First time DMing: Expedition to Castle Ravenloft?

[Jeff the Green]

I had thought I'd put off trying my hand at DMing until I had a workable homebrew setting. But it's gotten away from me. In a good way, I mean. In any case, I was thinking I'd run a prewritten module.

I like Gothic Horror, undead, and the idea of plucking adventurers from their everyday lives to do the bidding of an immortal scheming bastard, so I thought I'd run Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.

Is this a good or bad module for PBP? Anything in particular I should be watching out for?

I was also thinking I'd limit it to tier-3 and below, and give a free +1 LA to both make up for that and encourage interesting race choices. Are those bad ideas for either EtCR or a newbie DM?

[Tokiko Mima]

You have to write your own ending, for one. In various parts it references a section on Concluding the Adventure, but no such section exists.

Let your players know that they will not be critting much, and it's almost non-stop combat once they enter the castle. Oh, and Strahd has Fell Draining magic missile on his spell list. On second thought, maybe that's better kept as a surprise.