DDAL Running DDAL04 (Ravenloft) Adventures as a Campaign

A Trip to the Quivering Forest part 1: DDAL04-01 & DDAL04-06

Since Barovia is in my group's homebrew world, the Quivering Forest just another location there, and Jeny Greenteeth came from somewhere else in the same world. In my group's world, elves don't typically live in Barovia, so I changed the history of Greenhall: it's an enclave of druids working to heal the forest, which includes some elves who have traveled there from other areas. I greatly reduced the size of Greenhall, making it only a couple of dozen or so strong.

I also threw out everything about Aya Glenmiir except her name. She's now a scout from Greenhall, using the elven scout statblock. The explanation for how she and the two boys came to be lost near the Vaduvas' camp was that thick mists had suddenly descended on the Quivering Forest about ten days earlier, when the boys were away from the camp. Aya went looking for them, but when she found them, they were unable to find their way back. They had been wandering ever since, without seeing a familiar landmark or another living soul except for Alina and Laszlo, who were beginning their violent quarrel when the elves happened on their camp.

(Note: Logically, the elves should have ransacked the camp for food and taken that salted ham in Laszlo's backback, since they were so hungry. If I were to run this again, I'd include that detail--unless I just cut the elves entirely.)

I transitioned from the last adventure by saying that the roads were impassable for several days, but since it was still early in the season, there was enough of a thaw after the storm for them to make the journey. I also included the detail about the snow disappearing when they reached the Quivering Forest.

This Does Not Belong Here

On the road, I inserted "This Does Not Belong Here," the encounter with the Vistani wagon with a tree growing through it, from DDAL04-02 "The Beast." That's a nicely atmospheric vignette, and it's annoying that there is no follow-up to it. I figured that the occupants of the wagon became some of the victims of the giant spiders, although I don't know if my players figured that part out. The bard took the tambourine.

Fire Thistles

Then, to get to the forest, they had to climb the icy hill with the fire thistles from DDAL04-01. I think the players enjoyed this. The bard and rogue picked two thistles each, and although I stressed that they wouldn't keep their power for long, I let them use them against the spiders later. The paladin and cleric lost their footing on the hill and slid into the fire thistle bush. Here's where the rules, as written, will annoy players like mine: each of them got three thistles stuck to them. The module only allows for a PC to try to carefully remove one thistle in the round before they explode. But the players wanted to use their actions to drop and roll in the snow to keep all the thistles from exploding. It would have felt really cheesy saying "No, you can't do that," so I let them make an acrobatics roll to save for half damage.

Mad Elves

Next, upon entering the Quivering Forest, they encountered the mad elves from "Suits of the Mists." Aya recognized them and called out to them, but they were too crazed to recognize her. The party wanted to use the cooshees against the elves, but none of them were trained in animal handling. I offered to give them advantage on the animal handling check if they made it when within melee range of a cooshee--with the downside that if the check failed, the cooshee could then make a melee attack when its turn came.

Meeting with Derali

I changed Derali and her guards to humans. They came on the scene as soon as the fight with the mad elves was finished. Derali explained to Aya that the mists had continued to descend since they were lost from the camp, having varying effects on the druids. Each time the mists appeared, more of the druids disappeared. Some turned up later, completely mad, like the scouts the party had just fought; others seemed to have disappeared completely. The druids had varying theories about where the mists came from: some thought they were caused by Jeny Greenteeth, and others thought Strahd was creating them. Derali sent her guards to accompany Aya's companions and the mad scouts back to Greenhall. She asked Aya and the PCs to help her look for more of the missing druids.

A Sticky Situation

I ran this encounter without changes. After it was over, the PCs were invited back to Greenhall for a long rest.

The group reached level 2 in this session.

Best of luck! I've run through the entire series twice, and it needs some work to make it all hang together. Some of the adventures are awesome, others less so.

There's a couple of things in it that were included to set-up details for future seasons of the DDAL adventures, but then they moved away from the Moonsea and that work was wasted - and leads to some unsatisfying material in this season.

Cheers!

MerricB said:

Best of luck! I've run through the entire series twice, and it needs some work to make it all hang together. Some of the adventures are awesome, others less so.

There's a couple of things in it that were included to set-up details for future seasons of the DDAL adventures, but then they moved away from the Moonsea and that work was wasted - and leads to some unsatisfying material in this season.

Cheers!

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Hey Merric, your blog is great! Very helpful.

Just wondering if you had a quick & dirty outline of what you would change/cut/edit to run the AL modules in series? Basically, I'm thinking of including Orasnou as a side trek questline in a normal CoS campaign.

