16 November 2025 - Ravenloft

History

From Wikipedia:

Ravenloft is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. It is an alternate time-space existence known as a pocket dimension or demiplane, called the Demiplane of Dread, which consists of a collection of land pieces called "domains", brought together by a mysterious force known only as the Dark Powers. Each domain is tailored to and mystically ruled by a being called a Darklord who is forever trapped and surrounded by magical mists surrounding the domain. Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire in the original AD&D Ravenloft I6 module released in 1983, became the first Darklord, both ruler and prisoner of his own personal domain of Barovia.
In 1978, Tracy and Laura Hickman wrote adventures that would eventually be published as the Dungeon & Dragons modules Pharaoh and Ravenloft. Strahd von Zarovich was created by the Hickmans "after Tracy returned home from a disappointing session of D&D. Back in First Edition, the game was less of a storytelling game. [...] It didn't make sense to [Tracy] why a creature like a vampire was just sitting around in a random dungeon with oozes, goblins, and zombies. So he and his wife set out to create a vampire villain with fleshed-out motivations and history". When the Hickmans began work on Ravenloft, they felt the vampire archetype had become overused, trite, and mundane, and decided to create a frightening version of the creature for the module. They play-tested it with a group of players every Halloween for five years on their own game system with the adventure titled Vampyr. However, the Hickmans kept being asked about their "Ravenloft game", and so the Ravenloft name stuck. The duo eventually caught the attention of D&D's original publishers. They were hired to adapt it into the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and it was released as Module I6: Ravenloft in 1983 by TSR.

While there were 78 Ravenloft titles published by TSR, 21 by Sword & Sorcery Studios, and 11 by Wizards of the Coast, there have only been 4 official modules based on the Hickmans' original "Vampyr" adventure. They are:

I6 Ravenloft (1983) - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st Ed.) - - published after playtesting Vampyr for 5 years
House of Strahd (1993) - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Ed. - - updated to take place in the new Ravenloft Domain of Dread 2nd Ed. Campaign Setting
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (2006) - Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Ed. - - updated to be played as a mini-campaign, much longer than the original module, and possible to embed in Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or a generic setting
Curse of Strahd (2016) - Dungeons & Dragons 5th Ed. - - updated to include many more towns and wilderness areas. A "Revamped" version was published in 2020 with a focus on diversity and inclusion with the Vistani

We are playing the original I6 Ravenloft, using Foundry VTT and the Advanced Roleplaying System (ARS) ruleset in Foundry, which is essentially AD&D 2nd Edition with Ascending Armor Class, although we are keeping the AD&D (1st Ed.) monster and game stats. We are also using the Vistani name instead of the original.

Session Zero

We spent the session building characters, leveling them up to 7th level, and rolling for magic items the characters would have found during their adventuring up to that point.

Here are the characters:

Azdroth (John) - a Chaotic Neutral Elf Magic User
Clarity (Meridith) - a Neutral Half Elf Assassin
Garreth (Steve) - a Neutral Good Human Ranger
Knohm (Lyle) - a Neutral Evil Gnome Illusionist/Assassin
Lillian Stargzer (Alisha) - a Neutral Good Human Cleric
Zugzug (Jason) - a Chaotic Good Half-Orc Fighter

Given all the different races, classes, and alignments, this ought to be interesting to see how you can all work together (or not)

Gameplay

There was none this time, as we did not finish all character prep.

Post-Session

I had time to work on the Game World in Foundry, and updated our Session Zero scene to include Clyde Caldwell's original painting as a background for the scene.

I also included a lightning effect just for fun!