What to use in a Ravenloft-style undead campaign?

[Morrus]

What books and materials would you use if you were to run a Ravenloft-style undead campaign with a theme of traditional gothic horror and creepiness?

Any good adventures already out there? Sourcebooks (other than piles of new monsters - I don't think we're short of undead critters)?

Any houserules you'd use to highlight the campaign and make it different to a normal heroic fantasy one?

 

[Scott DeWar]

I went from cover to cover choosing what i felt would fit, frm slimes and molds to carnivorous plants.

"Good evening, and welcome to me garden where you are tonight's dinner. mua ha ha ha ha!!!"

Every dark lord of the undead needs helpers so maybe dark creepers, and a creeper lord acting as Eigore?

 

[gamerprinter]

Well not intending to deviate from the gothic horror (European-ish) concept, some of the Kaidan materials reflavored might work for you. Not the Curse of the Golden Spear adventure arc, as that is very Japanese in feel, and unless you're doing a Rokushima Tayoo campaign (Ravenloft Japan) it has too much of the oriental flavor. If you don't mind the work of heavy reflavoring, the adventures are fricken scary, so it might be worth the effort.

Frozen Wind is a one shot adventure for Kaidan that can easily be reflavored to a European/Ravenloftian location high in alpine region in late fall (a freak snowstorm is part of the storyline.) I think it would work well. And the PDF version of this adventure is FREE, while a POD version from Lightening Source is available for $9.99 - very reasonable.

30 Haunts for Kaidan feature 9 storylines that break up the 30 available haunts and the associated undead and other evil beings of the total book. Easily reflavored to any genre, the storylines present locations and backstories with associated haunts. I think this book is great for giving ideas on combining haunts that have a real cohesion with a larger storyline and an ideal product for your goal.

30 Haunts for Ship and Shore is not a Kaidan book, but it does have one storied location with multiple related haunts for a horror by the sea village with its own dark curse. It is good seed material for the start of a gothic horror setting.

I've never played Carrion Crown, nor The Harrowing by Paizo, though both are considered excellent gothic horror in Golarian products, so those might be ideal for you as well. You can easily pull the "Golarian" out of these adventures and reset them in a locale more to your needs.

If you're willing to play a gothic horror in Japan concept (and I don't think you would be...) then the rest of the Kaidan material and adventures might be ideal for you.

"House rules-wise" I think the discussions on the Fraternity of Shadows Ravenloft fan site cover many of these ideas. One discussion for example suggests removing Detect Evil from the Paladin and the spell itself and other means of identifying the opposition being less effective than in non-Ravenloftian settings.

 

[Scott DeWar]

***snip*** . . . . . removing Detect Evil from the Paladin and the spell itself and other means of identifying the opposition being less effective than in non-Ravenloftian settings.

one way to do this is to say that evil so permeates the land, it can be detected every where.

 

[gamerprinter]

Another consideration, when using undead from the Bestiaries and elsewhere, rely on variants, and monster templates. If the players know what they are facing and how to defeat it, the horror aspect fades away and it turns into a normal D&D encounter.

A skeleton, for example, could be just an animated skeleton, or it could be ghost in skeletal form, a lich, a graveknight without his armor, a bone golem - or something else completely off the charts. If every single encountered undead cannot be assigned as a specific known undead, then the unknown quality instills fear.

Also Ravenloft adventures tend to more heavy in role playing aspects than hack/slash - through careful roleplay, story canter, atmospheric additions like music and use of candles while in play, horror is better presented. It takes work by both the GM and the players to instill a setting based on terror.

 

[Scott DeWar]

Another consideration, when using undead from the Bestiaries and elsewhere, rely on variants, and monster templates.

such as fast zombies and burning skeletons. wights with the cold template to freeze yor pcs in their steps! I like this so much it brings chills of joy!!!!!

 

[tylermalan]

The best game that I've ever run was a 5 to 6 month long Ravenloft campaign set in the Pathfinder rules and in Golarion. I ran it last year.

Ustalav is essentially Pathfinder's version of Ravenloft, so setting the game there is a decent idea. In that vein, Rule of Fear is the Pathfinder sourcebook for Ustalav and is valuable if you want to play there.

My game was extremely low combat, and I find it difficult to affect the "horror" if you add too much combat. YMMV.

My players were told upfront that they would gain levels at the rate of one level every two weeks until level 3, at which point it would increase to one level every 3 weeks. No experience points. This allowed me to really tailor the encounters which is fairly essential in horror, in my opinion.

I used a lot of music and it helped a lot.

I heavily encouraged (almost forced) my players to create characters with horrible secrets and then I exploited them to the max.

Lastly, sources... If you head to Secrets of the Kargatane: The Home of Ravenloft on the Net and check out the netbooks and adventures there, you'll get a lot of good ideas. I used material specifically from Forgotten Children and Children of the Night: Demons. Those netbooks are really light on monsters and really heavy on characters, storylines, and atmosphere.

As for the Carrion Crown AP, I played through the first two books (as a player) and I wouldn't recommend them. They're good adventures, but if you're really looking for horror then you won't find it there without a really, really good DM. Even then, the first book is particularly complicated and reads well but is difficult to run, IMO.

 

[tylermalan]

Also Ravenloft adventures tend to more heavy in role playing aspects than hack/slash - through careful roleplay, story canter, atmospheric additions like music and use of candles while in play, horror is better presented. It takes work by both the GM and the players to instill a setting based on terror.

This is really ultra-true.

 

[Stormonu]

Any reason you're not looking at the 3.5 era Ravenloft books?

I have the Carrion Crown adventure, but haven't played it. Should be a good place to riff adventures from.

Also, the original Ravenloft module is spot on good. Not the PoS Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, though, and neither is House on Griffon Hill. I'm not sure I'd recommend any of the 2E Ravenloft modules; my group found them extremely railroaded and unfair (in a bad way). The only one I can think of that I enjoyed was Night of the Living Dead.

 

[JeffB]

Kargatane. Awesome old site. Had not been to it in years.