D&D General The goal of your Ravenloft campaign

[ccs]

I don't run Ravenloft as a campaign setting as I think it's absolute crap for that purpose.
What I do is simply take the original I6/I10 modules, now parts of CoS, existing 2e RL models that I like, and bits & pieces and weave them into the overall campaign on occasion.
It might have the RL masthead on the cover, but it's just another adventure in a series of adventures, plot lines/twists, PC determined quests, etc.

 

[hopeless]

To be fair moderation helps quite a bit with this.
If every week involves some mind numbing horror your players are going to need some kind of distraction to avoid them getting burnt out over this concept.

 

[Sithlord]

How droll. Your dismissiveness is very edge-lordy.

Should have put some emoji’ sun that it lol. I was being completely sarcastic and deliberately mirthfully silly.

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

I'd probably have the characters associated withthe Keepers of the Feather, doing various errands and missions and coming to get to know some of the Domains. And then, slowly, reveal that the world is basically a giant stage for a group of insane puppeteers and that they are among the few who can actually try and escape their sick games or remove some of their most valuable puppets from the play.

 

[GwaihirAgain]

I ran Curse of Strahd for my group, then sent them into the Forgotten Realms, where Strahd and baddies destroyed waterdeep, then planar, and finally Reran Curse Of Strahd with the very high level characters before they finally defeated Strahd once and for all.

So Im gonna steer clear of Barovia, and also no trapped and cant get out shtick. Im thinking I might do a rod of seven parts campaign with one part hidden in each of seven domains.

G

 

[jgsugden]

I'm not a fan of a Ravenloft Campaign. It is best when it is intense and a punctuation - if you try to be intense all the time, it looses the intensity. I have used it for decades the same way - as an adventure that is part of a longer campaign. The PCs take an unexpected detour to Ravenloft as part of their story. I often sandwich it between two light hearted adventures in the campaign, making the contrast very strident.

When they go, the PCs rarely understand why they are really there. They often believe they're there to defeat an evil (often the Darklord), to protect someone, or to do something else active. In the end, they'll feel like they achieve those goals ... only to have the victory turn to ash as they realize that Ravenloft's powers are going to return things back to where they were (or make them worse). However, they will walk away with victories even though they were helpless to solve their original goals, usually in the form of information.

Example: There was a major event in my campaign world that took place a thousand years ago. It caused a disaster that shook the entire world and plunged it into chaos for the next 1000 years. However, exactly what took place is not clear. The only way to discover what really took place (sort of) is to find your way to the Shadowfell and into the Ravenloft Realm where the perpetrator of that event relives that day over and over and over and over, never able to find the courage to stop it. PCs have found themselves in this realm many times over the years. Some think they've time traveled and are there to stop the Apocalypse. Some know they're in Ravenloft, but they think they're there to save someone (or something) destroyed in the Apocalypse that followed. However, from a story perspective, every time PCs have come there, it was for them to witness what took place so that they can be armed with that information to use in their current storyline. That event has a lot of fallout and impacted dozens of major campaign events since the 80s, and when Ravenloft was introduced in the early 1990s, it gave me a perfect vehicle to convey that information in a dynamic way. It comes to play every couple years.