DM seeking advice and tips

[hellkyte]

Ok i origianlly planned to do a 4e adventrue in ravenloft with my friends, who all seemed quite as excited as me for the prospect of the adventure. however i got majorly stalled on the creative process and am having many diffuculties converting monsters and creating a good story element. i think i may have bit off more than i could chew lol. So i had decided to look at some of the premade adventures and maybe change thier aspects to ravenloft to fit my campaign, this is how i came across the War of the Burning Sky setting and immediately loved it. i want to introduce it to my group however my one problem is thier expecting ravenloft and have already designed their characters. now one idea i had was to have ravenloft kidnap the WotBS setting but get sealed out, and through the adventure when they complete it "hopefully by then my original ravenloft idea will be ready lol" the dark powers of ravenloft burst through the barrier to claim the realm, only to discover that it has either been freed from their grasp by the parties actions, or it is burning to ashen ruin by the parties actions based on the nice quote "will you save the nation, or watch it burn". at that point the dark powers as either punishment, or intrigue would rip a peice of their essence out returning them to lvl 1 and placing them in the core of ravenloft to fight once more.

BTW If you play once a week for about 3-4 hours, how long would it take to get through the first 2 secitons of WotBS setting? i only have those 2 at the moment.

For my ravenloft campaign these are the main ideas:

1. lvl 1 - 10 survive and begin panning to escape.

2. lvl 11 - 20 kill the darklords and free thier territories.

3. lvl 21-29 kill the 5 incarnations of the Dark Powers to reclaim the 5
sections that ravenloft was divided into when the incarnations appeared.

4. lvl 30 kill the 5 dark powers and either take their power as thier own and open the multiverse to ravenlofts evil with the party becoming the new and more powerful Dark Powers of Ravenloft, or they destroy the powers taken from the Dark Powers and in doing so free all the lands and people from the realm of dread and returning them to thier proper place.

for my ravenloft campaign I am welcoming all input and advice as i need alot of it to make it work. For some reason its not working out when i try to do it. i guess it doesnt help that my previous campaign only lasted one session, and within that session there was at least one who kept asking when wed be playing my friends session again... so confidence in writing my own not so high.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, what are you having problems with specifically?

I think if you have a copy of Open Grave you should be able to pretty much get by with the monsters there and in the MM and maybe a few from MM2. At least for low level play there should be a sufficiency of beasties to get you started.

I'd concentrate on creating one basic adventure with say 5 or 6 encounters to get things started and then as that begins to unfold you can outline more of the whole thing.

 

[hellkyte]

interesting

hmm i think i have that book. ill have to double check. as for what problems im having, that would be the amount of darklords and options of attacks to the players. i dont know if i should limit them to only going after a few darklords or have them go after the lords of the core provinces which is like 12 or 15 lords lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, if they are just starting out then you have some time to decide. I imagine they'll need to take a while to get up to some decent level before they can knock off very many of the dark lords. Though some of them are moderately low level (I see they published a new domain of dread in Dragon a couple issues back that has an 8th level lord).

 

[hellkyte]

huh i didnt know that. though i could see it. i know the darklord Harmon Lukas has a very small realm which only contians like 2 cities in it. im thinking of starting them in Darkon, then shifting them around abit until there rdy to start taking on darklords, i wanted to leave azalin for the second last lord to kill before strahd.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The main thing that I find hard about the Domains of Dread is imagining how anyone can survive in them for long at all. I mean the normal inhabitants. Graefmotte has a population of 450 or so people but at the rate they eat each other, get eaten by ghouls, turned into ghouls, executed by Lord Graef, etc I doubt there would be any left in a year's time. Then again maybe time flows differently in the Shadowfell...

 

[hellkyte]

A thought just occured to me, why noy limit thier heroic progression in a medium sized land with a not so major darklord with the main arc to weaken the border of mists. In doing so they allow the darklords to leave their realm and attack anothers to seize it. That way I could reduce the amount of darklord bosses they would have to kill to around 5 or so.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

My best advice? (And take this with a grain of salt, of course; it's really just my$.02 as a long-time Ravenloft fan.)

1) Most important, IMHO? Spend some time beforehand immersing yourself in the "Gothic Horror" genre. (Staples like Frankenstein, Dracula, Isle of Dr. Moreau and others such as EA Poe.) The feel is paramount to everything. And it's a very specific tone to convey.
2) Secnd most important premise (again, IMHO?) Keep the threat of PC Death/Insanity/Corroption at the forefront of the game Sure the PC's may control earth-shattering power, but what happens if they use it foolishly or selfiishly?
3) I'm actually OK with the basic premise for your campaign, though that's not what most people typically of when they envision Ravenloft. Typically, the Powers are not even mentioned except in the vaguest of terms, and their "essence" has been debated since they were introduced; you'd need to do some serious thinking about how you want to portray them. (If the goal is to ultimately dismantle them, you should definitely begin foreshadowing them early in the campaign.)
4) Realize how dependent each Domain is on it's Darklord; the Darklord is the REASON for the Domain's very existence. If a Darklord is killed, either the Powers will select a new Darklord, or the domain will be subsumed into ANOTHER domain. (You may want to opt for the latter option, so that you effectively end up with one unified Demiplane of Dread.)
5) I would say to focus on a single domain that interests you, intially, while you get a feel for the characters and their powers. (There's quite a few domains to choose from, each wiht their own feel; IE if you want true gothic horror, start in Barovia. For a more grim-n-gritty feel, try Darkon.) Taking on a Darklord is a daunting task, and should not be taken lightly. (See Point 3.)
This will also help you to plan encounters, by seeing what the "theme" of the domain is. (IE Baroiva would see creatures like wolves, crows, ravens, and other "wild beasts", while Souragne might see a variety of undead in the zombie/ghoul vein.)

Anyway, I have more thoughts, but these are the first few points that come to mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I'll second that. Creepy music for game time can be fun too, though I prefer not to overdo that kind of thing too much or it loses its impact.

 

[hellkyte]

thanks shadow. i appreciate the input and i see thier merit. i enjoy that i was able to come up with an idea that doesnt seem to have been really considered for ravenloft. i hope in the future once i have more matarial rdy to make a post about the campaign chronicling its status with full character bios the pc have created for their characters. thank you for the helpful ideas. Also thank you for the music tip AbdulAlhazred. oh and thanks for the book supplement suggestion AdbulAlhazred, it seriously helped me out alot. thank you both for the help. well looks like its time for some writing lol.