D&D General The thread where I review a ton of Ravenloft modules

[Paul Farquhar]

Also, with a module like this, I always like to emulate its inspiration in some respect, in this case, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This is one problem with the "weekend in hell" take on Ravenloft. In a typical gothic story the protagonist would have family connections motivating them, which is hard to set up when the party are assumed to be complete strangers. The bodysnatcher plot would work better if the PCs had friends or family in the affected village. Failing that, have them pass through the village earlier and get to know people.

Also inspiration, I couldn't resist putting in Little Shop of Horrors references in my version. "Feed meh! Feed meh NOW!!"

I resisted the temptation to have all the pod people only be able to say "I am Groot".

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, it's hard to imagine one party going on all these adventures. Then again, with how lethal Ravenloft enemies tended to be, I suppose there's a lot of attrition to consider.

I kept trying to run and play Ravenloft, but the general consensus among the old salts I know is that when someone mentions running a Ravenloft game, there's a collective groan.

We had met to discuss who would run a campaign a few years back, and this one new DM was all excited when he proposed a Ravenloft game. Cue the groans and him being very confused. "Ravenloft is great, I love Ravenloft, what's wrong with it?"

So we told him. Railroaded into a setting designed to be miserable, with enemies who are supposed to instill you with gothic terror, but are basically overtuned to the point you feel less like heroic adventurers, and more like a bunch of dumb kids who decided to camp out at Lake Crystal or some old cabin in the woods. I told him I'd give it a chance, but my roommate still had PTSD from a 4e adventure where poltergeists possessed household items and he almost died to a polterofen (that's a ghost possessing an oven by the by).

Heck, the AL Curse of Strahd tie-in adventure was so brutal that the only reason I survived was I had a legacy Yuan-Ti Paladin (the magic resistance was useless as the DM ruled against it working on anything that wasn't a spell, lol, but the immunity to poisoned was huge, and well, a Paladin is the hardest thing to kill in 5e as near as I can tell), and we still got a character perma-killed by disintegration in the final battle and another permanently trapped in Ravenloft, lol.

Though to be fair, Tomb of Annihilation was much, much worse. People were quitting rather than risk losing their characters, lol.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, it's hard to imagine one party going on all these adventures. Then again, with how lethal Ravenloft enemies tended to be, I suppose there's a lot of attrition to consider.

I kept trying to run and play Ravenloft, but the general consensus among the old salts I know is that when someone mentions running a Ravenloft game, there's a collective groan.

We had met to discuss who would run a campaign a few years back, and this one new DM was all excited when he proposed a Ravenloft game. Cue the groans and him being very confused. "Ravenloft is great, I love Ravenloft, what's wrong with it?"

So we told him. Railroaded into a setting designed to be miserable, with enemies who are supposed to instill you with gothic terror, but are basically overtuned to the point you feel less like heroic adventurers, and more like a bunch of dumb kids who decided to camp out at Lake Crystal or some old cabin in the woods. I told him I'd give it a chance, but my roommate still had PTSD from a 4e adventure where poltergeists possessed household items and he almost died to a polterofen (that's a ghost possessing an oven by the by).

Heck, the AL Curse of Strahd tie-in adventure was so brutal that the only reason I survived was I had a legacy Yuan-Ti Paladin (the magic resistance was useless as the DM ruled against it working on anything that wasn't a spell, lol, but the immunity to poisoned was huge, and well, a Paladin is the hardest thing to kill in 5e as near as I can tell), and we still got a character perma-killed by disintegration in the final battle and another permanently trapped in Ravenloft, lol.

Though to be fair, Tomb of Annihilation was much, much worse. People were quitting rather than risk losing their characters, lol.

This is my experience too - players were reluctant to sign up for Ravenloft because of past bad experiences (CoS being a major offender). They are enjoying my current Ravenloft campaign (well, they keep turning up!) but I am running exactly zero of those old Ravenloft adventures. It's a mixture of my own stuff, supplemented with 5e short adventures with a Ravenloft makeover. And of course, this being me, there is a lot of comedy to go with the horror.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah, it's hard to imagine one party going on all these adventures. Then again, with how lethal Ravenloft enemies tended to be, I suppose there's a lot of attrition to consider.

I keep meaning to write a long post somewhere (maybe here, maybe as a blog post, etc.) about my idea for "The Great Pendragon Ravenloft Campaign," which uses Dark Sun's character tree, but modified so that players can slowly bring in new characters (and the slowness is key; these should be characters added organically) as old ones die, become corrupted, escape the demiplane, etc., allowing the campaign to continue over time (the official materials only cover about two dozen years of in-game time across two editions, but that's still a long time if you run a Ravenloft campaign, appropriately enough, as if it were The Walking Dead in terms of cast rotation).

 

[TiQuinn]

We had met to discuss who would run a campaign a few years back, and this one new DM was all excited when he proposed a Ravenloft game. Cue the groans and him being very confused. "Ravenloft is great, I love Ravenloft, what's wrong with it?"

