Review: Ravenloft Honorable Mentions

 Not full reviews really today, but some honorable mentions of books and accessories you can use with Ravenloft.

X2 Castle Amber (Basic)

I have talked a lot about Castle Amber and how it is a Proto-Ravenloft setting. Droping this into the Domain of Dread seems like a no-brainer to me. 

B7 Rahasia (Basic)

Likewise I have talked about Rahasia and this one come from Tracy and Laura Hickman. Content from this adventure has found its way into official Ravenloft products for 5e.

Heroes of Horror (3.5)

The lack of proper Ravenloft material for 3e can be partially remedied with Heroes of Horror for D&D 3.5. Though this one moves away from Ravenloft's quasi-Gothic horror and looks for something more D&D like.

Dread Metrol: Into the Mists - An Eberron / Ravenloft Crossover (5e)

Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron gives us an Eberron/Ravenloft crossover. Over 100 pages.

She is the Ancient: A Genderbent Curse of Strahd (5e)

I reviewed this in detail a while back. Great new take on the classic Ravenloft adventure. 

And a couple of really good map packs. Suitable for any edition: Castle Ravenloft Battle Maps and Tessa Presents 113 Maps for Curse of Strahd.

And that ends my exploration into Ravenloft for this Halloween. Who knows, maybe we will return again next year! Plenty of AD&D 2nd products left to explore.

Monstrous Mondays: The Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums

 I have been covering the AD&D 2nd Ed version of Ravenloft all this month. I have also been covering the the Forgotten Realms and currently in the AD&D 2nd Edition era. One thing they both have in common is that a few of the books feature new monsters in AD&D 2nd Monstrous Compendium format.

I reviewed the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums sometime back. Since I have been reviewing the various books I have been printing out the Monstrous Compendium pages and adding them to my three-ring binder for Ravenloft.

As I run across a monster page for these reviews OR from Dragon magazine in my This Old Dragon feature, I print them out (or cut them out as the case may merit) and add them to my binder.

It has taken 30+ years but I feel that the Monstrous Compendium concept is finally living up to its potential for me.

I have been doing the same thing with my Forgotten Realms monsters as I talked about a while back.

Again, I might start mining my other MCs to see what would fit here. I already have one filled with demons and devils, so I wont add those, but I am considering taking the Death Knight from Krynn and putting in this one.

The truth is I am not likely to play AD&D 2nd ed Ravenloft again. BUT my son is running his 5e group through Castle Amber using AD&D 1st ed. So it is possible I could run an AD&D 2nd Ed game again one day. I have mentioned that I am running an AD&D 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms game with my oldest, though we have not played in a while. So I guess never say never.

Despite my concerns with Ravenloft under AD&D 2nd ed, it was my game for the 90s. 

In any case I feel like an archivist in some dusty library, collecting tomes for my own pleasures. 

This is another entry for my RPG Blog Carnival for October!

Review: Islands of Terror (2e)

We are slowly moving through the 1990s and coming up on our next Ravenloft accessory.  This one expanded on the idea of realms not connected to the core, but rather as "islands" in a sea of mist. You ended up in these realms largely by chance aka DM's whim. But the notion does fit with the idea of Ravenloft. As expected, some of this island would later cease to exist. Was it because their Darklords were defeated? Not as evil as the others? Or some other darker fate? Questions like these filled the old RAVENLOFT-L email list for a long time. 

RR4: Islands of Terror (2e)

1992. By Scott Bennie and Colin McComb. Cover art by Jeff Easley. Interior art by Ron Hill, John Knecht and Jaime Lombardo, art and maps by David C. Sutherland III.

For this review I am only considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG. There is no Print on Demand copy yet and I lost my original a long time ago.

This book contains new "island" domains and their darklords. Many pulled from or influenced by other TSR campaign worlds. 

Nidala. This realm is the domain of a Lawful Good Paladin turned crazed zealot. She is now just a Lawful Evil fighter and rules her land with an iron fist. Of course she still sees herself as acting for the good of all. I liked this one because I played a lot of Paladins in my time, and Elena was a great example of her "Lawfulness" overpowering her "Goodness." Plus she still thinks she is a Paladin because the Dark Powers are now granting her her former paladin powers. 

Elena Faith-hold is connected to Kateri Shadowborn from the Darklords book (Ebonbane). Given the descriptions of each and their lands, I am inclined to say they were all from Oerth, the World of Greyhawk.

The Wildlands. This is an African-influenced, fable-like, domain full of talking animals. The animals act like humans in other domains and they are all terrified of the land's Darklord King Crocodile. This darklord is a huge crocodile with the abilities of a 12th-level fighter. 

Scaena. This domain is a theatre controlled by its author-lord, Lemot Sediam Juste. It is a "travelling show" that floats from place to place. It can appear as anything that Juste wishes (writes) it is just a theater building. The obvious influence here is Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera movie. 

I'Cath. This land is obviously from Kara-Tur and one of the few I had used from this book. 

