Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

WizO_Unicorn

Evening, James! Evening, Bruce!

Thank you for coming to the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft chat with Bruce Cordell and James Wyatt. Do you have any opening remarks for us before we get to questions?

Bruce

I'm happy to see so many people interested in the module. It was great fun working with James writing this thing, or as we like to say, reimagining it for 3.5

James

Well, just thanks for being here, thanks for your interest in this adventure.

Zerotkatama

There's no concluding the adventure section, which I assume is due to book space. Do you have any advice as to what a Concluding the adventure should contain?

James

The tricky thing is that there are so many variables in how the adventure plays out, that it's hard to tell you how to end it.

Bruce

Well, the adventure is finally concluded when Strahd is definitively dealt with. There are many partial victories, but the true victory comes in defeating Strahd, I'd say.

James

Our hope is that, after playing the adventure for weeks or months, you'll know better than we do where to go with it next!

Particularly in light of the adventure hooks you used to start the adventure, what's happened along the way, and what you want to do next in your campaign.

Silentkiller

So what level we looking at starting?

Bruce

5th or 6th is probably the lowest you'd want to go.

But you can start higher if you want to move right to the castle

James

The adventure says 6th to 10th on the cover, but there's more specific advice inside for starting at higher level if you're going to do less of the adventure.

WizO_Shadow

I'm ecstatic Ravenloft is being updated to 3.5!! How many of the Ravenloft books/modules are you going to update for 3.5?

James

At this point, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is a standalone adventure / minicampaign. We have more Expedition adventures planned, but no more Ravenloft products announced at this time.

Bruce

Being the iconic Ravenloft adventure, this is the only one we have plans to give such treatment to at present. How'd you like that for market-speak? :-)

JulesLetters

I heard that the 'original' Sunblade (Legacy Weapon) upon which all others were based is in Ravenloft. What's the inspiration for making an 'original' of a classic weapon? Does it play an integral part in any of the paths the adventure can take?

Bruce

The inspiration is that the sunblade in Ravenloft actually IS the original from which later versions were copied. Or at least, so we believe.

James

Speaking from the perspective of the history of D&D, the original Sunsword did appear in the module I6.

ChrisNichols

What led to the change in Strahd's look from the classic Clyde Caldwell design to the long-haired elf design?

James

By "long-haired elf," I assume you mean the picture on page 7, as opposed to the cover image?

Bruce

I prefer the Strahd on the cover. The interior is one artist's interpretation (as is the new cover) of course.

James

Artistic inspiration is all I can say. :)

ChrisNichols

Right, I did mean the page 7 illo. It seems to be the one more heavily used in WotC's promotional art.

Gratzu

Whose idea was it to do the rewrite and what all did it take to pull it together?

James

It's the one we're using to promote D&D game day, at least, yes. Boy, I don't know whose idea it was originally. It took several months of writing from both me and Bruce...

Bruce

I think there is a general idea that every so often it is cool to do a sequel of an old classic. Not sure whose idea it was to make this the original but with new 'racing stripes' so to speak. as far as working on it...

James

Followed by the usual process of editing, typesetting, art and cartography, etc., etc....

Bruce

that was a lot of work in a short period of time--shorter than the time we were given, because James and I were new to the new format, which was evolving as we wrote it.

James

Yes, boy howdy! :)

Bruce

But in the end, I'm exceptionally happy with how the format turned out.

WizO_Shadow

What sentimental attachment and/or what did you enjoy about doing this project the most? ( I think it was partially answered above)

James

I have a long history with Ravenloft. My first published game material was for the Masque of the Red Death setting. So it was really exciting for me to get this chance to revisit where it all began.

Bruce

My sentimental attachment were to the maps, which I used to pull out all the time of the original I6, looking at and imagining a fully 3D castle for the first time.

Ok, not quite...

James

There are a lot of things I'm really proud of: all of Chapter 3, the legacy items, and the fundamental structure of the adventure.

