Café de Nuit

Salutations, I am Nakraal, somehow the name was rejected on registration so now I am Baba Ral ..

Long long time DM, mostly in Birthright, but I was fortunate to walk in the mists only as a player. The idea of DMing RL has matured those last months and I now am determined to prepare and pull together my first campaign in the demiplane of dread.

I will certainly need your help as the world is much more complex than I first thought. And thats good .. And horrific.

Welcome, Baba Ral! We're glad to be here to help you get acquainted with our little land of terror.

Not sure what happened with your username, but if you want me to change it, let me know via PM.

Hello everyone!

I've been a longtime fan of Ravenloft since the days of the Kargatane website and ran a fairly successful campaign for 2nd ed some time ago (although it ended up mutating into Monty Python's Realm of Dread in the end... ). I absolutely love this site and always look forward to learning more about the Land of Mists. Keep up the good work!

Welcome El Gambito! What finally made you take the plunge and sign up?

I encountered a very interesting chap called Dominic who suggested that it would be a good idea for me to join...

Seriously though, it's been the release of Curse of Strahd and the upcoming Strange Aeons Pathfinder stuff that have rekindled my obsession with all things spooky and Ravenloft-ish.

El Gambito wrote:Seriously though, it's been the release of Curse of Strahd and the upcoming Strange Aeons Pathfinder stuff that have rekindled my obsession with all things spooky and Ravenloft-ish.

Awesome. Good to see that Curse is bringing in new blood as well as bringing old fans back into the fold... welcome!

Hi, I'm Nirnel. I have been following Ravenloft for more than 15 years, and buying any material I can acquire (pretty few books, in Spain), but I will only start running a game now.

Bienvenidos, nirnel! Hope your game goes well! We're here to help, if you need us...

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote:Bienvenidos, nirnel! Hope your game goes well! We're here to help, if you need us...

Thank you. I started by reading the module twice and tweaking the lore to adjust to Ravenloft as we knew it, but I might still make a few changes. I also intend to use DMG optional rules for a grittier campaign (slow natural healing, maybe a bit of the gritty version of resting, so they recover gradually the HP and spell slots over a few days) and I don't know whether it would be too much in this module.

I am going to use milestones to level up, but I will absolutely not make my characters level up in the middle of a dungeon, only in downtime. I'm toying with the idea of running a level 1 introductory adventure before being snatched by the mists, so they would be level 2 in Death House, and if they are too weak with the optional rules I'm going to use, I think I'll let them level once or twice beyond 10th level (not sure about it yet).

When we are finished with CoS, I plan to convert the old modules and play them. GC, the Evil Eye, GH, Bleak House... These ones at least, to include the main events. A few (or a lot) of the adventures including van Richten, adventures I like or have read good reviews about (like Castles Forlorn), some homebrew about dread possibilities (or even from scratch)...

Do you have any dire warning about any of the above points? (like "Don't do it like that, you fool! It will be a disaster because of X!")

Always a Ravenloft fan but not so much a fan of the modules... Been playing with my kids and their friends for the past five years and last night I sat down to read I10 House on Gryphon Hill, a game I remember as being a miserable experience as a player over 20 years ago, and thinking my DM made it better cause as read it seems well... bad.

Inspired to see if it was, just me, I sought out reviews and here I am. I may post my memories of Ravenloft the module as well as the other memories under tyrannical DM's running the Demiplane of Dread. If only because I find great humor nowadays in the lengths my DM's went to in order to keep Strahd alive in the basic module and to keep the train on the rails in others.

Welcome, TwoGunBob! Always good to get the player's point of view for a change. We mostly have DM's here, so it would be educational, for sure.

TwoGunBob wrote:Always a Ravenloft fan but not so much a fan of the modules... Been playing with my kids and their friends for the past five years and last night I sat down to read I10 House on Gryphon Hill, a game I remember as being a miserable experience as a player over 20 years ago, and thinking my DM made it better cause as read it seems well... bad.

Inspired to see if it was, just me, I sought out reviews and here I am. I may post my memories of Ravenloft the module as well as the other memories under tyrannical DM's running the Demiplane of Dread. If only because I find great humor nowadays in the lengths my DM's went to in order to keep Strahd alive in the basic module and to keep the train on the rails in others.

Haha! good to hear and we'd love to hear about it!

Hey everyone,
I'm a long time roleplayer (well, mostly GM to be honest) and a huge fan of Ravenloft. Me and my group started playing D&D back when b/x was new, then moved over to AD&D and many other RPGs. However, we never played the original Ravenloft module when it came out and to be honest RL never caught my eye back then (we're talking the AD&D 1e and 2e peiod here). For our horror fix we played Call of Cthulhu instead.

Fast forward to 2010. This is where we came back to RPGs after some 15 years of not playing. I happened upon an old copy of "Domains of Dread" and that was it. Hooked. For me, RL is the perfect D&D setting, combining fantasy elements with horror (which is my absolute favourite flavor of RPGs these days).

Ravenloft is easily my favourite D&D setting and we have been playing in the setting using the OpenQuest 2 (BRP variant) rules as I think that old D&D is somewhat badly suited for RL.

However, the 5e rules changed that and next up after we wrap up some stuff in our current Call of Cthulhu game (Masks of Nyarlahotep) I will run Curse of Strahd and expand the setting using the 2e and 3e RL books for inspiration.

Pretty exited about that

Yep, that's a little about me...

Welcome dawnrazor. I think you'll find some kindred spirits here. Ravenloft is our favorite setting too!

So I made this account a while back. I could have sworn I properly introduced myself in this thread, but apparently I forgot to.

I'm relatively new to RPG's, D&D, and gothic horror. I've only been playing d&d for two and a half years now, but I've really thrown myself head first into it. I've been interested in gothic horror for a bit longer than that, ever since falling in love with the story of Frankenstein.

Anyways, of all D&D settings, I'd have to say ravenloft is probably my favorite. The concept is genius, and I hope to use it to create amazing stories for those I DM for.

On that note- I was in a 5th edition curse of Strahd play by post game that died back in October. I'm strongly considering buying the module and picking up where my last DM left off. I'll probably be making several posts asking for advice on handling certain situations in the future.