How has the experience of Ravenloft from a setting perspective been with Shadowdark?The game has always seemed more geared to one shots and strict dungeon crawls so would love to hear about how you’ve expanded/house ruled the system.
The sort of baffling thing about SD is it's almost obsessive focus on torches and torch timers. But Ravenloft isn't a dungeon-crawl setting. So, I just ignore all that. Also, SD is purely based around a "dark ages" aesthetic - weapons and armor and tech level. Given that I've got things like "insane asylums" and "steamboats" in this setting, I had to bump up the tech level to something around early 1800s. That worked very well, and seems to fit well.
As for actual house rules, we were already using 5e-like rules in our normal West Marches game (I am a player in that game). We allow PCs to take the Dodge action, we use flanking, and grid combat, for example.
I gave them max hp at level 1, and more favorable rules for rolling stats. I need them to survive, since we're telling a story here. I don't use carousing. There are no parties in Ravenloft! All of my PCs have a phobia. I added half-elf and gnome ancestries. I added some new gear: ball bearings, compass, mirror, pocket watches, etc. - about a dozen things. I added a few new weapons - most of these came from some of the Cursed Scrolls - whip, sling, scimitar, etc.
I revised the Background. Some of them didn't work very well. I changed the deity list. Ord and Gede don't work very well. I'm mostly using Celtic and Greek gods. I have 11.
Some of the classes don't vibe. I found a bunch of 3rd party things and reviewed them. I tossed a bunch because they were broken. This is my list:
4 core + Arcanist (basically priest + wizard), Barber Chirurgeon, Bard, Duelist, Knight of St. Ydris, Knight of the Old Code, Ranger, Paladin, Warlock, Witch, Witch Hunter.
