What you need to get started
Welcome to our new series on our adaptation of Curse of Strahd for one-on-one play! We’re so excited you’re joining us!
For the most part, we’ll break our posts and videos up into “For Players” and “For DMs” to avoid spoilers while also being as helpful as possible so you can adapt this campaign for your own duet.
In this introductory post, we cover some of the questions you’ll want to discuss before beginning play.
I will cover these in more detail for players in parts one and two of the player-focused side of the series. DMs, my working assumption is that you already have some strong ideas about what’s going on in your campaign, or that you will as your read Jonathan’s DM-oriented posts, but this will get everyone on the same page for the conversations to have before starting Curse of Strahd.
The Questions!
Again, this is a general overview, but hopefully, you can take this list and expand as you go! We’ll also add to it and update as we discover more things we wish we’d covered from the get-go!
- What elements of horror, Gothic, or dark fantasy genres appeal to you? What would you prefer to not see at all?
- What do you think of when you think of vampires? What do you find interesting about them?
- Why is your character risking their life in this particular circumstance? DMs, this is where it’s really important for you to help guide the player in creating their character and their character backstory.
RP and combat are a lot more fun when you have a strong idea of what your character wants. It’s great for a campaign to be surprising, but, as a player, my suggestion for starting CoS, or any campaign, is to give your player an idea as to what the campaign itself will be like so they can take that into account when making their PC.
If you’re playing through Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, let them know that there’s going to be a lot of downtime so they can plan accordingly and develop that part of their character’s backstory, personality, and interests.
If you’re playing through Curse of Strahd, let them know that it’s going to be a darker, likely more serious campaign.
Of course the level of that seriousness will shift depending on the preferences the two of you express, but we’ve found it really helpful to set expectations right at the beginning.
Further Reading
We’d love for you to check out a few of our previous posts on starting a campaign, balancing preferences, and creating your character’s backstory!
Starting your D&D Campaign Strong
Uncovering your Character’s Motivation
Developing your Character’s Backstory
Balancing DM and Player Preferences
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If you like what you’re reading, please consider supporting the blog by purchasing our adventures and supplements in our shop or sponsoring us on Patreon. We appreciate you so much! Thank you for joining us on this adventure! – Beth and Jonathan
We’d love to hear your thoughts and questions!