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I'm planning to run my group through the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft hardcover, and have been doing a lot of reading up on Ravenloft lore in that book, White Wolf's 3rd Edition campaign setting book, and the AD&D Ravenloft Boxed Set. I'm really looking forward to running this, and will be doing plenty more research to interweave some classic feel with the updated "Expedition" material.
The taint rules from Heroes of Horror (adapted from the OGL taint rules in Unearthed Arcana) are mentioned several times throughout the Expedition hardcover as an optional addition, which got me thinking in broader terms about how taint and curses might be related within Ravenloft. Here's my first pass at how this might look in my game:
While adventuring in Ravenloft, characters acquire taint as described in the Taint rules found in Heroes of Horror, but suffer none of the normal effects associated with taint. Characters can accumulate any amount of taint without being affected, until they are subjected to a curse spell or effect while in the demiplane of Ravenloft. The spell Bestow Curse, and other effects based on it, function differently in Ravenloft. When a character is targeted with a successful curse, the normal effects of the spell are ignored; the curse instead exposes a creature to the effects of its accumulated corruption or depravity. If a character is already subjected to the effects of one type of taint, a second Bestow Curse or related effect subjects him to the effect of the other type. Characters already suffering the effects of both their accumulated corruption and depravity are unaffected by additional curse spells or effects.
While under the influence of a curse effect, a character in Ravenloft immediately shows the normal effect of all current accumulated corruption or depravity, and is affected normally by future accumulation of taint while under the influence of the curse. Additionally, a character's Good alignment score is reduced by the severity of his corruption or depravity, minimum 1. Mild taint reduces this score by 2, Moderate taint reduces it by 4, and Severe taint reduces it by 6. The Good alignment score of insane creatures is reduced by 8. This reduction in Good alignment score is based on the level of either corruption or depravity, whichever is higher. Ending the curse effect prevents any further effect caused by the character's accumulated corruption or depravity, but accumulated taint and any existing effects must be removed or reversed separately as described in the taint rules.
A creature's accumulated taint can be sensed using the Detect Taint spell, as described in Heroes of Horror.
If a target's level of corruption or depravity has already been sensed through the Detect Taint spell, casters can cause a specific corruption or depravity to manifest as the result of a curse. The caster makes a Spellcraft check as part of placing the curse; on a successful check, the caster may select a specific corruption or depravity effect to manifest as a result of the curse. The DC for this check is equal to the amount of taint plus the character's ability score modifier (Con for depravity, Will for corruption).
Also, as an aside:
Acererak the lich is replaced by Azalin the lich (described in the AD&D Realm of Terror book from the boxed set), and the Tomb of Horrors was built in part to keep the Holy Symbol of Ravenloft out of the hands of any who might use it against Strahd.
When the Fortunes of Ravenloft are used to determine the location of the Holy Symbol, the characters will instead find some important clue or necessary information leading them to the Tomb to retrieve the Symbol.
I've got a lot more homework to do, on all of the above, but wanted to share these thoughts on taint and curses while it's all fresh. Feedback welcome :)
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Sounds like fun.
Be careful on going too far with Acererak and Strahd. These are two of the three most famous NPCs in D&D history (with Eclevdra) and can easily overshadow the campaign -- the way an FR campaign revolving around Elminster and Szass Tam might: all the sudden the PCs are observers of the campaign.
Taint: As you design the details of "what happens" just make sure these are far from meta-game details. Few things ruin Ravenloft more than game effects: "Everyone has a -2 on Will Saves," or "You start losing a point of CON and CHA each day."
Bleh, Ravenloft becomes just another campaign. How unfortunate.
