Need Some Help With Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

[Snake]

Hello Everyone,

I was planning on running an epic level game with my group, but due to several issues that arose I postponed it and now want to run the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft Campaign. Now, I have never ran a pre-made campaign before and I haven't been able to pick up the actual campaign book yet, so I need some help. I saw a thread by Tec-Goblin that sort of confused me. EtCR is in Ravenloft right 3rd/3.5 edition DnD? And what is the general story of the campaign in general? Any help would be great.

Thanks

[Nathan of the FoS]

Hello Everyone,

I was planning on running an epic level game with my group, but due to several issues that arose I postponed it and now want to run the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft Campaign. Now, I have never ran a pre-made campaign before and I haven't been able to pick up the actual campaign book yet, so I need some help. I saw a thread by Tec-Goblin that sort of confused me. EtCR is in Ravenloft right 3rd/3.5 edition DnD? And what is the general story of the campaign in general? Any help would be great.

Thanks

Well, it's not really in the Ravenloft campaign setting; it refers back to the I6 Ravenloft adventure. Basically, it a) updates I6 to v3.5 mechanics and b) elaborates on the original adventure quite a bit to give more options for encounters in and around Castle Ravenloft.

[Snake]

Well, it's not really in the Ravenloft campaign setting; it refers back to the I6 Ravenloft adventure.

So it's before Strahd is pulled into Ravenloft? If it's at Castle Ravenloft, wouldn't it almost have to be after Strahd became a Darklord?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Well, it's not really in the Ravenloft campaign setting; it refers back to the I6 Ravenloft adventure.

So it's before Strahd is pulled into Ravenloft? If it's at Castle Ravenloft, wouldn't it almost have to be after Strahd became a Darklord?

Not exactly...

In I6, there was no Ravenloft (other than the castle itself); Ravenloft the campaign setting hadn't been invented yet, in-game or out-of-game. So there was no idea of "Strahd being pulled into Ravenloft" or "Strahd being a darklord"--those concepts were added later, when the Ravenloft campaign setting was designed drawing on elements of the Ravenloft adventure.

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft goes all the way back to those roots. There is no assumption that "Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread" exists at all; Castle Ravenloft can be placed in any campaign setting, just as was the case in I6. There are no Dark Powers, no darklords, no Fear/Horror/Madness checks, because the adventure is not assumed to be taking place in the Demiplane of Dread.

[Snake]

So just so I understand this before I do it. Is Barovia surrounded by the mists at this point? This would mean that the players would be from another setting such as Faerun, Ebberon, etc. that got stuck in Barovia when it was cursed?

[HuManBing]

I think by this time Strahd has already done the wedding massacre, so Barovia is in the mists as you say.

PCs would most likely have stumbled into it from another campaign setting, but it's possible that they might have grown up in Barovia all their lives.

[Cole Deschain]

Since the village is surrounded by the choking fog, how the PCs get there is kinda irrelevant.

Set it wherever...

But MAN did I6/House of Strahd chew up and spit out PCs....

[steveflam]

Tell me about it. I think we went through quite a few p.cs at the time but still came back for more punishment!

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Don't confuse the choking fog with the Mists. Strahd controls the former, but only the DM controls the latter.

Think of I6 and EtCR as being an "alternate history" version of the castle: one in which Strahd's crime wasn't noticed by the Dark Powers, but by some other evil force. It did make him a vampire, but it left him on the Material Plane rather than sweeping him off to another world to suffer. In EtCR, Strahd has no "darklord" powers, his supernatural bond to the land is his own creation (via dark arcane magics), and he can be permanently killed by PC heroes without mucking up a game-setting.

[Sylaire]

The most important point about the "original" I6 Ravenloft as written is that the village of Barovia is firmly rooted in the game-world. It was not swept off to some alternate plane of existence, and the player characters aren't from some other world as well. This leaves you with three options, as I see it (I'm sure other people including yourself will think of eighteen more by tomorrow morning ):

1) If you have an ongoing campaign world, find a corner of the world for Barovia to fit. This can range from very easy to very difficult, depending on how well-developed your game setting is and the general overtones of it (if you're into published settings, for example, Oerth or Mystara would be a far easier "fit" for Barovia than the Forgotten Realms).

2) Play the adventure as a one-shot, with characters generated for only the adventure (I've actually run the original I6 this way, simply because I wasn't part of an established campaign.). This might actually be a more effective way to do it if you wanted to emphasize the Gothic horror aspects of Ravenloft, simply because it makes it easier to pull no punches with Strahd and his minions without your players pinning you to a real-world wall for exterminating the entire party.

3) Do a bit of retconning and permit the classic "Weekend in Hell" rules from Ravenloft to work...the Mists or some similar plot device carry the characters off to the outskirts of Barovia and return them to their normal campaign.

Oh, hey, after rereading the original post I already thought of another one:

4) If you're starting the campaign with EtCR, you can simply build your campaign world outwards from Barovia so it meshes nicely.

[Snake]

Yeah I'm starting them with this campaign so we'll see how it goes. Thanks for clearing things up guys. I just got the book yesterday so hopefully everything works smoothly.

[LadySoth]

So just so I understand this before I do it. Is Barovia surrounded by the mists at this point? This would mean that the players would be from another setting such as Faerun, Ebberon, etc. that got stuck in Barovia when it was cursed?

I think the Mists as we know them even exist in this book. I picked up a copy a couple of weeks ago and have finally got around to reading it -- boy was I surprised!

Ravenloft without the Mists???!!!???

And there's not even a clear indication where Barovia is actually supposed to be located. . .

WoTC sure sends us mixed messages. "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" seemed like an attempt to integrate RLoft into the main DnD world, seeming to signal an end to the franchise, but then we get an announcement from them that in 2008, a brand new series of RLoft novels is coming out. Anyone else feel a little confused??? I'm glad that they're keeping the series alive, but I don't know if I like all the changes . . .

[Snake]

Is there anyway to incorporate the Ravenloft Tarot deck when the PCs have their fortune read by Madame Eva? I don't know much about the cards, but the ones they tell me to use for a Tarot deck aren't in the Ravenloft version. Any advice? I'd like to get some use out of these Ravenloft cards.

[WolfKook]

Wow! I know a tarokka conversion of that reading would be of great use for most of us who have bought EtCR and plan on playing with it!

[Snake]

Wow! I know a tarokka conversion of that reading would be of great use for most of us who have bought EtCR and plan on playing with it!

Yeah no kidding. At the moment I'm just gonna pick results ahead of time randomly and relay the results in game; unless I use playing cards.