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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 9372833" data-attributes="member: 85555">The Van Richten books are really what taught me how to run Ravenloft more than anything else. I think part of the issue with what you are observing is there was a real contrast between what the Van Richten books were striving for and the Zeitgeist of adventure design at that time (which tended to be very much grounded in this &quot;GM is the storyteller&quot; kind of mentality. The Van Richten books were different and offered you glimpses of his investigations, which felt like moments in a campaign. And the thing that was striking about them was how open they were. They were much more about investigation, monster hunting. They felt more like there was an ongoing situation the PCs might stumble into. And it took time to take those examples and the tools in the books (which were largely about monster customization) and figure out how to make that work at the table. Once I started to understand it, my Ravenloft sessions changed a lot. I still have good memories of those early models, and I can appreciate them on their own terms, but the van Richten books are what gave me insights and approaches that I still use to this day in virtually any campaign I run</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 9372833, member: 85555"] The Van Richten books are really what taught me how to run Ravenloft more than anything else. I think part of the issue with what you are observing is there was a real contrast between what the Van Richten books were striving for and the Zeitgeist of adventure design at that time (which tended to be very much grounded in this "GM is the storyteller" kind of mentality. The Van Richten books were different and offered you glimpses of his investigations, which felt like moments in a campaign. And the thing that was striking about them was how open they were. They were much more about investigation, monster hunting. They felt more like there was an ongoing situation the PCs might stumble into. And it took time to take those examples and the tools in the books (which were largely about monster customization) and figure out how to make that work at the table. Once I started to understand it, my Ravenloft sessions changed a lot. I still have good memories of those early models, and I can appreciate them on their own terms, but the van Richten books are what gave me insights and approaches that I still use to this day in virtually any campaign I run [/QUOTE]

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