I like The Beast and the Laszlo-Alina storyline and the impending storm. It creates a very foreboding backdrop. I like the idea of the players arriving in town and suddenly becoming trapped in a sense. That said, I'm really unsure how to make the leap to The Executioner, especially the elapsed time that's assumed to have passed. I can justify hand-waving that the storm forces everyone inside for a week or so but more than that starts to feel very forced. My players would definitely call BS because it's a storytelling crutch.

I definitely like your idea of having Gregori from the Hare & Hair to kick things off and lead the players to the Burgomaster's house. The adventure states that Arik/Lazslo and Fillar have been conducting business together for a length of time but the scene in the Eyes of Midnight shop don't indicate that at all, or at least doesn't seem to depend on it.

I'm ok with Laszlo escaping but the part with the angry mob also seems forced and tacked on, as does the ending with the Burgomaster. This whole adventure feels like one scene of a larger adventure rather than an adventure on its own. Because of that, as you pointed out in your blog, it tries really to come up with a beginning, middle, and end but fails. On top of that, the adventure suffers from some continuity mistakes and
confusing writing.

MerricB said:

Best of luck! I've run through the entire series twice, and it needs some work to make it all hang together.

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Any tips that aren't covered in your blog? Also, just so you know, your review of DDAL04-04, "The Marionette," doesn't have the "Curse of Strahd" tag, so it doesn't show up on the link above. (I left a comment there too.)

GlassJaw said:

That said, I'm really unsure how to make the leap to The Executioner, especially the elapsed time that's assumed to have passed.

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Orasnou is right next to Vallaki; maybe have them do stuff in Vallaki after "The Beast" and then come back for "The Executioner" a bit later?

To ensure that my players will come back to Orasnou, I had Gregori promise them that the burgomaster would pay them for finding Alina and Laszlo, but the burgomaster was out of town. They'll go back to get their payment. Might work for your group too.

ETA: Oh, also, if your party is level 1, I'd suggest making one of the encounters before the werewolf's den a non-combat one. I used two combat encounters, and the party was quite low on spells and HP when they reached the werewolf's den. This contributed to them talking Alina out of attacking them, which is fine, but anticlimactic.

So as I read (and reread) these adventures, I'm struggling with whether I should embrace the newly-acquired Quivering Forest or ignore it.

Since I will be running CoS as written, my concern is that the creatures foreign to Barovia that come up in the later adventures (orcs, trolls, yuan-ti, etc) will be jarring and break immersion. Heck, even the appearance of the elves early on might raise some eyebrows.

That said, one idea I had to address this is that the northeast corner of Barovia is unstable. For some background, I plan to run Barovia like a "simulation" a la The Matrix, Westworld, or The Truman Show, with Strahd playing the role of Truman and the "Dark Powers" running the show. The mists in this area would be slightly "ajar" so things are getting pulled in haphazardly, sort of like a glitch in the Matrix. Going to Orasnou might give the players some clues as to what's going on, or at least a glimpse behind the curtain.

GlassJaw said:

So as I read (and reread) these adventures, I'm struggling with whether I should embrace the newly-acquired Quivering Forest or ignore it.

Since I will be running CoS as written, my concern is that the creatures foreign to Barovia that come up in the later adventures (orcs, trolls, yuan-ti, etc) will be jarring and break immersion. Heck, even the appearance of the elves early on might raise some eyebrows.

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I'm probably going to change the orcs and yuan-ti to something else. As mentioned above, I already came up with an explanation for the elves.

jayoungr said:

I'm probably going to change the orcs and yuan-ti to something else. As mentioned above, I already came up with an explanation for the elves.

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That's an option but what I'm noticing is the second half of the CoS AL adventures are really convoluted. As MerricB mentioned, they shoehorned in more FR stuff because it would going to be a tie-in for things to come but then that plan got abandoned. It shows in the second half of the modules. In addition, 11 and 12 have very little to do with the storyline.

I also HATE the premise of the The Artifact (#10). It might be ok in the AL where the adventures are more "stand-alone", but in a continuous campaign it's completely jarring to have the Burgomaster, who's been portrayed as a lazy coward up to this point, suddenly need the players to escort him to the Amber Temple. What?! Nevermind that the Amber Temple is completely on the other side of the map. I know the Burgomaster isn't all that he seems but it would be a major head-scratcher.

My point is that the second half of the modules need a massive amount of rework, at least for my purposes. So I don't know. I'm starting to lose motivation in making them all work.

Rant: Oraşnou Makes No Sense

The village of Oraşnou is described as very small and isolated. The expanded background information packet, "The Mist and the Wood," says it has only about three dozen residents and they rely on monthly trading visits from the Vistani, who are the only ones to bring them news and goods. The only nearby town is Vallaki; the village of Barovia is geographically close, but anyone going there would have to pass by Castle Ravenloft, so in practice people rarely make the trip.

