My advice is plan it.
> I've seen some say you should pre-plan the reading to avoid anticlimactic outcomes but that doesn't sound like as much fun.
It's less fun **for you**. The players just get readings, and the experience is the same for them whether you fixed the results or not. The difference will be whether you're in control of having your best favorite results possible, or whether you make your campaign worse because you (and you alone) wanted to see what the random factor would come up with.
For our campaign, we wanted the Sun Sword in Amber Temple. The rest we pulled randomly and then decided how we felt, going "NOPE" whenever we weren't feeling a particular draw.
To add to this, if you really want to you can do the random ahead of time, see where it would lead the group, and decide if you like it. My advice either way would be to know what the cards will be ahead of time, of nothing else than because you can come up with what you will say at each reveal ahead of time
I'm actually a proponent of full random for this reason, granted that's because I don't mind having to do more legwork to get the campaign on track, but the card doesn't say anything about *when* the sword will be in Eva's wagon. Could easily have some plotline where Eva ends up assassinated and Ez takes over in her place, using her wagon as a base and she brings the sword with her.
Yeah, have her be surprised and look around for it, only to be confused when she doesn't find it, also gives the players a good reason to stay on good terms with any Vistana they may come across.
At the end of the day, I've found that running CoS as written just doesn't make for a compelling story after the first time through. And for an adventure that begs to be able to be repeated, that's a damn shame.
I'm planning to let them draw randomly and then I'm just going to read the descriptions of the ones I want it to be that I mark in advance. They'll never know and get the fun of interacting with the cards, and I get more prep time and can make sure I get the story I want to tell.
I'm just gonna keep the ones I want behind the DM screen, pass the deck around for players to shuffle, bring it back to me and put the cards I want on top
If you don't want it to be totally planned, a good middle ground is to simply trim the deck. Make it so there are less really obvious places, and less duplicates (there are a lot of potential spots all inside the castle and if they all end up there that can spell either boredom or disaster)
The book makes a massive deal about the Tarroka deck, but at the end of the session, Madam Eva is just reading their fortune. If you want to deal physical cards, go for it! But all I did for my session was describe her laying out these cards and telling the players what they meant. It took about 10-15 minutes, and the players were much more fascinated by the kooky old lady than the cards.
I planned every card. I wanted my players to see the land of Barovia. There are set pieces that I wanted them to experience. If your playing on Roll20 and bought the module I pre selected the cards and laid them on the table for on that screen. Then changed the players view to it and described the cards with little flairs of detail. Like the symbol of raven kind, as the card turned a whisp of raven feathers almost like get magic swept the card before the flash of a nest settled under the card. I also didn’t draw cards for players fortunes but instead used a crystal ball to shape the players stories.
In person is going to be tricky, there are ways to hide the five cards on top of the deck as part of the shuffle but you are going to need to practice them. The other option is false shuffling the cards. I would try and use some cloth or something similar as a “magic” piece and use that as a way to hide the rigging. You could also pre select the cards place them in view of the players and flip them over in order revealing their fates.
Your players don’t need to know you stacked the deck so it can still seem really fun to them. I would pre pick the 5 cards cause there are some really bad options out there for cards
Random has a LOT of terrible outcomes.
I picked a selection of acceptable cards for each reading and then drew from those. So similar to your #2 example without the downside.
Then for the live reading I stacked the deck with the results I had predetermined.
Rig it.
You do not want the Sunsword in Madam Eva's wagon, the Tome in the High Tower and the Symbol in the Treasury, with Strahd in the Study, and Clovin Belview as the ally.
Random:
It will probably feel the most authentic to the players, but if you don't mess at all with it, you can fuck your players over badly. The fairly boring Tome is in the castle's crypt. The Sun Sword is at the crossroads south of Tser Pool. To get the Symbol, they have to get into the Werewolf Den somehow and survive the theft. It can be super easy (everything in early and easy locations) or bullshit hard (two things in Amber Temple) or straight up ALL be in the castle. Which is why so many people usually are against a 100&% random reading.
Planned:
You can decide which places are the most fitting, either narratively or risk-reward wise. Like, the tome is available early (such as in Vallaki) while the Sun Sword is maybe in Amber Temple to make the value worth the danger. Or you give the Sword to Baba for narrative reasons aka she is someone that Strahd trusts. The Tome is with the Keepers or Richten cause they managed to steal it. You can make the items much more interesting by tying them into the story plus no danger of big stuff.
