Alzrius
The EN World kitten
What I find fairly ironic about this is that it works best with the type of campaign that I suspect is also the rarest kind: the multi-generational campaign (the only example of this that comes to mind isn't for D&D at all, that being Chaosium's Great Pendragon Campaign).What we DON'T have here is much about Strahd personally. He's obviously deeply embedded in the history of the place and he looms fearfully over all aspects of the politics, but he's not present in person, and our narrator doesn't even visit Castle Ravnloft. There's an appendix about Tatyana's current incarnation, who is actually middle aged now after leaving Barovia as a young girl when her parents heard a fortune teller's prediction that if she stayed she'd be dead by 20. I'm torn about this. The Strahd/Tatyana story is so classic that it'd be unfortunate to deny PCs a chance to get involved, but on the other hand this incarnation of Tatyana has real interest of her own, and Strahd confronting the idea that he missed the boat and that his eternal lost love is now middle-aged is an interesting wrinkle to the story. But it's a wrinkle best suited to those players who already know the basic Strahd story and want to play through a variation. It's very plainly targeted at long-time Ravenloft players and fans, as is a lot of the Kargatane's work. So I'm not sure how i feel about it, really. Giving the DM a variety of options to choose from might have been a better idea.
The Realm of Terror boxed set, which is earliest incarnation of the Ravenloft campaign, begins (if I recall correctly) in 735 of the Barovian Calendar. The Grand Conjunction takes place in 740, with the Revised Campaign Setting set shortly after its conclusion. Domains of Dread kicks things forward a full ten years, to 750. And Ravenloft Third Edition moves up to 755, with the Gazetteers beginning early in 756 (see page 4 of Gazetteer II).
Now, it's not unusual for D&D campaign worlds to advance in time between campaign releases. Even notwithstanding the timeskip after the Spellplague, quite a bit of time passed between the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting and the Third Edition Campaign Setting, for instance. But insofar as Ravenloft's interwoven metaplot(s) go, there's some interesting possibilities raised if you play with the passage of time, since twenty years is enough time for a new generation of characters to come of age if/when your PCs retire.
It's entirely possible that you could have PCs who start out in 735 and are still kicking in 755, of course. But given how many ways there are to lose PCs - not just death; they might suffer under a debilitating curse that they can't remove, fail madness checks and go semi-permanently insane, or even fail powers checks and become monsters themselves - I think the idea of playing a multi-generational campaign arc could be compelling. RM4 House of Strahd is the "official" adaptation of the original I6 Ravenloft, for example. While you'd need to ignore its placement in the timeline, you could have the "first generation" of PCs go through the events of the Grand Conjunction, then decide to confront Strahd afterwards and be defeated or mostly wiped out, leaving what they learn about Sergei and Tatyana to their offspring, who are coming of age by the time 755 rolls around.
Really, there's a lot you can do with that; especially if the older generation get lost one by one in notable modules (e.g. one of them is stuck in Il Aluk after the events of the Grim Harvest. Another is lost trying to save Rudeolph van Richten at Bleak House, etc.). It's almost lends itself to using the "character tree" option from the Dark Sun Campaign Setting.
It's be hard to set up, but could be extremely rewarding if done right. (Bonus points if you can fold in ideas from Legacy of the Blood: Great Families of the Core, which give ways to make PCs related to various darklord family lines.)
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