So the new Ravenloft-based adventure Curse of Strahd for Dungeons and Dragons is set for release in just over a week release next week so I thought it might be a good time to look back over at the original Ravenloft module by Laura and Tracy Hickman. I am fortunate enough to have partner that tracked down a copy of the module and I received it as a Christmas present a few years ago. Hopefully this post will help explain to people a bit of the history of Ravenloft and how it fits into the bigger D&D picture. Beneath is a scan of my copy’s cover page.

We can see that on the cover is Strahd, the vampire lord that features prominently in the upcoming module for 5^th edition. He’s a Dracula type figure that has a tortured past and that was one of the things that made Ravenloft different. Previous to the publication of the module enemies and NPCs were simply in the game to give the players something to kill or to talk to. The Hickmans changed this; they made the villain the centre of the story. Strahd is the story in Ravenloft and that revolutionized the approach to adventure design. No longer could you simply have a series of unconnected rooms in a dungeon that didn’t make sense outside of itself. The characterization of Strahd as a villain helped peel away the wild and wooly adventure design of the 1970’s and replace it with something more meaningful.

So in addition to Strad what else have we got? We can see that the adventure is labelled as ‘I6’, meaning, for those unfamiliar with AD&D modules that it was the 6^th adventure in the ‘I’ series. ‘I’ stands for intermediate, and it was mostly a series of unconnected adventures, though Ravenloft is one of the few within the series to get a sequel. We can also see that the adventure is intended for ‘6 to 8 characters of levels 5 to 7’. This reveals a difference in the game design culture and the understanding of how many PC’s would be in the game. I, along with most people who play D&D I presume would consider eight player characters quite a lot, maybe too many for some people. It reveals that, both the rules for AD&D were faster and simpler (well, I’d ague about simplicity…) and that life was cheaper back in 1^st E AD&D.

With the cover done, let’s take a proper look inside. The actual cover pages are a folio with rest of the book inside. So if you take the cover off you get this wonderfully drawn map (it’s so big I had to take a picture of it rather than a scan). The view Tracey went for is an isometric cutaway, showing each floor plan. This isometric design is something that he would go on to use to great effect in other AD&D modules, such as the Dragonlance modules and it’s a choice that works really well here. You can get a sense of the grand scale of Castle Ravenloft as soon as you open that map. The steep towers and foreboding halls leap off the page. I love it.

What’s actually in the adventure then? Well it is, at its heart an exploration of Castle Ravenloft as well as interactions with the local townsfolk. There is also plenty of action that happens out in the ghoul haunted forest that surrounds Castle Ravenloft that can keep a party’s interest for many, many sessions. It’s all about uncovering the mystery with Ravenloft. The game made use of tarot cards, in which an npc at the beginning of the module gives the players a reading which can reveal certain details about the upcoming adventure and the mysterious vampire lord. I believe that the use of tarot cards is coming back in Curse of Strahd and I for one am very excited to see what Wizards of the Coast have cooked up for us. I do hope they have managed to keep the mysterious adventure design and the grim foreboding tone of the original module for Curse. Either way, I shall be interested to see what they have written. I hope you’ve found this discussion interesting and I’d like to hear people’s thought’s on the Ravenloft.