New to Ravenloft? Or new to our forum? introduce yourself!

[Mischief]

Hello! I'm certainly not new to Ravenloft, seeing as I'm still playing with my good ol' Black Box, but I am new to this forum! I used to browse the Fraternity of Shadows and Mordent Cartographic Society websites for information on Ravenloft. I actually only played D&D until the mid-nineties, but used Ravenloft for other systems for several more years after.

I only got back into it when I decided to try a running a fifth edition game. Long story short, I thought Curse of Strahd was just a remake of the old Ravenloft/House of Strahd module and ended up running a campaign for two play groups over the course of the last two years I intend to keep running Ravenloft campaigns for the foreseeable future and I have to admit D&D kind of grew on me. I recently got a hold of "Jester" David Gibson's Ravenloft supplements to update my old boxed set to fifth edition and I look forward to show the lands beyond Barovia to my players!

P.S.: Shout out to the other Montréal people!

Tell us about some of the fun you'd had and horrible tortures you have inflicted on your hapless adventurers!

[Morgane]

Tell us about some of the fun you'd had and horrible tortures you have inflicted on your hapless adventurers!

Well, both of my play groups were mostly new to Ravenloft, and one of them was even completely new to roleplaying games, including my fiancee. Showing my friends a classic module and introducing my fiancee to D&D were their own rewards. Once they defeated Strahd, that's when things got interesting.

In my first group, the characters were people from the Material plane lured into Barovia by some Vistani. One character got corrupted by some dark powers in one of the book's extra dungeons, and he is now starting to realise he has become a creature of Ravenloft. The party has found out that they are trapped in the demi-plane and is now exploring the Core in search of a way out. They have yet to realise that they are trapped specifically because that character is becoming a monster, and that the quickest way out is to destroy said monster. Fortunately for them, they are about to learn about ways to cheat their way out of the curse, but it will involve forbidden magics and dark pacts and other fun things...

In my fiancee's group, we simply wrapped up the Curse of Strahd campaign in order to try something else. My fiancee wanted to try Call of Cthulhu, but I wanted to keep running D&D. So now I'm running a Lovecraftian campaign using the D&D rules set and Mordentshire as the backdrop. The characters are members of the Mordent Cartographic Society (sponsored by the University of Mordentshire) investigating strange mysteries and facing eldritch horrors. For their first mission, they are escorting a natural philosopher to a fishing village in order to study some new species of sea animal. If you have read A Shadow over Innsmouth, it's basically that but in D&D from there.

[Mischief]

For their first mission, they are escorting a natural philosopher to a fishing village in order to study some new species of sea animal. If you have read A Shadow over Innsmouth, it's basically that but in D&D from there.

I haven't, but Mordent does sound like a good place for fish-people pariahs.

[rpgcasey]

Hello ya'll. It's ya boy.

I'm new here and I discovered Fraternity of Shadows recently. It is a wonderful resource for Ravenloft, which I am a bit obsessed with.

[HyperionSol]

Hello everyone. Long time lurker who finally decided to join up.

I'm finishing details for a Ravenloft one-shot which may evolve into more. Set in Dementlieu, it involves a wax museum whose curator is trapped in the basement. He murdered his wife in a fit of rage when she changed his exhibits, thinking she could hear them speak and wished to be moved. The exhibits then came to life and trapped him in the basement where it is too hot for them. It involves elements from a Tales from the Crypt comic I discovered and some from the 80's movie Waxwork.

The curator is able to attend his duties during the day, but his immense pride in his reputation and his obsession with beating his 'rival' Alexandre du Cire (from COTN: The Created) won't allow him to try and get help from authorities at large. It would also reveal he murdered his wife. Of course, he's not been idle in the basement at night, feeling he is on the verge of finally beating his rival even if his own exhibits are trying to kill him.

[rpgcasey]

Hello everyone. Long time lurker who finally decided to join up.

I'm finishing details for a Ravenloft one-shot which may evolve into more. Set in Dementlieu, it involves a wax museum whose curator is trapped in the basement. He murdered his wife in a fit of rage when she changed his exhibits, thinking she could hear them speak and wished to be moved. The exhibits then came to life and trapped him in the basement where it is too hot for them. It involves elements from a Tales from the Crypt comic I discovered and some from the 80's movie Waxwork.

