Curse of Strahd is a well-known and beloved campaign for Dungeons & Dragons. Taking players through a horror-themed quest in a land called Barovia, the campaign features undead, suspicious villagers, and the manipulative overlord Strahd von Zarovich. With the anniversary of its release back in 2016, this box set includes a lot of fun extras and additional updates to the campaign guide. Chris Perkins, Principal Narrative Designer for D&D stated:
We don’t do a tremendous number of box sets. And we don’t always have the luxury of time or money to really test ourselves… You’d think that we’re just taking something that exists, we’re putting it in a fancy package and ‘Whoop!’ it’s done, but actually so much thought and so many people were involved in the concepting and the packaging and the design, the cards, the DM screen, and everything. It was actually a very time consuming – but fun – process.”
This $99.99 box set comes in a thematically appropriate coffin-shaped box with Ravenloft decor. The set includes a 224-page softcover of the campaign guide, a 20-page Creatures of Horror booklet for Barovia’s monsters, a double-sided map that features Barovia and Castle Ravenloft, a foil-stamped Tarokka deck including a reference booklet for interpretation, twelve postcards for game invitations, a custom DM screen, as well as other fun handouts! Perkins elaborated:
It was always my wish that at some point we could put a version of the adventure together that actually had the cards with it, and it’s out of that idea that this boxed set emerged. We did want to make sure that if Beadle and Grimm, for instance, were doing their own version of it, we wouldn’t eventually be duplicating what they would do. They tend to go, with their Platinum Editions, in the hundreds of dollars. So this is kind of filling in middle space between what they would normally do and what we would normally sell.”Â
There are also a handful of updates to this Dungeons and Dragons adventure. These include the addition of amendments that had been published separately throughout the years, some additional character options, and some tweaks to avoid any offensive references to Romani peoples, which the group known as Vistani resemble.
For many players, Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse of Strahd was their intro into the world of role-playing, just like it was for me. For all die hard D&D fans, this box set is a must!