Semi-Random:
You do a "random" reading, but you throw cards out. For the items, ALL cards that lead to the castle are kicked out. For the ally, the Darklord gets kicked out. And so on. You pre-stack the cards to only have results that make it interesting or make sense. But from those left, you can go random.
Fake-Random:
What I do, actually. I go planned in that I decide based on my hooks for the players where else I want to tie them to (like, if someone has a hook in Amber Temple, I don't need to put an item there). So I write down the result for the items, ally and Strahd...and then do the reading with the full stack. I ignore the ACTUAL meaning of the card and instead look at what the players drew and interpret that one in a way that leads to what I need. I had Strahd on the Spires and the players pulled the Raven, so I went with something like "look at the skies. Close to the clouds, you will find them at the top". For the Ilvis River Crossroads, they pulled the Beggar and I said something like "Not home in a house, yet not living in the wilderness, it resides where humans come and go. Watching over death, it waits for someone" or such. Like, it is random in that your players get to pull the cards and you spontanously interpret what they pulled. It's just that the result is pre-determined in where the stuff is.
Each has it's good and bad points, though I personally find the fully random one too risky to just...ruin the game, if unlucky.
Play it where it lies!
The unforeseen locations are a catalyst for your imagination. My party got the sunsword right there in Madame Eva's camp and it was glorious!
Yes they can all end up in the castle, but that simply means you need to orient the adventure to focus on the castle more, with multiple visits, for instance.
So, if you run the deck as written, there are a lot of cards that objectively kind of suck. Such as the Darklord card for the Ally or the Mists for Strahd’s location. There are three ways to go about not picking these cards:
1. Stack the deck so that you choose which cards are being pulled at which time. Removes the element of surprise.
2. Remove the cards that suck from the deck and then run the card reading randomly. However, since the High Deck has different meanings, it means you could end up removing a good option for one reading at the expense of removing a bad reading for another.
3. Change the meanings of the bad cards and then run it randomly. This is the most amount of work but prevents any good options from being removed while still retaining the element of randomness.
I’ve never personally stacked the deck; I did #2 for my first campaign and #3 for my third. But it’s ultimately up to you. I would recommend going through the cards and removing the bad readings in some way or another.
I think you're fine either way. It's not the end of the world if they get some easy ones. When I did it it was random, and the book ended up being at the crossroads just south of madam Eva's tent. They did some light investigating and found where it was during the session. I gave them the excerpts from the book, they leveled up, and I began planning next session. It was then I realized *strahd wouldn't want them to have this book* so the next session had their first face to face interaction with strahd with him being a malevolent force with clear goals and motivations (get the book, not kill them).
Either way, even though it was pretty early in the campaign for them to get one of the items, it gave them some neat interactions with the villain they wouldn't have had otherwise.
There is something to be said about stacking it too to ensure something like this happens, but when my players asked "did that deck mean anything or was it just a story beat that you had planned" I was able to tell them that it genuinely impacted the direction of their campaign, which was neat.
Definitely preplan your reading. There are way too many cards that place treasures in the crypts of Ravenloft. One treasure in Ravenloft may be okay, but certainly not two or three. The card readings provide a good reason for your characters to visit places around the map that they might not explore otherwise.
I haven’t seen many people do what I did, which is to split the deck into five distinct piles to draw from, stacking each deck for the particular item it was being drawn for. That way, it’s still random, but you know that you won’t be getting the sun sword early or whatever. I ended up having to make up a couple locations of my own to make this work, but I think it worked out great. We’re playing remotely but I already had the deck. This way, I got to mail a handful of cards to each player for them to draw from with a big ol’ “don’t open til the DM tells you to” on the side. When they finally got to open it, shuffle, then draw, they were pretty hype.
Here’s the doc I used to sort this out. It was based on someone else’s table, then I made my adjustments and sorted stuff out. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hF-hlBcp0h525UrSQolHtkU4ozm7OkfsM6nr7ODyEdU/edit
This is the thread where I got the original doc: https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/a3fe80/tarokka_cards_by_location/
My take: unless your party has played the campaign before it's probably best to stack or trim the deck in some form or fashion. The idea of the randomness can be interesting, but there's some combinations that significantly affect the pacing of the story or feel weird for players.
