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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Hope" data-source="post: 9375880" data-attributes="member: 27051">Well, on a general level, people like different things. I don't think there's anything more to it than that. But OK here's what we enjoyed.Out of the gate, once the players realised they were heading into the brand-new Ravenloft setting, they were excited to experience it from that perspective. Some of us had played through I6 and I10 but most were new to Ravenloft and some to D&D as well. Once the Mists took them, I explained what had happened and they were ready to buy into the setting conceits. They were happy to help the jailor deal with the werewolf, then annoyed at him for trapping them. His explanation was that he wasn't sure whether they had been infected with lycanthropy (as it happens, one of them had!). They were very motivated to help Akriel because she was a Gothic Damsel With An Overbearing Father. Several of the players were fans of gothic literature and were super excited to actually be in a gothic tale rather than standard D&D fare.They refused to have anything to do with the Woodland Encounter and pressed on to the Inn, determined to not be distracted from helping Akriel. I think they suspected the Woodland Encounter was meant to waylay them.They loved all the stuff at the Inn. By this point they had completely bought into the idea of being in a gothic story and didn't bat an eyelid at the idea that Harkon Lukas owned the Inn - it fitted perfectly into their expectations of what should be happening in this kind of story. Of course Akriel chooses the worst possible place to meet. It would be boring and logical otherwise and decrease the Wuthering Quotient.Wolfweres ripping holes in the walls and whatnot made for a really thrilling scene. Having monsters stalk them rather than the other way around was something the players very much enjoyed.The Gorge sequence ended up being really horrific - we had our first death of the campaign here when one character went off snooping on his own. I think giant ravens are really cool, by the way.I don't know how much of the adventure you have read. Subsequent chapters worked for much the same reason. They retrieved the Crown, gave it to Dominiani, then returned to take it back from him once they realised they had been duped. By this point they were ready for a knockdown fight and gave him one. Interestingly, rather than the given ending to the adventure, they came up with a better one - to use the Crown's magic jar powers to face Daglan inside the crown and help the Warlord defeat him in a psychic battle inside a misty mindscape. This made for a very satisfying ending so we rolled with that. Their enjoyment of this adventure cemented the group's love of Ravenloft and any time the Mists rolled in, they were more than ready for more of whatever it had to offer.Different strokes, I guess <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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