Black Box era, what did we do?

[Strahdsbuddy]

While watching the latest Hour of the Raven, it occured to me what a great storyline Gabrielle Aderre had from the Evil Eye to the Gazetteer. It was a tremendous improvement over the Black Box (indeed my gospel!) which painted Invidia as rather dull. I get the feeling the seeds were planted for teh future, but it hadn't been revealed to us yet.

I'm curious, did anyone use Invidia back in the old days? Did you have your own spin on it?

How about the other domains? Particularly under-described at the time was Valachan, Gundarak, Nova Vaasa, Tepest and Richemulot. Did you old bucks stick to the familiar, Barovia and Mordent like I did, or the setting of the first adventure in Kartakass? Or did you blaze a trail?

[Mephisto of the FoS]

My first box set was Castles Forlorn, I played only as a PC before that (and I've never played as a PC in a Ravenloft adventure). And then my next box set was the Red Box. But I think I am qualifyed to answer the question since all the adventures I 've written and played were before the Grand Conjuction. So yes I ve done a follow up adventure of Feast of Goblyns in Gundarak, have made some sessions in Forlorn, and also in Nova Vaasa, one of Malken being psychicly connected with a Player Character during his murders (more like a murder mystery), and a small trip to Tepest to find a chronomancer living in the woods. I bought a used Black Box around 1997 I think, and by then I already had Forbidden Lore (with the only extra info from the red box being the secret societies, images, dikehsa dice and the cards without the printing error in the red box. I 've never played a Barovia adventure... but the first adventure I ever DMed was the PCs trying to avert the reviving of Dracula (if I knew about Strahd then it would be him), I had no idea about monster powers then (didn't own a monstrous compedium, didn't even had a Players handbook then), I think his stats were of something like a 2nd lvl human fighter or something. So a kender PC killed Dracula with a hoopak sling...I was so pissed of I killed the whole party... really pathetic... , I was 11 or something and the only D&D product I had was "The Denizens of Ravenloft Miniatures" box set, so I had no idea about DMing, but at least we were laughing about that years later.

[RavensCall]

My first box set was the Red box. Reading through it, I fell in love with the setting but felt that I was missing something. I used a few of the modules for "weekend in hell" adventures. It wasn't till Domains of Dread came out that I could see the potential for a home campaign with native player characters. Then I combed ebay and such and got the Black box and many of the older modules for the Grand Conjunction. Once I had everything, I did a kind of time travel/Quantum Leap type campaign where a cursed hourglass sent the players across time to play out various games. They would go in the past and then return to the present, etc. Everyone had fun but looking back it sounded better on paper than actual play and we never finished the campaign. Now years later, I'm going to try again. After the holidays my current group should be wrapped up with our current campaign and we are going to start a full Ravenloft campaign. I have a few story arcs but basically I intend to start with the Black Box and go from there, letting them play through the Grand Conjunction modules along with other modules and homebrew adventures. I plan on making it a traveling campaign and plan on sending the players to some of the lesser detailed domains. Using some ideas from online, for example I like Mad Step Dad's idea that Arkendale is a kind of Southern Gothic domain. Maybe incorporate Nathan Timothy's riverboat and do a kind of medieval/mardi gras type feel. I also plan to expand on the death of Duke Gundar when the players get to the Feast of Goblyns adventure. I'm going to homebrew how Dr. Dominiani was able to destroy Duke Gundar. But to answer your original question, no I didn't develop the lesser known domains, I just kinda used the modules and didn't really flesh things out. I hope to correct that with this new campaign.

[Strahdsbuddy]

I love the Quantum Leap campaign, i had an idea for one similar: after the Requiem, Azalin--as a demilich--is time hopping trying to keep the various domains from forming, and thereby never having a demiplane to get trapped in. He was refered to only as The Traveler by their Vistani guide, a Zarovan version of Al. The players had to follow him to the seminal events of individual domains and make sure the horrible events transpired so they would ahve a future to return to. Mine never got off the ground, sadly...

