Expedition to Castle Ravenloft Reboot

[Dravda]

With my Red Hand of Doom game finishing in a few weeks here, I'm looking to the next game I'll be running. I have decided to update another classic 3.5 module to Pathfinder: Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. I've run it in the past, and my only hesitation is that I have a player in my group who's played it before and wasn't excited about playing through it again. My solution: "Fine. You're playing as Strahd."

This is obviously going to require a major rewrite of the entire adventure. Strahd will become, even more than usual, a proactive force in Barovia. For his goal, I am thinking of combining several: he wants the PCs as vampire minions, AND he wants the witches dead, AND he wants to werewolves under his control, all while desiring Ireena. Obviously, I will be encouraging Strahd's player to come up with his own goal: any suggestions there are much appreciated.

Castle Ravenloft will need to be a moving, breathing organism, not the "video gamey" dungeon described in the book. There must be multiple factions within the castle, all of whom are attempting to advance their own schemes, which Strahd's player will need to manage. A listing of Strahd's notable minions follows:


Madame Eva -- Strahd's nominal ally, she leads the Vistani but would be happy to see him gone.
Varikov the Trapper -- psychotic dwarf ranger. Likes killing and stuffing people. Further motivations and goals needed.
Kavan the Grim -- a ferocious vampire barbarian, and the first of Strahd's daywalkers. Motivations and goals needed.
Sasha Ivliskova -- Strahd's once-concubine, now bitterly resentful. The book has her pretty much locked up in the basement, but that's boring. She may aid the PCs and quietly sabotage Strahd unless he takes appropriate precautions against her treachery. Her ultimate goals are (in order) Strahd's downfall, Barovia's safety, and to finally find release in death.
Emil -- human werewolf fighter, the inept spy Strahd sent after the Necromancer. Perhaps an outcast, who sees Strahd as a father figure and wishes to undercut Strahd's other minions?
Lucian -- shadow demon inhabiting an aasimar paladin, and Strahd's spymaster. Likely to be Strahd's main source of intelligence on the players, though he needs a goal of his own.
The Necromancer -- human necromancer (NOT a cleric/wizard. I'm not angry, WotC. I'm just disappointed). I actually like what the book has on her motivations etc: a once-loyal minion who's begun to question why she serves Strahd. She's starting to feel marginalized and unappreciated, and could become a serious thorn in Strahd's side if not mollified.
Leif Lipsiege -- Strahd's steward. Motivations and goals needed, and I'm not sold on him being a tainted raver.
Khyristrix -- barbed devil. As-written, she's just concerned with her garden, but she's already got a cadre of minions in the form of the warlocks. I feel like she could be advancing a much more interesting goal.
Rafail -- the vampire fighter guarding the Dayheart. This dude needs some serious fleshing out: a vampire should never be a throwaway monster.
Cyrus -- the cook, and probably the only truly insane character whom I will keep as such. He's not really important enough to be anything other than comic relief for Strahd, and an unnerving fixture for the PCs.

Any suggestions or advice are greatly appreciated! If anyone's run the module before, I'd especially appreciate your insight. On the party's end, this will play out as standard gothic horror, but Strahd's side should end up being something more akin to a tense political maze.

One last thing is that we play on Roll20, so it will be fairly easy to schedule cutaways or even entire private sessions with Strahd's player.

[weckar]

When I ran it, I added a a bit of Sothe's backstory to the mix, plus some later Ravenloft setting elements and a twist of my own imagining:
The Strahd/Not-Ireena thing is a cycle that has been running for a looooong time. Frankly, the dark powers are getting bored with it so they introduce the PCs to spice things up. Which means, if they are not sufficiently entertaining they are doing away with Barovia and its inhabitants altogether. I had hints to this interweaved with the prophecy section.
Additionally, I made one slight alteration to the crypts: Opening the brother's grave they find... Strahd. I twisted the story so that it was the brother who killed Strahd, not the other way around, and in his resulting madness he came to believe himself to be Strahd to cope with one fewer loss, and a love he didn't deserve anyway. The Dark Powers took this idea a step further by altering his appearance too.

