Curse of Strahd
In this adventure, the characters find themselves in Barovia -- a cursed land ruled by a vampire lord, Strahd von Zarovich. Soon they will learn that it's very hard to escape that place, and it's liege's grasp. There is only one goal: to get out alive...
About the game: The main themes of the adventure are horror, survival, fate and treachery. The primary goal of the adventurers is to survive in a very dark, dangerous and gloomy world, controlled by someone who is, for all intents and purposes, an evil deity -- but who is at the same time bound by invisible chains of fate, which no power is able to overcome. The characters will face extreme hardships -- some of them will not make it through; but at the end Strahd always gives them a choice: to perish, or to sacrifice their companions.
Although it is based on the Curse of Strahd adventure, the game is going to be somewhat more sandbox-styled that you would expect from such format. Basically consider the published adventure as an initial condition of a simulated system: in the beginning the game will mostly follow the outline, but then proceed to diverge from it. In general, feel free to do whatever you want in-game: your decisions will be neither restricted, nor railroaded.
There are some differences from the published setting, most notably that the Tarokka cards work in a completely different way, also it is much harder to defeat Strahd, and that it is possible to escape Barovia without defeating Strahd -- not in any straightforward way, of course, but it should be considered the default "good" ending. Slaying the vampire, on the other hand, requires nothing short of excellence.
As a deviation from the tabletop D&D, party splitting is fully permitted, and even expected to an extent.
The game will be hard and deadly: be prepared that you may lose your character. In that case you will be able to re-enter the game as a new character of level 1. I will, however, try my best to make it fair: that you can always either get out of deadly situations, or avoid them in the first place, even if you are generally unlucky with the dice.
Speaking of which, the characters are going to have different levels. You don't get XP for slaying monsters or completing quests; instead you get level-ups for exceeding Strahd's expectations, so to say. Because of that, and also because of the fact that the new characters enter the game at 1st level, the character's levels are going to be pretty spread out.
About your character: You start at the 1st level, 27 point buy. The game is RP heavy; try to provide a good background story for your character, as well as think though their psychology. The overarching setting is the Forgotten Realms -- consider adding some details to your character that would connect them to the outside world. List of approved sources for character creation:
