Read before session zero

Content and Safety

Sundering of Strahd

This campaign is horror, and it is not the fun kind of horror all the way through. The setting is a country under occupation where people are livestock, and the game is about surviving that and deciding what surviving is worth. Most of the difficulty is moral rather than tactical.

This document is a disclosure, not a menu. Almost everything below is structural. It is what the campaign is made of, and I cannot remove it and still run this campaign. I am telling you now so that you can decide whether you want to play it, rather than finding out in month three.

If something here is a dealbreaker, say so and there are no hard feelings. That is a reasonable thing to want out of a game and this is not the game for it.

Tone

Grimdark, with the emphasis on grim. There is humour, there is genuine warmth, and there are places worth protecting. There is also no guarantee that a right choice is available, that good people survive, or that your victories hold. Some outcomes are bad endings by design.

What the campaign contains

The spine of the setting

Slavery and ownership of people. One group in this setting is legally property, bought and sold at a market price, usually as infants. Their owners often treat them with real affection while still owning them, and many are kept content by magic rather than by anything their owners have earned. This is a recurring subject, not background texture.
Racism and caste. Systemic, casual, and voiced by likeable characters as well as villains. Some of it targets fantasy peoples and it maps onto real world bigotry on purpose.
Systemic cruelty and collective punishment. Whole settlements are destroyed for the actions of individuals, including settlements you will have spent time in and liked.
Sexual violence as history. An entire people in this world exists because of it, and they are central to the plot. The section below sets out exactly how this is and is not handled.

Also present

Torture and mutilation. Several of the people in power are sadists, and some of them reshape or punish bodies for their own amusement. It is shown in its results more than in detail, but it is shown.
Cannibalism. Human flesh is a delicacy in this setting, and it is traded. There are also situations where a character may be pushed toward eating people in order to survive.
Body horror. The dead walk, and some of the things in this country have been changed into shapes they were never meant to have, people included.
Complicity. You will be asked to do things for people you despise, and other people will sometimes pay for what you did. The campaign does not always offer a clean way out of either.

What can happen to your character

This campaign puts more pressure on your character than most games do, and some of it reaches past the character sheet. You should know about these before you build anyone you are attached to.

Permanent loss. Characters can die, and some of the ways they can be lost are final. A character whose mind gives out entirely is gone, and you will hand over the sheet.
The bargain. When a character dies, they may be offered a way back. It always works, and it always costs something permanent, visible and social.
Losing control. A character whose mind is badly worn down may do things offscreen that you did not choose, and you will find out afterward along with everyone else. Those things can be serious, up to and including hurting someone innocent.
Being changed. Some of what happens in this country can alter a character's body, mind or loyalties for a long time, sometimes for the rest of the campaign.

None of this is aimed at punishing anyone. If one of these is a hard no for you, tell me before we start and we will talk about it.

How sexual violence is handled

It is discussed as lore. It is how dhampirs come to exist in this world, and dhampirs are a persecuted people, a plot thread, and a faction you will meet.

Its consequences appear on screen. The people born of it are present, they are openly identified as what they are, and some of them are proud of it. They can also be murdered in front of you, and some take their own lives.

The act is never depicted or described occurring during a session. No scene will move toward it, build to it, or cut away from it in progress. It is history and consequence only.

Player characters are never victims of it. Not on screen, not in backstory prompts, not as a threat, not implied, not by any NPC at any point.

These last two are absolute. I will not be talked out of them by anyone at the table, including by someone who thinks they are being accommodating.

What I need from you before we start

Whether any of the above is a dealbreaker. Better now than later, and there is no wrong answer.
Whether you want a heads up before a heavy scene, or whether that spoils it for you. People want opposite things here and I would rather know which you are.
Anything you would rather say privately than in front of the group. Message me instead.

You can change these answers at any point. Nothing said in session zero locks you in, and something that was fine in month one is allowed to stop being fine in month six.

The short version

This is a game about people in an ugly situation making compromises, and the horror is meant to land. It is not meant to hurt you. Those are different things, and if the line between them ever gets crossed at my table, tell me and we stop.