Ravenloft - your experiences?

[Pinotage]

We had great times with this module. Never finished it in any of the several times that we ran it, and, to be honest, all those vampires made it particularly brutal. Even played it once in conjunction with 'Ravenloft II' - I forget the name, I10, I think. Was it House of Strahd?

Anywho, we'd all dress up as our characters and I'd dress up as a vampire and we'd play into the wee hours of the morning. Hours and hours of fun, inevitably resulting in a TPK. That said, we were young, only 13 or 14, so often we'd get bored and move on to the next great adventure that we'd found.

Pinotage

 

[HellHound]

I played in this one.

Strahd was VERY well played by the DM, and slowly chewed through the party better than any prior attempts at killing us. However, as a party of ten, we had enough survivors to win in the end.

But to do so, we had to kill one dominated party member, and one who had returned from the dead as a vampire.

 

[Klaus]

I had an extra 2e PHB and DMG, which I promptly traded with another gamer for I6 and I10 (Ravenloft and Gryphon Hill).

Wonderful adventure (though I never had players interested in running through it).

And as Barsoomcore said, that map is one of the two bestest maps in all moduledom. The other being Xak Tsaroth, from the Dragonlance modules (yeah, I'm a sucker for three-quarters-view maps).

 

[jasper]

I dm this one 3 times. The third we just quit since most of players said they played it before. The second does not stand out. But the first.
Hmm I was running an npc cleric since no one in the group like clerics and the back up crazy mad fighter.
Robert C. King was running Roderick Mac Terry and Richard Prince one a ranger and one fighter magic user.
Chuck was running Na ven gr (revenge mix up) with a belt of etherealness a fighter I think and a thief.
Jose was running a druid nicknamed Tree (the old druid with tree on its shield mini).
This became the module which would not end or we sleep during the day.
The recovery of sun sword and Strahd marring the babe was method drawn (I had all three players pick a card the week before)
The first time they met our dear count was at the door of mayor’s house. I goofed. Strahd said Good evening in the stereotypical Dracula voice and all hell broke loose. They slammed the door and all the players started yelling game plans and tactics. So loud that when I left my dorm room in the barracks I could hear them through two doors into the bathroom. I decide since I could hear them a vampire could hear them plot too.
First plan Chuck goes to second floor and lays down covering fire with his bow and tosses oil if possible. The cleric will be ready to turn him and the mage would lightening bolt him. Jose will open the door on the count of three. Now during all this time all the players are yelling and enjoying themselves. The three count comes and Jose opens the door to an incoming fireball. Chuck ends up fighting off bats and wolves trying to enter the house from his position. They did hurt Strahd but they were too wounded to follow this retreat. This started with them burning all their spells off at night and having to sleep and recover the spells in the daytime.

Second encounter caused a weapon to become cursed. Roderick had picked up a vorpal battle axe in another adventure. I was using good hits bad misses chart. Roderick fumble three times in the module. The first was lose weapon roll dice and determine direction and distance. The dice came up just missing one of the pc’s. The second was hit friend. And on the third it came within a foot of hitting Chuck’s fighter. We talked and knew the dice we tell us the axe was cursed. The curse we gave was sooner or later the owner would lose his head to the axe.

After they entered the castle they fought a couple of encounters with the dear Count, who calling card and opening attack was a fireball either his or the wand into the party. This when I started letting the monsters use the magic items in their lair. Most of these battles end with a draw. Except for Chuck’s forgetting and me being accused of megagaming to keep the module going.

Chuck’s forgetting was memorable due to his belt. His sop was to activate it go and get to rear of the monster and back stab. Chuck got teleported back to prison cell and starts to walk to party in the knee deep water. He feels a tapping on his shoulder and hears Good Evening. He loses it until after four rounds of combat and four levels (the Count was unlucky on his to hit rolls) he remembers to activate the belt.

My megagaming was not me megagaming but I had been playing both my cleric and the count to the hilt. We had trapped him in one of his coffins and were beating him. When my turn came I turned him. And the Count turn into missed and fled with under 10 hit points left. It took me a few minutes to understand why the other 3 were look at me with death in their eyes. But once we talked it out everyone one understood I was just getting too much into the character of my npc.

