Which of the many adventures for Ravenloft, in 1st 2nd or 3rd edition, were any good?  Were there any at all aside from perhaps the original one?

RPGPundit

There are plenty of good adventures.... as long as you don't mind doing some minor editing. (and what modual doesn't?")

For the most part a good number of them have a solid core, but some really stupid bits tacked on.  Others require an overhaul for an encounter or two, (the set up or motivation being totaly retarded)

Feast of Goblyns (starting in Kartakass) was a favorite of my players. I of course edited out a few of the stupid thing there in. I forget the details now, but I do remember making changes.

There's plenty of fighting, intrigue and mystery to be had.

Night of the Walking Dead, (set Scourange) was another favoite for my group.

Now my group was native to Ravenloft (Darkon natives) so I didn't have to do that whole "This might be the way home!" at the end of every adventure.

But they where hunted by dark forces, so where always on the move (a reason to keep them runing into new adventures).

The Book of Crypts had several short adventures in it. Some good, some not so much.

All in all I liked the Van Richten's guides the most. Unique opponents for your groups to face. Not just in power, but motivation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;519309Which of the many adventures for Ravenloft, in 1st 2nd or 3rd edition, were any good?  Were there any at all aside from perhaps the original one?

RPGPundit

There are many good Ravenloft Adventures, but most of them require some reworking.

Ravenloft (the original) is just classic. It has been remade a couple of times as well (House of Strahd was good but Castle Ravenloft for 3E was a heap of garbage).

My personal favorite is Feast of Goblyns. It has a bit of that annoying 90s stuff in it, but there is so much good it does't matter. You get two pretty fleshed out towns, some cool encounters (one really fun one on the road), a castle with a vampire who drinks brain fluid, a mysterious cavern complex, a new pocket domain, plus a major magic item and goblyns (which are a strange twist on goblins). But best of all ot comes with a fully fleshed out Kartakan Inn. For he Inn alone it is great. Basic premise is the pcs are unwitting pawns of Ariel Lucas (the daughter of the domain lord Harkon Lukas). Like I said it does have some of those annoying elements, but it does do a good job of emphasizing that the npcs are all free willed and will react diffetently and take different courses of actio depending on what the PCs do.

The other one I highly recommend is Castles Forlorn. This is a bit of a sandbix, involving a haunted castle and surrounding villages inabited by Goblyns (Forlorn is next to Kartakass). Really well done boxed set.

Night of the Walking Dead is another I recommend.

Book of Crypts has a few cool adventures in it as well.

Even though I have major issues with the moduoe, The Created (think evil Pinnocchio) is good if you dont mind fixing some broken parts.

Another vote for Night of the Walking Dead.  Had a glorious TPK in that one that had everybody on the edge of their seats.

I am going to go against the consensus so far and say that Book of Crypts is at least 75% crap.  Seriously, more like "overly-detailed adventure seeds with needless backstory" than proper adventures.

On the topic of sucky ravenloft adventures; Bleak House: The Death of Rudolph Van Richten-- terrible adventure, didn't get much worse than this one in my opiniom.

I found every module for Ravenloft in the 2nd edition extremely fun to host as a DM and in some cases, quite challanging for the players themselves.  I really do not have any personal favorites but the first one that really comes to mind is Ship of Horror.

I'll check out castles forlorn.  Its just curious to me, I know there were like, dozens and dozens of supplements and I'd never heard anyone say anything good about any of them.

RPGPundit

Aside from I6 itself, I had ONE module from Ravenloft. I can't remember the title for the life of me, but it sucked. Very helpful, I know...

Quote from: RPGPundit;519576I'll check out castles forlorn.  Its just curious to me, I know there were like, dozens and dozens of supplements and I'd never heard anyone say anything good about any of them.

RPGPundit

For the supps the van richten guides are great. Really improved my game a lot.

Quote from: RPGPundit;519576I'll check out castles forlorn.  Its just curious to me, I know there were like, dozens and dozens of supplements and I'd never heard anyone say anything good about any of them.

RPGPundit

That is the problem with people today, you just take people's word at it.

How about picking up the modules in question and running them yourself and you MAKE your OWN opinion???

