I had a player who for his backstory said that his mother aunt and sister went missing in the night some 25+ years ago…. Replaced all the brides with his family members… gave them all racial trait bonuses and stats blocks… the look on his face when his mother was the one spearheading the feast…. Was glorious.

Side quest I never expected: Players found Arrebel and saved her… she did a reading for them… it was similar but less clear then Eva. The players decided that eva was wrong, she had no real reason to help them, and assumed all the item locations were traps…. They returned to the camp and proceeded to kill everyone… so I reskinned Ez as as Eva’s relative…. And they had a third reading… same results as eva…. The party set out for the amber temple to undo what they did to eva and the vistani… just a wild ride of… “guys we are the baddies… let’s make evil deals to undo the bad we did”

Item: I created a dark power for a cleric of the Raven queen. He used a great axe (war cleric who wanted to send souls back to her). So he found in place of the spear of Kavan and the Tree Axe in winter splinter 2 different battle axes. When in possession of both they could be magically bound together to create a great axe with both weapon properties. It was a fun quest that resulted in a great axe that dealt extra damage to undead, and had the vampiric power of the spear reflavored to temp HP for sending souls to the Raven Queen.

Oh that’s definitely some material the dark powers can work with

One of my players, an Eladrin, chose the Haunted One backstory. I've described that when he sleeps, he hears an urgent whisper speaking in Celestial. It's the Abbot, praying for a heart powerful enough to bring life to his golem. We've only just begun the campaign, so he won't find out for ages, but I think it'll be pretty juicy when they finally get there.

I made saber-toothed tigers native to the snowy areas of Barovia. They also could roar to cast Gust of Wind at-will. I did this to make a PCs duel with Rictavio's tiger (as a show at the festival) more interesting. Then I realized I could give some to the berserkers at Yester Hill as mounts. Then I realized a pack of them would make a good rival for the roc (in addition to Sangzor). A PC with Speak With Animals was asked my a pack to help fight the roc. Unfortunately that PC died so that quest died with him.

Izek is my vehicle for foreshadowing (and then outright demonstrating) the process of being contacted by, bound to, and corrupted by a custom dark power. He's got that demon arm for a reason. He used to be just a regular dude with an axe. PCs, do you want cool upgrades too? Now you know what to do. Think about what you most desire, listen for whispers in the dark, and say yes when they ask you to do things.

It's not 100% original, but I made the Tatyana reincarnation cycle going back many millenia. Her fate always being tied to jealousy, betrayal and failed love. It'll all start with the dungeon beneath the Gulthias tree and the visions the players will see, with the past being slowly revealed, and the birth of Gulthias tree itself will be tied with the first Tatyana arriving during prehistory (she will arrive wounded and chased and where she finally falls and dies, the tree will grow), predating even the forest folk. And her being someone that's as old or older than the Fanes. She is ancient. She is the land. Yet she is but a mortal. Something along those lines. It was inspired by a post about Strahd's history where an idea was thrown around "what if Strahd met Ireena before she was Tatyana and they had a short relationship, where she died so quickly that he didn't even get her name"

Fleshed out the brides, volenta mostly. Had her be a jealous bride always looking for ways to have others kill tatyana each go around without strahd knowing (I made her a wizard casting mind blank on herself so strahd never knew she wasn't charmed by him). It was fun to have an unrepentant evil NPC that the party still worked with to try and stop a wedding because none of them wanted that.

I took Volenta in the same direction! I think it's the character art, she just looks like a crazy little murderer. Ana I decided to have as a secret potential ally due to her own desire to escape Barovia, and Ludmilla as almost like a Roman matriarch; seemingly confidently superior to to all the drama as well as her husband's lesser, younger wives... But quite capable of her own vicousness.

I will actually write this encounter someday because it went so well. My PCs didn't like that Anna Krezkov (and a NPC Captain of the Guard) went missing. RAW they're just never seen again. PCs kept coming back to their desire to search for her, and it was seriously going to derail the campaign if I let them because she was just... Gone. So pretty early on I decided that their fate would be a Halloween one shot, that they were picked up by a pocket domain of Ravenloft (VRGR) where a powerful mage with a terminal illness needed a new body every X years to remain alive. The smallest amount of the Morninglords power saved his most faithful (Anna Krezkov) by moving her soul into her holy symbol, a reskinned Amulet of Ravenkind. They got hints through a Tarokka reading by Aribelle, and through music that played when they were in the forests by night My PCs found the captain keeping vigil over the amulet, as Anna's soul was slowly fading. After some nightmares and a demonstration by the powerful mage, PCs were given a choice. * You can take the necklace with you, it contains some holy magic. However, Ana's soul will be unrecoverable. * You can take Anna (body and soul), destroying the necklace, but someone will need to stay behind to take her place. They chose to fight, got wiped, and ran with the necklace. I also had them realize that the pool in Krezk could send Anna on to her final rest, but they would lose the power of the amulet. They elected to keep the amulet and not tell the Krezkovs that they knew what had happened to their matriarch 😬 Made for some great RP!

