While most of this forum (myself included) likes to play Ravenloft as a serious setting, reading through some of the modules reminded of the gonzo fantasy aesthetics of stuff like the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.
I mean consider the following:
The Awakening has a cat apocalypse caused by a mummy and a random PC getting possessed to become a deus ex machina
Adam's Wrath opens with a TPK, followed by a golemization, then a brain transplant into clone bodies
Hour of The Knife has a set-up for PCs to die left and right, get replaced by doppelgangers, then resurrected
Dark of The Moon has the PC turned into werewolves
Considering that these adventures are all mid level, an "adventure path" of Ravenloft modules will probably yield a PC that has died at least twice (technically), been cloned, and turned to a werewolf and flesh golem (but got better). Have you ever run a more tongue-in-cheek/gonzo version of the Ravenloft setting?
Never done it, but from day 1, there's been the potential for over-the-top goofiness or camp, such as the punny names in the crypts below Castle Ravenloft in I6. As much beloved as Feast of Goblyns is, it's full of stark examples too, such as Radaga's canyon where she's encountered sitting in the ribcage of a giant pyreskeleton. The Book of Crypts is filled with a lot of just plain weird things as well, such as a cult of inexplicably high level fighter Malar cultists led by an illithid of all things. And in the Created the player characters get body switched with Pinnochio style puppets.
It's all in the presentation.... There are some truly ridiculous things that happen in Ravenloft, but if they are spun as serious, they are horrifying. If spun as funny... they are pretty funny. There's a fine line between Hammer and Troma. A lot of it is how much you empathize with the victims. After all, remember what Mel Brooks said: “Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.”
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
Just run Feast of Goblyns. Seriously, so over-the-top camp people have been writing apologetics for it ever since. My players lost all decorum after the bridge room with the skeletons that swing down by their ankles. It was forevermore referred to as the "Chinese acrobat skeletons" room, and when they returned back, someone used mage hand and scrying to unfasten all their ankle chains before entering the room, then the walked the bridge and watched them all blithely jump to their re-deaths. Comedy gold, horror kryptonite.
