Has anyone run this adventure? What are your thoughts on it?
I have run a total of ONE module in my 38 years of gaming, "Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut" from a 1e Dragon magazine, but I'm thinking of running my players through it.
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I really like it.
It was maybe 06-07 that I used it as the core of a homebrew campaign, along with the old clown-show Castle Greyhawk (from '87 I think) and other old GH stuff such as Ivid the Undying and Scarlet Brotherhood and Iuz the Old, etc.
But the then-New GH book by Mona & Jacobs was the core.
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I think that if you're running it as-is, you ought to expect that it will be really playable. I haven't taken it off the shelf in a few years for research but you gotta figure that since it was Mona and Jacobs back when they were really focused on writing great, playable adventures more than overseeing a whole publishing company that the lesser responsibilities let them really do a good job.
And, of the Hardbacks that came out in the series, Greyhawk was received FAR better by the gaming audience than the others! Baur admitted that Expedition to Demonweb was cobbled together too quickly and he wasn't too proud of it. Ravenloft was absolutely terrible (Eva a Green Hag with a Minotaur bodyguard?!? Seriously?!? How stupid!). Undermountain is pretty good but Expedition to Greyhawk is widely regarded as by far the best of the four.
Terrific! Thanks for the info!
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Ravenloft was absolutely terrible (Eva a Green Hag with a Minotaur bodyguard?!? Seriously?!? How stupid!).
Not challenging, but curious. Why is this stupid? Just because minotaurs and hags don't normally hang out together?
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Ah, good question.
The answer is "atmosphere."
The I3 Ravenloft (with the noteworthy Red Dragon exception) is far more about mood and tone -- really an atmosphere adventure. And when Ravenloft started doing novels, splat-books, adventures, & other 2E stuff, the material that was mostly mood and tone and atmosphere was well appreciated by the gaming community; we all tried to make creepy, horror adventures. And the material that was more hack-and-slash and 'bull-in-china-shop' was garbage.
Madame Eva is a wise, venerable Gypsy who reads the PCs' fortunes and provides atmosphere and mood and tone. She vaguely answers questions throughout the adventure and provides cryptic warnings and auguries. She is mysterious and appears and disappears like a mist. She is among the first elements of Flavor for the whole game: creepy, disturbing, almost ethereal.
Ravenloft is intended to be Silence of the Lambs -- not The Devil's Rejects.) That is the expectation.
The 3.5 book made her a brute annis hag (I miswrote green hag earlier) and gave her a minotaur bodyguard. As though this was a Dave Arneson or Frank Mentzer hack-and-slash adventure with no soul, no heart, no aesthetic. Just dumb, meaningless combat. That's all the whole book is. Dumb and meaningless combat. (Not that there is anything at all wrong with brute, meaningless hack-and-slash -- it is Fun. But it's NOT Ravenloft.)
I agree; that's not Ravenloft. Atmospheric, psychological horror is what I've always thought Ravenloft was about (with killin' thrown in for grins).
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Okay, that makes sense. I have seen over the years that people try to make Raveloft act like Planescape, in that because it's a realm that captures denizens of other realms, that it should be treated as a smorgasbord of unrelated creatures running around (but with Strahd's castle looming in the background). But your point about the literature of Ravenloft defining the setting's atmosphere rings true.
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I have seen over the years that people try to make Raveloft act like Planescape, in that because it's a realm that captures denizens of other realms, that it should be treated as a smorgasbord of unrelated creatures running around (but with Strahd's castle looming in the background).
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I can see how people have done that kind of take on it; I think it sounds horrible: I mean, if you're doing Ravenloft do Ravenloft; if you're doing Planescape do Planescape. (I just finished an Epic Planescape campaign about six months ago-- Mordenkainen sending the PCs from their baronies in Furyondy to Sigil to "Clean out the squatters in his little fortress in The City of Doors" and as a reward, the PCs could use the structure as a base-of-operations for any adventures they may want to pursue in Sigil. The PCs eventually decided to go to Azzagrat and fight Graz'zt.)
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Ravenloft is about mood and atmosphere, the horror and terror setting. Why have gamers (and designers) altered it? .... Because it can be extraordinarily difficult to pull that off in an actual game. For some groups it is impossible. Players at the dining room table HAVE to be ready to stay seated, shut the 'F' up, and listen to the DM unfold the adventure. Take it seriously. No phones. No flipping through PC sheet pages. No puns. Almost no combat whatsoever. .... And when you can get the players to go for that, it is unsustainable. Ravenloft can be great for a one-session adventure. But it is very difficult to to keep the mood the more sessions you go. Sooner or later, players want to cut loose and make jokes, check their phones, snack on snacks & beer, and most of all, kick in the door and do some raucous monster bashing. Then spend treasure and Level-Up. Cuz that's FUN!
But you can do a successful Ravenloft game. I even managed a successful Ravenloft campaign several years ago (most of my Ravenloft games in the 90s would work for a few sessions and then deteriorate into more typical adventures, players pretending to be spooked rather than being spooked).