running first adventure looking for advice

[Ebonshade]

So, come Janurary I'm going to start to run a ravenloft campaign, i'm working on the first adventure now. So far the people that have never played are going to make outlander characters, so they and their pcs can experience it at the same time. One wants to be a half vistani, so i'm going to at least give them any info about spells and such they need. The plan is possilby to have them be level 2, having each just finished their first serious adventure, only to walk into the mists. I was thinking of having them walk into the mists for a bit then place them on the Darkonese boarder. Once the outlander pcs gather I was going to throw up the boarder under them make them either run south into falkvoia, or further into darkon. If they run into Falkovia I'm going to have them possibly thrown into prison, but that depends on their behavior. One will be playing an elf, so they'll defiently have to be careful. the issue i'm having is, what to have them do if they stay in darkon. I was thinking of having come across a gremishka infested house they could clear out to use as base for the early run. I'm not really sure where to go from there. mainly on when to end the adventure.

[CorvusCornix]

Well, in my experience, the most important aspect of the very first adventure is to give the players a solid motivation. Do you want the outsiders to hunt for the door to freedom (out of Ravenloft)? Although this might be difficult, as half of the group are from Ravenloft, and therefore - most likely - won't share this motivation. Maybe you already have some experience with your players? Do you know whether they enjoy a good treasure hunt, or do they love heavy roleplaying, or action-laden adventures? I'd suggest you might want to first develop a basic, overarching plot and "persuade" your players to follow it. Give them some hint of an ancient artifact, or powerful curse, or have your major villain make an entrance and give your players a reason to want to hunt him down... Something like that.

Falkovnia (and especially the prisons) can be a very frustrating place, especially for the first adventure. I'd have the players stay at the border to Falkovnia for a few adventures first, so that they get a good impression of how terrible that domain is, before finally giving them a VERY good reason to have to travel there. That way, they know that they need to tread VERY lightly and maintain a very low profile.

My experience with outsider-PCs was a mixed one so far: try as I might, I couldn't get them motivated to do much beside searching for a way out. Following that, I had all other groups start as natives... I'm not saying it doesn't work, I just want to point out some of the pitfalls...

All that said, I believe Darkon is a good starting point - just bear in mind, that your PCs will lose their memories if they stay there for longer than 3 months (after 1d3 months, if I remember correctly). If you don't want that, the other domains bordering on Falkovnia are also good starting points.

[brass]

All that said, I believe Darkon is a good starting point - just bear in mind, that your PCs will lose their memories if they stay there for longer than 3 months (after 1d3 months, if I remember correctly). If you don't want that, the other domains bordering on Falkovnia are also good starting points.

Corvus make a good point about Darkon, you may want to give the players some warning moments where they forget simple items about their home world. Perhaps you just can't remember your aunts name , she taught you to bind a wound and used to come to mind when you now bind a wound. Perhaps one of the group suddenly can't remember the name of town or country they are from and the rest of the group has to keep reminding him.

[Ebonshade]

One thing I learned from the game paranoia, is the joys of note passing. When they start to go into any detail about their past lives after a few sessions I'll be passing them notes that will be mention how that seems so fuzzy. The two native players will be probly going into decent detail about their charcters. I have no real idea how detailed the others will get, so it may well make it far to easy for them to be claimed.

I may well be better off keeping them in Darkon for a few levels. I'm also going to give the pcs homework of writing up as good a biography as they can, and giving me a copy. I tend to keep the character sheets, so that makes having darkon claim them so much easier. The other issue was language one of the native players made the comment of having common be a gutter version of Darkonese. They may well perceive the fact their claiming is just giving them a better grasp of the tongue around them.

I'm thinking gremishka house is probly a good place to end the adventure. I could have a gang of the little buggers invade the town and then have the characters chase them down to the house. I was deffiently thinking of having that entire house seem like a subverted telling of gremlins gone wrong (ie they devoured the parent mogwai like creature, then overtook the people living there while they slept.). I could reward them with the house and see how they like what's happened so far. I think a motivation for at least then would be to protect the townspeople. THe only issue being i think is the fact the grimshka are very squishy. Then again, I could easily make some of the house ones stronger.