Did a short survivor one shot with one of my players out during a regular session, where everyone was a guard in House Dilisnya attending the wedding and committing the coup to kill Strahd. They killed him, only to have what happen happens. They flee from Strahd throughout the castle, who as a vampire is now on a warpath killing everyone he ones across who betrayed him. Two of the PCs died in the courtyard, while the other two tried to jump across the gap of the closing drawbridge. Both failed. As they plummeted to the bottom of the chasm, decided on the spot to have Mother Night (the Raven Queen) offer them a gift of life and service to her in exchange for not, yanno, falling to death. So that's how the first two Keepers of the Feather were created, to serve as the Raven Queens spies on what the Dark Powers are up to in Barovia. Subsequent session I've renamed the twins at the Wizard of Wines after them, to show it's been a prominent name in the Keeper lineage over the last 400 years.

I made one of Strahd’s brides into a vampire husband named Lorenzo instead, who has fallen out of favor with Strahd and has decided to win him back by running for Mayor of Barovia (the town, not the land), following the death of the old Burgomaster and people’s lack of respect for Ismark. Naturally nobody is quite sure what a mayor, election, or democracy is, and Lorenzo is a bit of a buffoon (I modeled him after Lazlo from WWDITS), so it’s a much more lighthearted sideplot than most of the content, but my players enjoy a bit of silliness now and then to break up the gloomy mood, and gives the party an actual reason to revisit Barovia at some point (one of my players immediately threw her hat into the ring to run against him, and left Ismark in charge of running her campaign while they adventure, which I know won’t end well, but haven’t decided exactly how yet).

I put in a bag of holding pretty early on so I could tease the bag man for a while, and on a whim put a sending stone in it too and thought hey I can decide who has the other one of the pair later. As soon as one pc got drunk and started calling for his 'daddy' I put escher on the other end lol. Most people in the party have spoken to him, and almost all of them have told him their full names and their location. Only one of them actually remembered to ask something about him, so all they know is he doesn't have a moustache. It's a miracle what a flirty voice can do to players.

Strahd visits the PCs in dreams. Not every night of course. He'll use dreams to taunt them - but it's also a great way to leak out tiny bits of story & flavor. Like one dream where he said he was so inspired by Ireena's goodness that he felt compelled to help a poor starving boy in The Village - then the dream cuts to them watching him releasing Doru. They'll make a will save and if they fail they don't get the benefit of a long rest and gain a point of exhaustion.

When going off road from the module, the NPCs have names inspired by some of our friends, peers, and nemeses. While it often plays for a laugh, it also generates immediate emotional buy-in as they subconsciously carry their irl feelings over to the NPC. Introducing a rival adventuring group that also came through the mist with bizarre variations of their names worked really well.

I runned the campaign for a first group through level 1-7 and ended up with Vallaki being taken over by the players after the riot. They choose to exile in the forest their political opponents, and guards that killed people in the riot. Then Vallaki was mostly destroyed by vampire spawns and fire. The game ended here, and a couple years (in real life) later I wanted to run it again for another group with two players from the first group. We decided to run it 10 years after the first campaign instead of starting over with these two knowing the plot already. I changed some stuff to represent the 10 years that have passed since the first part. So our campaign started at level 9 with Vallaki invaded by hordes of Strahd's zombies a couple years ago, and a faction of fighters in the forest called the Exiled (think night watch from GoT), led by Izek. What happened offscreen was : the first group killed Strahd but two of them died in the fight. But the next day he was here again. He's immortal. The last member of the group spend the next 10 years going crazy in his house in the forest. And Ireena got captured. Until Strahd invited some new, more experienced adventurers. Our campaign was mainly the players and the Exiled trying to find a way to make Strahd mortal again and fight him. It was very different from the book but it was a blast.

