Hey all,
I've been away from Ravenloft for a long while, but I'm going to be coming back soon as my 5E group wants to play Curse of Strahd.
Have any of you run it? Do you have suggestions? What worked well, what didn't? I've read most of the module, and I know there are definitely things that are...out of place with regards to classic Ravenloft. But are those things bad?
This won't be an extended campaign beyond the module, so we won't be visiting other domains, etc.
One of the more...contentious things I find with the module is the "soulless" Barovians. I'm thinking of eliminating it altogether, but before I do anything like that, I wanted to know what other folks who have run the module found.
Curse of Strahd Advice from Ravenloft Fans
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The Lesser Evil
- Evil Genius
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- Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2004 3:17 am
Re: Curse of Strahd Advice from Ravenloft Fans
I've played in it but didn't run it, and one issue in the game that exploded in our group was Rictavio's seeming mass murder/genocide of the Vistani in the camp by sending in the tiger. That caused a big argument in our group because the DM made it vague that the tiger might kill everybody in the camp, women and children included. It caused or at least contributed to some pretty bad rancor within the group. I would recommend that part of the adventure be handled with care.
Re: Curse of Strahd Advice from Ravenloft Fans
Thanks for the heads-up; I'll keep that in mind!
Re: Curse of Strahd Advice from Ravenloft Fans
I have run Curse of Strahd and Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts. These two 5e adventures helped bring me into the classic Ravenloft setting, and I started to read a lot of books and understand more about the original setting. Looking back now, I can share a few things I feel now about both of these 5e Ravenloft adventures.
Curse of Strahd's attempt to expand into a 1-10 campaign I felt was...forced. The 1-3 section called Death House imo was enjoyable. However, everything that happens in the Krezk area, with the wereravens, most of the hooks in Vallaki, and ESPECIALLY the Amber Temple felt very...forced, stale, and like they were trying to rewrite other classic Ravenloft adventures into Barovia. The hags in the windmill are also waaaay too powerful for the level the adventurers would be (and are a poor remake of the hags of Tepest). Baba Lysaga was pretty interesting, and the creeping hut coming to life was a nice touch, but I can't really see much with Lysaga being tied into the campaign. Even the way they introduce her in CoS feels very much like she's mostly irrelevant. Overall, Curse of Strahd felt like they tried to throw in more than it needed to be. This is my problem with WotC trying to turn the classic weekend in hell adventures into campaigns that allow little customization. If I were to run CoS again, I would most likely do it as close to the original as possible and drop a lot of the added stuff. But then one would have to ask the question...why not use the original then? It's not like AD&D is hard to convert to 5e tbh (been doing it for classic RL and so far its gone very well thanks to Jester's guide and monster manual). So my advice for CoS would be to just read it all the way through and pick out what you like, remove what you don't like, and add whatever you want. You seem pretty familiar with the classic RL, so I'm sure there will be parts of the original you might want to toss in.
The biggest glaring issue that really set people off is the Amber Temple. The Amber Temple defines what the Dark Powers are...and its just vestiges of dead gods sealed inside a temple by old wizards. That's it. The beauty of the Dark Powers were always they were beyond divinity, beyond the supernatural, and the setting took away the focus on mortals being the tools of divine beings struggling for dominance, but were ragtag adventures struggling to deal with very real and very horrifying creatures of darkness that walked among the living. But apparently Tracy Hickman and Chris Perkins just had to throw the gods into RL so yeah there is nothing special about the Dark Powers in CoS. If you have no intention of using other domains and want to run CoS as its own thing? Sure the Amber Temple is okay...but it still feels kind of like a cheap way for Hickman to further take a jab at the classic setting and provide a very boring answer as to what the Dark Powers are. I personally didn't use the Amber Temple in my CoS, and would advise not using it unless you like it for what it is.
Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts on the other hand, was very well made. This one had multiple writers who were fans of the classic setting, so it has better references that don't feel like some cheap re-imagining. Perkins and Hickman didn't work on this one, and it shows. I honestly can't recommend this one enough for 5e RL stuff. I enjoyed it so much that I've been contemplating trying to re-write a few things to make it fit into the Classic RL setting. It introduces a new village inside of Barovia called Orasnou, and it also has a strong connection to Faerun so anyone coming from there will probably enjoy it more. This one does use the Amber Temple as well, but it does so in a way that I found to be very enjoyable as did the players. Overall, I would recommend for a good "new" Ravenloft experience, I would suggest DMs run players through all of Misty Fortunes and then just send them into the Castle. They'll be leveled enough to go ahead and take on Strahd with plenty of magic items at their disposal. Just do the tarokka reading before the castle and let them find the three items they need as per the original would have them do (no need to go over to Vallaki or Krezk). This way, they get the best that the 5e RL has to offer without the forced stuff that would diminish the experience. But hey, use whatever you like of course.
Curse of Strahd's attempt to expand into a 1-10 campaign I felt was...forced. The 1-3 section called Death House imo was enjoyable. However, everything that happens in the Krezk area, with the wereravens, most of the hooks in Vallaki, and ESPECIALLY the Amber Temple felt very...forced, stale, and like they were trying to rewrite other classic Ravenloft adventures into Barovia. The hags in the windmill are also waaaay too powerful for the level the adventurers would be (and are a poor remake of the hags of Tepest). Baba Lysaga was pretty interesting, and the creeping hut coming to life was a nice touch, but I can't really see much with Lysaga being tied into the campaign. Even the way they introduce her in CoS feels very much like she's mostly irrelevant. Overall, Curse of Strahd felt like they tried to throw in more than it needed to be. This is my problem with WotC trying to turn the classic weekend in hell adventures into campaigns that allow little customization. If I were to run CoS again, I would most likely do it as close to the original as possible and drop a lot of the added stuff. But then one would have to ask the question...why not use the original then? It's not like AD&D is hard to convert to 5e tbh (been doing it for classic RL and so far its gone very well thanks to Jester's guide and monster manual). So my advice for CoS would be to just read it all the way through and pick out what you like, remove what you don't like, and add whatever you want. You seem pretty familiar with the classic RL, so I'm sure there will be parts of the original you might want to toss in.
The biggest glaring issue that really set people off is the Amber Temple. The Amber Temple defines what the Dark Powers are...and its just vestiges of dead gods sealed inside a temple by old wizards. That's it. The beauty of the Dark Powers were always they were beyond divinity, beyond the supernatural, and the setting took away the focus on mortals being the tools of divine beings struggling for dominance, but were ragtag adventures struggling to deal with very real and very horrifying creatures of darkness that walked among the living. But apparently Tracy Hickman and Chris Perkins just had to throw the gods into RL so yeah there is nothing special about the Dark Powers in CoS. If you have no intention of using other domains and want to run CoS as its own thing? Sure the Amber Temple is okay...but it still feels kind of like a cheap way for Hickman to further take a jab at the classic setting and provide a very boring answer as to what the Dark Powers are. I personally didn't use the Amber Temple in my CoS, and would advise not using it unless you like it for what it is.
Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts on the other hand, was very well made. This one had multiple writers who were fans of the classic setting, so it has better references that don't feel like some cheap re-imagining. Perkins and Hickman didn't work on this one, and it shows. I honestly can't recommend this one enough for 5e RL stuff. I enjoyed it so much that I've been contemplating trying to re-write a few things to make it fit into the Classic RL setting. It introduces a new village inside of Barovia called Orasnou, and it also has a strong connection to Faerun so anyone coming from there will probably enjoy it more. This one does use the Amber Temple as well, but it does so in a way that I found to be very enjoyable as did the players. Overall, I would recommend for a good "new" Ravenloft experience, I would suggest DMs run players through all of Misty Fortunes and then just send them into the Castle. They'll be leveled enough to go ahead and take on Strahd with plenty of magic items at their disposal. Just do the tarokka reading before the castle and let them find the three items they need as per the original would have them do (no need to go over to Vallaki or Krezk). This way, they get the best that the 5e RL has to offer without the forced stuff that would diminish the experience. But hey, use whatever you like of course.