Saragoss. This watery domain is from the Forgotten Realms' Sea of Stars. BUT I misread it back in the day and though it was from Krynn. Remember it was 1992, not much of an internet yet and I did not have ready access to either Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms books. The darklord here is a Pirate Captain who can change into a shark and is a Priest of Umberlee. It is an interesting one and I wanted to use in my failed nautical AD&D 2nd Ed game.

Timor. This is a large, Victorian-like city where the darklord is the Hive Queen of the Marikith. We would see something similar with the 10th Doctor in the Doctor Who episode, The Runaway Bride. The city of Timor is filled with food, no one goes hungry. Why, because the Hive Queen wants to keep the populace fattened up for her children to feed on. Outside of Ravenloft this would make for a nice scary one shot.

Pharazia. While not specifically stated, this land could have originated in the Al-Qadim setting. The darklord, Diamabel is an interesting sort. He sees himself as not just good, but the embodiment of goodly virtues. He is where he is because he has been betrayed by the entire world. 

Staunton Bluffs. I am not sure this one was needed. It does a lot of things that other domains also do. Gothic. Ghosts. We have seen this all before. A man jealous of his brother and his brother's position in the the family. BUT there is a little clue here that gives me some hope. One of the nearby duchies on their homeworld was Avergne. Now this could be the Auvergne of France OR the Averoigne of Glantri and Castle Amber. I am inclined to go with Glantril and Mystara here. Especially since there was a great magical rite performed by the would-be darklord Torrence Bleysmith (also cribbed from Strahd).

Bleysmith is now a ghost. He leaves his people alone, likely due to guilt, and their lives are better for it. 

Nosos. In a horror tale a little too close to reality, this is the land of what happens when the wealthy control everything. It is a vast industrial wasteland of pollution and disease.

We wrap-up the book with four "new" monsters. I say "new" because we have seen some of these before, but with new Ravenloft writeups. One, the Sea Zombie was first published in the AD&D 1st Ed Greyhawk Adventures book with AD&D 2nd Ed stats.

Over-all a good set of new domains and darklords for your Ravenloft game. Like a lot of the Ravenloft books the game stats are limited, so you could adapt this to and edition of Ravenloft you are playing with little to no effort at all.

In Search of Barovia (Ravenloft)

 I have been talking about the AD&D 2nd Edition campaign setting Ravenloft. Every domain in the Land of Mists / Domain of Dread is a copy of some land from one of the other campaign worlds. Darkon and Tovag are copies of old Oerth. Hazlan and I'Cath are from the Forgotten Realms; Thay and Kara-Tur specifically. Sithicus and Falkovnia are from Dragonlance. Lamordia seems to be from an Earth-like world given it has the same months we do. Even Eberron creator Keith Baker has a Domain in Ravenloft from his world. 

But there are two notable exceptions. 

1. First, there are no core domains from Mystara. 
2. Secondly, the black heart of the Core Domains, Barovia, does not have a "home world."

Why? Because Barovia is from Mystara!

Now, please keep this in mind. None of this is supported by real-world evidence at all. There was no secret cabal of ur-Developers at TSR deciding this was true and leaving breadcrumbs for me to find. This is less than circumstantial evidence. This is full-on Conspiracy Theory, tin foil hat territory. No, this makes conspiracy theories look like rational arguments. This is conclusion shopping at its lowest.

But at least it makes more sense than some conspiracy theories. So adjust your tin foil hat, make sure your webcams are turned off, and your phone is nowhere near because we are going down a rabbit hole.

Evidence From the Novels

The Ravenloft novels...were a wild bunch. But we can at least assume they were canon. In the first one, "Vampire of the Mists," Strahd does not know about Faerûn when he meets Jander Sunstar. Jander also does not know about Barovia.  Likewise, in "Knight of the Black Rose," Strahd has never heard of Krynn or Lord Soth, not something that would been true for someone of Strahd's age and position. Everyone knew about Lord Soth. The best evidence comes from "I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire," where Strahd describes his lands and also mentions he has never heard of Azalin (Azalin Rex) or Oerth. 

These are all strikes against Oerth, Krynn, and Abeir-Toril.

Most of the novels in the Ravenloft line are self-contained, so no mention either way of what worlds they might be from originally. 

Evidence from the Campaign Worlds

Going the other direction, we know that the Gods of Krynn keep a pretty tight hold on their world. So much so that Spelljamming and Outer Plane travel to and from Krynn is very difficult. One more strike against Krynn.

The Forgotten Realms have nearly ever square inch of their world map accounted for. If it had been the Realms, we would have heard about it by now. One more strike against Abeir-Toril. OR at least the Toril part, "Forgotten Abeir" might be a different story.

Dark Sun's Athas is a desert wasteland filled with Psionic-enhanced creatures. So there is no way it is from there.

The World of Greyhawk's Oerth has a LOT of land that is unaccounted for. So, we need to find a way to rule it out based on the campaign setting.

Eberon was not created yet, so that one is out as well. 

None of this tells us where Barovia and Strahd are from. It just tells us where they are not from.

