Publisher: Dungeon Masters GuildAny 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.
NOTE: I am enabling both a PDF preview AND a "pay what you want" option. Please just don't steal it. If you find it worthwhile, pitch in what you would like! Thanks! Hey look out, it's a vampire bat! (^^^';.;'^^^)