They finally defeated the Count more to the fact in a week and half I had to pack up my whole baggage because I was being transferred to Berlin than anything they were doing.

 

[rogueattorney]

I finally acquired a copy of my own a year or so back, and upon reading it realized that this module marked the elusive "Rosetta Stone" moment when D&D turned from everything I loved to everything I hated. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, 2E, all of that crap from the last 20 years that drove me away from D&D seems to stem directly from this one single module. Ravenloft represents, literally, everything I always hated about post-Gygax D&D in embryonic form.

Ditto.

Actually, I think I6 itself is extraordinarily well done. And would run it/play in it in a heartbeat. However, there is no question that its popularity directly precipitated the Dragonlance series of adventures, and thus the "it's story-time now, children" style of published adventure that would dominate TSR for the next decade, and have a great deal to do with me leaving the hobby for quite some time.

R.A.

 

[D'karr]

I'd played this adventure in late 1984. The crypt was the deadliest part of this adventure to our party, as someone got treasure happy and started opening every crypt he could at once. We ended up fighting several wraiths, a nightmare and other assorted nasties. I believe only two characters survived.

Then in late 2000, after 3e had come out I converted this adventure for my group. We had a blast. It was a TPK, however this is the one of a few adventures my player's still talk about as the best time ever.

Quotable quotes - "That can't be Strahd, it's too early to be Strahd." Much crying and gnashing of teeth ensued.

 

[R-Hero]

You mean like this?

Help yourself.

Oh, and I made Strahd a 10th level wizard, but if you like it, you can have it.

This couldn't have come at a better time. I had a lot of monsters and npc's converted and in a file on e-tools. I had lost said file after an update of e-tools. I was very angry with myself and almost gave up on the conversion.

Count Strahd the wizard was my first choice. Immortal, has a lot of study time on his hands. It seemed a logical choice.

I want to vamp (uhgg, bad pun ) up Strahd because three potential players in my group have been guilty of being rat bastard Dm's. One potential player had suggested that a high cha Strahd would be helpfull with domination and suggestion type spells and help a sorcerer with his spell list.
What he don't know is many feats and skills in Libris Mortis also depend on Cha. I plan on using L.M.

Many thanks for the link!!

 

[D'karr]

When I did the conversion I converted Strahd more in line with I, Strahd by P.N. Elrod.

He was a Fighter 5/ Wizard 10.

All the PC's for the adventure were 10-11 level characters at the beginning of the adventure. The one that survived was 13th level at the end, I believe he was also drained once or twice.

Suggestions for conversion - make the whole of the castle unhallowed and make the undead more resistant to turning. It would suck to unleash 30 skeletons on your party and have them be destroyed in the first round because of your high level cleric.

Plan Strahd's strategies ahead. Have Strahd use hit and run tactics all the time. He will toy with the PCs.

 

[R-Hero]

When I did the conversion I converted Strahd more in line with I, Strahd by P.N. Elrod.

He was a Fighter 5/ Wizard 10.

All the PC's for the adventure were 10-11 level characters at the beginning of the adventure. The one that survived was 13th level at the end, I believe he was also drained once or twice.

Suggestions for conversion - make the whole of the castle unhallowed and make the undead more resistant to turning. It would suck to unleash 30 skeletons on your party and have them be destroyed in the first round because of your high level cleric.

Plan Strahd's strategies ahead. Have Strahd use hit and run tactics all the time. He will toy with the PCs.

Good idea. I could tie unhallowed in with the magic fog, but most of the Strahd-created undead have a higher resistance to turning anyway. I was also gong to try to keep character levels around 5th-7th. That should keep a good turn roll from becoming a tpk for my undead.

I am going to keep 10 level sorcerer w/ vampire template, arm him with a two handed weapon to take advantage of vampire strength.

I feel like i'm about to hijack the thread. After I filter through some of the new info and ideas that I have read and put pen to paper, I may start a Ravenloft i6 conversion thread.

 

[Crothian]

It was fun. I changed the backstory some to fit in with oner pof the PCs to draw them more into the story and made it a bit of mystery role playing adventure with horror ties.