Running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

[Talmun]

Initial Thoughts

-Spoilers-

Tonight was the first session of my Ravenloft campaign. All-in-all it went very well. The Party ran through the fight at the town square and interacted with Ashlyn and the NPC’s in the inn. We ended the night with the party walking resolutely up the street toward the church.

Pros:
I like the encounter format. I know people have complained that it seems like page-count padding but it’s very convenient to have everything you need for an encounter on two pages, eliminating page-flipping during combat. I’m not sure I’ve ever had pre-written module combats run so smoothly from a DM’s POV.

The encounters themselves so far are nicely put together and give a good “overrun by zombies” feel without the party actually being, you know, overrun. Also, the encounters are fairly challenging. My party is cleric/divine heavy and it’s by no means a cakewalk for them.

I like the overall layout and plotline so far. It’s different enough from I6 that a player who has read/played the original recently will not be bored.


Cons:
I’m not sure the fake letter from the Burgomaster will always accomplish with it is intended to. The party quickly finds out it’s a fake upon reaching Barovia and is apt to disregard anything it says from that point on. Timing on this might need some tweaking so that the party doesn’t so quickly realize that it’s a forgery.

The book has three zombie encounters before the party reaches the village square, where they stumble into a 4th. It also suggests that for every 40 feet they travel in town there is a 45% chance they encounter more zombies. Add to that the substantial chance that any building the PC’s might enter might also have a zombie encounter. I like zombies, but this is way over the top. I utterly dropped the 40 feet/45% encounters and had only one building encounter, taken with the larger brawl at the village square that was enough.

Nearly every NPC the party talks to in town are supposed to tell them to go get their fortune read by Madam Eva. It’s as subtle as a battleaxe to the forehead. I had two NPC’s mention her off-hand and that was more than enough to get the point across.

-End Spoilers-

As I said, all-in-all my players seemed to enjoy themselves and I enjoyed myself; really the best yardstick of all.

 

[jdrakeh]

Wait, wait. . . there are a lot of Ravenloft products. Is this a thread for the new Expedition to Castle Ravenloft?

 

[Talmun]

Wait, wait. . . there are a lot of Ravenloft products. Is this a thread for the new Expedition to Castle Ravenloft?

Yes, sorry.

Will edit the title.

 

[Nightfall]

Yeah we'd like a little clarification here...

We talking the new Expedition or some game featuring Ravenloft?

 

[jdrakeh]

Yes, sorry.

Will edit the title.

Thanks you. Also, I look forward to seeing you continue this thread -- I've been very interested in EtCR, but haven't had the money to pick it up. I suspect this thread will play a large role in whether I decide to start saving money toward this end

 

[Nightfall]

That makes two of us JD. I, too, as a fan of Ravenloft, would like to see more details about this and maybe make it an aspect of a Ravenloft campaign.

 

[Treebore]

I don't know, I consider myself a Ravenloft fan, ran the old module a half dozen times or more, ran a year long 3E Arthaus Ravenloft setting campaign (because I hated the 2E version), and I think this new version is very well done, interesting and solid decisions on converting the old 1E stuff to 3E, etc....

But then there are other "Ravenloft" fans who say they hate it, can't stand the halfling Vistani, what they did to the priest, etc...

All I can say is this is the ONLY 3E product by WOTC that I strongly like. My next favorite product is "good", and that is Libris Mortis.


I say get it guys, but others say its sacriledge/blasphemy/just plain sucks, so hopefully this thread will definitely give you a clear decision.

He definitely sounds like a DM I would like playing in a game of.

 

[Terwox]

In the book it does mention that the party should quickly discover that the note is a forgery after very little investigation.

It's not necessarily tremendously complex and layered, but what's there is really neat in my opinion -- and better for being "simple."

 

[Talmun]

In the book it does mention that the party should quickly discover that the note is a forgery after very little investigation.

It's not necessarily tremendously complex and layered, but what's there is really neat in my opinion -- and better for being "simple."

All that I understand, here's my issue though:
If the party discovers that the note is a forgery, then they are more likely to investigate where the letter really came from than the sub-plot that the note is supposed to lead them to. Naturally, once the letter is believed to be fake, then it's contents are generally going to be ignored. This is a problem since several of the sub-plots (Strahd's secondary goals) are best handled by the party before taking on the Castle and Strahd himself.

I'm simply saying that by holding off on the revelation that the letter with the secondary plot hook is a fake it might be a little easier to encourage the party to investigate it's contents.

I apologize for not making this clear initially.

 

[Talmun]

I don't know, I consider myself a Ravenloft fan, ran the old module a half dozen times or more, ran a year long 3E Arthaus Ravenloft setting campaign (because I hated the 2E version), and I think this new version is very well done, interesting and solid decisions on converting the old 1E stuff to 3E, etc....

But then there are other "Ravenloft" fans who say they hate it, can't stand the halfling Vistani, what they did to the priest, etc...

All I can say is this is the ONLY 3E product by WOTC that I strongly like. My next favorite product is "good", and that is Libris Mortis.


I say get it guys, but others say its sacriledge/blasphemy/just plain sucks, so hopefully this thread will definitely give you a clear decision.

He definitely sounds like a DM I would like playing in a game of.

I agree with your assessment of Expedition...

While I enjoy the original adventure, I believe that the improvements/changes made in this updated module give us something new while still holding true to the spirit of the original. After all, what would really be the point of just publishing a 3.5 update of I6, an adventure that clocks in at all of 36 pages? Sure the rules and stats would be new, but the core of the adventure would be exactly the same. Not to mention that some of the encounters in the original are badly dated - both the red dragons in the foyer of the Castle and the puzzle-room with the golems always struck me as out of place in the 'gothic' setting.

I can't speak to the 3E Domain of Dread stuff because I never really got into it, and I don't really think it's all that relevant to this module anyway. Expedition... is an update of I6, not the Black Box campaign setting that grew out of it. In my mind the two exist as separate entities.

And thank you for the kind words.