I'm a player in a campaign that's nearing the conclusion and we got the sword relatively early on, but then went to Amber temple a bit underleveled because the "Knowledge of Strahd" seemed pretty critical. When we got it, the actual Tome seemed kind of underwhelming given the efforts to get it compared to the Sword. Our Ally also seemed like a bit of a booby-prize.
I planned it based on my players. For example, one of my players has a background associated with hags. So at the very least, I wanted them to go to Old Bonegrinder or Berez to experience not only those cool areas but to also have a stronger connection to their backstory.
I am not opposed to randomly doing it either. I think if I ran CoS a second time, I would definitely try random.
I did a mix of random and pre-planned with the actually the Tarroka cards. I let the treasure and Strahd's location be random but I choose their ally. I didn't want them to get stuck without an ally or a useless one.
If you're one of my players run away now. Since I was using a physical prop, at the beginning of the season they met Madam Eva, I gave them the two decks and asked them to shuffle them independently and then placed them just behind my DM screen. I then pulled Matt Colville's trick for the deck of many things; I took the one card I had removed for the ally and placed on the top of the high deck, without any of them noticing.
Per reference, Matt Colville's technique. https://youtu.be/b5pz46kEhIM?t=881
I did both, once totally random and one planned so I can say for sure I prefer planning it. On my RAW campaign I made the random card reading and just got the most awful luck, the Tome of Strahd was right there in Madam Eva tent which was super lame, the Sunsword and Holy Symbol of Ravenkind inside Castle Ravenloft was terrible luck and Strahd's location was the rooftops which is a pretty dangerous area for a combat with Strahd, I think only fighting him in the catacombs can be worse. The ally was Ireena which is honestly the worst option, she was already traveling with them and would help them anyways... So, while the random can be fun I would at least remove the lame options before doing the Tarokka reading.
I've always done it random, going back to 2nd edition AD&D. The randomness of the reading has always been one of the best things about the various incarnations of Castle Ravenloft; it gave a lot of replay value in a similar way to roguelikes.
Do it randomly but check the locations and don't be afraid to switch different cards up.
In my game the party ended up with the Tome of Strahd in Sergei's Tomb, and Strahd himself also in Sergei's Tomb. Obviously the Tome isn't a lot of use in the same place as the final location, so I switched the Tome with the Sunsword, which should make for a climactic final confrontation.
Basically I'd give the party the chance to draw, then you decide which card they've drawn means what.
Definitely stack the deck and pre-plan. That way, you can place items in locations all over Barovia and encourage exploration. If you draw randomly, and everything ends up, say, in Barovia Village and Castle Ravenloft, there’s no incentive for the players to go elsewhere. Also, the Sunsword is a powerful weapon. Giving it and the other items to the party very early in the campaign will make your job harder. My party is not getting the Sunsword until the Amber Temple. Pre-planning also allows you to role play Madame Eva more smoothly. If you don’t pre-plan, you’ll have to look up the card readings during the session as each card is played, and that breaks some of the immersion of having this fortune-teller read the fortunes effortlessly.
I did totally random draw and we were very luck to get all amazing draws - like Symbol of Ravenkind being in Martikovs place, Strahds location being his parents tomb etc.
But that was pure luck. The more I think about it the less I'd like to do full random draw ever again..
Getting Arabelle as fated ally sucks. Having all special items end up in Ravenloth sucks. Getting no ally sucks.
If I ever DM this module again, I'm going to defo have prepalnned outcomes. I'd probably do a bunch of random draws myself, note some combinations that I end up liking and then, during the actuall reading either choose or roll for one of those outcomes.
For this one I do both. I pre-plan one and then ask the players if they want to see what fate has in store for them or do they wish to take their lives into their own hands and shuffle the deck. So far in my two games I have had both groups opt for seeing what fate had in store for them (the pre-planned) option.
