Crossover Campaigns

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Hell_Born
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Crossover Campaigns

Post by Hell_Born »

has anyone ever run a campaign where the entire party (or at least most of it) started playing in a different campaign setting, but then moved to Ravenloft? I'm just curious how you would handle the transition and which campaign settings are best suited for it. Below is my opinions:

Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance: three of the- if not the- easiest to convert settings, they are the backbone to the setting after all.

Masque of the Red Death: as an expansion to Ravenloft, extremely easy to convert, there's little difference (history and geography aside) between this setting and the more culturally advanced domains

Ebberon (sp?): don't know anything about it, so can comment.

Dark Sun: hard to do, as the characters are already pretty hardened to death and gore. Best option is to play upon the "Strangers in a Strange Land" thing, as Athas is desert and Ravenloft european-based.

Planescape: at first glance, this seems impossible and for a while I agreed. Characters from this setting drink with fiends, wrestle with celestials and converse with dieties, making the gothic nature of Ravenloft nothing to them. However, a crossover can be done: just make use of the fact that absolutely nothing is known about Ravenloft outside of the Demiplane (check the Codex of Demiplanes article at the official Planescape site) and the fact that Ravenloft is different in nature to any other demiplane. A crossover between the two might revolve around the group being sent to "get the dark" on this obscure demiplane, but as you all know getting in is easy, but getting out is a whole other story...
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Post by Storm Knight »

Don't have any of the Ebberron source material and I have never played an Ebberron game myself, but I assume characters that are one of the Ebberron specific player-races may face quite a bit of difficulty with the folk of Ravenloft.

The shifters are part-lycanthropes, and already have a very bestial appearance to them (though I suppose at best they'll be mistaken for Caliban). The warforged are a race of sentient constructs made of steel and wood, which I am sure would be at least unsettling for most commoners, especially of the low-tech domains. Changelings are similar to dopplegangers, I suppose if they are smart about taking a human form they'll be ok. The Kalshatar are like psion-people. Because their appearance is similar to that of a human, they should be okay too as long as they are careful with knowing when to use their powers.

(Anyone who knows more about Eberron is free to correct me on this)


I'm using the good ol' standard D&D setting; Greyhawk, as the homeworld of the outlanders in my campaign. Its fantasy, but nothing too extreme, that way the characters will be familiar with some of the fantasy elements of Ravenloft, but won't undergo too much cultural shock from lack of lots of crazy magical/fantastical things. Plus, my players are most familliar with the ways of this setting.
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Post by Hell_Born »

Does anyone else have any input on this topic of mine?
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Post by Dukkar Scaliba »

Hell_Born wrote:Does anyone else have any input on this topic of mine?
Yes, I have ;)

I'm the master of a mixed group, where six PCs are from the Forgotten Realms (well, two are dead now), one from Dragonlance and one native from Darkon.
It's a very difficult situation, because sometimes the PCs didn't get schocked and kill parts of the atmosphere. For example, the theory of the wizard from the FR: After getting into the mists, the cleric of gond in the group gets the cold feeling that his god is very far away - then, they know that there on another plane. Know the group traveled from Darkon to Larmordia and isn't very fascinating from the lore of the land.
So I think its better to bring a group from a world into the mists, who don't know much about the multiuniverse and magic itself.
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Post by Pariah »

Last campaign (as I was a player) the first four players were from forgotten realms (all of us were gathered in Scardale) and we were told to investigate a strange red mansion that had strangely materialized by the coast and had covered the entire village we were in in a thick mist...

Worked out well, as only two of the original players were experienced in DnD and none of us knew anything about Ravenloft at the time. Though the players caught on that we weren't in Kansas anymore when my character (good old Siegfried) was noticed by the Dark Powers for his single-minded hate and was quickly down the path of no return...

Of course, they never caught onto the reasoning behind what was going on, as whenever they approached me about my past I simply growled at them and kept distance (though I did explain it once when we were camping out against a lycanthrope, my most hated enemy: 'Lycanthrope killed my family, now I'm hunting it.')

When our fifth player joined in he was actually a resident (though the player himself didn't know much about Ravenloft either) and came in as a Cleric of Ezra to keep us alive and show us the ropes of Mordent. When Siegfried went completely Dark Lord on the party and tried to kill them, my new character popped in: Raphael Cheslav, monster hunter extraordinaire! Everyone loved him...an intelligent, blunt and womanizing resident of Mordent (originally came from Borca after his family was murdered). So we had mixed group that worked fairly well.