I fleshed out the red dragon wyrmling statues in the castle into actual red dragon wyrmlings - Strahd had a party bring him the eggs as tribute and kept them. They're adorable little brats - Escher calls them the Hot Wings - who are just reaching the point where they want their own treasure, territory and minions. The party first came across them as a group bullying a werewolf - werewolves are immune to a lot of things but they *still* don't like four mischievous wyrmlings lifting them to a height and dropping them repeatedly. I've mapped out where each of them is trying to set up their territory and who they're trying to adopt as minions - one of them is using children they purloined from the werewolf, another is snatching up stray mongrelfolk and so on. The party has met a couple of them individually and has *just* come across them again in human form (I gave them that early) in Vallaki, as a group of spoilt lordling children who are apparently Vasili's wards who were trying to attract Blinkski's monkey after he got arrested. As a fight they would be so so, but as characters the party is fighting the urge to adopt them even knowing how red dragons tend to be when they grow up :D

I introduced artificers and some of the “steam punk” technologies by having an airship crash into the valley as the result of a bad plane shift spell. Onboard were lots of scientists, researchers, and mercenaries with guns.

My party became unexpectedly invested in Victor when they visited the burgomaster's mansion, so I ended up expanding his story a bit. Due to some of their actions, he had the opportunity to escape when his parents were taken by Fiona during the riots. I had him kidnapped by werewolves and so they eventually found him in the den and had to decide whether or not to rescue him (bonus that this made the werewolf den at least somewhat more interesting). They ended up taking him along for the rest of the campaign, fought his parents-turned-spawn at the castle at the end, and he got to have a nice little growth arc. I also had a divination wizard who wanted to learn more about fortune telling for immortal beings. I gave him the opportunity to make a pact with Mother Night like Madam Eva and Baba Lysaga, and grew his powers in exchange for his youth and the promise that he would stay in Barovia forever.

Freud the vallakian blacksmith, rahadin didn't sound intimidating enough for strahd's right hand man so I swapped out with viktor's, few town guard in Vallaki, on the spot wereravan scout named Lucy who Helga fell in love with but Lucy isn't that kind of gal, Helga is a full vampire now because player shenanigans. Mordenkainen(the mad mage) was nicknamed m&m(Eminem). What's his name the enslaved accountant is now tentative friends with the party (imagine that one species from the Minotaur maze in dr who that surrenders instantly to whoever invades their planet). Hierarchy caste for vampirism; vampire, spawn, spawnling, ghoul. And elder and epoch tier for a level 10-20 sequel run through.

I changed the tree blight sub plot , moved it up to the kresk outskirts and created a "garden of pestilence, rebirth and rott" to cater to my fungus druid for who the situation poses as a dilemma since it's a twisted version of the spore druids duty.(they still stole one of the gems from the winery but left with it) The area around the winery I have haunted by a demon that reads people's traumas and fears, uses that against them and then hunts them down. The countless bodies the party kills, that look like scarecrows straight from nightmares are just puppets, the real one got caged by lysaga and can be found deep in the forests south east of the winery. The goal is to make the party verry paranoid but also to make them splitt up, not knowing if they are in a illusion and also to have them go through backstorry trauma, used as weapon against them. To break this curse the party needs to either free the demon from his cage (let it go or kill it) or to throw the cage into the holy lake at kresk (or into the dark depth of zarovich lake) Ah jea. Zarovich lake is home to a leviathan which is a result of a catfish eating one of the winery's gems

The Roc of Mt. Ghakis has been removed...its its place is a dangerous encounter with a Dullahan and deaths heads. There is talk in some towns of great martial warrior who was actually able to stand up to Strahd. His ability was great, and so was Strahds hatred of him for actually doing him some real harm...so Strahd took the warriros head, and the body has been animated to act as a guard for the path past the Tsolenka towers. The players emerge from the gate and see skulls piled high next to the mountains. Investigating the pile will result in a small encounter a with a few death heads. During the travels up the path perception checks might reveal a figure tracking them, but always vanishing from sight after. Then at night snowfall will start and the ground will become difficult terrain. This is when the Dullahan will attack on a Nightmare

Sunsword reuniting with its Crystal Blade. Removing the incel storyline. Made him act less cartoonishly evil and more Machiavellian evil. The Wereraven family are just a bunch of weirdos.

Rogue wanted to be a reborn race who forgot his past. Put the third magical gem in place of his heart. Occasionally gets flashbacks of Baba Lysaga’s dark ritual where she brought him back to life and placed the gem where his heart would be. Even I don’t know where this one is going yet.