So, what does Mystara have to offer us? Well, a lot really.

Mystara

While Tracy Hickman is best known for Dragonlance, that is also one-half Margaret Weiss. So, I am not ready to say Ravenloft is from Krynn based on the Hickman connection alone. But there is another Hickman publication, and it is from Tracy AND Laura Hickman, just like Ravenloft. That is Rahasia.

Rahasia was written by the Hickmans and features body-snatching undead witches, a strong horror trope. Even in the 5e era, The Curse of Strahd adventure, lists Rahasia as an influence. Plus, there are some other solid connections, like finding the same wines in Rahasia's Wizard Tower and in Ravenloft Curse of Strahd. Rahasia is a solid Mystara, or at least a BECMI adventure.

There is also Castle Amber. This Expert Set adventure is explicitly Mystara with the inclusion of Glantri. It also reads like a "Proto-Ravenloft."  I have discussed the Castle Amber/Ravenloft connections before. 

• Ravenloft / Glantri connection
• Averoigne via Ravenloft
• On the Road to Averoigne
• Castle Amber by Candle Light
• Castle Amber, Butterbeer and the Order of the Platinum Dragon

Averoigne was later added to Glantri and the Amber family is said to have come from Old Earth. In many ways the Earth of the Ambers is very, very similar to the Earth of Ravenloft's Gothic Earth.

So, another set of near-evidence is connecting Ravenloft to Mystara. What else do we have?

The vampires of Mystara are more diverse than vampires of other game worlds. This collection of Vampiric Bloodlines at the Vaults of Pandius attests to that.

Immortals vs. The Dark Powers

Mystara and Ravenloft are both settings largely devoid of gods. There are the Immortals of Mystara that cover the same role as gods, but are explicitly not gods. Ravenloft has its Dark Powers which are also not gods. In fact, there is even some evidence that gods worshiped in Ravenloft might only be reflections of the Dark Powers. This all runs pretty counter to most D&D worlds, especially Krynn and Abeir-Toril where the gods are important and very active in the affairs of mortals.

Could the Dark Powers be Chaotic Immortals? I think that is a question best left un-answered, but it has, to quote Stephen Colbert, a bit of Truthiness to it.

Another factor. Both the Immortals and the Dark Powers have a history of scooping up land, countries, even entire civilizations and hiding them away. The Immortals do this with the Hollow World, and the Dark Powers do it with the lands of Ravenloft.

Barovia could have been scoped up and planted elsewhere, and both the Dark Powers and Immortals could have covered it up.  Which does lead into my next point.

Lands

Mystara is a strange patchwork of cultures and lands. Vikings live right next to a Khanate, and on the other side of these steppes is fantasy Wales with bits of Renaissance Italy. These lands only make sense when you realize the Immortals have a hand in moving people around.

Same is true for Ravenloft. Only here, there is less movement. 

Barovia is also small, only 24 miles East-West and about 10 miles North-South. This makes it smaller that an average hex on many Mystara maps. A place like could come from anywhere. More to the point it could go missing from anywhere.

Like Mystara, Ravenloft is a hodge-podge of lands and cultures. 

Time Lines

Additionally, I can use some dates from the novels to narrow some ideas down. Now, a note about time. Time seems to run differently in Ravenloft, so I can't put an exact formula for it. There isn't one. I just have to try to deal with it. The only hard and fast rule I will adhere to is that there is no travel to the past.

WORKING: Timeline

This timeline is a work in progress with changes being made all the time. 

I will add and move details around as I discover them. I am using the Forgotten Realms DR calendar here since many worlds have had interactions with the Realms so it helps with the dating. Any date in Red is a fixed date, one I have confirmation of.  I have squared all the dates yet. Part of the issue is that Mystara's year is different from the other worlds.  Some of the dates do not line up right yet, I am working on those.

This shorter timeline is based on these works: 

• John W. Mangrum's epic Ravenloft timeline.
• Timeline of Ravenloft adventures, found on Reddit.
• The Unofficial Timeline of Mystara
• TIMELINE for Mystara, "Twin Campaigns" version

I still have a lot of work to do on these and some funky math to make them work. This is, of course, assuming that time passes the same way in all the realms, and I am not making that assumption.  I could hand wave and say "it fits" but I at least would like to find a large enough whole for Barovia in Mystara to fit.

The Art

This one is a little more interesting in my mind.

Both the early Mystara Gazetteer line and the Ravenloft line share the same artists. Now this is not a huge surprise. There were a lot of books being pumped out by TSR in the AD&D 2nd Ed days and only a few artists. But they typically were used on various projects in various combinations.

Both Mystara and Ravenloft shared the same cover artist, Clyde Caldwell, and the same interior artist, Stephen Fabian. And some of the parallels are striking.

Count Strahd (Ravenloft) and Prince Voszlany (Glantri)

Victor Mordenheim (Ravenloft) and Rafiel (Mystara - Shadow Elves)

Count Strahd and Prince Voszlany look like they are related, and Victor Mordenheim and Rafiel look like they went to University together.