Try to come up with "Flavorful" effects that still work in-game. I think the research you're doing will help give examples you can use or modify; let me add one to published suggestions:
If a PC fails a Will Save for a curse or becomes insane or gets a phobia or whatever, make a few lists of hallucinations and emotional responses to give them for their character. For example, a PC is starting to go nuts, give that Player (NOT to share with others) a list of 12 (for example) hallucinations: he sees spiders crawling on another PC; he's convinced a PC has red "Satan" eyes; he's infested with body lice and mites, a circus clown keeps popping up behind the bushes and waving, etc. Then, during certain game-situations he has to roll a d12 to see which hallucination happens (maybe he gets a Will Save, maybe not). The key here is that, in addition to never being allowed to share the list with the other Players he can also not tell them what hallucination he's experiencing! He cannot say, "You guys don't see that clown over there?!" or "Oh my god, So-&-So, you're covered with spiders!" The Player has to roleplay the character in his condition.
Smooth Sailing techniques: If you give the affected Player the list privately and ahead of time, the other Players won't even know it exists, what fun. During play when pitchfork wielding, torch-carrying peasants attack the PCs for practicing "witchcraft," have the affected PC roll a d12 -- the other Players have NO IDEA what's going on -- and after the roll you don't tell the affected Player anything (he can look at his list to see what's what). Then, when it's his turn in initiative and he starts crying and maybe attacks one of the PCs (non-lethal force) then the encounter becomes a great Ravenloft-worthy encounter... In that first sentence I said "ahead of time"; the more "ahead of time" the Player gets the list the more time he has to think about HOW he will roleplay the situation -- he won't have a brain-fart for how to portray his PC.
-W. E. Ray
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Sounds like fun.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm definitely planning to work with the players to create the proper atmosphere of horror we'll need for the campaign to really play well. They're not really in the habit just yet of doing much in-character role-playing, but I'm hoping that a really good, involved adventure like this one can draw them out a little more.
I like how the Taint rules have been fleshed out in Heroes of Horror, and will be using them pretty much as presented there. I'd initially thought only non-spell curses (as mentioned in the Realm of Terror book) would bring out the effects of a character's corruption or depravity scores, but decided that using this idea for all curse effects inside Ravenloft would help give it a distinct (and more horror-y) flavor.
The adventure will play out pretty much as written in the "Expedition" hardcover, but there will be some changes to bring the flavor more in line with older versions (i.e., Ravenloft is a demiplane, dammit!) and other stuff I'm incorporating (like Azalin building the Tomb) is mainly to expand the story and flavor beyond what's presented in the hardcover.
Should work out well but I need to do a lot of reading up on things before deciding exactly how all the different pieces will come together. If it works out well enough I'll start a campaign journal here to share the Ongoing Adventures.
As you design the details of "what happens" just make sure these are far from meta-game details. Few things ruin Ravenloft more than game effects: "Everyone has a -2 on Will Saves," or "You start losing a point of CON and CHA each day."
Bleh, Ravenloft becomes just another campaign. How unfortunate.
This is going to be very important. If you can, keep as many of the numbers a secret from your players. It's a little extra paper work for you, but really helps to keep the players in the moment.
There's no quick trips to note-paper-landia so they can scribble down "-2" and the like. These are bad because they are usually accompanied by a fight over the only eraser, a toilet break and a a rush to the fridge....Also, check the ending of your adventure. I know my copy of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft came without an 'adventure conclusion' section. I know I'm not alone on this and some poor sods didn't notice until they got that far in game....
Good luck - I'm sure you'll have a blast!
Peace,
tfad
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PLEASE tell me you're making Madame Eva more like the original -- NO Hill Giant bodyguard!
I still need to read through the original adventure to see what material in the updated version might need rolling back. I always wanted to play it and never did get to, so I know Ravenloft mainly by reputation and reading through the campaign source material. A good friend of mine is a total Ravenloft/Cthulhu nut, so I'm bouncing ideas off him to get feedback about ways to flesh out the adventure without overly complicating the amount of game prep I'll need to do.
This will be run using the Pathfinder rules, so I'm thinking of Pathfinder-izing Strahd, possibly a few other major NPCs as well. The PCs are currently in Greyhawk, and have just begun their journey through a Shadow conduit that will dump them in Golarion. They'll be Pathfinder-ized along the way, though I'll be running the first few Pathfinder modules as-is to see how well Pathfinder plays with 3.5.
