Ravenloft Campaign based on Modules

[TrinixxofWestmarch]

What's the general concensus of our esteemed members on running a campaign through the Ravenloft modules from start to finish?

This is slightly problematic due to the fact that the modules as published don't allow for linear PC progression; the PC level requirements tend to vary wildly across modules, jumping up and down on a case-by-case basis.

I doubt whether all the modules could be included anyway. So here's the real question: if you were to start a Ravenloft campaign based on the published modules, which would you choose, what order would you run them in, and what would need to be excluded? (in order not to do violence to the chronology).

Cheers,
-T

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

I have always largely written my own adventures for my campaigns, though I have used some canon adventures and some others from netbooks in the past. I would say on average, no more than a quarter of the adventures in each of my campaigns would be written by prewritten by another person, I just liked to make things up.

Unfortunately, this means I have never ran a campaign where all of the adventures have been those I have either bought or downloaded.

[Joël of the FoS]

Using John's timeline and my own preference, here's my list. The must-do are signaled with ***.

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The hexad ones are great. Play them in the right order:

Night of the Walking Dead *** - Levels 1-3
Touch of Death - Levels 3-5
Feast of Goblyns - Levels 4-7
Ship of Horror - Levels 8-10 (just keep the boat part and avoid the last parts)
From the Shadows - Levels 9-12 (be sure you read the Strahd novels to make yourself comfortable with these events)
Roots of Evil - Levels 9-12

(year 736 to 740)

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And these:


year 741: The Awakening ***
year 742: Hour of the Knife ***
year 744: When Black Roses Bloom ***** (Soth must not have left RL)
year 747: The Evil Eye ***** (start of Malloccio's reign)
year 749: Neither Man Nor Beast
year 750: Bleak House (death of Van Richten)

year 751: Servants of Darkness ***, followed by The Shadow Rift (SoD is excellent, not so sure about TSRift)

after 754: Dark of the Moon

any shattering catastrophy year: Vecna reborn (weird but cool), then a few years after - Die Vecna Die! (make sure the dungeon crawl parts are smaller then in the book)

Other without real important timing:

as past flashback: House of Strahd *****
irrelevant year question : Castles Forlorn ***
year 738 The Created
CotN adventures (of which the one with Azenwrath being quite cool)

Avoid (unless big changes are made):

The Forgotten Terror
A Light in the Belfry
Death Unchained
Death Ascendant
Thoughts of Darkness

[Daisu]

i tried to run such a campaign, i used the mists as form of time travel, mostly before GC. think of it as the quantium leap solution. it works.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Personally, I think the modules work best when woven into a homespun campaign. I realize, of course that not everyone has time for that. My own campaign is about 50/50. I wouldn't try to run ALL the modules. Some of them are stinkers, and some of them are repetitious. (If you're running Adam's Wrath, From the Shadows, Hour of the Knife and the Created, I'd advise altering them drasticly lest you hear your players say "We're all dead without a choice AGAIN!??!?!!")

Rather than going in level order, I'd rather go geographically as much as possible, and scale the encounters by level. The old "The mists whisk you away" tactic works in moderation, but at the end of each adventure, it can get old fast.

[Daisu]

I did the same a 50/50 and also i started in richetmulot, before going to NotWD. I did a ghost adventure of my own for the first (been trying to write it to submit, but losted on disks and archive misplaced), then did Nightmare lands first adventure (which effects a PC with Hypnos' control) well running it in Richelmulot, letting PCs encounter the NPCs before the NPCs were in Scholar of Decay, also side trek of Book of prince of Twlight (sorry hard to remember this far back) which was being printed by the guy in its back history, while three sects of priest of ezra were trying to stop him for different reasons. And main part of thegame in richetmulot was dealing with a rogue group of Talons.
Lots of referencing!

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

I would say that roughly 10% od the adventures I run are from modules I have bought or downloaded, the rest all come the dark regions of my imagination. I did run Servants of Darkness, Prince of Shadows (from the Shadow Rift accessory) and Dark of the Moon (with alteations at the end so Gregor survives) in one campaign, but those were the only ones that I hadn't written myself.