The Caldwell covers are fairly part-and-parcel with the look of Ravenloft from the start. So seeing all the books side by side they do "feel" right together.

Likewise the Stephen Fabian interior art has a dark spookiness to it and his style is so unique that when I picked up a 1990 copy of Anita and saw his art I knew it right away.

Maybe I need to make a witch, named Anita, (or Anita Tina, I always wanted a character with a palindrome name) from Mystara, Glantri in particular, who gets stuck in Ravenloft. I like this.

--

Of course, none of this is true. But it feels true, and isn't that better than the truth? At least that is what Leonard Nimoy, the Patron Saint of "In Search Of," has to say.

 

Links

• Ravenloft / Glantri connection
• Vaults of Pandius Mystara/Ravenloft timeline
• The Unofficial Timeline of Mystara
• Nu-Ravenloft and Mystara: Cosmic Parallels
• Ravenloft / Karameikos map alignment (huge file)
• The Piazza Board
• Strahd von Zarovich was from Mystara?
• Strahd's Home Plane?
• Mystara Connections in Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft?
• Reddit: What world was Barovia originally a part of?
• Barovia
• Ravenloft wiki
• Eberron wiki
• Forgotten Realms wiki
• Plansescape wiki
• Dragonsfoot with my original posting from the 90s.
• Fraternity of Shadows with a possible DragonQuest connection

Products

• Basic and First Edition
• I6 Ravenloft
• I10 Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill
• B7 Rahasia
• X2 Castle Amber
• GAZ3 The Principalities of Glantri
• GAZ13 The Shadow Elves
• Second Edition
• Ravenloft, Realms of Terror
• Ravenloft, Forbidden Lore
• Night of the Vampire (2e)
• Mark of Amber (2e)

Review: Ravenloft Realms of Terror

 We move right away to AD&D Second Edition with the Realms of Terror boxed set.  For this review I am going to feature the original 1990 Boxed set, the PDF and Print on Demand options from DriveThruRPG

Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990)

Boxed set. 144-page rule book (B&W), 4 full color maps, 24 full color sheets featuring various families and castles of the Demi-plane.
by Bruce Nesmith with Andria Hayday. Art by Clyde Caldwell and Stephen Fabian.

PDF and PoD is a combined product; color and B&W art, 168 pages.

It is really hard to quantify exactly what this boxed set meant to me at the time of its release. This came out in June 1990. I was 21, living in my university town year round now, getting ready for grad school. I can remember sitting at my desk in my apartment reading over this set many times.

While even at the time I knew that trying to force-feed Gothic Horror into AD&D was a tall order, I still loved every bit of it.  It was the closest I had seen up to that point that captured the play style I really wanted. D&D + Horror was pretty much everything I was doing and this was a new frontier for me.

Ravenloft was a boxed set campaign world at the height of AD&D 2nd Edition's foray into boxed set campaign worlds. It was one of the game's great strengths and, ultimately, one of the reasons for TSR's undoing, but that is not our topic today.  

The Demi-plane of Ravenloft was a Twilight Zone-like place where the truly evil were captured and put off into a prison of their own with others, including what seems like many innocents. Something that dominated the RAVENLOFT-L lists back in the day. It was a horror anthology writ large. It was everything I wanted in a campaign world.

Realm of Terror Book

The Realm of Terror book is a 144-page guide to this new world. 

Chapter: From Gothic Roots

This covers what this book is trying to do with nods both to the original Ravenloft Adventures and to the Gothic Horror genre. A very quick introduction to Gothic Horror.

Chapter II: The Demiplane of Dread

Covers the basics. What is this demiplane, how did it come into being, what connection does it have to Strahd Von Zarovich. If reading this you think Twilight Zone, Hotel California or even the old Roach Motel, then you would be forgiven. 

Of note here, for me at least, is a timeline of the major events in the Demiplane.

The Mists of Ravenloft, a feature of the first module and brought back for the second, is all important here. They can be summoned and partially controlled by the Domains' Dark Lords. They can also reach into the Prime Material and seek out other souls. Even bringing in entire new Domains with it, or leaving traces in the Prime Material.

Chapter III: The Reshaping of Characters

The big assumption here is that characters would be coming from somewhere else. This allowed for the various "Weekend in Hell" scenarios that you could do with Ravenloft. Certainly the first two adventures felt like this as did X2 Castle Amber. Thus characters will have some alterations. Clerical abilities such as Turning Undead do not work as well as it used too. Magic is always a bit wonky. Demihumans are always looked at with suspicion. And evil acts will cause the character to make Dark Powers checks. If they fail they become more and more attached to the Demiplane and can never leave. 

Chapter IV: Fear and Horror Checks

Ok. I will be honest this is one of my favorites things about Ravenloft and a mechanic I ported back over to Vanilla D&D many times. It works best here though.