The curator is able to attend his duties during the day, but his immense pride in his reputation and his obsession with beating his 'rival' Alexandre du Cire (from COTN: The Created) won't allow him to try and get help from authorities at large. It would also reveal he murdered his wife. Of course, he's not been idle in the basement at night, feeling he is on the verge of finally beating his rival even if his own exhibits are trying to kill him.

I'd love to add it to my collection to play when you are done with it.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Hello ya'll. It's ya boy.

I'm new here and I discovered Fraternity of Shadows recently. It is a wonderful resource for Ravenloft, which I am a bit obsessed with.

welcome, rpgcasey. I think you'll find we're all a bit obsessed around here... you'll fit right in!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Hello everyone. Long time lurker who finally decided to join up.

I'm finishing details for a Ravenloft one-shot which may evolve into more. Set in Dementlieu, it involves a wax museum whose curator is trapped in the basement. He murdered his wife in a fit of rage when she changed his exhibits, thinking she could hear them speak and wished to be moved. The exhibits then came to life and trapped him in the basement where it is too hot for them. It involves elements from a Tales from the Crypt comic I discovered and some from the 80's movie Waxwork.

The curator is able to attend his duties during the day, but his immense pride in his reputation and his obsession with beating his 'rival' Alexandre du Cire (from COTN: The Created) won't allow him to try and get help from authorities at large. It would also reveal he murdered his wife. Of course, he's not been idle in the basement at night, feeling he is on the verge of finally beating his rival even if his own exhibits are trying to kill him.

Welcome, HyperionSol! I'm a huge fan of du Cire, and am always glad to see him used. Sounds like adding a rival for him makes for an interesting springboard. Good luck!

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Hi I am an huge fan of Ravenloft since I started playing Ad&d (the first product I bought as a DM was Castles Forlorn back in 1993). I had been a regular visitor of Kargatane and then FoS. Although I haven't played for many years I still read the various FoS netbooks and I am always waiting for the next halloween to come to read more new additions and ideas. Keep up the good work FoS and best wishes to all.

(favourite NPC when I started playing), now I can't choose there are so many well written character's and darklords out there...

[Hanbaoge]

Ah, introductions - well, as mentioned elsewhere, I'm a recent returnee to the Misty-stuff, was pretty active here about 15-odd years back and then life did its thing. I used to post under variations on the name "wannabe", but I doubt I was memorable.

Been doing D&D since the early 1990s, proud to say that Basic and 1st ed are still my favs, though 3rd has its advantages, and I pretend 4th never happened. I'm familiar with several game systems besides D&D, but that's where I started and there shall I remain.

Other than that, not sure what to tell you, so feel free to ask.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Hello. ^_^ Welcome back, I guess?

Um... Where do you stand on v. 3.75, a.k.a. Pathfinder 1E?

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

. . . and I pretend 4th never happened.

I have too many of those books to be able to pretend it never happened. Ah, the folly of youth . . .

[Mischief]

. . . and I pretend 4th never happened.

I have too many of those books to be able to pretend it never happened. Ah, the folly of youth . . .

I like some of the monster design theory. Fort, Ref, Will, "Bloodied", and 1HP minions... My first game was 4e!

[Mephisto of the FoS]