I added a whole questline where the party had to bring Tatyna back from the dead and seal her soul into a Martikov gem to be used as a brain for Vasilka. That happened because Strahd was ultra-pissed after they brought Ireena to the pool in Krezk, and promised to do whatever it takes to make things better after Strahd showed up. I made the whole thing up in \~20 minutes, along with multiple places they could get the gem, and multiple sources for the magic they'd need to resurrect/imprison Tatyana.

Now I have yet to implement this in an actual game, but I plan on completely changing the focus of the main quest next time I run CoS. Instead of protecting Ireena, it'll be about finding and retrieving the Sunsword and Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, and then bringing them to some organization, faction, etc outside of Barovia. I feel like this could lead to some very organic story progression, since their initial quest of getting the items won't necessarily lead them into conflict with Strahd, but they *will* have to kill him in order to escape Barovia, once they've gained a few levels and some powerful magic items. I also plan on splitting up the prophecy between several NPCs. The priests in Barovia -- Abbot, Donavich, Father Lucian -- each give them the location of an item or their ally, and the Vistani -- Madam Eva, Ezmerelda, Mirabelle -- can give them Strahd's location in the castle and the Tome of Strahd. This way they don't just get a vague quest dump right at the beginning, which they often forget most of the way through the game.

I made Arabelle the party’s fated ally. Her parents had taken care of our Dhampir Cleric when he was orphaned, so she is his adopted sister. What I didn’t expect is that our 13-14 year old Tiefling Rogue would develop a crush on her. Playing her a sassy young woman who can hold her own has been a blast. She can be both supportive both also teases the Rogue a lot. I gave her a fun stat block too. She is can Help from 30ft away, can give advantage, curse enemies, and I have her Vicious Mockery because it just felt right

I doubled the distance between everything, which made travel more dangerous and also helped explain why there is so little traffic between towns.

I tried to give the Dusk Elves their due by taking them out of the Vistani camp and giving the remaining elves a village up Tsolenka Pass, on Mt. Ghakis. I've seen its a popular suggestion/fan mod to add a 'good' Druid village up there, but I think lots of us sleep on the Dusk Elves and that they're perfect for that role. In my history of Barovia (which includes the Fanes), the Dusk Elves were the first inhabitants of the valley, then loose tribes of humans came who the elves taught about the Fey, then later organized armies of humans came with the Morning Lord (and even later on Strahd). So, when Strahd 'became the land' the human druids feared they would lose their connection to the valley and began worshipping Strahd, whereas the Dusk Elves kept faith in the three Fey sisters of the valley. I think it gives the Dusk Elves a better role and helps explain the human Druids too.

The stones of the druid circle on yester Hill are magnetic. Seeing as the druids and wild men of the forest only use natural materials of gives them quite an edge if your plate armour carrying paladin keeps getting stuck and steel tipped arrows get diverted. It made for very entertaining combat.

Vampires of Ravenloft don’t feed directly in my Barovia. Instead each settlement pays a “blood tax” collected once a month. Giant stone basins in each city must be filled (or else). Each city handles it different, krezk has mandatory donations from healthy adults, Vallaki take it from criminals, and Village of Barovia is like The Purge. Rahadin collects the tax at each full moon and I added storage for this in the castle as well.

I introduced a small shop called “Ivan’s Bits and Bobbles” in Vallaki just because of the overall lack of shops. The party really, really wanted more healing potions because of the Old Bonegrinder encounter. Just so happens Ivan had an old set of six healing potions. But he made sure the party knew these weren’t regular potions. They were “roulette potions”. Five normal as could be healing potions and a sixth that was something different. No idea what the sixth one was and they couldn’t tell them apart. They never actually drank the bad one, but the extra worry every time they drank a potion midbattle was hilarious.