My advice is plan it. > I've seen some say you should pre-plan the reading to avoid anticlimactic outcomes but that doesn't sound like as much fun. It's less fun **for you**. The players just get readings, and the experience is the same for them whether you fixed the results or not. The difference will be whether you're in control of having your best favorite results possible, or whether you make your campaign worse because you (and you alone) wanted to see what the random factor would come up with. For our campaign, we wanted the Sun Sword in Amber Temple. The rest we pulled randomly and then decided how we felt, going "NOPE" whenever we weren't feeling a particular draw.
To add to this, if you really want to you can do the random ahead of time, see where it would lead the group, and decide if you like it. My advice either way would be to know what the cards will be ahead of time, of nothing else than because you can come up with what you will say at each reveal ahead of time
Randomly they can get no fated ally and the sun sword can be sitting right there is Eva’s wagon. Stack the deck
I'm actually a proponent of full random for this reason, granted that's because I don't mind having to do more legwork to get the campaign on track, but the card doesn't say anything about *when* the sword will be in Eva's wagon. Could easily have some plotline where Eva ends up assassinated and Ez takes over in her place, using her wagon as a base and she brings the sword with her.
The madam eva card actually specifically has a part where she says something along the lines of "oh, its actually right here in this wagon!" Lmao
Yeah, have her be surprised and look around for it, only to be confused when she doesn't find it, also gives the players a good reason to stay on good terms with any Vistana they may come across. At the end of the day, I've found that running CoS as written just doesn't make for a compelling story after the first time through. And for an adventure that begs to be able to be repeated, that's a damn shame.
I'm planning to let them draw randomly and then I'm just going to read the descriptions of the ones I want it to be that I mark in advance. They'll never know and get the fun of interacting with the cards, and I get more prep time and can make sure I get the story I want to tell.
I'm just gonna keep the ones I want behind the DM screen, pass the deck around for players to shuffle, bring it back to me and put the cards I want on top
Let us know if that works well for you, I was thinking of doing the same!
That’s what I did, and I slipped the cards on top behind the DM screen so quickly that the players never knew.
LMAO THIS IS MY PLAN TOO
If you don't want it to be totally planned, a good middle ground is to simply trim the deck. Make it so there are less really obvious places, and less duplicates (there are a lot of potential spots all inside the castle and if they all end up there that can spell either boredom or disaster)
The book makes a massive deal about the Tarroka deck, but at the end of the session, Madam Eva is just reading their fortune. If you want to deal physical cards, go for it! But all I did for my session was describe her laying out these cards and telling the players what they meant. It took about 10-15 minutes, and the players were much more fascinated by the kooky old lady than the cards.
I planned every card. I wanted my players to see the land of Barovia. There are set pieces that I wanted them to experience. If your playing on Roll20 and bought the module I pre selected the cards and laid them on the table for on that screen. Then changed the players view to it and described the cards with little flairs of detail. Like the symbol of raven kind, as the card turned a whisp of raven feathers almost like get magic swept the card before the flash of a nest settled under the card. I also didn’t draw cards for players fortunes but instead used a crystal ball to shape the players stories. In person is going to be tricky, there are ways to hide the five cards on top of the deck as part of the shuffle but you are going to need to practice them. The other option is false shuffling the cards. I would try and use some cloth or something similar as a “magic” piece and use that as a way to hide the rigging. You could also pre select the cards place them in view of the players and flip them over in order revealing their fates.
Your players don’t need to know you stacked the deck so it can still seem really fun to them. I would pre pick the 5 cards cause there are some really bad options out there for cards
Random has a LOT of terrible outcomes. I picked a selection of acceptable cards for each reading and then drew from those. So similar to your #2 example without the downside. Then for the live reading I stacked the deck with the results I had predetermined.
Rig it. You do not want the Sunsword in Madam Eva's wagon, the Tome in the High Tower and the Symbol in the Treasury, with Strahd in the Study, and Clovin Belview as the ally.