Lots of text is given over to how to invoke a fearful, spooky atmosphere. But lets be honest, D&D Characters AND D&D Players can be a bit of a jaded bunch. Compare the moves "Alien" and "Aliens" and see the difference horror has on the unaware and on seasoned warriors. The Fear and Horror checks help this mood along.

Chapter V: Werebeasts and Vampires

The MVPs of Gothic Horror (along with Ghosts), if characters get special hinderances, these guys get special bonuses.  Most importantly we get the Vampire Powers due to age a year before Vampire: The Masquerade did it. This is also something I ported back to D&D. Though I will admit, it does lessen the impact that this campaign setting has when I do that.

Chapter VI: Curses

An ancient cursed family? A scientist (er...Naturalist) cursed to discover a cure that might be worse than the aliment? Undead, Lycanthropes, the restless Vampire? What is Gothic Horror without curses. You would think with all this they would have given us some proper witches, but that comes later.

Chapter VII: Gypsies

Ok, you know that disclaimer on DriveThruRPG that many of the old guard whinge about? It is for things like this. Did the authors mean to disparage people of Romany descent? Of course not. They were using the common term as it was used when this printed. That doesn't mean the name is not offensive to some. We have to respect that. 

In newer versions of Ravenloft these have been replaced with Vistani. There are still some issues with that yes, but it is beyond the scope of this review to go into that.

What the chapter does cover are a people that seem to have some sort of special relationship to the land and to the Mists. 

Chapter VIII: Telling the Future

The I6: Ravenloft adventure casts a long shadow over this product. Fortune Telling is covered here. Typically with regular playing cards, but we used a Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

Chapter IX: Spells in Ravenloft and Chapter X: Magic Items in Ravenloft

We mentioned in Chapter III that characters have changes, well here are various spells and magic items from AD&D 2nd Edition and how they are changed. 

These characters, though while longer than the previous ones, could have been combined.

Chapter XI: Lands of the Core and Chapter XII: Islands of Terror

Ahh! Now we are getting to the world proper. This chapter describes the various lands/countries of teh Core Domain with Barovia as the beating, black heart. Each land is covered along with who their Darklord is, what the population is made up of and what characters can expect. Each land also has a section on how the Darklord can close their borders to keep people out or in. The Darklords themselves can never leave their lands. 

The Islands of Terror are largely disconnected from the Core, but can be reached via the Mists. 

Nearly* every AD&D 2nd Ed world is represented here, some more than once. 

(*I'll deal with this in another post.) 

These two chapters are the largest.

Chapter XIII: The Who's Doomed of Ravenloft

Were the chapters padded to make sure this one was Chapter 13? Maybe.

This covers the Darklords and important NPCs, both good and evil, you can encounter in Ravenloft. There are a lot of archetypical (some say stereotypical) villians of Gothic Horror. We get Dracula for example in both his human (Vlad Drakov) and vampire (Strahd) personas. Ghosts, Liches, were creatures, poisoners, the lot.

The Ravenloft adventure really sold the idea that the monster at the end, something later known as the "Big Bad," should really be a developed character. This takes that to logical next steps and makes all the Darklords detailed characters. This is a good thing really. 

Chapter XIV: Bloodlines

Covers the various family trees of the folks of Ravenloft. 

Chapter XV: Techniques of Terror (and Adventure Ideas)

More DM advice on how to run a horror game. 

The book ends with seven new AD&D Monstrous Compendium style monster pages.

The Boxed Set Contents

The boxed set also comes with 4 Poster sized maps; 1 of the Core, 1 of the Islands of Terror, and 2 of the various villages and towns. There is a clear plastic hex-grid to lay over the top.

There are 16 full color cards (8.5" x 11") of the various important castles and homes in Ravenloft.

Five cards of the various important families with details on the back.

And three with information usable by players and DMs.

The Print on Demand Copy

The Print on Demand copy is great, still quite clear. ALL of the material from the Boxed set is here. And by all I do mean all the maps and even the clear hex grid (no longer clear obviously). It does limit the utility of the maps, but since you can opt for the PDFs at the same time you can print out the maps and cards. 

I was very active in the Ravenloft fandom scene online back in the 1990s. I was a very active member of the RAVENLOFT-L email list back then and then later on the various Usenet groups.

Some of those people I still talk too today.

Ravenloft WAS 1990s AD&D for me. As long as I stayed in my dark little corner of the mists, I didn't care about what the other worlds did or didn't do. I still paid attention to Mystara and a little bit of Greyhawk, but the rest were so much noise to me. And my experiences were not unique.

I had pretty much given up on D&D, having moved on over to other games, but I had kept a lot of my Ravenloft stuff. Sadly, I did unload a huge bulk of it all in the early 2000s. I have since been able to buy it all back on PDF. Less space in my home, and less likely I'll decide to sell it all again.

I have a good example of this coming up next.

But I am going to say this, after so many decades away from the AD&D 2nd Ed version of Ravenloft, it is nice to be "home" once again. 