The main problem I think you'd face if you came from Eberron (and even from Forgotten Realms depending on your starting point) is the amount of magic available to you. They're high-magic campaigns, and if you take too long to bring them into Ravenloft...well, the horror kinda goes away when you're armed with +2, Flaming burst, keen scimitars, your wizard has a full spellbook and the robes of the archmagi and you're travelling with a Warforged Juggernaut...

The best thing to do here would be to throw them against things where their massive fire power can't do anything. My GM threw a lycanthrope at us and my druid was dumbfounded when he shot it in the eye with a silver arrow to no effect! Ghosts were another thing that it seemed the party just didn't get, despite Raphael's constant berating on how to deal with them...but you give a fighter a ghost-touch weapon and he can take anything! :p

The OR also threw most of us for a bad ride (except for Siegfried, who reveled in his massive OR and gave him an Intimidate check of...I think of 20 at level 5, I can't remember, but the OR was huge as by the end of it I was basically a were-wolf all the time - they banned him from Mordenshire).

Then there's the power checks...which will typically catch everyone offguard. Suddenly that friendly rogue of theirs is looking a bit odd these days, the fighter seems just a bit too blood thirsty and the ranger too eager to massacre any shapeshifter he comes across...

Either way you play, I think Ravenloft has enough differences to throw any people from any plane into it and have them cauhgt off guard enough for the horror to sink in. Hell, I think the dread realization that they may never go home would drive most of them insanity if not a deep depression.

I know I wouldn't like to be stuck in Ravenloft...
Kill one man and you're a murderer.
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Kill one hundred and you're a hero.
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Post by Ronia Sun »

Ebberon Changelings, in their natural form, would have a booger of a time in Ravenloft...especially in Paridon, where dopplegangers are regarded with extreme loathing. A canny changeling might do well, but too many slips and (s)he might find themselves the target of a monster-hunt!

I actually have a shifter in my Ravenloft party...and she is a RL native. She knows her father was a werebeast, and so she fears that she herself is some sort of lycanthrope. She is currently searching for a cure. Imagine her surprise when the priest informs her that, whatever she's got, it ain't lycanthropy. She is one of the more human looking shifters, except when in the grip of a rage. As a Sri Rajian in the Core, most folks react more to her dark skin than anything else. (At least until she makes eye contact with them...)

Kalashtar would stick out to a certain extent, simply because most of them are so damn good looking. They'd probably get mistaken for fae blood.

Warforged would probably have a serious problem, since they would inevitably be mistaken for golems.

In truth, though, any of the 'standard' races from Eberron would find Ravenloft culturally shocking. Eberron halflings, for example, ride dinosaurs and tend to be barbarians. Even in the cities, they're not exactly the stereotypical halfling. Eberron elves have that whole 'death cult' thing that would earn them some very dubious glances in the 'loft. Half-elves are a race unto themselves, and would find the reactions of Ravenloft residents confusing and unsettling. Heaven only knows what would happen with a dragonmark heir. Would their abilities even work, seperated as they would be from the ring of Siberys?

There's a lot of potential for fun, though, in bringing a party from Eberron into Ravenloft. The folks from Eberron all view magic as technology; it's an everyday part of their lives. The superstition and fear with which magic is viewed by much of Ravenloft would certainly throw them all for a loop...
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Post by ewancummins »

I always found that Earth -Ravenloft crossovers worked well. I planned on taking a party of explorers from Europe - circa 1600 ,and having the Mists snatch them up at sea, en route to the New World. Landing in Darkon instead of Virginia would be quite a shock.Never got around to running that particular one.
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Post by Spiteful Crow »

I was thinking about the Dark Sun domain of Kalidnay (Domains of Dread) and I thought a nice way to hook some Dark Sun adventurers would be to tell them about the city state of Kalidnay that "mysteriously vanished one day," and then freak them out by bringing them there and slowly introducing Ravenloft elements until they realize they have more things to worry about than the heat. :twisted:
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Post by Ronia Sun »

See, now, this is why I love Ravenloft so much. It's the one setting where the DM can be truly, gleefully, unabashedly evil... :D
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. --Terry Pratchett
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Post by Brandi »

Ronia Sun wrote:See, now, this is why I love Ravenloft so much. It's the one setting where the DM can be truly, gleefully, unabashedly evil... :D
*cough*Paranoia*cough*
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