Bruce

In the podcast I discussed how my DM killed me so cruelly with Strahd. I also very strongly remember the organ music my DM played when we as players first came into the castle. Very effective on our 14 year old brains. Thanks Monte.

Gstommylee

So you wanted to bring the great experience of Ravenloft since most of the newer players where like you said around when it originally came out to have the same fun as you guys orginally did.

James

Right.

Bruce

Yes, but we also wanted original I6 players to get excited about doing Ravenloft all over again!

ChrisNichols

Why did you choose not to include any references to or materials from the larger Ravenloft campaign setting as developed in both 2nd edition (from TSR) and 3.0/3.5E (from S&S/Arthaus)? And was there anything from those that you would like to have added if you could?

Bruce

The decision was to focus solely on I6,because it had more than enough information, obviously, to fill a 200+ page book with the new format and other information we included.

James

The idea was to revisit, reimagine, whatever... the original, classic adventure. It's been 20some years since that adventure shook up the D&D universe, which is longer than much of our audience has been alive. (Gasp!) We wanted to pass that experience on to the next generation! :)

So much of the focus of the later Ravenloft material was on lands beyond Barovia, I don't think there's a whole lot I would have looted. We were very tightly focused on Castle Ravenloft.

I did look at the House of Strahd adventure and the various implementations of Strahd's stat block as we went along, though.

Bruce

I know there was a lot of good stuff in the expanded Ravenloft setting, but it just wasn't our focus.

Gratzu

Were you worried about the older fans' reactions to your changes?

James

I wasn't. Perhaps I should have been, but no. I think we stayed remarkably faithful to the original, while enriching it for a new play environment.

Bruce

A little I guess, but I think we stayed so close to the original vision that I'm only proud of what we accomplished in showcasing all that was great about the original using 3.5 rules and writing styles.

Warghoul

What time are you guys coming over to run some Ravenloft for me? ;) but seriously, any good pointers for running a Ravenloft/horror type game?

James

First, I highly recommend checking out the D&D Podcast. Dave Noonan and Mike Mearls led off their interview of us with a really interesting discussion of horror games.

Bruce

James can pump Heroes of Horror

James

To that, I'd add that the most important thing is that everyone agree to help build the atmosphere. It doesn't work as well if your players sit down expecting the usual game and you try to surprise them into a horror game.

Make sure they know to expect creepiness, and get their buy-in so they'll play along and at least act scared... until they really are scared. :)

Bruce

The best horror game I was involved with was one were I co-DMed. we split the players into two groups and only allowed them to talk via walki-talkies. They were supposedly in submarines exploring a sunken city.

Zerotkatama

Chiming in with the advice for horror mood setting, aside from organ music, is there any music in particular you use when running Ravenloft, or horror in general?

Bruce

Many. one good one: Soundtrack to the Ninth Gate.

James

Heh. I have a "horror gaming" playlist on my iPod. It covers a range... let's see.... Cortege Macabre from Grohg, Shostakovich's 5th symphony, Lord of the Rings music, some Beethoven, some Eberron music from the Sharn CD, some Pirates of the Caribbean, some Mozart Requiem. I want more! :)

ChrisNichols

Is the Dawnheart (artifact) intended as a replacement for or reinterpretation of the Heart of Midnight (a giant living heart that animated the highest tower of Castle Ravenloft) in House of Strahd (the 2nd edition remake of I6)?

Bruce

The Dayheart is indeed what becomes of the living tower with its heart showing in the original I6

LordDiggori

For Bruce, How did the DM kill you with Strahd so "cruelly"? Was it THE Monte Cook that DMed? :D

Bruce

My wizard stepped where he shouldn't and suddenly I appeared lying down in a small place, wood pressed against my face.. A coffin! I look out through the eyes of my raven familiar and see a caped man sitting on a coffin. The man says something like, "It's curtains for you," and bites the head off the raven. Then I had to roll up a new character. yes, Monte Cook :-)

Gotten

Has the work that S&S did on the Ravenloft 3rd ed been used in revising the adventure, or was it ignored? Why?