Review: I6 Ravenloft

 For this October, I am going to focus on Dungeons & Dragons' own horror setting, Ravenloft. I am not going to review every Ravenloft product, nor am I planning on a review of every Ravenloft product I own, but I am going to focus on some select items. To that end I am starting with where it all started, the classic Ravenloft module, I6. 

I6 Ravenloft

by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Art by Clyde Caldwell. (1983). Color covers, black-white interior art. Cartography by Dave Sutherland. 32 Pages.

I have talked about this adventure a lot. It is one of my all-time favorite adventures. Maybe less for what it is and more for what it meant to me.

Ravenloft was originally an adventure for First Edition AD&D, released in 1983, and written by Tracy and Laura Hickman's husband-and-wife team. It was part of the "I" or intermediate series of adventures. Most of these were not linked and only shared that they were higher levels than beginning adventures. Ravenloft, given the code I6, was for character levels 5 to 7. 

Ravenloft is not your typical dungeon crawl, and it is very atypical of the time's adventures. There is less of the typical Howard, Moorcock, and Tolkien here, and it is pure Bram Stoker. 

Ravenloft is Gothic Horror—or, more to the point, it is the Hammer Horror flavor of Gothic Horror laid over the top of Dungeons & Dragons. Harker was a milder-mannered English solicitor. The heroes here have fought dragons, goblins, and other real monsters. How can the Lord of Castle Ravenloft measure up to that?

Quite well, really.

I  picked up this adventure when it was first released and essentially threw it at my DM and told him he had to run me through it. It was everything I had hoped it would have been. Remember, my Appendix N is filled with Hammer Horror, Dracula, and Universal monsters. This was perfect for me. 

Ravenloft was a huge change from many of the adventures TSR had published to that date. For starters, the adventure featured an antagonist, Count Strahd von Zarovich, who was no mere monster. Yes, he was an AD&D Vampire, but he was meant to be run as an intelligent Non-player Character.  Before this, the vampires have been the unnamed Vampire Queen of the Palace of the Vampire Queen, Drelnza, the vampire daughter of Iggwilv in The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and Belgos, the Drow Vampire in Vault of the Drow. By 1983, the amount written on all three of these vampires would not even be as long as this post will be. Strahd was different.

Strahd had a backstory, motivation, and intelligence, and he was ruthless. The goal was to destroy him, and that was not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination.

The adventure also introduced some new elements. The dungeon crawl was gone, replaced by a huge gothic castle and a nearby village. The adventure could be replayed and unique given the "Fortunes of Ravenloft" mechanic, which allows key items, people, and motives to change based on a fortune card reading.

Finally, there were the isomorphic, 3D-looking maps from Dave Sutherland, which helped give perspective to many levels of Castle Ravenloft. 

The adventure was an immediate and resounding hit. This adventure, along with the Dragonlance Adventures, also by Tracy Hickman (and Margaret Weis), led to something many old-school gamers call "The Hickman Revolution." They claim it marks the time between the Golden Age and Silver Age of AD&D, with the Silver Age coming after 1983. While yes there was change, a lot of it was for the better.

For me, it was a dream come true. Vampires had always been my favorite creatures to fight in D&D, and I was an avid Dracula fan. I bought this adventure and then threw it at my DM, saying, "Run this!" 

I grew up on a steady stream of Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, and Dark Shadows. That's my Appendix N. So, an adventure set in pretty much the Hammer Hamlet where I get strange locals and have to fight a vampire? Yeah, that is what D&D was to me. You can almost hear Toccata and Fugue in D minor while running it. 

I find that the people who don't like this adventure don't see what makes it great. This is not Lord of the Rings, Conan, or some other Appendix N pulp fantasy. This is Hammer Horror. Strahd has to be played with a combination of charisma, scene-chewing villainy, and absolute brutality. In other words, it is exactly like Christopher Lee playing Dracula.  Even the nearby village is filled with terrified but pitchforks in the ready villagers. 

That is not to say the adventure doesn't have its problems. At times, the Gothic elements are shoved into the Swords & Sorcery fantasy of D&D. And...let's be honest, some of the puns on the headstones in the lowest level are more than cringe-worthy.  If played properly, a vampire like Strahd could wipe out a party, and that is not counting all the other monsters (gargoyles, really strong zombies, werewolves) in the castle. Though Strahd suffers from the same issues that Christopher Lee's Dracula did, completely obsessive that blind him to some obvious blunders. But that is the nature of vampires, really. 

Original, 25th Anniversary Edition, Print on Demand Edition

I have played through this once, and I have run it four or five times. I would love to try it sometime under the Ghosts of Albion or WitchCraftRPG rules. I took my D&D 5e group through it when they completed Castle Amber to make for a "Mists" series. It was fantastic.

I even got my original module from 1983 signed by Tracy Hickman the year I ran my family through it.

Much like Dracula, Count Strahd and Ravenloft keep coming back for more and more. 

All versions of Castle Ravenloft, so far.

I am sure there will be even another version of this adventure out for D&D 5.5/5r. And I am just as likely to buy it.

