After eighteen months, our Curse of Strahd campaign is over. I posted recaps each week on Mastodon, as well as kept a Travelogue doc over our 70 sessions. It was an incredible journey, and the most emotionally invested game we've run. While the final battle was nearly trivial, the connections we made with the characters was the real highlight. I tried my best to give each player some unique backstory hook that would weave into the world, and for the most part I feel like I succeeded. There were stretches of weeks where we played entire sessions just conversing in character, delving into nuances of the plot without drawing a weapon or rolling a single die.
Near the end of 2023 while moving into our first house, I was very sick between a bout with Covid and the stress of it all, and could barely function. But the group kept the game going with barely any direction from me while I pushed through. I still haven't fully recovered, and struggle now to come up with words sometimes or keep NPC banter up in a way that can get frustrating, but the deep creative work we put into the campaign was enough fuel to see it through to an incredible end.
This is my second big campaign, and while the first one was a homebrew dreamed up entirely of our own making, this one felt more like a world that we made our own. We explored every nook and cranny of Barovia, know every character's name and face, and forged the types relationships that's like gold in a writers room - where you know exactly how any two would interact in a room together. It was something special.
I'm taking a break from high-intensity DMing with a lighthearted little foray that I'll post about here in a bit. But for now, I'd like to share our campaign travelogue. This is free to read and review, use any ideas for lore or plot twists you like: Curse of Strahd Campaign Log