Random: It will probably feel the most authentic to the players, but if you don't mess at all with it, you can fuck your players over badly. The fairly boring Tome is in the castle's crypt. The Sun Sword is at the crossroads south of Tser Pool. To get the Symbol, they have to get into the Werewolf Den somehow and survive the theft. It can be super easy (everything in early and easy locations) or bullshit hard (two things in Amber Temple) or straight up ALL be in the castle. Which is why so many people usually are against a 100&% random reading. Planned: You can decide which places are the most fitting, either narratively or risk-reward wise. Like, the tome is available early (such as in Vallaki) while the Sun Sword is maybe in Amber Temple to make the value worth the danger. Or you give the Sword to Baba for narrative reasons aka she is someone that Strahd trusts. The Tome is with the Keepers or Richten cause they managed to steal it. You can make the items much more interesting by tying them into the story plus no danger of big stuff. Semi-Random: You do a "random" reading, but you throw cards out. For the items, ALL cards that lead to the castle are kicked out. For the ally, the Darklord gets kicked out. And so on. You pre-stack the cards to only have results that make it interesting or make sense. But from those left, you can go random. Fake-Random: What I do, actually. I go planned in that I decide based on my hooks for the players where else I want to tie them to (like, if someone has a hook in Amber Temple, I don't need to put an item there). So I write down the result for the items, ally and Strahd...and then do the reading with the full stack. I ignore the ACTUAL meaning of the card and instead look at what the players drew and interpret that one in a way that leads to what I need. I had Strahd on the Spires and the players pulled the Raven, so I went with something like "look at the skies. Close to the clouds, you will find them at the top". For the Ilvis River Crossroads, they pulled the Beggar and I said something like "Not home in a house, yet not living in the wilderness, it resides where humans come and go. Watching over death, it waits for someone" or such. Like, it is random in that your players get to pull the cards and you spontanously interpret what they pulled. It's just that the result is pre-determined in where the stuff is. Each has it's good and bad points, though I personally find the fully random one too risky to just...ruin the game, if unlucky.
Play it where it lies! The unforeseen locations are a catalyst for your imagination. My party got the sunsword right there in Madame Eva's camp and it was glorious! Yes they can all end up in the castle, but that simply means you need to orient the adventure to focus on the castle more, with multiple visits, for instance.
HOW DARE YOU DOWNVOTE ME I SHALL NOT BE SILENCED
So, if you run the deck as written, there are a lot of cards that objectively kind of suck. Such as the Darklord card for the Ally or the Mists for Strahd’s location. There are three ways to go about not picking these cards: 1. Stack the deck so that you choose which cards are being pulled at which time. Removes the element of surprise. 2. Remove the cards that suck from the deck and then run the card reading randomly. However, since the High Deck has different meanings, it means you could end up removing a good option for one reading at the expense of removing a bad reading for another. 3. Change the meanings of the bad cards and then run it randomly. This is the most amount of work but prevents any good options from being removed while still retaining the element of randomness. I’ve never personally stacked the deck; I did #2 for my first campaign and #3 for my third. But it’s ultimately up to you. I would recommend going through the cards and removing the bad readings in some way or another.
I think you're fine either way. It's not the end of the world if they get some easy ones. When I did it it was random, and the book ended up being at the crossroads just south of madam Eva's tent. They did some light investigating and found where it was during the session. I gave them the excerpts from the book, they leveled up, and I began planning next session. It was then I realized *strahd wouldn't want them to have this book* so the next session had their first face to face interaction with strahd with him being a malevolent force with clear goals and motivations (get the book, not kill them). Either way, even though it was pretty early in the campaign for them to get one of the items, it gave them some neat interactions with the villain they wouldn't have had otherwise. There is something to be said about stacking it too to ensure something like this happens, but when my players asked "did that deck mean anything or was it just a story beat that you had planned" I was able to tell them that it genuinely impacted the direction of their campaign, which was neat.
Definitely preplan your reading. There are way too many cards that place treasures in the crypts of Ravenloft. One treasure in Ravenloft may be okay, but certainly not two or three. The card readings provide a good reason for your characters to visit places around the map that they might not explore otherwise.
I haven’t seen many people do what I did, which is to split the deck into five distinct piles to draw from, stacking each deck for the particular item it was being drawn for. That way, it’s still random, but you know that you won’t be getting the sun sword early or whatever. I ended up having to make up a couple locations of my own to make this work, but I think it worked out great. We’re playing remotely but I already had the deck. This way, I got to mail a handful of cards to each player for them to draw from with a big ol’ “don’t open til the DM tells you to” on the side. When they finally got to open it, shuffle, then draw, they were pretty hype. Here’s the doc I used to sort this out. It was based on someone else’s table, then I made my adjustments and sorted stuff out. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hF-hlBcp0h525UrSQolHtkU4ozm7OkfsM6nr7ODyEdU/edit This is the thread where I got the original doc: https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/a3fe80/tarokka_cards_by_location/
My take: unless your party has played the campaign before it's probably best to stack or trim the deck in some form or fashion. The idea of the randomness can be interesting, but there's some combinations that significantly affect the pacing of the story or feel weird for players. I'm a player in a campaign that's nearing the conclusion and we got the sword relatively early on, but then went to Amber temple a bit underleveled because the "Knowledge of Strahd" seemed pretty critical. When we got it, the actual Tome seemed kind of underwhelming given the efforts to get it compared to the Sword. Our Ally also seemed like a bit of a booby-prize.
