Last night, my Wednesday night group continued their quest through Curse of Strahd. This is the second group I’m running through the adventure, and they’re making different choices from the first group. Occasionally very different choices.

And last night, most of the group were pretty tired. So they weren’t paying as much attention as you might expect. This led to a few interesting situations…

It was early evening in Barovia. Seeking a stolen treasure, they’d learnt that the treasure was at the top of a flight of stairs. However, at the top of this flight were two doorways: one to the left. One to the right. The players determined that the ranger should creep up there on his own. He’d been told that there were vampires to the left, and the treasure to the right.

The ranger went up the stairs… looked at the doors… then went down again.

“Which door was it again?”

Well, at least he didn’t open one!

A little later in the session, they’d found the treasure (in a bag), but before they could get it, the vampires had detected them and started attacking. The ranger, learning there were windows in the room, smashed one and waited for the sunlight to destroy the vampires!

The other players looked at him. “What are you doing? It’s night!”

“Oh.”

Instead, he jumped out the window. One by one the others jumped out, fleeing the vampires. The last PC looked around the table, ran across to the treasure, picked it up, and then followed them.

“Why didn’t you grab the treasure?” he asked the others.

No intelligent answer was forthcoming.

Curse of Strahd is potentially a horror story. But sometimes the horror doesn’t survive the players!