Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2265703" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've never seen the Silver Anniversay Edition, though I've heard negative comments about the 2nd edition 'House of Strahd' which may be the same thing.I'd go with the original - that way you are safe.Running the module is fairly straightforward for a 1st edition module.  There is a straight forward outline of what Strahd can do and how often he can do it, and a method for randomly setting Strahd's goals, weaknesses, and the location of several minor artifacts important to the story.  Most of the module is an elaborate dungeon crawl in a big spooky haunted castle, and requires only minor tweaking to suit your taste.  My biggest gripes with the module and suggestions for developing it would be:a) The gypsy camp's placement on the map makes it far to easy for the player's to just skip over.  This would be a big shame, so consider moving the gypsy camp way from the castle and put it on the approach to Bavaria.  The fortune teller scene is a good mood setter, and I usually even move it outside of Bavaria to the village before the PC's enter the mists.   It's one of the few dramatic problems with the otherwise exceptional maps in the game.   In fact, Ravenloft itself is probably the best dungeon map in the game's history.b) Bavaria seems to be by the implication of the map a days journey from whereever the character's start out.  You would think then that the locals would have some rumor about Bavaria.  I think its better to add at least day or two of journey to the map according to the world in which you are going to drop the game into.  In particular, read Dracula and Jonathan Harker's account of his journey through Romania.  Sensible PC's are going to want to investigate the Baron/Bavaria before leaving, and you best be prepared.   Moving the starting point of the journey far enough back can help prevent hook dodging by untrusting PC's.c) The town is underdeveloped.  Given the size constraints of a published module, this is completely understandable (and in fact in many ways preferable).  You will need to add a cast of townsfolk, both sympathetic and dispicable.   In particular, I always add a few orphaned children, a caretaker figure, a ruined priest, a gypsy vagabond, a spy for the baron, a ghoulish would be vampire, and so forth.  By all means, run the funeral to its utmost.  It's one of the most dramatic scenes in published adventures.  Remember that it is not necessary for the first appearance of the Baron to be beligerent unless the PC's demand it, and that there are alot of different ways to run this module depending on your tastes and the personality of your players.  The Baron could be disguised amongst the townsfolk engaged in some conspiracy, or could relay some made up story about a family curse as if he was the victim and setting the PC's to some quest in his own castle, or any number of things initially depending on how you want to run the adventure.d) Carefully control your wandering encounters - especially within Ravenloft itself - so that they enhance the mood rather than destroy it.  Depending on how you've been playing out the module, some of the wandering encounters simply don't do alot to enhance the feel of the module and can make the big creepy castle seem a little bit overcrowded.  The PC's should not be made to feel as if every Tom, Dick, and Svetyana in Bavaria are trapsing around in the castle.   Considering how often Strahd is able to sic his creatures on the PC's, you won't need alot of random encounters in the castle IMO unless things get too slow in thier search for the coffin and you need to liven things up.Like I said, the dungeon map is a marvel.  Even though its an open ended map, its very good at moving the PC's through it in a structured fashion, so that very early on my players always end up in the dining room.   This can be a dramatic encounter for any number of reasons (depending on what has happened before), so by all means play it up in detail.   It's creepy, its freaky and its one of many many ways you can put Strahd 'on stage' as the adventure nemesis.</blockquote>

Verification