So we told him. Railroaded into a setting designed to be miserable, with enemies who are supposed to instill you with gothic terror, but are basically overtuned to the point you feel less like heroic adventurers, and more like a bunch of dumb kids who decided to camp out at Lake Crystal or some old cabin in the woods.

lol, I’d probably just take your hint at that point and propose a different campaign entirely. I know some of my current group absolutely hate horror RPGs - they just don’t get the point. Being heroic is their jam and Ravenloft, while your characters can still be the heroes, it’s not that kind of heroic.

 

[Remathilis]

This is my experience too - players were reluctant to sign up for Ravenloft because of past bad experiences (CoS being a major offender). They are enjoying my current Ravenloft campaign (well, they keep turning up!) but I am running exactly zero of those old Ravenloft adventures. It's a mixture of my own stuff, supplemented with 5e short adventures with a Ravenloft makeover. And of course, this being me, there is a lot of comedy to go with the horror.

I freaking lucked out then. Both when CoS and VRGR dropped, the consensus amongst my player group was to turn to me and say "you ARE buying it, right?" But then again, I don't run Ravenloft as a meat grinder, I run it as spooky D&D. As I've said, D&D sucks for horror, but it's great for taking classic adventure tropes and adding a spooky twist to it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I freaking lucked out then. Both when CoS and VRGR dropped, the consensus amongst my player group was to turn to me and say "you ARE buying it, right?" But then again, I don't run Ravenloft as a meat grinder, I run it as spooky D&D. As I've said, D&D sucks for horror, but it's great for taking classic adventure tropes and adding a spooky twist to it.

Oh, VGR is great, I've used lots of stuff from that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

VGR was not my cup of tea for Ravenloft

 

[Bedrockgames]

The module “Dark of the Moon” specifically requires GMs to track the phases of the moon, specifically with regards to the absence of the moon (what one might call the new moon). The fact that a moon has phases, implies there is a sun, of course, and that the world is a sphere, otherwise you couldn’t get a crescent moon. This contradicts VRGtR, which states that the world being round is a lie.

It isn't a sphere in old school Ravenloft. Not a fan of VGR but they aren't contracting canon at all here. The moon can actually appear different in different domains. They never get into what the reality of the moon is as far as I can recall but it being crescent shaped likely has nothing to do with the movement of planets (it could merely be an illusion, there may be some other mythic or magical explanation, but I would guess it is likely simply that way because the world where the domain comes from or where its people come from had a moon with phases). Ultimately the real reason is it is werewolf movie trope and it is how our moon operates.

That isn't stopping anyone from deciding that Ravenloft really is a sphere and the mists simply reveal the planet and shape the land of the planet when a new domain forms. But the cosmology of the setting is it existed on the borders of the ethereal plane and its physics are very dreamlike and surreal

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, it's hard to imagine one party going on all these adventures. Then again, with how lethal Ravenloft enemies tended to be, I suppose there's a lot of attrition to consider.

I kept trying to run and play Ravenloft, but the general consensus among the old salts I know is that when someone mentions running a Ravenloft game, there's a collective groan.

We had met to discuss who would run a campaign a few years back, and this one new DM was all excited when he proposed a Ravenloft game. Cue the groans and him being very confused. "Ravenloft is great, I love Ravenloft, what's wrong with it?"

So we told him. Railroaded into a setting designed to be miserable, with enemies who are supposed to instill you with gothic terror, but are basically overtuned to the point you feel less like heroic adventurers, and more like a bunch of dumb kids who decided to camp out at Lake Crystal or some old cabin in the woods. I told him I'd give it a chance, but my roommate still had PTSD from a 4e adventure where poltergeists possessed household items and he almost died to a polterofen (that's a ghost possessing an oven by the by).

Heck, the AL Curse of Strahd tie-in adventure was so brutal that the only reason I survived was I had a legacy Yuan-Ti Paladin (the magic resistance was useless as the DM ruled against it working on anything that wasn't a spell, lol, but the immunity to poisoned was huge, and well, a Paladin is the hardest thing to kill in 5e as near as I can tell), and we still got a character perma-killed by disintegration in the final battle and another permanently trapped in Ravenloft, lol.

Though to be fair, Tomb of Annihilation was much, much worse. People were quitting rather than risk losing their characters, lol.

This is not my experience with Ravenloft at all. I remember it being one of the most popular settings, and it was also a very easy setting to recruit players for as well. There were people who didn't like it, and they often had strong opinions about why, but there were plenty of people who loved it. The railroading, that was just 90s TSR. A lot of 90s TSR lines and modules were done in that way. But the 90s was a very strong time for horror in general, Vampire was just taking off for example, Call of Cthulhu was popular still, and we had numerous campaigns set in ORRORSH for TORG. And gothic was pretty in at that time. I never found any issue with shifting focus away from the heroics and towards horror. It also never felt like Crystal Lake. The black box was specifically dismissive of the slasher genre as a model (it wasn't until Woodruff figured out how to bridge that gap through golems in Van Richter's Guide to the Created that it was even kosher in the setting to think of bringing someone like Mike Myers or Jason in for inspiration). But the emphasis was never on slaughtering characters, it was on mood building, building mood, and hopefully achieving a sense of horror (which was not so much about fountains of blood but a sense of things not being as they ought to be)