I ran this for a group of players who knew the module, but the small changes (I made a few additional ones throughout, as they were too late to stop the witching ritual) were enough to make it a compelling story and even mystery for them again.

[Dravda]

Interesting ideas. The changeability is one of my favorite things about the module: I've actually run it twice in the past, and one player was in on both. The second time, though, I played Strahd's "Descent into Madness" goal, which confused the hell out of them and left them not knowing WHAT to expect.

Who is Sothe, by the way? Are you referring to the Fire Emblem character?

[weckar]

Dragonlance character who ended up in Ravenloft at one point. One of the few confirmed escapees.

[ksbsnowowl]

He means Lord Soth, the Death Knight. The Knight of the Black Rose.

The creators of DL were pissed TSR put Lord Soth in RL, and wrote an appearance of him into a later DL novel. With 3rd edition, and the licensing of RL to... whatever third party had the rights to publish RL material through about 2006... that license did not include the rights to Soth, a DL character. As such, the cannon is that Soth escaped RL.

[Dravda]

Ah. I have read none of the Ravenloft material beyond the adventure module, nor am I particularly interested in expanding Ravenloft as anything beyond a one-adventure locale. Perhaps I should have specified that.

[Landis963]

Here's what I've got off the top of my head. DISCLAIMER: I have not run or played any incarnation of Ravenloft before, but have reading the 5th ed. book for Curse of Strahd, plus heard the reputation of the original. (Also sat in on a session of Ravenloft during high school. They needed to use my MTG deck for the tarokka, which disappointed the GM when he learned I didn't have any dragons).





Madame Eva -- Strahd's nominal ally, she leads the Vistani but would be happy to see him gone.
Varikov the Trapper -- psychotic dwarf ranger. Likes killing and stuffing people. Further motivations and goals needed. Perhaps some significant other he's trying to resurrect, but in his madness is getting it wrong?
Kavan the Grim -- a ferocious vampire barbarian, and the first of Strahd's daywalkers. Motivations and goals needed. Goal: Stay out of Strahd's way. Motivation: Have fun in as hedonistic a fashion as each town will allow, with fire, sex, and blood being his chief predilections. Some characters don't need depth so much as they need charisma. Also, that stuffy "Grim" doesn't lend itself well to interesting characters - you can explain it any way you like or (my personal favorite) have him be Kavan the Grin instead.
Sasha Ivliskova -- Strahd's once-concubine, now bitterly resentful. The book has her pretty much locked up in the basement, but that's boring. She may aid the PCs and quietly sabotage Strahd unless he takes appropriate precautions against her treachery. Her ultimate goals are (in order) Strahd's downfall, Barovia's safety, and to finally find release in death.
Emil -- human werewolf fighter, the inept spy Strahd sent after the Necromancer. Perhaps an outcast, who sees Strahd as a father figure and wishes to undercut Strahd's other minions?
Lucian -- shadow demon inhabiting an aasimar paladin, and Strahd's spymaster. Likely to be Strahd's main source of intelligence on the players, though he needs a goal of his own. He wants to escape, and preferably to do so without the possibility of Strahd coming after him. Also, he's got a game of "chess" going with Khyristrix, which provides him side missions to do when Strahd isn't breathing down his neck.
The Necromancer -- human necromancer (NOT a cleric/wizard. I'm not angry, WotC. I'm just disappointed). I actually like what the book has on her motivations etc: a once-loyal minion who's begun to question why she serves Strahd. She's starting to feel marginalized and unappreciated, and could become a serious thorn in Strahd's side if not mollified.Why couldn't she be a Cleric/Wizard?
Leif Lipsiege -- Strahd's steward. Motivations and goals needed, and I'm not sold on him being a tainted raver. What if, over the years in service to the von Zarovich family, he's become part of the castle, almost? Therefore, his motivations are a heady mix of loyalty and self-preservation, and his goal would therefore be to wipe out the party before they harm the master or his holdings. Regardless of Strahd's actual feelings on the matter - although he will defer to Strahd's wishes when pressed.
Khyristrix -- barbed devil. As-written, she's just concerned with her garden, but she's already got a cadre of minions in the form of the warlocks. I feel like she could be advancing a much more interesting goal. "Chess" with Lucian, perhaps? With a larger goal of escaping?
Rafail -- the vampire fighter guarding the Dayheart. This dude needs some serious fleshing out: a vampire should never be a throwaway monster. Strahd's "firstborn", the son of the second iteration of Tatyana, and shares many of her features.
Cyrus -- the cook, and probably the only truly insane character whom I will keep as such. He's not really important enough to be anything other than comic relief for Strahd, and an unnerving fixture for the PCs.

