How you ran Expedition to Ravenloft

[H.Flashman]

Well its been several years since I last posted on this forum. So long, in fact, that I forgot my previous password or even what e-mail account with which it went.

I have gone from Midnight to Iron Heores but mostrecently I have begun to run more-or-les tradtional 3.5 D&D under the auspices of "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft"

I am very familiar with the original adventure, its sequel and the 2nd Ed. setting as well as with many of the novels (though I admit that I never fisnihsed , "I, Strahd").

Warning: Spoilers



So far I have dumped the Zombie plague idea as just silliness that impeded roleplaying and any real sense of fear (though the plague will come about later) for an asylum ran by the famed Alienist Doctor Germain D'honaire (from Ravenloft II: House on Gryphon Hill) but included the Priest's, Danovich, descent into madness as something palpable that the PCs can, are, and will witness.

Also I have dumped the motivations for Strahd as presented in the Text form something a bit more sinister. Strahd is ancient and he is facing an eternity of ennui so he sets of games for his own amusement. The PCs are one such game. He is the Cat and they are his mice. He will terrorize his opponents, help them, hurt them, give them succor and then drain their levels. He has no goals besides creating another fabulous contest of wills that might invigorate him to the point of enjoying unlife again.

How have you , as DMs, changed the story, the rules and the plot? What characters did you introduce, inflate, or dismiss?

Did you find Strahd to be a suitable enemy at the end of the Adventure for 10th level Characters?? What about after the Fanes were Destroyed/stripped?

 

[kenmarable]

Potential spoilers below, but I'll try to be subtle and mild:













Not sure how much I'll help, but since we have a vampire (well, someone transforming into a PC-compatible vampire) in the group, I decided to have her master (vampire named Rykos) command her to go to Ravenloft and deal with the mountain hag (the summoning one, I think that's the mountain one). What the player just realized is that Rykos's master is Strahd, and that he probably sent the PC there in order to challenge and defeat Strahd, thereby freeing himself from Strahd's control.

It's an interesting twist because she hates her master, but isn't the type to just let Strahd live if she can stop it, but that would benefit the master she hates...

Unfortunately, that's pretty particular to our group since we have a vampire in training in our midst. They haven't taken on Strahd yet, so I don't know how well the challenge is balanced (and our group is more powerful than average anyway, so I'll most likely boost him a bit on the fly if necessary).

One of the benefits of the adventure (and especially your take on it) is that you can have Strahd attack multiple times and flee in order to gauge how well a final battle would play out.

Also, in my campaign, the fortune reading was a big hit. If I did it again, I'd find ways to incorporate multiple readings and make it more of an impact on the game than just behind the scenes DM stuff. Having the locations of items be determined by the cards I thought was pretty cool, but from the player's perspective, I wasn't as obvious. Paizo's Pathfinder #7 has some great stuff on using their Harrow Deck directly in the adventure. I just started reading it, but there might be some useful stuff there.

 

[Puggins]

Expedition to Ravenloft is quite likely the most disappointing adventure I have ever purchased. I'm normally a big fan of James Wyatt, and WotC has really been hitting adventures out of the park recently (IMO, of course), so it's really, really, REALLY annoying that one of my two favorite adventures of all time is the lone misfire of the past few years.

Spoliers Follow.



The biggest issue that I have with the module is that the designers decided to tear Ravenloft away from its Gothic Horror roots by cramming in as many different types of Horror as possible.

* You've got a zombie movie (the plague)
* You've got a Chainsaw Massacre (the dwarven serial killer)
* You've got a guy messing with "things man was not meant to know" (Danovich)
* You've got Lovecraft (the Garden, the Blood God)

You have SO many references to different horror genres that the original gothic feel of Ravenloft is drowned out and muted. Even worse, some of the other changes were excellent and inspired, making the generic mess of the theme even more tragic. Making Eva a hag and the head of a coven? Genius! But she's wasted as a simple encounter rather than as a tragic figure mourning Strahd's betrayal of the land, which I think would be amazingly cool and very in line with the original.

I think you're on the right track. I'd re-institute the original flavor of Ravenloft by stripping away some of the more egregious references to other horror genres. Get rid of the zombie plague. Eliminate the Dwarf Psychopath. Remove Cthulhu's Topiary.

I'd also re-work Eva into a much more complicated figure- she was originally a nymph of the land, right? Wouldn't she be torn between her own survival and the desire to purge purge away Strad's influence, which she might see as a betrayal? (She might also feel guilty for being complicit in this betrayal). Maybe once her two sister die she'll willingly take her own life- something along those lines.