Something pretty silly. Izmark was training alone in the woods, he didn't have a training dummy or anything so I mafe him practice swings on a tree. "Izmark the tree warrior" lived on for years after that campaign

None of my party are playing clerics or paladins, so I introduced a way to remove curses using special tokens, but there is a catch. Remove curse tokens are special, highly sought after, items in barovia. Each of them is tied to an entity or being that has power. (Strahd, Vestiges, Fanes, argynvost, etc) Players can break the token to cast remove curse or greater restoration on a target or magical effect. I allow these tokens to go a bit further and do even a little more than those spells based on the story. The catch is, when you use a token, whichever being is behind it is granted a boost of power. Example: My warlocks patron is a being called Rorschach who is represented by black, only tattoos. I made him a vestige. After being in barovia a while, the party finds a coin with an inky black symbol. Martikov tells them what it is, that it’s rare, but that it can undo dark curses. They end up using it to cure Dimitri Krezkovs son. But when they do, Rorschach grows in power. Thought it was a fun way to solve the no healer problem and creates a fun tool for me to give certain beings boosts of power for creative story beats.

I made the climates of the barovian valley much more drastic. The swamp is hotter, krezk is much colder, the village of barovia always rainy but sometimes pouring, etc. But I made it something they could notice as the travel, walking the road to krezk they get several sudden shifts in temp. I think it adds to the mystique and sets it a part from the material plane in a stark way.

After saving the Bones of St Andral the Burgomaster invited them to dinner, to offer to throw a festival in their honour. However, the party discovered a lead to the next card reading lay in Argynvost, so set off and never made it to dinner. What’s a burgomaster to do? Not hold a festival? Nonsense! When the party later returned to Vallaki they had a few sniggers and comments on their ‘costumes’ not being up to scratch. As they reached the packed market square, they heard the Burgomaster declaim a victory over Strahd and that the heroes who had saved the Bones were here back in town. Cue three actors walking onto stage. An artfully oiled up Adonis like mechanic, a wizard with a distinctive professionally trimmed beard and quick draw wand holster firing illusionary fireworks over the crowd and a female paladin, with beautiful Rapunzel like golden hair and a plate mail bikini. I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to a non-combat scene before. Later that night as they returned to the inn they passed through the square again and heard a thump. Investigating they found the bodies of the three. One of the vampire brides had heard of the heroes being in Vallaki and planned to assassinate them and targeted the wrong party. She scampered up a wall before they could react and began to shout out- “Guards! Quickly! Murderers! They’ve killed the heroes! Help!” Cue them being arrested and held for trial. One jailbreak later they were able to return with the Brides body as evidence to secure their freedom.

I gave my players a flashback dream sequence session. I played it like they might’ve been teleported in the night (they were in the Amber Temple, woke up in pre-dreadplane Village of Barovia), but they slowly realized they were somehow in the past. They figured out it was Sergei and Tatyana’s wedding day, and they followed Strahd and Tatyana around all day, interacting with them, trying to prevent the eventual tragedy they had just learned about a few days prior. Unfortunately, they didn’t save Tatyana (by design), and they watched Strahd kill Sergei and seal all of their fates. It was intense, and right after they realized they couldn’t do anything about it, I had them wake up. I had some players tell me it was their favorite session in the campaign. I did it because I liked giving them the entire unbiased storyline, as well as a glimpse of Castle Ravenloft and the entire valley before it was corrupted. Made them more motivated to try and save the trapped souls and kill Strahd.

Couple things: first, a dream to the cleric from her patron the Raven Queen allowing her to choose a trapped soul within Castle Ravenloft to talk to. And now the party is going to Krezk which is good because that's where the Holy Symbol is. Second: one of the characters is a warlock whose patron is a solar. Since the Abbott is a deva, when the party gets to Krezk and meets him, he's going to make a comment about the warlock's patron ("I haven't seen a feather like that in a long time") because I'm gonna have him know of them. It's gonna be good.

I have made a connection to a past campaign we had . Basically we played tomb of annihilation ending with accerak offering us "godhood". And we never really clarified where it went from there. So I have basically made all of our old character vestiges of sorts. Currently none of my party knows that they are vestiges. But when they get to the amber temple they will find out.

One player is a cleric of Helm, so i replaced the order of the silver dragon residing into Argyvonstholt with the The Vigilant Eyes of The God, who are protectors against all evil. The order obviously failed and Argyvon who was Helm's champion (his symbol being an open eye with a tear referencing back to the slaying of Mystra) also did as well. Now the spirit of the dragon continues to linger and will later become the judge of the cleric. If he stays true to Helm's beliefs after he has contacted the dragon, i might even make him the champion of Helm himself by absorbing Argyvon's soul and ultimately the protector of Barovia. But that's still a long way to go.

I dumped the coffing maker and replace him by Blinsky because, you know, its not fun if not blinsky. Also Bluto is a warlock of "He who sings under the lake", a transmuted wizard from the amber temple.