Basically (long story),
Before that, we played a few random adventures at first level (ignoring advancement while everyone learned the basics), with Mad God's Key as the final pre-SCAP adventure. I'd made the high-level lich from SCAP the bad guy in Mad God's Key, and they used the key from that adventure to follow him through a portal to Cauldron.
After dropping SCAP, they traveled via portal to generic Greyhawk, where we've just been doing random, unconnected adventures. When 4e was first announced, we started working on house rules to "fix" things we didn't like about 3.5; after Pathfinder was announced, we (well, I) decided to move the game to Golarion, running under the Pathfinder RPG.
In order to tie together all of this random dimension-hopping, I decided to have the characters brought to Golarion as agents of Desna in her ceaseless conflict with Lamashtu. Lamashtu's agents in Golarion are bringing about a conjunction with Ravenloft, which Lamashtu hopes to exploit to spread the vile stain of Taint (along with other Ravenloft horrors) throughout the world, remaking it more to her liking. The PCs have been slowly guided by Desna from their home dimension to Golarion, which will be touched on in the intro emails they get describing their journey between the planes.
While transitioning to Golarion, the PCs are granted a boon by Desna (Pathfinder-ization), and set up to be her B Team in case her other attempts to stop the conjunction ritual fail. The key from Mad God's Key was used to manipulate an existing portal from Greyhawk, and will replace the First Key found in the Tomb of Horrors adventure that's used to open the final vault in the Tomb. When the players realized the key was a link back to one of their very first adventures, it helped tie together what has been just a disconnected jumble of random Tuesday night gaming. Woo!
Sadly, the A Team does fail to stop the conjunction ritual, and the PCs will then need to travel to Ravenloft (manifested on Droskar's Crag), break the link between planes that keeps the conjunction together, and defeat Strahd so they can escape Ravenloft and return to Golarion. Along the way, they'll encounter the corrupted remnants of Desna's A Team characters and, hopefully, avoid being killed, consumed, or corrupted themselves.
And please tell me you're not making Barovia a hack-n-slash village of zombies!
It may be some of that, but it won't be only that. I'm just pushing the big picture pieces around now, trying to nail down all of the What Has Gone Before to my liking. Once that's all done, I'll go through the "Expedition" hardcover and other supplemental material (like Tomb of Horrors and the Diseased! web supplement adventure) to smooth out the rough edges of the What Lies Ahead.
I definitely don't plan on running anything in my EtCR campaign as a grind of combats just to accumulate treasure and XP. Yuck.
... Hey, have you checked Paizo's Message Board Archives for the handful of really good Threads already on EtCR?
I've browsed a few of the threads there but need to bookmark them so I can come back and read them more thoroughly. I mainly shared my original post because I saw there were a lot of Ravenloft fans here who might be interested to read the random crap I'm coming up with for my version :)
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This is going to be very important. If you can, keep as many of the numbers a secret from your players. It's a little extra paper work for you, but really helps to keep the players in the moment.
There's no quick trips to note-paper-landia so they can scribble down "-2" and the like. These are bad because they are usually accompanied by a fight over the only eraser, a toilet break and a a rush to the fridge....
I'm so with you here. I work on making the mechanics as transparent as possible, though we currently still do a lot of looking-up-of-things so we can really learn the system inside/out, backwards/forwards.
If things work out the way I plan, they won't even know they're accumulating taint until the first of them is hit with a curse that brings out the effects. Good Times :)
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PLEASE tell me you're making Madame Eva more like the original -- NO Hill Giant bodyguard!
And please tell me you're not making Barovia a hack-n-slash village of zombies!
Well, after doing a metric ton of reading on Ravenloft over the last week (including the original I6 adventure and the AD&D campaign setting book), I'm doing an extensive write-up on the background of Strahd, Ravenloft, Barovia, and the Vistani to roll back a lot of the fluff changes in the "Expedition" hardcover to be more in line with the setting's original tone.
