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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Talmun" data-source="post: 3170703" data-attributes="member: 17751">Initial Thoughts-Spoilers-Tonight was the first session of my Ravenloft campaign.  All-in-all it went very well.  The Party ran through the fight at the town square and interacted with Ashlyn and the NPC’s in the inn.  We ended the night with the party walking resolutely up the street toward the church.Pros:I like the encounter format.  I know people have complained that it seems like page-count padding but it’s very convenient to have everything you need for an encounter on two pages, eliminating page-flipping during combat.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had pre-written module combats run so smoothly from a DM’s POV.The encounters themselves so far are nicely put together and give a good “overrun by zombies” feel without the party actually being, you know, overrun.  Also, the encounters are fairly challenging.  My party is cleric/divine heavy and it’s by no means a cakewalk for them.I like the overall layout and plotline so far.  It’s different enough from I6 that a player who has read/played the original recently will not be bored.Cons:I’m not sure the fake letter from the Burgomaster will always accomplish with it is intended to.  The party quickly finds out it’s a fake upon reaching Barovia and is apt to disregard anything it says from that point on.  Timing on this might need some tweaking so that the party doesn’t so quickly realize that it’s a forgery.The book has three zombie encounters before the party reaches the village square, where they stumble into a 4th.  It also suggests that for every 40 feet they travel in town there is a 45% chance they encounter more zombies.  Add to that the substantial chance that any building the PC’s might enter might also have a zombie encounter.  I like zombies, but this is way over the top.  I utterly dropped the 40 feet/45% encounters and had only one building encounter, taken with the larger brawl at the village square that was enough.Nearly every NPC the party talks to in town are supposed to tell them to go get their fortune read by Madam Eva.  It’s as subtle as a battleaxe to the forehead.  I had two NPC’s mention her off-hand and that was more than enough to get the point across.-End Spoilers-As I said, all-in-all my players seemed to enjoy themselves and I enjoyed myself; really the best yardstick of all.</blockquote>

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