Favorite Published Adventures

[IanFordam]

We're in that quiet period between QtR submissions closing and the publication of the forthcoming issue. Just to stir the cauldron a little, I thought I'd ask:

Among the many published Ravenloft adventures, which ones were your favorites and/or your players' favorites?

For my part, my players have been gaming for forty years and therefore have read many of the official modules somewhere along the line. As such I've only run two published adventures for them. Circle of Darkness generally went over well once the players figured out how society worked under the Church of Zhakata (leading to the repeated refrain, "G'Henna is awful"), but I should also admit to considerable embellishment of the original source. The second adventure, then, was "Blood in Moondale", which I ran as a flashback within my larger Liffen campaign. Because it was run with throwaway characters, my players were more willing to roll with the module-y nature of the adventure. Although they figured out what was happening with the werewolf early on,

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the bit with Dante Lysin caught them by pleasant surprise.

So how 'bout you all? What are some of your favorites?

[Speedwagon]

Thanks for the thread Ian!

I haven't had the chance to run too many modules as written or with modifications, but of the ones that I did, my PCs enjoyed their heavily-modified version of Thoughts of Darkness. It was really just Thoughts of Darkness in all but name as I changed the major details of how and why they were in Bluetspur and made the scenario more about escaping Bluetspur, coupled with the removal of the Apparatus and Lyssa von Zarovich.

I also ran a mostly by-the-book version of Neither Man nor Beast that made me fall in love with Markovia and Dr. Markov/Diosamblet. Unfortunately I didn't fully complete it: by the time the broken ones under Akanga had their revolution against the Giver of Pain, the PCs had found a way to leave the island as they didn't want to get involved with the doctor. On the upside, the reason why they didn't want to get involved with the doctor was because one of their number stayed behind with the kindly Dr. Fran while the rest went to the Order of the Guardians monastery to retrieve the Table of Life, and that PC was turned into a broken one. This spooked everyone else to the point that they didn't want to stay on the island longer, and even though they met and offered to team up with Akanga, they didn't trust Akanga to kill them either. Despite that rather anti-climactic solution, my players did enjoy Neither Man nor Beast as they had read the original work it's based off of and appreciated the way Dr. Markov managed to fool them whenever they asked him questions.

In terms of the modules that I had the chance to read but not run, Dark of the Moon really captured my interest. Vorostokov as a domain and Gregor Zolnik as a darklord hadn't really popped out at me until I read the module, and I gradually began to fall in love with this domain in the Frozen Reaches, especially after having played the 5e module Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden with friends and noting potential similarities in implementation between the two (aside from the fact that they're both rather cold). So I'd say that as of now, Dark of the Moon is my favorite module to have read, and I would like to run something like it in the future.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Haven't DM'ed many but I can say that

Castles Forlorn is an all time favourite competing with Feast of Goblyns which although it has many problems we had a really good time (as well as a battle against 180 skeletons). Wasn't familiar with fatigue rules back then and the party killed them all. They wouldn't have survived if we had played it post-Player's Option: Combat & Tactics

When Black Roses Bloom we had a nice time though all were familiar with Sothy's background.

Adam's Wrath was a nice one, Adam's cavern was really spooky and Adam's Children a nice touch.

Touch of Death to linear and the climactic end is actually anti-climactic.

Night of the Walking Dead would be far more interesting after the Souragne Gazetteer.

Howls in the Night was a failure, not necessarily because of the module.

The Awakening Nice adventure but Nova Vaasa was a mess back then, good thing there is the Rav.Gaz. now.

Gazing Into the Abyss from Chilling Tales was one of the most memorable atmospheres I have DMed in. The players were really scared, unfortunately that death spell for a 4th-6th level "didn't help much" and every member of the party fell under Van Richten's Curse. Even though everyone was killed they really enjoyed the adventure, fortunately it was a one session game and no favourite PCs were killed.

I had also played the following Book of Crypts adventures
Bride of Mordenheim, interesting but needs work I remember playing it with two players.
Blood in Moondale, too obvious didn't like it much.
The Dark Minstrel, this was really boring and frustrating for the players.

[Strahdsbuddy]

I will second Castles Forlorn, we had a blast with the temporal shifts and trying to piece everything together

Not officially Ravenloft, but Ghosts of Mistmoor was the best haunted house I’ve ever seen and my players jumping when someone upstairs slammed a door unexpectedly is one of my favorite moments as a DM

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Early in my DMing career, I ran a lot of modules completely as is. As my later campaigns became more story focused and customized, I heavily modified some of them to fit the larger narrative or to patch over parts I didn't like or that didn't fit.

Night of the walking Dead is a classic that I've run I think 3 times with no changes.
Feast of Goblyns is a sentimental fave. I've run it both as is and heavily modified for different groups and it's gone over well both times.
The Evil Eye changed my conception of what a module could be. It's practically a Gazetteer with an adventure running through it.

