Expedition to Castle Ravenloft: Preparations *(Spoilers?)*

[Luckadoo]

Hello,
I'm currently DM for a run of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (ECR). As of last session, the PCs are close to entering the castle itself. I've removed the Fanes because of the limited amount of time we have to play in order to make the game not so long. As I was looking over the castle information I found the number of encounters to be outrageous. That being said, my players like nothing more than a good session of battling. My question is this: How should I prepare for their journey into the castle? I have 2 rolls of gaming paper (2.5'x12') to use for maps (although I think I'll need more). I'm not sure if I should draw out every map available or if I should just draw out the encounters. I'm unsure if Strahd is attacking in every room where it doesn't say "Use this encounter if..." and Strahd is there. The book explains to use Strahd if "he chooses to attack the PCs here," and I imagine that relates to the Fortunes of Ravenloft tarot reading.
Basically, I'm a mess and want to run a good adventure for my players, but I'm not sure where to begin. Any advice at all would be appreciated. :smallfrown:

[Nich_Critic]

For the maps, it's really up to you. When I ran it, they didn't really make it to the castle, so I can't answer you there apart from generic advice. For obvious reasons, having all the maps available to you will be useful, but if you want to cut corners, avoid drawing rooms that aren't likely to be used in combat, or that are kind of out of the way. You can also probably avoid drawing rooms that are at the long end of several encounters, at least at first.

For Strahd, the fortunes of Ravenloft only determine where he makes his final stand. You can (and should) still use him to harry the PC's: It's his castle, after all. But, depending on his goal, he's not necessarily trying to kill them (yet). And he won't do anything excessively risky. If the party are adept at capturing and killing vampires, he might not let them get an attack off on him. Just appear, fire a spell, and leave through one of the many secret passages. Keep the party on their toes.

Edit: I guess a better answer is that the encounters that say they have Strahd should probably have him, but only if it makes sense.

[Luckadoo]

Hello,
I see! That makes a ton of sense now that you've laid it out to me like that. I've already started just drawing out the Tactical Encounter maps for the castle.
What I've considered doing is printing out copies of the first floor sketch and second floor sketch and so on and just having those available so the Players can look at them and say, "Well we're in K25, so we want to move onto K26," or what have you. I feel that having a visual aid like this will help my players, but I'm not sure if it takes away from any sort of mood. What do you think?