Domains of Dread was one fo the msot important books of the entire setting, for the exact reasons you stated. All the background info was necessary. I wonder if it blew up anyone's campaign. I wonder if one of the Black box era DMs ever had a big old plan for Nova Vaasa, all tucked in and 1/3 of the size it would be later, only to have Domains of Dread ruin in with the canon info!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I was pretty strictly module-based back then. I was in high school, and while I'd come up with a few adventures on my own outside of Ravenloft, they weren't very good. Once I read Feast of Goblyns, I saw what an adventure could really be, and I went full-on module-happy for a while, running them pretty much as written. It wasn't until the middle of college when I started reading Stu Turner's campaign and other journals like it and saw how one might weave adventures together with character-driven bits and setting background to make something more than the sum of parts. I recall only 3 times I did anything straight from the Black Box:
1) I introduced a new player to D&D with a very basic monster hunt for a Gremishka, mainly because I didn't own a Monstrous Compendium and the only monster stats I had to work with were the ones at the back of the black box setting book. (No SRD in those days!)
2) For a class project, I made a really terrible (but ambitious!) module (more of a sketch, really) based on entering Strahd's mind and setting him on the right path instead of the wrong one in various points of his life to redeem him. (In retrospect, kind of similar to what WBRB did for Soth)
3) A friend of mine and I spent an afternoon brainstorming about Arak. If you recall, it was very bare-bones in the Black Box, with only a hint of backstory related to Drow. Tristessa didn't even exist. We had fleshed out a darklord and a backstory, and a whole society, none of which I remember now. Wish I'd written some of it down. Never actually used it in a game, just as a creative exercise.

[ewancummins]

I played D&D a few times as a kid, but I didn't really start playing regularly until 1991 or 1992. A friend was our DM and he used the Black Box as his go-to campaign setting. We played a mix of what would later be called 'outlanders' and 'natives'' from the start.

The DM's take on the setting was fairly low-magic, at least in most domains. True spellcasting clerics were uncommon, and mostly from outside, beyond the Mists.
Spiritualists and mediums were rather more common in some domains.
Gunpowder was rare, alchemical stuff, absent from most places. Our PCs moved around a fair bit: Mordent, Dementlieu, Richemulot, Falkovnia, Arkandale, and other places.

Darklords featured prominently in some adventures. I recall an Irda paladin smashing Ivan Dilisnya in the head with a mace, but I am not sure if it proved permanent and fatal. It definitely took him down for that scene and helped us escape. My (Earth native, from 16th Century England) PC shot at him, but missed, with an harquebus in the same adventure. A cleric or druid PC once unleashed an insect swarm on Ivana Boritsi, but of course a thousand bee stings won't do her in...

A drow NPC from Arak showed up once, wrapped in bandages and looking like a mummy in a hooded cloak. I seem to recall he (she?) was surprised by my PC's attitude, which was to treat the drow as a human afflicted with some strange disease, but not as a monster.


I was usually a played, but I did run a few short Ravenloft games.
My DM bought the Red Box when it came out and implemented some of the changes, but not, I think, all of them. I seem to recall he was never sold on the Shadow Rift, at least not as it was developed.

[Mistmaster]

Ivana is immune to poison, not to swarm damage, thought.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Ivana is immune to poison, not to swarm damage, thought.

Yes but the swarm damage in this instance is from bee stings

sting: = a small sharp-pointed organ at the end of the abdomen of bees, wasps, ants, and scorpions, capable of inflicting a painful or dangerous wound by injecting poison

so I believe this is an example of good logical thinking on the part of the DM.

[Mistmaster]

I don't agree the swarm damage is phisical, the poison is extra; one thousand of small pins and the end of the day do make some damage.

[ewancummins]

Ivana is immune to poison, not to swarm damage, thought.

1 It's beestings, and so poison.
2 This was 2E rules, not 3E.

As I recall, she still suffered some pain from all the pricking, and was quite distracted.

Our PCs did NOT stick around to find out what happened, as we had to deal with armed guards.
We later learned she was just fine.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

I don't agree the swarm damage is phisical, the poison is extra; one thousand of small pins and the end of the day do make some damage.

My friend from Sri Raji disagrees with you. Do you see his point?...

[Mistmaster]

Fakirs have damage reduction thought.

[Gautsu]

Dungeon #42 had The Price of Revenge, which I really liked. Based a lot of my early trips into Valachan off of that information