He tries to drive wedges by playing on character flaws, but not for amusement. He hardly took notice of the party at low levels until they did something big. For instance, most Vasili plotlines I read on here are just too silly or roundabout for my game.
I do agree that Strahd is less of a malevolent prankster than some posts on this sub would have you believe. This leads him to doing some things, like creating his vampire brides, that he would not have done in the novel, but I felt OK keeping in the module. In that time, Strahd becomes less and less human and more bored with his tortured existence. Although the novel Strahd and module do differ in one important way: consider how young Strahd is in the novel vs the module. He's less of the Joker and more Ra's Al Ghul. Just looking for advice on this small "mid adventure crisis" I am having. i have flirted with the idea that he's up to a grander scheme about leaving Barovia and taking his "army" with him, perhaps to Faerun by building some Deus Ex Machina, but it seems very "supervillany". I just put myself in my players shoes and wonder, what purpose do they have to confront him? They don't have a strong enough connection to Ireena.
He has given the PCs a grace period which is about to expire, but it doesn't seem like he would swoop down immediately and start attacking once it ends. He has even saved them from being killed from the Hags, for breaking his rules. My Strahd looks down at my party for being rude, but doesn't feel threatened by any of them. My PC's have met Strahd several times, none of which he has attacked them. So I guess my question is, how do I maintain true to character and thus the story? He's a reset switch of Barovia, with him acting as Neo, and the Dark Powers the Matrix itself. It has me at a crossroads as I continuously see Strahd not the villain but just another tool of the dark powers. So when I read many posts of Strahd antagonizing the PC's or setting traps for them, corrupting them, or outright fighting them, it doesn't seem true to character. He doesn't antagonize unless antagonized. He never comes across as someone who is going to deliberately bother anyone unless the rules are broken. He frequently rewards those for loyalty, and punishes those who have offended him/his rule/his land/etc. But in the novel, Strahd seems less of a figure who will toy around with people.
Obviously, his desire over Ireena/Tatyana, is 100% fully explained and kept. However, it does confuse me a bit towards Strahd's motivations when it comes to having strangers in his land. My assumption is Chris Perkins just rebooted some of the facts to keep the novel relevant. Even though it was written back in 1993 to coincide with the 2nd Edition Ravenloft modules, it surprisingly holds up well to the current information written some 20+ years later in "Curse of Strahd". He caught his breath.I just finished PN Elrod's novel, "I Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire", as a way to understand the character better. I, Strahd, Lord of Barovia, well aware certain events of my reign have been desperately misunderstood by those who are better at garbling history than recording it, hereby set down an exact record of those events, that the truth may at last be known. No table of contents, but from the dates it looked to be some kind of history. The flowing handwriting was a bit difficult to follow at first the writer's style of calligraphy had not been in common use for three hundred years. There were no ornate illuminations, no fussy borders, only lines of plain text in hard black ink. Other pages were thin and desiccated, positively yellow from age, and crackled alarmingly as Van Richten turned them over. Some of the parchment pages were the color of cream, thick and substantial, made to last many, many lifetimes.
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