So, I've been hearing about this Castle Ravenloft Stuff

[TechnOkami]

Basically, my question is very open ended: what makes it such a memorable campaign?

I mean, I know it has dark things that go bump in the night, and vampires, ghouls, and undead galore, but what sets it apart from the rest of them?

[Mato]

The player sided expansions?

I mean it does give to feats (meh), a new undead hunter PrC (meh), class subs (liking the paladin mount one), alchemical items (lichbane is better for DMs), and items. Hecks ya the items.

Sunsword is a +1 Bastard Sword for 3k, only it can be used as if it were a longsword. So if you have a longsword using character, +600ish gp changes that d8 to a d10. And if you're up for it, -2 to one skill & -8 HP turns it into a +4 weapon with an x3 critical multiplier. Not bad for 3k eh?

Moonfriend is 9k, +3 to your level with Turn Undead. Icon of Ravenloft? 19k for +4 to your level. That's +7 to max HD and +7 damage you know. The Codex teaches Warlocks new a new Least Invocation and is the only item that does so. Perfect Vestments gives more Smites per day and a bonus to smite damage. Really, there is some good divine items to poke in here for so head to borders or soemthing and take a look.

[Eldan]

Would you mean the Castle Ravenloft adventure, or the Ravenloft campaign setting? Different things ,really.

[TechnOkami]

Would you mean the Castle Ravenloft adventure, or the Ravenloft campaign setting? Different things ,really.

I don't know... Lets go with both!

[kaomera]

There may be some spoilers here, I declined to tag anything because, honestly, playing the module or even looking at the cover is liable to give away anything I've said below, and with reputation Ravenloft has acquired over the years I think it's safe to say it's been throughly spoiled by now...

OK, so, you have:

Module I6 Ravenloft, released in 1983 for 1e AD&D and authored by Tracy & Laura Hickman. It's considered one of the classic modules, and was updated in 1993 as House of Strahd (to fit it into the 2e Ravenloft campaign setting), and again more recently in 2006 as Expedition to Castle Ravenloft for 3.5. The module combines both in- and out-of-dungeon encounters, a solid storyline, and some interesting spot rules (the cards, frex). It's got it's flaws, but really any module does. I think it does a good job of deserving it's reputation. There was a sequel, but I know little of it.

So, the PCs end up trapped in a place called Barovia, which is under siege of sorts from the Lord of the land, one Count Strahd von Zarovich. The module makes little secret of the fact that Strahd is an evil vampire and the BBEG, instead keeping other plot elements secret, some of the via some novel randomization (the cards mentioned above). Just getting to the titular castle can be a bit of a challenge, and from there things are only liable to get more difficult. The module can and does end in a TPK, but with clever / ''good'' play and a bit of luck it's winnable.

The Ravenloft Campaign Setting takes the ideas of the 1e module and conjures up ''The Demi-Plane of Dread''. I don't really have much in the way of experience with 2e, but it was pretty highly regarded. Really most of the 2e campaign settings were well-liked, but a lot of them suffered from inconsistent quality. Since I never played it I'll let someone else fill in the details.

The Castle Ravenloft Board Game (2010) is thematically based on both the fourth edition of D&D and the original I6 module. It's a board game; there are roleplaying elements but ime the design was focused on first and foremost making a good board game and only secondly in making it a tie-in to 4e. It's pretty good, I think I might like it more if I wasn't already a D&D player. As it is I already get my dungeon-crawling itch scratched so when I play a board game I tend towards other areas.

(All dates corrected after checking Wikipedia - seriously I got every damn one of them wrong... :smalleek:)

[TechnOkami]

Mmk... then lets just boil the discussion down to the Moduel and the Campaign Setting, and NOT the Board Game.

[Togath]

There's also a 3.5 adventure module called expedidtion to castle ravenloft

[TechnOkami]

...everything but the Board Game then?

[Eldan]

I know only a few things about the Ravenloft CS that i read on Wiki.

Basically, it's a place where all the worst people of the multiverse were brought by a shadowy, powerful entity or entities. They are all given enormous power over one domain, but they are also given an "ironic" failing, often the greatest failure of their life played out again and again, with them unable to stop it.

There are normal inhabitants of the Demiplane of Dread, people who got lost in magical mists and ended up in Ravenloft, for the most part. The PCs are those.

It features all the classics of gothic horror. Mad scienstist, dark sorcerers, ghouls, monsters, sadistic fey. There are many loosely connected domains, all with their own horror theme.

There was a series of quite good and interesting books called Von Richten's Guide to [X], each of which described the strengths, weaknesses and so on of one particular kind of famous monster. E.g. Van Richten's Guide to Werewolves.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Really, the star of the setting are the darklords.

If you run a campaign in Ravenloft, I highly suggest that it end in either killing a darklord, or escaping from one.