When 4th edition came out I had stopped playing but was still interested in new information I think there are some really well written stuff in Dragon and Dungeon magazines for 4th edition. But I was and still am against dragonborn characters (especially in ravenloft) and is one of the reasons I avoid playing the fighter character in the Ravenloft board game. I just started playing this weekend with my girlfriend as an introduction to D&D, although we had played a small one-o-one catburglar mini adventure during quarantine which she enjoyed even if she was killed by a giant rat (some catburglar...). As I write this I remembered how I started playing, my first game was the D&D board game Goblin's Lair which I didn't like so much, I prefered Hero Quest (probably because I liked the illustrated cards and the miniatures better than the papercut figures in Goblin Lair) and ended up playing Sega Mega Drive that day. Somehow later I gave it another try although I actually played Ad&d (2nd edition) then and I was stuck. After many years of DMing and playing as a PC, me and the friends I was playing with begun experimenting with new rules. We were froustrated as we were trying to come up with new battle rules for the 2nd edition, trying to make it more realistic. For me the biggest problem with the 2nd edition although is the system I ve played the most thus making it easier for me to play, was that most characters were similar of previous characters of the same class (refering to game mechanics), the various class kits that came out to create diversity were problematic on our (group's) opinion and when usually a character died he was replaced with a "clone" of that same character if it was of the same class. Then 3rd edition came out and it had all the element's I was looking for, unfortunatelly our party disbanded cause there was no time to organize gaming sessions or time to create adventures and paint miniatures, since we always played with painted lead miniatures, dioramas and drawn tiled battlegrounds, so we stopped. I can count the times I've played 3rd edition in my hands but I continued buying Ravenloft products even if we weren't playing anymore. In my opinion the White Wolf products gave life to the campaign setting and most of the products are really good, in a way they were more role playing oriented compared to some 2nd edition products that where mostly based on adventures, but I must say that I like almost all 2nd edition Ravenloft adventures. Even Feast of Goblyns which lasted for weeks of gaming sessions (taking the PC's just a full 10 hour gaming session to fight 180 Skeletons and a tree, and surviving) and has some serious plot issues is one of the adventures I enjoyed DMing. The Arthaus products although being really good in their majority had a few bad exceptions that are described in the FoS reviews, also the editorials in the FoS site have given a lots of ideas and plotlines from things that didn't make it to the final product and I am really glad for the existence of this site cause someone could connect the dots and create something out of a missing link. When 4th edition was going to be released I thought that WotC or Arthaus would somehow combine the 4th edition with the Time of Unparallel Darkness. When I first heard of the Shadofell I thought it would be the aftermath of the ToUD a time when all the evil contained in the Demiplane of Dread would be unlished in the Prime Material Plane but then I read that it is only a plane of existence where The Land of Mists was placed and I was disapointed that a few articles in the new edition missed that gothic atmosphere from previous ones. I remember the illustrations in the article Playing Vistani (Dragon Magazine #380) with the dragonborn Vistani and I didn't like it... high fantasy in Ravenloft?... characters that look like they had missed a bounch of powers checks already? the only appropriate Ravenloft setting for dragonborn characters would be kobolt characters in Spawn of the Lizard, I thought... and laughed at the idea of a dragonborn adventurer in a heroic visit to Tepest. Anyways since I had stopped playing by then I never read the rules for 4th edition only the adventure storylines and new domains (I especially prefer the new Headless Horseman plot and character than the vague previous one that was just a killing machine) and I was glad that the campaign setting survived through some articles in WotC magazines (at some point I even feared that the Time of Unparallel Darkness would be the real life termination of Ravenloft). Then the 5th edition Curse of Strahd came, although I have never played the new edition I 've bought Curse of Strahd and as a book I think it is better made than Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (Kavan the Grim?...really?... Why? and illustration of image of the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind in gold with a ruby among others) as it has a better atmosphere and illustrations (although I must object on the illustration for the Icon of Ravenloft (also the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind has still a ruby instead of a crystal "that holds a pice of the sun" and the Amber Temple has too much information as to the nature of some specific entities and also the backstory of it does not compute with previous products). I have to say that although Clyde Caldwell, Stephen Fabian and Robh Ruppel are my favourite Ravenloft artists, I prefer the image of Strahd as it is now, a hero of an ancient time long gone, more closely resembling Bram Stoker's Vlad Tepes Dracula, since in various descriptions he is mentioned as being dressed in an obsolete style (though I guess the Bella Lugosi one was more appropriate for Haloween in 1983). Sometimes I hope they had made the old illustrations and lead miniatures of Strahd in the new version since the Bela Lugosi outfit is a big give away, especially for his alter ego when going around Barovia. I am looking forward for the box set comming out, mostly for the edition of larger Tarokka Cards and I am curious of the changes that have been made in the text, as there have been critics for portraying Vistani in a stereotypical racist way for Roma. This change is a good addition to the product as there are people new to the game and the world of Ravenloft who haven't read Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani and have no idea of Van Richten's reconciliation with Arturi Radanavich and their subsequently mutual forgiveness and spiritual healing or that most Vistani are not thieves and brigands as most Barovians believe.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/23/21300 ... -of-strahd

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Welcome Mephisto and Hanbaoge, glad to have you joining the fun.

Let's just please take the edition comparisons to a new thread if they are going to continue....