One of the things I've noticed about the updated "Expedition" adventure is it's thematically sort of all over the place, rather than being tightly focused on the gothic horror flavor that (for me) really makes Ravenloft stand out. There are a few things new to the "Expedition" hardcover that I'm keeping, though not necessarily in the way they're presented in that book.
Reading through the updated version raised a lot of questions for me about what the actual deal is with Ravenloft that I'm writing my own lore to account for, not necessarily for the players to know but to be there for me in case they run off the edge of the map and raise a lot of unanswered questions.
Not that players ever do that, mind you ;)
When I've got it all nailed down and written up to my liking, I'll share it here for anyone else who might be interested.
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At the risk of being a bit presumptuous (a risk I always take) I'll share with you my observations and experiences with my favorite campaign of all time.
Things from I6 to keep:
1) The letter carrier asking for help at the beginning and the subsequent discovery that that wasn't the right letter!
2) Madame Eva reading the PCs' fortunes that predict where, when & why for the adventure.
3) The mother in the village sobbing over her lost little girl who had been "shut-in" her whole life for protection.
These are the best pre-castle moments of the game and make the castle-romp so much more engaging. The village of Barovia should come across just as the 2E material portrays it: people alive but not really living life because of fear. The biggest crime WotC made with EtCR is murdering the whole town and turning 'em into zombies. How pathetic.
1E vs 2E considerations
In I6 the PCs enter the castle with the hopes of destroying Strahd and being able to escape the mists.
In 2E Strahd becomes so legendary that no one (outside of game) wants him defeated. Meanwhile, other evil NPCs take the stage around him.
This gives you two choices on what kind of Ravenloft campaign you want to run. Do you want Strahd to be the BBEG that the PCs spend the adventure trying to get to and destroy (like I6) or do you want Strahd to be a powerful NPC that's in the background keeping his eyes on the PCs but not the main villain?? If this is the case you have to make another BBEG, equally evil (almost) as Strahd.
The PCs will still meet Strahd; they'll still be afraid of him. He'll send gypsy spies to watch them, etc., but the campaign hooks and progression will revolve around some other evil force in Ravenloft -- you mention Acererak/ Azalin earlier.
Anyway, you may want to think about it.
-W. E. Ray
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At the risk of being a bit presumptuous (a risk I always take) I'll share with you my observations and experiences with my favorite campaign of all time.
No worries :)
Things from I6 to keep:
1) The letter carrier asking for help at the beginning and the subsequent discovery that that wasn't the right letter!2) Madame Eva reading the PCs' fortunes that predict where, when & why for the adventure.
3) The mother in the village sobbing over her lost little girl who had been "shut-in" her whole life for protection.
Most of the tone and feel of I6 and the AD&D campaign setting is being written into my prep notes for Expedition, though I'm changing the setup and intro to the whole thing. I've taken pages (!) of notes for my final version, drawing heavily on pre-3e material, that I'll eventually summarize and post somewhere, just for sharing.
These are the best pre-castle moments of the game and make the castle-romp so much more engaging. The village of Barovia should come across just as the 2E material portrays it: people alive but not really living life because of fear. The biggest crime WotC made with EtCR is murdering the whole town and turning 'em into zombies. How pathetic.
Yeah, that got scrapped pretty much right away. The zombie attack will still happen, but in a way that's more directly related to the overall story. I'm also dumping the Lightbringer characters and tweaking everything that needs it back toward a more "gothic horror" feel.
Just as an example, here's what I jotted down for themes and elements to guide any rewrites or additions to the Expedition material:
I'm a big (!) fan of the classic black and white Universal monster movies, so they are a big influence on my critical editorial eye ;)
Anyway, you may want to think about it.
I've pretty much done nothing but for about the last week. I was on vacation all last week, and what I'd planned as maybe a couple days of light reading for prep turned into me parked in front of my laptop searching PDFs and messageboards, or carrying books and printouts from room to room, muttering to myself about all the "updated" stuff in Expedition that would need to be changed back.
Thanks for the feedback!