My favourite darklords would be Ivana and...Ivan, I think it was. The poison astrocrats, you know? They were cool, and properly handled, they made for good mystery and intrigue - especially if you played the existence of the darklords as "dark secret known only to a few occult scholars".

Agree?

[Mordokai]

The Boritzis? Yeah, they are good choice. But myself, I prefer the ghaele eladring mistress of the circus of freaks. Forgot the name.

Really, if you can, get the Van Richten's guides. They will tell you a whole lot and then some.

[kaomera]

There's also a 3.5 adventure module called expedidtion to castle ravenloft
As mentioned above this is largely the original module re-done for 3.5; however maybe I shouldn't have put it that way because it's somewhat misleading. The ''Expedition to'' series significantly expand on the source material. IIRC in this case there's a lot of stuff to be done in and around the area before heading into the castle itself. I'm not 100% sure because I found the format they chose (delve format, I think?) very off-putting and never actually tried running it. It did seem like they at least tried to fit all of the classic bits in there, and I think it had options for running it as less of a mini-campaign (I know some books in the series did).

As to what makes Ravenloft, in general, so memorable: One I6 is just a classic module, and as such there's a certain history to it. It was also a tough module, and so players who had run through it and survived where rightfully proud of the accomplishment. Beyond that (and especially with the 2e material, I think) it was a stab at horror, which is a bit of a twist from normal D&D.

[Terraoblivion]

For the campaign setting, I'd mostly recommend the 3.x stuff, except for Champions of Darkness which is awful in every conceivable way. While it builds on the 2e setting it improves it in a number of ways. One is by adding some coherence to the setting, in terms of things like where everything is and just what Nova Vaasa is like. It also excises some of the derpier, cheesier things like pillars of skulls and pools of blood for no adequately explained reason, making the world more conducive to horror by removing random giggles. Finally, and most importantly, it expands greatly on the setting as a place where people live and die, with unique cultures, mundane politics and all those other things that makes it easy to get invested in it and care to save it. As an outgrowth of this last part, it squarely focuses its attention on creating native characters as opposed to people drawn into Ravenloft by the Mist.

As a more general note about the setting, though I think it's more pronounced in the 3.x version, is the strong focus on challenging and questioning morality. The world has an objective morality, which might not necessarily coincide with what is most expedient, effective or what your character's parents taught them. The world also loves testing the morality of people in it, enticing them with power and efficiency if they'll just do something bad just this once, but biting will ultimately curse you.

[Mordokai]

I'm not sure I'm following you. You claim that Champions of Darkness is awful book(which I personally disagree with, but that's neither here nor there), and then you proceed to tell us why it's good?

Was this just a major case of me being unable to comprehend and properly process what you've written down, or was that a mistake on your part and you meant some other book?

[Terraoblivion]

No, the 3.x version of the setting. None of that applies to Champions of Darkness, which is just one book out of 20 or so and which is awful.

[pendell]

Something I specifically recall about the Ravenloft setting is the 'powers' mechanic. Doing particularly evil things would draw the attention of the powers of Ravenloft, who would 'give' the offending PC various supernatural abilities. These often came with some kind of tell-tale like antenna, claws for hands, etc.

If the PC used these 'gifts' to continue to do the evil they were obviously intended for, the PC would continue to gain in power but also gain in corruption, losing humanity in the process. If taken far enough, the PC would go completely beyond the players' control and become an NPC.

The other thing that I recall is that the darklords are rulers of their own little domain in the demiplane, which serves as their prison. They are less like mortal kings ruling over territory and more like demons ruling their own little corner of hell. Taking on a darklord in his or her own domain is very close to suicide, but not impossible.

IIRC, Lord Soth from Dragonlance had a domain here for a short time, but Hickman & Weis complained, so TSR (this was before they became Wizards) wrote him out of the story.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Yora]

The cruel thing about the darkloards is that within their domains, they get the one thing they always wanted. But everything else is in a way which makes it impossible to have any joy with the thing they desired. Like getting your very own orchestra and then turning deaf.
However, I think there's the added sting that the darklords are unable to realize that they brought it all on themselves, which makes it impossible for them to get over it.

[Lapak]

The cruel thing about the darkloards is that within their domains, they get the one thing they always wanted. But everything else is in a way which makes it impossible to have any joy with the thing they desired. Like getting your very own orchestra and then turning deaf.This is the bit that kind of defines the campaign setting and sets the tone, so it's worth expanding on. You can throw out all of the specific domains and Darklords and creatures and so on and still make a recognizable Ravenloft by sticking to one very basic theme: Ravenloft is a demiplane ruled by undefined Dark Powers that are seriously into ironic self-punishment.

It shows up in the Darklords: the woman Strahd lusts after is reborn over and over in his domain, but she always fears and hates the monster he turned himself into to get her and his pursuit always leads to her death. Guy wants to be the undisputed military leader of a country? He gets absolute control over a pointless backwater with no cities to speak of or anything worth exerting control over.