[weckar]

Landis makes interesting suggestions. One that I'd like to focus attention are the wedding guests that are off-handedly mentioned in the module. They on their own could become a significant faction (or factions) Strahd needs to keep reigned in.
Another thing to consider, with Strahd being so much more of a presence this way, is whether you need the hags and their fanes at all. I could easily see most of that being skipped - or at least simplified.

[Dravda]

Excellent ideas, Landis, thank you very much! To answer your question about the Necromancer, as-written she's a cleric/wizard/true necromancer. She has 11 class levels, but can only cast 4th level spells. She is 2 entire spell levels behind because she broke the First and Fifth Commandments of Optimization. As such, she'll be punching dramatically below her weight when faced with the party. Worse, her build means that she can't even cast create undead, since that's a 6th level spell. If only she'd single-classed. Oh well, she can always be restatted.

weckar, what page are the wedding guests mentioned on? I don't remember them at all.

And you are quite right about the Fanes: they may need pruning or even discarding altogether, but I'll need to see what direction Strahd's player wants to take the game before I make any major campaign flow decisions.

[weckar]

I currently don't have access to the book (regrettably), but I know that one occupies a room high up in one of the towers. A few floors above a landing with a living painting, as I recall, but it has frankly been a while.

[Landis963]

How has this been going, by the way?

[Landis963]

You have inspired me to work out a Ravenloft retelling of my own. However, I'm running into a few issues with a metaplot I'm trying to work into it. Namely, some important denizen of Barovia has worked out a deal with the Dark Powers for immortality, freedom from the mists, and everything they could ever want - with the caveat that the Dark Powers must use a proxy to fulfill 3 boons in order to take all those things back. (Heavily inspired by Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone, if you couldn't tell) Who should have struck the deal, and what should the boons be? For reference, the boons in Hearts of Stone were 1) "Show my brother a good time." (neglecting to mention that his brother is dead), 2) "Bring me the house of a local bigwig" (neglecting to mention that said bigwig has a safe designed like a house locked in his private vault), and 3) "Bring me the flower I gave my wife." (neglecting to mention that both the wife and, more importantly, the flower are long gone)

My first thought is that Strahd should have been the one to strike the pact, hence the vampiric power, the castle, the total dominion over everything but his one true love, etc. The reason why the Dark Powers agree to end the pact is for much the same reason as weckar suggests: they've seen every possible direction the Strahd/Not-Ireena plot could play out, and are mightily bored with it, no matter who the adventurers du jour are.

So, they appear to 5 separate souled people being stored as cattle for the household's enjoyment, giving them a dream wherein they explain the task. When the adventurers wake, they feel no different, but the servant coming to collect them for the master's pleasure recoils at a brand on their face, marking them as the property of the Dark Powers. The 5 adventurers are made to kneel before Strahd, and explain what the Dark Powers want. He then selects the first of three boons, then turns them out of the castle without so much as a change in clothes. The Vistani caravan would be at the nearest crossroads, and the plot begins.

The Boons:

1) (don't know this one)
2) Bring me the heart of my beloved
3) Survive the next 30 heartbeats

[Pugwampy]

I saw The Castle Ravenloft map in the old mod . Wow that looks difficult to read .