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Jesus, I forgot about the Lightbringer NPCs -- must've blocked 'em out of my memory as some kind of defense mechanism against stupidity. Thanks alot, now I'll never get it out of my mind.
Hey. Your mind and mine have similar defenses. Great. :-)
I suggest taking a look to Ravenloft Gazetteer I by Arthaus to see how to make Barovia something more than a horror movie clichè... ;-)
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Also, check the ending of your adventure. I know my copy of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft came without an 'adventure conclusion' section. I know I'm not alone on this and some poor sods didn't notice until they got that far in game....
Now, you freaked me out. I am checking my book. Where is it supposed to be? OM!!!!!!
I have loved Ravenloft since the old I6 first edition module came out. If I was running (and I will eventurally) I would run it like the old 1st edition flavor. I loved twisting up characters who used necromatic spells. I did not even give them a break on rolls and that. I just gave them some twisting - a benefit and somekind of weirdness. Ah, those were the days. Some of my favorite NPCs are ones who survived Ravenloft and are now back. One such is the Eyeless Mage - Ah good times were had by ME!!!
Feast of Goblyns was also a favorite of mine.
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One of the things I find most interesting is the old I6 idea of the fortune teller who's predictions 'come true'. Any thoughts on how this could be expanded in a more free form campaign?
Hmmm ... nothing off the top of my head but it sounds like a good idea. I guess you could stake out some interesting encounter areas across Barovia, then when writing new adventures use a handful of them as possible locations for one or more MacGuffins.
Could get repetitious, though; maybe sometimes use it to determine Big Bad's vulnerabilities or to predict the initial attitudes (and/or specific ways they might be improved) of one or more potential allies.
e.g., if you can get the werewolves and the hags (who don't care for each other because of what that one said about our sharon) to cooperate on a specific activity, then (your bad guy here) will be too distracted dealing with them to keep you from reaching the (location in Barovia), and *pauses to deal cards* [x] is the best way to get them together. Stuff like that.
Also, I was wondering if someone could tell me if the base attack progression for the Knight of the Raven from EtCR has a fighter base attack progression, or a cleric, and whether its D10 or D8 hit die?
BAB is +1/level, hit die d8. I may decide to keep the KotR lore in the adventure, but I doubt the PCs would meet any of them. One of the reasons I'm dumping the whole Lightbringer thing is because IMC Ravenloft is a closed environment, being an eeeeevil demiplane and all. Also, I'm leaning toward Strahd and the PCs (and *maybe* some of the more important NPCs) being the only ones with levels in PC classes, mainly to increase the sense of isolation for the players as they won't have much in the way of peers/potential allies handy.
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I suggest taking a look to Ravenloft Gazetteer I by Arthaus to see how to make Barovia something more than a horror movie clichè... ;-)
Thanks! I'll add that to my list of possible references. I'm a bit over-saturated at the moment, with:
- Black Box (Realm of Terror)
- AD&D Ravenloft Campaign Setting
- Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
- Heroes of Horror
- Libris Mortis
- I6: Ravenloft
- Van Richten's Guide to the Mists (free download, even)
And then there's
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I think if I was going to do fortune telling I would do it like the Harrow is done in CotCT. I would do it for an adventure and then do it again for the next adventure. Then you can predict what is coming up better and the PCs can see the connection more easily.
That is a great idea. Though I can't decide if I want to go Harrow, or read the Fortunes using either Three-Dragon Ante or my Vertigo Tarot deck. Decisions, decisions ....
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I think if I was going to do fortune telling I would do it like the Harrow is done in CotCT. I would do it for an adventure and then do it again for the next adventure. Then you can predict what is coming up better and the PCs can see the connection more easily.That is a great idea. Though I can't decide if I want to go Harrow, or read the Fortunes using either Three-Dragon Ante or my Vertigo Tarot deck. Decisions, decisions ....
I have one of the original (maybe two) decks from the old Ravenloft days. I would do it just as it was done in I6. They have rules to use a regular deck of cards but I would either use the Harrow Deck or the Tarot if I did not have the Ravenloft cards.