Also, do not forget the Children of the Night and the Kargatane books for more adventures. They will need conrversion work, but they are good, just flesh them out a little

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

So far my campaign has been:

Pity the Child - from CoTN: Ghosts
The Clockmaker's Legacy - homebrew
The Carnival - just a brief intro to Carnival, based on the book
Seepage - from CotN: Created
The Mordentshire Miser - homebrew
Vir Stannum - homebrew
The Sinister Secrets of Southmoore - homebrew
The Evil Eye - highly recommended (altered a bit)
Van Richten Revealed - homebrew
Undying Justice - from Chilling Tales
Feast of Goblyns - (altered a lot)
All the World's a Stage - homebrew/Islands of Terror
Feasting with the Falcons - homebrew

[Guillius]

The hexad ones are great. Play them in the right order:

Night of the Walking Dead *** - Levels 1-3
Touch of Death - Levels 3-5
Feast of Goblyns - Levels 4-7
Ship of Horror - Levels 8-10 (just keep the boat part and avoid the last parts)
From the Shadows - Levels 9-12 (be sure you read the Strahd novels to make yourself comfortable with these events)
Roots of Evil - Levels 9-12

(year 736 to 740)

Just started running these in this exact order. Anyone reading this if you have any tips on how this has been done before or maybe a link to another fan that has done this it would be appreciated. I've been a long time lurker but hard to keep up with the amount of forums I like to read so apologies for no one really knowing me heheh.

[Charney]

I've randomly ran the various Modules I had obtain throughout the years.

736: Feast of Goblyns followed by a lot of homebrew adventures.
750: House of Strahd
751: Requiem
751: Bleak House as the last of my games in 2ED.

These are the only ones but I do plan on doing a Death Undaunted campaign if I could just find JWM outline for inspiration how to use the 3 Horsemen.

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

Am I the only person who likes A Light in the Belfry?

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

Am I the only person who likes A Light in the Belfry?

Maybe, I didn't really like it either.

[Nyarlathotep]

This is great, I'm working on a very similar campaign. Back when I actually played 2nd edition, I wasn't very big on adventure modules. The only one I owned was Hour of the Knife. But now I'm having the urge to play some old school Ravenloft (3rd edition was great, but the heroic fantasy focus of most of the class abilities detracted from the horror). Since I'm a bit older now and don't have as much time to plan my campaigns and since many of my players have no experience with the setting, I kinda want to run them through all the major events (and any good side adventures) from the beginning.
One question though is, is there a hard chronology for the adventures as written (without making alterations to make them fit)? Which adventures have a hard and fast timeframe and which can fit in anywhere? I'm mostly looking for an impartial chronology of all the modules based on the events within them (as I've probably not read them yet) and a list of which adventures are timeline neutral. It seems like most of the responses are very subjective to the tastes of the poster (which is what the OP asked), but I'm looking for something a little more impartial so that I can make my own judgement on what gets cut or changed.

A second question I have is, which Adventures, if any, feature Rudolph Van Richten? As my PC's don't know Ravenloft, I want to maximize their contact and sympathy for him before killing him off in Bleak House.

[Mangrum]

The campaign I ran back in the day was almost entirely based on modules. I really enjoyed stitching them together with the use of new and continuing characters. It was also fairly chaotic, with a lot of personality conflicts among players and a certain degree of revolving-door PCs.

Without going into much detail, the campaign started with outlander PCs in a homebrew world. The plan was to complete the Hyskosa's Hexad tale, but we never got that far.

Order of adventures:

The Created (PCs enter RL)
Night of the Walking Dead
(PCs reach Core for the first time in Lamordia)
"Bride of Mordenheim" from Book of Crypts
Horror's Harvest (Dungeon Mag)
"Blood in Moondale" from Book of Crypts
"The Dark Minstrel" from Book of Crypts
Touch of Death
Ghost of Mistmoor (set in Valachan, adapting the names to suit)
The Price of Revenge (Dungeon Mag)
Feast of Goblyns
Hour of the Knife
Homebrew based on the House of Lament
(Party splits in two; side party goes off and does "The Cedar Chest" from Book of Crypts and a homebrew, then disbands and eventually, briefly melts back into main group)
"Through Darkened Eyes" from Chilling Tales
The Awakening
When Black Roses Bloom
"Gazing Into the Abyss" from Chilling Tales
Castles Forlorn

...and that's where it petered out. I'd planned on next running a modified version of "A Duality of Vision," I think it is, from Children of the Night: Ghosts, then Dark of the Moon, and so on.

[Ryan Naylor]

Am I the only person who likes A Light in the Belfry?

No.

I also liked the Forgotten Terror, except you *must* run Castle Spulzeer first for it to make any sense.