Bruce

As we noted earlier, we wanted to focus only on I6, so including anything that came after I6 would have messed up that vision.

James

Well, as we said before, our focus for this book was almost entirely on Castle Ravenloft and the immediate surroundings--what's covered in the original I6. Yeah, what Bruce said. :)

ChrisNichols

It's kind of a shame that the 3E Ravenloft material got ignored. Andrew Wyatt wrote a brilliant section on Barovia in Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol. 1.

Gratzu

So what elements did you decide to change? (Aside from the rules and descriptive text that is) Why did you decide to change those elements?

Bruce

Describing Expedition to CR as 'ignoring' material later than I6 isn't really fair to what the product we wrote represents.

James

I think each of us added a bit of our own nightmares to the basic framework of the original adventure.

There were some particularly goofy examples of bad humor in the original that didn't survive the translation. (Others did.)

Bruce

Someone's identified the Dayheart as something that got more than an update, but an actual transformation. However, many other things are updated--and the many many empty spaces of the original castle now contain additional threats and connections.

James

But mostly I think I'd put our changes into the category of "creative embellishment"--we took a masterpiece and added our own flourishes.

Iddig

If there are more adventures for Ravenloft, will they all be some supernatural baddie? Or will it sometimes be just a guy who's the antagonist? Part of horror for me, is the "Not knowing for sure what's going on".

James

Well, at this time we have no more Ravenloft adventures announced, though there are more Expedition adventures (and plenty of other adventures) on the way.

Bruce

Yeah, hard to say until a particular adventure is concepted who will be the main threat. In this case, Strahd is too much a part of the whole package not to highlight him at the outset.

ChrisNichols

Why did you change the Vistani from human gypsies with strange powers to mix of comparatively normal humans and halflings? Why make Madame Eva an annis hag?

James

Well, in I6 the Vistani were "gypsies" with no strange powers. Gypsy is a real-world term that's pretty emotionally loaded for a lot of people, so we tried to avoid it.

Bruce

I have nothing to add to whatever James notes on this topic.

James

In 3E, we've presented halflings as having what you might call a "gypsy" lifestyle, so that's why I included them among the Vistani. Plus, we wanted to make sure the adventure still felt like D&D (and not d20 Gothic), which is why there are elves in the woods as well.

And Madame Eva is a hag because her "sisters" are... It's related to the same issue--making sure the adventure feels like a part of your D&D campaign world, with recognizable D&D monsters. Hags represent that witch/seer archetype in D&D, so we ran with them.

So I guess that's a pretty significant set of "creative embellishments"... :)

Gotten

Question on design: How do you feel the encounter new “one page” format has really enhanced this adventure? Do you see it as an improvement or not? I’m asking because I’m not sure it’s a good idea INSIDE the Castle, since encounters areas that are very close are treated as having “walls” in between them and so the adventure is less dynamic / organic :) (Especially in the Crypt)

James

I'm not sure I understand. We didn't add walls--in fact, quite the contrary--the new format lets us treat multiple rooms as a single encounter area, which I think is one of its strengths.

Bruce

Overall, I like the adventure format. You do raise an interesting point--in maps not designed originally for the format, there may be some room for dispute. However, I think it works well for me when I DM, so by that metric (the metric I always use when I design), I think it'll appeal to many other DMs.

James

I guess I do see it as an improvement, for precisely that reason--it helps us get beyond thinking of rooms completely separate from what's just on the other side of a door. The crypts might be one place where that approach doesn't work as well, because it's such a large encounter area...

... but still better, I think, to view it as a handful of regions rather than two dozen 10 x 10 rooms with weird monsters inside.

WizO_Shadow

Thank you everyone for coming tonight to the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft chat with Bruce Cordell and James Wyatt! And a special thank you to our guests for coming here and discussing their new product with us! You can find the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure at your local gaming store!