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Curse of Strahd: NPC Map for Dungeon Masters CoS Strahd von ZarovichClick to magnify
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Curse of Strahd: NPC Map for Dungeon Masters CoS Strahd von Zarovich

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OVER 10,000 DOWNLOADS have helped many DMs plan and run their Curse of Strahd campaign!


Any ambitious DM who has cracked the cover to the wonderful 5e campaign Curse of Strahd knows how incredibly complicated and interrelated the stories are of the many, many NPCs your players will encounter on their perilous journeys.

There are relatives, intrigue and shadowy groups, friends, enemies, hunters and hunted, estranged children, long lost lovers, the dead returning for vengeance and the drunk seeking fortunes.

On the surface CoS looks like a simple adventure. Find some items, slay the big bad bloodsucker. But as any DM who has looked over the book in detail knows, forgetting (or worse: misrepresenting!) the relationships of the NPCs can go a long way to tangle and derail an intricate campaign.

That's why I took the time to craft this detailed "relationship map" for Curse of Strahd. I have painstakingly gone through the book and marked out the most important NPC relationships and even many of the ones that are optional flavor.

I've colored the circles of the people in rough accordance to their plot alignment, if not their actual character alignment. Green tends to be protagonistic, red tends to be antagonistic. Blue tends to be uninvolved or not-necessarily plot-moving characters – but rest assured they're all important! Also the size of their name-circles is a little suggestion as to how important their are to the plot.

This single-paged PDF file is scaled to be printed as an 18x24" poster sized foldout. However you are more than free to simply peruse it to take notes, or print out smaller more manageable sections. I have been able to print it myself on two separate 11x17" pages and tape it together quite well.

NOTE: this document in NO WAY replaces the intricacies of the Curse of Strahd campaign materials. It is something of a guide, a cheat-sheet, a reminder of who may be related to whom. As such it does NOT describe the entire ways interactions or motivations should go. There's no way that would fit on a single poster with this type of layout. Curse of Strahd is required reading for any DM who wants to run the campaign. This is simply a helpful "map" for planning your encounters, motivations, and directions.

We DMs can use all the help we can get – and I hope you find this "map" to be extremely helpful. 

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Reviews (7)
Discussions (7)
Customer avatar
Marion W October 28, 2023 12:15 am UTC
PURCHASER
How do I add this to my cart? It wont let me add any PWYC items
Customer avatar
Jason B June 20, 2022 5:43 pm UTC
PURCHASER
OMG this is amazing and makes everything soooo much more clear when it comes to this campaign. Thanks!!
Customer avatar
Timothy S March 27, 2021 6:23 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Any chance you would consider changing the font to something more legible? I'm not sure what it's like for non-dyslexics, but the information is really hard to parse at a glance, to the point that even at 200% magnification it looks like the letters are overlapping or blending together.
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Cesar M September 25, 2023 11:28 pm UTC
PURCHASER
+1 to this, I'm not dyslexic, but the font chosen for the explanations (white boxes) reads very terribly at small sizes (and ironically seems like the smallest/most important text, so I had to browse this at 150% zoom and don't think I can reasonably have a printable and readable version).
Kerning on this font is very bad overall (see "WA"s vs "NK"s), but the "F"s in particular are all merging with the following letter, making them hard to distinguish from As and Ps.

Other than that, which seems like a relatively easy thing to change and unrelated to the main purpose of the map, this chart looks great and very helpful! Thanks a lot for putting this all together and all the work it must have taken to gather the information and find a visual way to arrange all the nodes. I particularly appreciate how the different locations are grouped up.
Customer avatar
Matthew S July 16, 2020 7:14 am UTC
PURCHASER
I've downloaded this and tried and tried, but I can't get a clear picture on my computer of what the writing that is smaller than just a name is. Am I missing something? I cannot use the map like this.
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Customer avatar
Carl H July 25, 2020 2:21 pm UTC
CREATOR
Hi Matthew - are you viewing the PDF? It's all vector art so it should be perfectly clear. That's the only thing I can imagine might be fuzzy is if you're not viewing the PDF? Hmmm. Any luck since you posted this? Sorry I didn't see it right away.
Customer avatar
James T October 10, 2019 4:45 am UTC
PURCHASER
I was sitting down to plot this out but thought I would see if someone else did it. First purchase on dm's guild. Great Job!
Customer avatar
Evan S February 06, 2017 8:24 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Carl, any chance you'll be willing to incorporate feedback to this map, and publish updates? I'm thinking of making some hand-written tweaks, but if you're still refining the map, then I want to offer direct feedback.
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Customer avatar
Carl H February 08, 2017 7:16 pm UTC
CREATOR
Hi Evan, thanks for the love! I've received some great feedback and am absolutely open to constructive criticism. That said, sometimes I'm just not able to FIT much more on the map while keeping it as (arguably) organized as I have it now. But I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can leave them here or shoot me a direct email at carlh@carlh.com – I'm glad you're enjoying it!
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Customer avatar
Evan S February 09, 2017 10:24 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Thoughts here: some of the white descriptive 'relationship' boxes are ambiguous in which direction the relationship exists. I.e., is A 'daughter' of B, or is B 'daughter' of A? Adding a little arrow to the connecting relationship lines might clarify? Maybe there are other means which wouldn't disrupt your solid design aesthetic.
Customer avatar
Evan S February 01, 2017 8:25 pm UTC
PURCHASER
This NPC relationship-map, aligned with campaign locales, is a GREAT resource. I started one of my own in much the same manner, but the undertaking was arduous. This one is a fine contribution to the CoS DM's toolbox.
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File Last Updated:
January 31, 2017
This title was added to our catalog on January 31, 2017.