Running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

[Treebore]

I don't follow Dragon, only Dungeon, so what is in 351?

 

[Nightfall]

Tree,

It has some looks at various D&D worlds (Like Ravenloft and was mentioned especially regarding the great realm of Sithicus), via the infamous/famous World Serpent Inn.

 

[Marcon]

Madam Eva is the fortune teller and not evil. Yet she has to be killed to sever Strahd's connection to the forest fane. I don't see the players doing that if the initial encounter with her goes well (and it needs to for the fortune telling).

That is not necessarily true. Look on page 61 and you'll see that there is a 1-in-4 chance that the way of severing the connection involves killing the hags. The other 3 options are "pacific" (As far as having to kill a blighted relic can be called pacific).

-Marcon

 

[Talmun]

How did you find/use the maps for the tactical encounters? Or did you use miniatures at all.

I really like the detail of the maps, but expect it to be difficult/time consuming to reproduce all them on the battlemap canvas I have.

Our group plays around a miniatures table – large and completely flat – we’ve taped down a laminated battlemap and I draw out the encounters with grease-pencil. It took me around 20-30 seconds each to draw the encounters in that first session, which is about normal.

They've got them on WotC's website now.

Thanks for the link, Niles, I had grabbed the maps for the village and the valley, but WotC didn’t have the rest of them up the last time I was there. The problem is that by default the maps print to a size that’s too small to use for mini combat and they have monster locations on them which essentially ruins their usefulness without some editing.

 

[Talmun]

<snip>
Spoilers...

I solved the problem of PC motivation by having 2 of them meet Helene (the widow who lost her husband to werewolves in Barovia) and setting Strahd's goal to gain the werewolf allies. So the convergence of both tasks were enough motivation to go to Barovia.

I liked the zombie siege, but it seemed a little overboard (some of it my fault). The party reached the village square, saved the paladin and rested at the inn. That night I decided to have another group of zombies attack the barricades to maintain the sense that the town was swarmed with undead (player ranger kept watch atop the Inn). The next morning they encountered the ghasts and yet more zombies. At this point they were feeling restless and just wanted to get to the church. When they finally did they pretty much rushed in there unprepared and suffered 2 deaths.

I haven't read the entire adventure yet but so far I feel the tactical side is excellent while the plot side has some weaknesses. Some NPC motivations present plot problems. For example, the paladin. She's there to find the Sunsword. Well, one of my players is a paladin. An obvious conflict of interest. I'm solving the problem by having her delay her quest after experiencing the grief of discovering her companions succumbed to the zombie plague. She'll take their bodies back home and resume her quest later. Another problem I have is figuring out what to do with Ireena. She wants to help the PCs and will even secretly follow them if necessary. I don't know if I want to deal with that headache. Madam Eva is the fortune teller and not evil. Yet she has to be killed to sever Strahd's connection to the forest fane. I don't see the players doing that if the initial encounter with her goes well (and it needs to for the fortune telling).

<snip>

-Spoilers-

Interesting; nice work combining the secondary goal and the initial hook. Strahd’s secondary goal in my game is Brook No Rival (The Witches attempting to summon a demon to challenge Strahd). The initial hook was easy since I too had several PC’s take me up on the offer to be members of the Lightbringer guild from the start; so they were commissioned to go find out what happened to the previous guild-members that went to Barovia.

I also have a paladin in the party (and two clerics), but I’m not sure how that makes a conflict of interest with Ashlyn’s goal of finding the Sunsword…is your player intent on racing her to find it? In any case, Ashlyn’s probable fates as I see them:
*She will die (she’s a level behind the PCs and it’s a horror module).
*She’ll be convinced by way of diplomacy and good role-playing to stay behind and protect the village.
*One of the players will pick her up as a PC after an untimely death.

Even if none of the above happens and Ashlyn is around when the PC’s find the Sunsword, I would most likely have her acquiesce to the party when it comes to the weapon’s use. No need for additional conflict.

My group has already convinced her not to accompany the party to the Church, playing on her concern for the villagers trapped in the town square.

Madam Eva may or may not be at odds with the party (see Marcon’s post). She’s listed as an Annis Hag on page 77 where, oddly, her alignment is listed as CN…most likely to keep a paladin from detecting her as evil and refusing to talk to her.

-End Spoilers-

 

[Talmun]

Thanks for the info! I also noticed more tidbits about Ireena while in the castle. Seems like i better go ahead and read the whole thing before next session.

I would highly recommend that you read it all the way through at least once, and you might even want to take notes (I am). There's a lot of interconnectedness and combined with the non-liner nature of certain portions of the module it can really be tough to keep track of where everything is in the story.

 

[Nightfall]

Thanks for the insights Tal. I look forward to see more as you progress.

 

[Talmun]

Thanks for the insights Tal. I look forward to see more as you progress.

Thanks, we play every Sunday, so I should be able to update from work Sunday night/Monday Morning...

 

[Nightfall]

Looking forward to seeing that. As I stated previously, my concern is primarily how one might go about focusing this into a Ravenloft based campaign. But eh I might change my mind. (Not saying I will just want to see where it might go in another direction, away from Bavoria I mean...)

 

[Cor Azer]

Our group plays around a miniatures table – large and completely flat – we’ve taped down a laminated battlemap and I draw out the encounters with grease-pencil. It took me around 20-30 seconds each to draw the encounters in that first session, which is about normal.

Thanks, that's mroe or less what I was wondering - the maps are in more detail than I'm used to using (I also tended to use the laminated map/marker idea), and was wondering if the detail on the maps is hard to convey.