curse of Strahd: the ending is open-ended, and character agency truly matters.
However, the star of the module remains Strahd.
For the party this may be an adventure, but for the vampire, it’s just a game, a tragic one that he has been forced to play for ages. The players are not the first group of adventurers to come to Barovia. Strahd has entertained plenty of such visitors, and he sees them as the only diversion in his endless imprisonment (just like everyone else, Strahd is also a prisoner of the mysterious Dark Powers of Ravenloft). Otherwise, why would the objects needed to destroy him be scattered in the country and not kept in Castle Ravenloft’s safest vault?
As a DM running this module, you should focus on Strahd’s behavior and motivations a lot. The characters arrive in Barovia when they are level 3, and Strahd could kill them all without lifting a finger. Why and how he lets them live until they pose a real threat are big questions that will shape the course of the campaign.
Perhaps Strahd is really just a prisoner, condemned by his past sins to replay the same charade over and over again. Or maybe he underestimates the party, the first real threat that he faces in centuries, which explains why he doesn’t murder them immediately. Perhaps it’s just the same arrogance and pride that led to his original downfall, coming into play once again. Whatever the choice, no other adventure puts the villain at the center in this way, and as an eternal DM who is forced to play villains all the time, I saw this as a great opportunity.
It all harkens back to the Hickmans’ first intuition: it’s fun to explore dungeons, kill monsters, and find loot, but D&D can also be more than that. In their own words, it can be “an intriguing story that is intricately woven into the play itself.” That story is told by real people interacting with interesting characters, and Strahd is perhaps the best of them.
“I am the Ancient. I am the Land. My beginnings are lost in the darkness of the past…”
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