Café de Nuit

So, I'm laying the ground work to run a version of "Curse of Strahd" for my daughter's gaming group, and plan on including a bunch of call back to some of the older stuff - does anyone remember if the Kargatane's bookshop in Vallaki was ever named? And if so, what was it?

I have dug through decades old notes, PDF and such, and have NOT been able to find anything.

Please and thank you in advance

I could be wrong but i believe it was just called The Vallaki Bookshop with the nearby pub being the Malodorous Goat

brothersale wrote: Thu Oct 15, 2026 2:19 am I could be wrong but i believe it was just called The Vallaki Bookshop with the nearby pub being the Malodorous Goat

I might be conflating this with Dion Fernandez' adventure, "The Nine of Hearts" - available here, via FoS - but I too think this was the case. It was just "The Vallaki Bookshop", and the tavern.

Like many, I primarily used the maps by the "Mordent Cartographic Society" for my games that the Frat also still stores - alas, the map of Vallaki that I used does not seem to be there, any more, or was done by someone else.

The Malodorous Goat Tavern was the name of the online message board community hosted by Kargatane, the premier fan site and former unofficial-to-official online hub for the Ravenloft Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. Set up in the style of a fictitious Barovian tavern, the message board served as a central gathering place for fans, contributors, and even game developers to discuss Ravenloft lore, adventures, and netbooks. The Malodorous Goat Tavern officially closed its doors on October 31, 2003 "destroyed by fire" on Halloween night, as part of the roleplay-heavy theme of the community. This coincided with the Secrets of the Kargatane team choosing to end their seven-year run as the primary online hub for Ravenloft. Shortly after the fire, many of the active community members and moderators migrated to form the Fraternity of Shadows, which took up the mantle as the new fan-base headquarters.

Are there still any mirrors/archived versions of the forum? -- I think I did, in fact, register there, in the weeks before it closed, but never posted. I remember not understanding that the forum had simply folded, and it took me another year, at least, before I joined the Frat.

...This was a while ago.

There are no currently available archives of the forum, IIRC Stu of the Kargatane has said he has a copy of the forum, so other members of the Kargatane may have copies, but as of this time they are not available.

Thank you for the info. I had been looking around a bit, but - yeah, some screenshots here and there, but never even a "Wayback Machine"-style mirror. That's sad; probably wise on the Kargatane's part because of all the notorious content-scrapping. Surely very sad, though; some awesome stuff there that would deserve to be remembered.

I do not recall that the bookstore had a name.

FWIW, I have a back of of the old K content. I wanted a copy on my hard drive so I could search through it and the rest of my RL stuff. While I will not recreate the whole K's site without their approuval, I could provide specific info if you need it.

Thanks for all the replies & info. I was there, back in the day, it's just been a bit since the Kargatane days.

Joël of the FoS wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:10 am I do not recall that the bookstore had a name.

FWIW, I have a back of of the old K content. I wanted a copy on my hard drive so I could search through it and the rest of my RL stuff. While I will not recreate the whole K's site without their approuval, I could provide specific info if you need it.

Thank you kindly. The thing for me personally is less that I would think that I'm missing anything specific: It's just that the first six or seven years of the community that is now clearly much more the Frat than it was ever the Kargatane are missing. That's kind of sad. We're never gonna get closer to the original 2e feeling than through the records of the people who were talking about the game as it was coming out. And that those records are, of course, now missing. -- Now, as I said above, no problem with the old stuff staying out of the hands of the usual AI scrappers. Maybe one of you guys will one day write a book about how it was to be a Ravenloft fan in the 1990s. I'd settle for that. (Similar books have been made for Greyhawk and FR, IIRC.So, this is not at all meant as a joke. )

In here in the FAQ, it says "I'm running/playing a game in your Tavern, and want a record of where my game is up to!

Email stu@kargatane.com, and we'll organise for you to get transcripts of your games currently running in the Tavern."

Perhaps that option is still available.

Joel: Please make back-ups of this rare and ancient treasure! You hold notes and pieces of forgotten knowledge!