The thing is, this doesn't just apply to the Darklords. It applies to everyone. Evil acts get rewarded with gradually-increasing 'gifts' that carry downsides. Non-spellcasters can successfully pronounce Curses on other people if there's sufficiently dark emotion behind, and those curses tend to cause as much pain to the curse-er as the curse-ee. And it doesn't just apply to evil! Sufficiently righteous Good gets the same treatment. Take Paladins in the 2e setting, who literally stick out like sore thumbs. The local Darklord is automatically aware of them and can pinpoint them with relatively little effort. The plane basically says 'so, you want to be a shining beacon of Goodness? All right. Emphasis on the 'shining beacon' part, so I hope you can take the beating you're about to get.'

Above all else, the plane punishes pride. PCs can adventure there, and accomplish a lot, but they have to do it quietly. The more prominent they make themselves (for good or ill) the more likely the Powers are to take notice and reward them for the attention they seek. The only way to get by in Ravenloft is to fly under the radar, and that holds true whether you're acting selfish or selfless.

[LibraryOgre]

Above all else, the plane punishes pride. PCs can adventure there, and accomplish a lot, but they have to do it quietly. The more prominent they make themselves (for good or ill) the more likely the Powers are to take notice and reward them for the attention they seek. The only way to get by in Ravenloft is to fly under the radar, and that holds true whether you're acting selfish or selfless.

Which also really adds to the flavor in that the villagers are all quiet and scared... anyone who ISN'T is a hero, and probably has something horribly wrong going on (Oh, look, I'm cursed to be a werewolf, or my mother is a hag, or whatever).

[Velaryon]

For the campaign setting, I'd mostly recommend the 3.x stuff, except for Champions of Darkness which is awful in every conceivable way.

Champions of Darkness wouldn't have been so bad if it was written for some other campaign setting. The biggest problem is that the book was written by people with no understanding of the setting, and a very poor grasp of what fits into the setting. Ravenloft is a setting that mashes up gothic horror and fantasy, leaning a bit more toward the horror, and Champions of Darkness completely fails to understand that.

As a whole, the 3.x line (other than that one book) are generally good fluff books, but the mechanics are a bit on the weak side. The prestige classes are quite flavorful, but the mechanics for them are almost universally bad. Very few of them give class abilities that are useful in any meaningful way (although there are a few, like the one paladin PrC that lets you call out the darklord in single combat). The feats are a little better, but there are still many throwaway options. And then there's the monster manual, which is riddled with errors and was so hastily converted from 3.0 to 3.5 that it failed to follow the actual monster creation rules, and thus many of the monsters don't have appropriate skills and feats.

For my money, the best 3.x Ravenloft books are the five Gazetteers, which explore 3-5 lands each in great detail, while advancing their own metaplot which was sadly left incomplete by the line's early cancellation. They're not only a great DM tool, but a fun read all by themselves even if you're not about to use them for a game.

One thing about Ravenloft is that it has some mechanics that, in the wrong hands, are very heavy-handed railroading tools. Most of the darklords have the ability to close the borders of their land in some magical way (surrounding the land in a ring of poison fog, causing endless hordes of undead to rise at the borders and attack anything that moves, etc.) that allows them to force people in or out of their land at their discretion. There are also three new saving throws for Fear, Horror, and Madness that have debilitating effects on those who fail, and can really ruin the mood if the player fails to roleplay them appropriately.

It can be a tricky setting to play in, but the world is extremely interesting. Personally, I prefer to read about the place more than I like to actually play campaigns there, but it may just be that I don't have the right group to play Ravenloft the way I think it's meant to be played.

[shaddy_24]

One of the things that made Castle Ravenloft the adventure stand out as a classic was Strahd himself. He's one of the most popular DnD villains of all time, even getting on Dragon Magazine's top 20 villains, though hitting the bottom of the list.

[Roderick_BR]

It's memorably for being a classic module, and one of the first "horror" campaings, where super-hero survival was not garanteed.

And vampires (and other monsters) were done right, not these things we see in other games and movies. </kind of a jerk>
Specially because it likes to remind you, that the greatest monsters are/were humans. They were just "rewarded" by making their exterior match their interior.

[horseboy]

IIRC, Lord Soth from Dragonlance had a domain here for a short time, but Hickman & Weis complained, so TSR (this was before they became Wizards) wrote him out of the story.
Knight of the Black Rose was my favorite "Dragonlance" novel. It was Soth's transition to Ravenloft.

Yes, it's D&D's horror setting. It strains the game engine to the breaking point trying to do some very interesting things. After I "left" D&D I could always be talked into a Ravenloft (or Darksun) campaign because the atmosphere was always entertaining.