Of the mini-adventures, I love:
Seepage (the Automatic Man), Waxing Horrific (du Cire), and Best of Both Worlds (Gestalt) from CotN:Created, Pity the Child (Nikolai Melentha) from Cotn:Ghosts, Dark Desires (de Penible) from Cotn:Demons, and Undying Justice from Chilling Tales.

I've always wanted to run Bleak House and Castles Forlorn but never have. The latter is particularly daunting.

In the non-Ravenloft, but Ravenloft-adjacent, I'll second "Ghosts of Mistmoor," which I've run and enjoyed, and I also really like Pathfinder's Murder's Mark and hope to run it one day.

[alhoon]

I haven't played many published but honestly, I think some of the best were in VrGtGhosts

[IanFordam]

Thanks for the responses, folks!

I had not expected the love for Castles Forlorn or Feast of Goblins, but of course learning about the unexpected favorites is why I asked my question. I'm also happy to see attention paid to the shorter adventures from Children of the Night and Chilling Tales since they are a substantial part of the reason why Ravenloft caught my attention in the first place.

I will admit to being surprised that nobody mentioned Curse of Strahd or any of the other flavors of the original Ravenloft module. And here I thought they would have been the gateway to the setting for more people!

The double shout-out for "Ghost of Mistmoor" means that I'm definitely going to have to keep an eye out for a copy of Dungeon #35.

[alhoon]

Honestly, Feast of the Goblyns is a bit "meh" in my opinion. I am not fun of the "Darklord for a day" for Dago-??? the one with the crown.

[Joël of the FoS]

Let’s see… over the years I’ve DMed :

In the 90’s, when in a weekend in hell style :

Ship of Horror - meh
When Black Roses Bloom - fun, wasn’t complicated.
From the Shadows (1992) – did it as a player, meh, but the DM wasn’t great
Die Vecna Die! – awful for the RL setting, fun dungeoncrawl

Since 2003, in my current RL campaign :

Effigy of Ivan Szimin (BoSecrets) – fun, could have been better, my fault. It was their introduction to RL.
Howls in the Night – great gothic story.
The Evil Eye – best ever, for me and for the PCs they loved it. Great sandbox, where anything can happen (it really did get complicated when two PCs were infected by lycanthropy)
Bleak House - second best ever, the players really hated Heinfroth’s guts.
Carnival – finally was the only dud of current campaign, my fault, they didn’t have a purpose to go there
Dark Minstrel (Evensong) – ok, as it quickly ended, or it would have became boring indeed.
Intro to the Nighmare Court ((where a PC and Tara Kolyana have the same nightmares) – cool as done, but I wouldn’t make a full campaign on this.
Ashington manor (Dark Tales & Disturbing Legends) – very cool, a light version of Castle Forlorn
Horror’s Harvest (from Dungeon mag) – was a lot of fun. The player who’s PC was controlled is still traumatized and always say “no zucchini please” where he orders food.
Azenwrath (Cotn-N) – anxiety of what’s coming was great, battle was short however
Skinsaw thief (PF#2) – really great adventure, where I mingled things from my campaign. They loved it.
Harrowstone (PF) – wow, that famous adventure was great!
SS Bonniville (Dungeon) – they liked it, especially since I tied it with a villain IMC
The Sante-Lyrimin abbey, with the two witches – fun and deadly!
The Rasputin’s Russia adventure (PF71) – again they loved it even if it was also deadly
Touch of death (current thing going on) – sounds it will be fun too. But I’ll change the ending. Mixed with ToD, PF’s the Pact Stone Pyramid mixed with Entombed with the Pharaoh is fun so far.

After that, I'm leaning toward Servants of Darkness and Shadow Rift, I'll poke you to test ideas later on.

Plus: lots of homemade, based on canon stuff – the Mordent stay sandbox, the heretic texts cycle, the Whispering Way arc, the Ivana Boritsi arc

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Honestly, Feast of the Goblyns is a bit "meh" in my opinion. I am not fun of the "Darklord for a day" for Dago-??? the one with the crown.

Agreed that the ending comes a out of left field. The whole Daglan portion is not great, and could use a big rewrite. But I love the intrigue of Harkon vs. Akriel vs. Heinfroth, and the set pieces are a lot of fun (the Old Kartakan Inn, Heinfroth's asylum, Radaga's cavern... (high cheese factor, but I've come to like that sometimes)) A precursor to The Evil Eye in many ways in terms of planting lots of seeds in the sandbox, if I can mix a metaphor or two. As a whole, yeah, it's a bit of a mess, but it's got a lot of great salvageble parts, particularly if you being in stuff from the Gazeteer and/or the novels.