Ravenloft: I6 or House of Strahd?

[Umbran]

You know there is also a second one, The House on Gryphon Hill (IIRC), which can be used together with the first?

It has been a looooong time since I played these, but my recollection is that The House on Gryphon Hill is nice, in that it gives you a good swath of history behind Stradh. The bad part is that (again, iirc) House on Gryphon Hill has much more the flavor of the PCs watching a story going on, rather than the PCs making a story.

 

[Joël of the FoS]

It has been a looooong time since I played these, but my recollection is that The House on Gryphon Hill is nice, in that it gives you a good swath of history behind Stradh. The bad part is that (again, iirc) House on Gryphon Hill has much more the flavor of the PCs watching a story going on, rather than the PCs making a story.

I-10 has interesting plot devices (the part where people changed places with monsters randomly), but the end is indeed of the worst railroading type. PCs have nothing to do but munch popcorn and watch.

You can get a free copy of I-10 on the classic pages of WotC, by the way.

And this part would fit better in a dream (since you find Azalin and Strahd at the same place), or perhaps taking place on Scaena's eerie theater?

Joël

 

[Joël of the FoS]

I've got both, and really, its the same adventure. They replaced some monsters with others and updated the mechanics, but the adventure itself is exactly the same...you're stuck in Barovia and you have to go to Castle Ravenloft to face Strahd.

That is my opinion too.

 

[Hawken]

Just to add to the confusion, as part of the silver anivaersary celebrations, they also released an adventure called simply 'Ravenloft', which was the original I6 with the stats updated to 2e, but not (presumably) the other changes that House of Strahd had.

Actually, the "Ravenloft" adventure was released after House of Strahd and has a few tweaks in it that HoS did not have.

The module is dangerous enough on its own that you could leave out the Fear, Horror and Madness checks. As an experienced Ravenloft DM, I'd suggest leaving out Madness anyway, that's never really worked in a way that contributed to the game (its more of a game-breaker, game ruiner kind of thing), but Fear and Horror checks work quite well, but they are optional. If the PCs role-play their characters well, the rules suggest that the DM doesn't make the players roll. But if the players are all "oh, another vampire, ho hum!", or something along those lines, that's the time to have them roll. Then again, with the PCs at mid level and up for these games, they'll pass almost all of their Fear and Horror checks anyway.

One thing that did come to mind about Ravenloft vs. the other versions, is that Ravenloft has scaled up considerably. For the original adventures, PCs are 7th-9th levels, in Ravenloft, they are 10th-12th. So, they might last a little longer, have slightly better odds at survival--at least until they get to Strahd at the end (16th level Vampire Necromancer).

 

[Welverin]

Really? Hmm. I got the Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to the Tomb of Horrors from SVGames, and they turned out quite nicely. I assumed RPGnow was using the same source. Thanks for the word of caution.

They are, the actual problems is that in the process of converting old products into pdf's WotC decided it wasn't as worthwhile and had they company doing the work use a cheaper method that lead to a loss in quality. So where you buy the pdf's from isn't impportant, but when it was made.