#RPGaDAY2024 Classic Campaign

 For today I have to talk about my Order of the Platinum Dragon campaign of my massive Come Endless Darkness romp through all the Classic D&D adventures. 

Since D&D 5 came out I have been running my family through the "Gygaxian Classics." while we technically started with B1 In Search of the Unknown with AD&D 1st ed, we quickly moved to D&D 5.  From here we did B2 Keep on the Borderlands and moved through the Great Greyhawk Campaign.

Our order of games has been:

• T1 Village of Hommlet (forgotten by the characters, played as a flashback after I6)
• B1 In Search of the Unknown (Gen Con Game)
• B2 Keep on the Borderlands
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill  (Gen Con Game)
• X2 Castle Amber
• I6 Ravenloft (Gen Con Game)
• C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness
• A1-5 Slave Lords
• C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
• G123, G4 Against the Giants  (Gen Con Game)
• D12, 3 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Vault of the Drow
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Gen Con Game)

I wanted my family to have the "Classic D&D Experience) with this.  Communities are often defined by the stories they share. These are the stories we all share.  How did you defeat Strahd? Did you shout 'Bree Yark'? What did you do in the Hill Giant's dining room?   Did you survive the Demonweb?

For various reasons we have not finished the last part of the Demonweb. Maybe we will one day.  I would like to hope so.

--

I am participating in Dave Chapman's #RPGaDAY2024 for August. 

Mail Call: HYPERBOREA

Another Old-school mail call this week and this one is quite timely. I finally got my Hyperborea leatherette Players and Referee's Guides.

If you have been here for any amount of time you know of my love for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, now just called HYPERBOREA.

This new set, 3rd Edition, does not disappoint.

As you can see it comes with the HYPERBOREA Player's Manual, the Referee's Guide, the Atlas of Hyperborea, dice, and a matching dice bag.

Now I have all three editions of this game. I don't need all three, but I can't find myself parting with any of them.

AS&SH and to a degree HYPERBOREA was where I started my ideas for the War of the Witch Queens, but I have moved it on to Old-School Essentials now. I would still LOVE to do something with HYPERBOREA, something special really. 

HYPERBOREA is firmly in the AD&D rules camp of the OSR clones, though it does only go to level 12. 

Part of me wants to run the Dark Wizard Games modules from Mark Taormino. There is some overlap in themes to be sure. I just wonder if some of the Eldritch Weirdness of HYPERBOREA would be lost in the Gonzo weirdness found in the Dark Wizard adventures.

I have talked before about how great these would be for B/X or OSE, but maybe this is where I need to go. 

Another option is this.

Now, this would work and The Lost City and Castle Amber both have solid Clark Ashton Smith vibes. Into the Borderlands and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks also fit the tone of HYPERBOREA well. Same with Isle of Dread which is very sandboxey.  The Temple of Elemental Evil is the odd one out unless I do a little massaging. 

Level wise I think it all might work.  Into the Borderlands covers levels 1-3. Isle of Dread covers 3-7. Barrier Peaks covers 8-12. The Lost City 1-3 (though I argue more like 2-4), Castle Amber 3-6, and Temple of Elemental Evil 1-8 (or more). I can already see how I could do this, to be honest. The trouble is I have run most of these with my kids already.

Still might be fun as an intellectual experiment. 

Monstrous Monday: Neh-thalggu (Brain Collector)

One of my favorite adventures is X2 Castle Amber. It covers so much of what I love in an adventure. Plus it is full of great Clark Ashton Smith homages and nods.

Among these homages is the Neh-thalggu or the Brain Collector.  It is such a creepy ass monster and I really love them. 

If the amount of OGC on them is any indication, then others like them too. You can find them for d20 3.x style, Pathfinder, and 5e.  This is in addition to official D&D stats for Basic and AD&D 2nd Ed.

Neh-thalggu (Brain Collector)

NO. ENCOUNTERED: 1
SIZE: Large
HD: 14 (d10) (77 hp)
MOVE: 60 ft.
AC: 16 (natural armor)
ATTACKS: Bite (1d10) + Poison (Save vs. Con or Paralyze), Claws (1d6) 
SPECIAL: Brain collection, Incorporeal, Spell Casting
SAVES: M
INT: Genius to Supra-genius (20-22)
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral
TYPE: Aberration
TREASURE: 8
XP: 6,000

The neh-thalggu, also known as the Brain Collector, is a creature from the Outer Darkness.

Neh-thalggus hail from distant worlds, traveling the gulfs of space on immense living ships that swiftly decay when they land upon a new world, leaving behind a deadly cargo of hungry monsters. Neh-thalggus are crablike nightmares with lamprey-like mouths, twitching eyes on their legs, and several blisters along their back that hold human brains. Some speculate that neh-thalggus encountered in this reality may merely be juveniles of their kind, perhaps exiled from their home worlds by greater kin until they can prove their worth on other worlds.