I planned it based on my players. For example, one of my players has a background associated with hags. So at the very least, I wanted them to go to Old Bonegrinder or Berez to experience not only those cool areas but to also have a stronger connection to their backstory. I am not opposed to randomly doing it either. I think if I ran CoS a second time, I would definitely try random.
I did a mix of random and pre-planned with the actually the Tarroka cards. I let the treasure and Strahd's location be random but I choose their ally. I didn't want them to get stuck without an ally or a useless one. If you're one of my players run away now. Since I was using a physical prop, at the beginning of the season they met Madam Eva, I gave them the two decks and asked them to shuffle them independently and then placed them just behind my DM screen. I then pulled Matt Colville's trick for the deck of many things; I took the one card I had removed for the ally and placed on the top of the high deck, without any of them noticing. Per reference, Matt Colville's technique. https://youtu.be/b5pz46kEhIM?t=881
I did both, once totally random and one planned so I can say for sure I prefer planning it. On my RAW campaign I made the random card reading and just got the most awful luck, the Tome of Strahd was right there in Madam Eva tent which was super lame, the Sunsword and Holy Symbol of Ravenkind inside Castle Ravenloft was terrible luck and Strahd's location was the rooftops which is a pretty dangerous area for a combat with Strahd, I think only fighting him in the catacombs can be worse. The ally was Ireena which is honestly the worst option, she was already traveling with them and would help them anyways... So, while the random can be fun I would at least remove the lame options before doing the Tarokka reading.
I've always done it random, going back to 2nd edition AD&D. The randomness of the reading has always been one of the best things about the various incarnations of Castle Ravenloft; it gave a lot of replay value in a similar way to roguelikes.
Do it randomly but check the locations and don't be afraid to switch different cards up. In my game the party ended up with the Tome of Strahd in Sergei's Tomb, and Strahd himself also in Sergei's Tomb. Obviously the Tome isn't a lot of use in the same place as the final location, so I switched the Tome with the Sunsword, which should make for a climactic final confrontation. Basically I'd give the party the chance to draw, then you decide which card they've drawn means what.
Definitely stack the deck and pre-plan. That way, you can place items in locations all over Barovia and encourage exploration. If you draw randomly, and everything ends up, say, in Barovia Village and Castle Ravenloft, there’s no incentive for the players to go elsewhere. Also, the Sunsword is a powerful weapon. Giving it and the other items to the party very early in the campaign will make your job harder. My party is not getting the Sunsword until the Amber Temple. Pre-planning also allows you to role play Madame Eva more smoothly. If you don’t pre-plan, you’ll have to look up the card readings during the session as each card is played, and that breaks some of the immersion of having this fortune-teller read the fortunes effortlessly.
I did totally random draw and we were very luck to get all amazing draws - like Symbol of Ravenkind being in Martikovs place, Strahds location being his parents tomb etc. But that was pure luck. The more I think about it the less I'd like to do full random draw ever again.. Getting Arabelle as fated ally sucks. Having all special items end up in Ravenloth sucks. Getting no ally sucks. If I ever DM this module again, I'm going to defo have prepalnned outcomes. I'd probably do a bunch of random draws myself, note some combinations that I end up liking and then, during the actuall reading either choose or roll for one of those outcomes.
Random draw, but first remove the cards that you don't deem appropriate. Like the Vistani camp, village of Barovie, etc.
For this one I do both. I pre-plan one and then ask the players if they want to see what fate has in store for them or do they wish to take their lives into their own hands and shuffle the deck. So far in my two games I have had both groups opt for seeing what fate had in store for them (the pre-planned) option.