In "The Beast" (DDAL04-02), Grigori Wurlbach says the Vistani visit every other month, and they rarely see travelers, especially in winter. On the other other hand, there are two places in town where travelers can stay: the rooms at the Hare and Hair, or at the Seven Tables. Grigori's shop even sells adventuring gear; it's clearly for gameplay reasons, but realistically, who are his customers?

Let's call the population 40--slightly more than three dozen. Think about how small that is! You could put the entire population of the town into two high school classrooms, or one if you squeezed. If we assume the average household is four people, that's ten buildings for the whole town. But the map of the town shows about 40 buildings total. Even if you assume some are outbuildings (chicken coops, etc.), that still means each household consists of several structures, which is at odds with how small and poor the place is supposed to be.

And what do they all eat? As described, the village is surrounded by woods and there aren't any outlying farms, unless there are some attached to either of the local noble estates, but considering that both of those noble estates have supernatural shenanigans going on, that explanation raises its own questions. There could be vegetable gardens and chickens in town, but would that be enough?

Then there's the fact that an extremely poor, isolated town of 40 people with no visitors somehow supports a general store, an inn, and a curio shop. Not to mention that they generate enough wealth for the burgomaster to live high and have an entire basement stacked full of things he has taken from the other 39 inhabitants. And the owner of the curio shop regularly sells things pilfered from the burgomaster's basement, and apparently nobody recognizes them.

Also, a random stranger suddenly shows up frequently with new things to sell and nobody thinks that's suspicious? The explanation is that he's getting all these things by robbing and murdering travelers, meaning that he must be killing a new group every few days, despite the fact that supposedly hardly any travelers come through this area. And the owner of the curio shop apparently is rich enough to keep paying for non-essential trinkets like jewelry, which means he must have a pretty good turnover of his items, which means he must be selling them to the villagers or possibly Vistani (since, again, no travelers to speak of). If he's selling to villagers, how do they afford these baubles when they're being taxed into poverty by the burgomaster? And if he's selling to the Vistani, why does he maintain a shop instead of just meeting their wagons when they stop in town every few weeks?

This just doesn't add up.

I think the only way to make sense of this is to assume that Oraşnou is larger and less isolated than it's described as being. Say the population is maybe 100-125, and they do see travelers regularly, but not much in the winter due to the harsh weather. Possibly say that the burgomaster's territory includes some outlying settlements in addition to the village proper. (Like, where do the rest of the Vaduva clan actually live? Do they pay taxes?) And add another reason besides the lack of furs for why supplies are so tight with the coming winter. Maybe there was a blight on the vegetables, or avian flu hit the chickens. The locals could attribute it to Strahd's anger, just as they do with the bad weather.

ETA: To add to the confusion, the intro to DDAL08, "The Broken One," describes Oraşnou as "a humble medieval village of two hundred souls."

jayoungr said:

This just doesn't add up.

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None of the ecology or economy of Barovia makes sense. The population is part of that but the larger issue is that it's a closed system (aside from the Vistani). I addressed it in this thread.

There are LENGTHY and detailed discussions on the issues of Barovia: for example.

While it's interesting to think about, it's largely a waste of time. That Ravenloft doesn't make sense is a feature, not a flaw. It further adds to the alien and unsettling nature of what's going on. It's also what led me to my "simulation" concept. Barovia is a prison for Strahd and the Dark Powers are the wardens. They keep the gears turning so to speak.

It's better left unexplained.

GlassJaw said:

While it's interesting to think about, it's largely a waste of time. That Ravenloft doesn't make sense is a feature, not a flaw. It further adds to the alien and unsettling nature of what's going on. It's also what led me to my "simulation" concept. Barovia is a prison for Strahd and the Dark Powers are the wardens. They keep the gears turning so to speak.

It's better left unexplained.

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For some tables, maybe, but I know my players and I know that won't fly with them. They're the types who will ask these questions, and they won't be satisfied with "A wizard did it" for an answer. Also, like I said above, Barovia is a physical location in their homebrew world, so that cuts down further on the amount of handwavium I can use. They have decades' worth of expectations for these things to make at least a modicum of sense.

GlassJaw said:

That's an option but what I'm noticing is the second half of the CoS AL adventures are really convoluted.

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I've only gotten up to part 7 in my prep, but the basic structure seems quite simple: we try to foil Esmae as she assembles the four artifacts of Tatiana. Anything else can be switched or cut as needed.

I haven't decided yet for sure what I'll do with adventures 11-12.