Combat: Neh-thalggu attack with their mouths they attempt to latch on with their mouths and claws to extract the brain from their victims.  They attack primarily with their mouths (bite) and then try to latch on with their claws.  On a successful bite and claw attack the victim must make a Constitution save or become paralyzed. Once paralyzed the creature will remove the victim's brain. 

Brain Collectors. Neh-thalggus are carnivores, but they do not digest humanoid brains they eat, rather, these brains lodge in one of several bulbous blisters on the creature's back and help to increase its intellect. Their brain collections may be a morbid form of currency in their home realm, or the thoughts in these brains may merely be fuel for a dark apotheosis into an even more sinister mature form.

Incorporeal: A neh-thalggu is not wholly in our reality but always remains partially extradimensional. Thus it can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, +1 or better weapons, magic, or psionics, with a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source. It can pass through solid objects at will, and its own attacks pass through armor (except for its bite attack, which is treated as if a corporeal attack). It always moves silently unless it chooses otherwise.

Mind Masters. Neh-thalggu masters lord it over their lesser kin by applying the drained brainpower of their victims toward mastering psychic magic and mesmerism. They may inhabit elaborate mindscapes as their lairs or may subtly influence the thoughts and senses of creatures they lure into their lair in furtherance of convoluted plots to manipulate the societies around them while they dwell in secret. Some dwell alone or with mind-controlled slaves, while others organize clusters of their own kind to spread their sinister schemes and feed their insatiable alien hunger.

Spell Casting. Neh-thalggu can cast spells as 1st level wizard. For every brain, they collect they add one more level of spell casting for a maximum of 12 brains to 13th level wizard.  For this reason Neh-thalggu will target wizards and other magic-using characters.

--

Might need some tweaks, but yeah this is one nasty beastie. 

The plot hook is obvious. A bunch of never before seen monsters are attacking the countryside the day after a shooting star was seen. Worst of all are reports of a "ghost monster" that feeds on brains. 

Don't forget the Indiegogo campaign for Amazing Adventures going on right now!  Grab the books and you can use this guy.

Monstrous Mondays: Pathfinder Bestiaries 2 and 3

Continuing my overviews/reviews of the various D&D-related monster books, I am coming up on a few I bought in PDF form only.  I'll talk about that and what these books have to offer that is different from other, similar, books.

Pathfinder Bestiary 2 

PDF. 336 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. 285 monsters.

This book is also available in a Letter hardcover version (first published) and a smaller softcover Pocket-Edition (6.4" x 8.3").

This is the second of the Pathfinder Bestiaries and it was published first in December 2010, just a little over a year after the first Bestiary in October of 2009. My expectation here was to get all the monsters "left over" from Bestiary 1, or at the very least, monsters from various Paizo products published in the last year.  We did get a little of each, but not as much as I expected and instead got a lot of new and even many original monsters. A few that I had not seen in print before. 

There were quite a few monsters here I was a little surprised and happy to see. Among them were the Chupacabra, Dhampir, the Jabberwock (our cover model), Neh-thalggu (more on that one in a bit), and the Wendigo.  I wanted it most for the wendigo, but the others were a nice touch. The big surprise was the Neh-thalggu or the Brain Collector that originally appeared in module X2 Castle Amber. I used this as my base to convert to 5e when I ran Castle Amber and of course, my players never encountered it. 

There are a few other "mythos" monsters here too. Denizen of Leng, Gug, Hound of Tindalos, and Leng spiders. We will see even more in future Bestiaries.

The nice innovations that Pathfinder brought to these monster entries are the nice single page, or most often 2-page spread for every monster. Stat blocks are better organized to find what you need when you need them.

I can print out a bunch of monsters for an adventure and stick them into my folder with the adventure and notes and not need to cart around a bunch of different books; just the material I need.

Pathfinder Bestiary 3 

PDF. 320 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. 268 monsters.

This book is also available in a Letter hardcover version (first published) and a smaller softcover Pocket-Edition (6.4" x 8.3").

This one was released a year after the Pathfinder Bestiary 2 in December of 2011. Like the previous book this one surprised me with the new of new to print creatures it has.

We do get some classics like the Axe beak and Lammasu from the original Monster Manual. The Adherer, Dire Corby, and Huecuva from the Fiend Folio. The Bandersnatch and Jubjub bird to go along with our Jabberwock. And one of my favorites, the Dimetrodon (always have a soft spot for these guys).

We get another new Cat Lord (originally from Monster Manual II).

So this one certainly feels like an expansion to the first two. One could make a good argument that all three are really part on one whole given the mix of new and classic monsters.

Like the first two this book also has monsters 1 to a page or across 2 pages. Making printing easy (well, not so much on your printer) but allows you to mix and match monsters as you need. Doing a "Lewis Carol" themed adventure? Print out the Jabberwock from Pathfinder Bestiary 2 and the Bandersnatch and Jubjub bird from Pathfinder Bestiary 3 along with whatever else you might need. 

Both books make good use of the OGL and have some previously published OGC here. They also release all but a tiny bit of IP as Open to the OGL for any and all to remix and reuse. 

They are quite a treasure trove of creatures.