That is how people miss out on life by assuming other people's opinions are valid when in most cases, they are not...

Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;519595That is the problem with people today, you just take people's word at it.

How about picking up the modules in question and running them yourself and you MAKE your OWN opinion???

That is how people miss out on life by assuming other people's opinions are valid when in most cases, they are not...

In all fairness he probably started this thread so he could do just that. My guess is rather than pick a ravenloft module at random and judge the whole line by that exampe he decided to see what people thought the winners were so he can judge the line on its strongest releases. There are things in the ravenloft books I suspect Pundit wont like (but not having seen his campaigns first hand i cant be sure).

One thing that stands out is the dungeons (whether they be crypts, castles, caverns, manor, etc) tend to be smaller in scale than alot of 1e dungeons. Ravenloft is also pretty combat light, gamemasters are expected to build suspense and atmosphere around the combat, focus a bit more on role pay, etc. Many of the techniques put forward in the modules can beheavy handed at times, and some are blatant railroading (there is still good advice but you can tell they were written in the 90s). Ravenloft is very magic light, and what magic is there tends to be warped. The setting also has mechanics like powers checks, curses, fear, horror and madness checks.

My suggestion pundit is consider checking out the following books if you are interested in judging the line:


The realm of terror boxed set
Domains of Dread book

-Castles Forlorn boxed adventure (this is considered very strong by alot of ravenloft fans)
-Feast of Goblyns (one of the earliest adventures and one of my favorite)
-Night of the walking dead (always gets a mention by fans)
-From the Shadows (an example of stuff you would probably hate about the line)

-Van richtens guide (recommend ancient dead, the created, or werebeasts).

I ran both I6 and Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill (Module I10) years ago.  Like the original, this predates Ravenloft being its own setting.  

I thought the sequel module was excellent as a twist on the original.  There are similarly used randomized elements to put together the plot elements (along with a deck of cards).  There was some clunky stuff, but at least it did not have a fully predefined storyline like most later Ravenloft modules.

I had a good time with I6, but I basically gutted it and replaced it with my own dungeon.  I used it for "Koriszegy Keep" in a game set in Karameikos.  The mists surrounded the cursed barony.  I kept the town.  I made the upper works of the castle a destroyed ruin (crumbling curtain walls and piles of rubble), and created a dungeon of ancient crypts and catacombs and warrens.  I twisted the Strahd back-story to fit, ditching some of wannabe novelist stuff and all the goofy set-piece scenes (stuff like the Dracula-inspired carriage and the organ playing and such went right out when I ditched the upper works of the castle).

After that, it turned into a pretty cool D&D adventure that my players still recall fondly.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;519401On the topic of sucky ravenloft adventures; Bleak House: The Death of Rudolph Van Richten-- terrible adventure, didn't get much worse than this one in my opiniom.

It's been twenty years since I read it, but the suckiness of Touch of Death had a major impact on my philosophy as a GM. This was a module which had a really amazing plot... which the PCs would never see or hope to understand.

(The entire thing dealt with an immense and ancient power struggle between legendary NPCs. The PCs had no way of learning the history of the conflict or even, in many respects, knowing that there was a struggle going on. If you played the adventure as written, it would consist of the PCs stumbling from one incomprehensible sequence of events to another.)

From that point forward, I've made it a point to virtually never bother my time prepping, designing, or even really thinking about anything that my players can't experience, learn about, and/or appreciate. (I will, on rare occasion, jot down 1-2 sentences to explain the history of something if it will clarify things for me or provide a foundation for building stuff on, but that's it.)

These days, of course, I don't have much of a tolerance for pre-prepared plots, either.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;519590For the supps the van richten guides are great. Really improved my game a lot.

Fantastic books, I have the collected volumes.  They are interesting in that as I read them they feel very obvious to me, as if the information is already somewhere in my head, but has been crystallized into book form for easy reference and use.  That makes it sound like the info is rather generic, but I don't think that is the case.

When Black Roses Bloom seems interesting, it is a sequel to a the first Soth RL paperback.  It allows for a some introduction and playing in Dragonlance without actually running the whole campaign.  I haven't had a chance to run it, but my pals have had fun with it in the past.