The Good

"The Interactive Tome of Strahd" offers an immersive and detailed exploration of Strahd von Zarovich's personal history through a series of well-crafted adventures. The narrative depth is impressive, allowing players to experience key moments from Strahd's past, enhancing their understanding of his character and the lore of Barovia. The adventures are designed for characters of 5th to 15th level, providing a broad range of challenges and encounters that scale appropriately. The inclusion of unique mechanics, such as being absorbed into the Tome and experiencing events firsthand, adds a fresh and engaging twist to gameplay. The attention to detail in the setting and character interactions creates a rich, atmospheric experience that captivates both players and Dungeon Masters.

The Bad

While the complexity and depth of "The Interactive Tome of Strahd" are commendable, they can also be overwhelming for new Dungeon Masters. The intricate storyline and numerous encounters require careful preparation and management to ensure a smooth gameplay experience. Additionally, the adventures' reliance on high-level characters and detailed knowledge of Barovian lore may limit accessibility for some players. The mechanics involving the Tome, though innovative, can add layers of complexity that may be challenging to balance and integrate seamlessly into existing campaigns. Despite these potential challenges, the overall richness and immersive quality of the adventure make it a valuable addition to any D&D campaign.

Overall

"The Interactive Tome of Strahd" is a masterfully crafted adventure that provides a deep, immersive experience, offering players a unique and detailed exploration of Strahd's history and the land of Barovia. Despite its complexity, it is a highly rewarding resource for those willing to delve into its rich narrative and challenging encounters.

Great story to flesh out the Curse of Strahd. Instead of the whole party I did 1 on 1 sessions with the player attuned to the book, who then could roleplay what they saw to the group on the next session. Tweaking something here and there to make him not look the grand evil, but just 'misunderstood' to put that party member against the rest. Can add quite some tension and flavor to the campaign!

This is absolute brilliance. It really adds a lot to Curse of Strahd (CoS). As I'm sure you know, there is a TON of stuff out there to add to CoS and I personally feel like 99% of it is unneccessary as CoS is so good, as written. This is an exception. This is a fantastic way to get your players involved in the story behind Strahd and to understand him better, which I believe adds to the fear and respect of him. And when the final battle finally goes down, it will have so much more meaning and emotion. I would call this a required add-on to CoS and I recommend you have the Tome placed somewhere near the beginning of the adventure. I went with Madam Eva's camp.

Also I highly recommend the gorgeous maps made by DM_Andy available on his patreon. He has free versions but the subscriber versions are better. patreon.com/posts/map-hub-links-to-74466209

I also made the following changes that worked well for me. This is absolutely not a criticism but I thought the idea might be helpful to some others. Instead of having the characters sucked into the book, I had my PC's go into a dream-state where their passive perception is -5 and if they get attacked, the first hit is an auto-crit (like they are unconcious). Then each chapter is 4 hours no matter what. No arcana roll to decipher. And anything that happens inside the book doesn't have consequences on reality (so if they die, they don't really die and they can't keep or bring anything back). So the only consequence to them messing up inside the chapter is that they get less information from it. So whatever they witnessed gets written in the book when they come back and they can reference at any time (I keep a campaign log available on discord anyway). And if they TPK or a critical NPC dies while inside the book, they just "fail" the chapter and have to repeat it in order to complete it later. I also allowed them to roll a different character whose level always matches their own and has Adventure League rules starting equipment. That they could use while they were in the book. I thought they might think it was fun. I was wrong. Everyone turned it down lol.

This is a very well known nad loved suppliment in the community, it adds depth to the Tome of Strahd, it adds subplots and gives the players information about Strahd that they personally experience through their characters. I give it 5/5 stars and am delighted to do so. That said, I didn't use it. It doesn't match my style of play, it extends an already very long module, and I wanted to do something slightly different with my Tome of Strahd. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to really pull anything useful from this suppliment, but that's entirely on me. This is either a 0% useful or 100% useful document, and I recommend checking it out to see if it fits in your campaign.

I could imagine running it in future runthroughs of the game.

At this point, the Interactive Tome of Strahd doesn't need more positive buzz, really, but even as someone who didn't use it as written, the ideas and scenarios it contains are extremely worth considering if you're going to run CoS.

It's almost a new adventure, really complete and flexible. You don't need to use everything, which make this new Tome more than excellent!

An amazing suppliment and a MUST HAVE for any Curse of Strahd DM!

Honestly my favourite module that I added to COS. It helps the players engage and flesh out Strahd so much more than a block of text could, and makes the Tome a practical benefit to the party like the Symbol of Ravenkind and sunsword.

Tout simplement le meilleur supplément a ce jour pour la Malédiction de Strahd

Buy this! Seriously. It's so incredibly well written and SUCH a cool way to get my players learning about the lore of Curse of Strahd. It's such a brilliant way to tell the backstory, and my players love "Story Time" each long rest. It's cool too to get these little bits and pieces amidst what the characters are doing and they can look back at things/npcs and be like "ooooohhhh!" It's sooo fun, this is such a great buy.

This is an amazing work of art that deserves more than 5 stars. Wow. Just wow. My players haven't found the Tome of Strahd yet, but even if yours has, there's no reason you couldn't somehow incorporate this into it. Instead of the info-dump the RAW module gives you, this version of the Tome drops you and your players into the history of the vampire himself.

There are only three things you need to consider when using this addition. First, have some sort of consistent outcome prepared should your players actively interfere with the story. Maybe when they turn on Strahd as a boy, the scene fades to mist and the characters are forcibly ejected from the book, and further attempts to re-read that chapter reveal a half-completed page before continuing on to the next one. Or perhaps they can try again, this time following the chapter to its conclusion.

Secondly, the text mentions that magical items pulled from the book become nonmagical, but says nothing about what happens to magical items brought in. This is especially concerning if your players already have the activated Sunsword and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. What happens? Do they disappear from a player's inventory for the time they're in the book? Temporarily transform into normal items? Maybe they can't interact with them at all, or perhaps all magical items besides the Sunsword and Symbol of Ravenkind function normally. Maybe your players could even roleplay an NPC that doesn't have access to them, instead serving as bloodknights during the assault on Castle Ravenloft, or using their spellcasting powers as Barovian witches to cook Strahd a meal!

The third is more of a personal suggestion, but consider this: the Tome is an excellent place to hide the relics. The Tarokka reading tells you where a relic is, but it doesn’t say WHEN it was there. Personally, the chaos of Chapter 6 is an excellent moment to recover the Sunsword, while the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind can come up for grabs at the end of Chapter 9. If your players somehow manage to retrieve one of these during a previous chapter, it goes missing from their inventory the moment the Tome spits them out- the story still needs its prop, after all. It’s also up to you to determine if the artifacts are affected by the Tome's 'magical-to-nonmagical' property. If they are, their repair could be a worthwhile sidequest. Even better, Strahd might not confiscate relics that pose no threat to him. He might even congratulate the players for recovering useless trinkets of a bygone age, thus buying them time while relieving you from wondering what Strahd might do once he finds out the characters have them.

All in all, this is well worth the $15 spent, and I strongly encourage anyone on the fence to spring for it. It will save you prep time and give your players a first-row seat to the history of Barovia... and the events that led to the downfall of one of D&D's most notorious and well-loved villains.

You will not be disappointed.

Awesome! I'm only on chapter 2 but my players are fascinated with the book, and I don't think they would care much if it was as RAW.