Review: Ravenloft (1983)
A review of Tracy and Laura Hickman's legendary gothic horror adventure for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Ravenloft, written by Tracy and Laura Hickman and illustrated by Clyde Caldwell and Dave Sutherland, is a 40 page module published in 1983 for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. Ben Riggs, in his history of TSR, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, extolled the virtues of this legendary adventure:
The Hickmans brought with them to Lake Geneva new ideas about how adventures should be written. Up to this point, D&D adventures were largely descriptions of locations filled with enemies, traps, and treasures. Visit the Caves of Chaos! There behold warring tribes of goblins, orcs, and kobolds! Such adventures were usually about killing monsters in dark places and taking their stuff.
The Hickmans had a higher aim. They wanted to write adventures with objectives “more worthwhile than simply pillaging and killing” and “an intriguing story that is intricately woven into the play itself.” These ideas were on full display in the October 1983 adventure composed by the Hickmans, Ravenloft.
Ravenloft was a truly brilliant, nigh-perfect adventure. It was set in the misty mountains and valleys of Barovia, a land ruled by the undead and undying Count Strahd von Zarovich. Strahd was an active opponent who pursued characters with all the cunning and hunger of a wolf hunting wounded deer. The players had total freedom to explore Barovia but were magically trapped inside the realm, preventing them from going for help and saving the DM from having to worry about any other locations. The goal of the adventure was to destroy Strahd, free the people of his sad land, and in turn escape his domain. It was about more than murder and pillage, and its story was beyond intriguing. Mythic is a more appropriate description. The adventure was even re-playable because the locations of important objects were randomly determined by a deck of cards.
As an addendum, Professor Dungeonmaster of Dungeon Craft calls Ravenloft The Adventure That Changed D&D Forever:
"Ravenloft looked and felt different." [...] "Ravenloft didn't just change D&D modules, it changed the entire course of the game. D&D would never be the same post-Ravenloft."
Ravenloft was soon followed up by a sequel, then expanded into a wildly popular campaign setting (in both 1990 and again 2016), and a series of novels. Strahd clearly cast a tall shadow, but does the purported genius of Ravenloft hold up forty years later?
Approaching Castle Ravenloft. Illustration by Clyde Caldwell
The Story
Count Strahd von Zarovich was a fierce warrior that conquered the valley of Barovia and fell in love with one of the locals, a young woman named Tatyana. His affection was not returned however. She spurned him and favored his younger brother Sergei instead. They were soon engaged. In a rage, Strahd made a pact with death to become an all-powerful and immortal vampyr. On the day of their wedding he killed Sergei and tried to claim Tatyana for himself. In her grief, she flung herself from the walls of Castle Ravenloft. Her body was never found nor was she ever seen again. Despite her supposed death, Strahd was not dissuaded from his quest to reunite with his love. When the characters enter the story, they discover that the local Burgomaster's daughter, Ireena Koylana, may be the reincarnation of Tatyana, and must put an end to Strahd to save her from his clutches.
The Book
Ravenloft's presentation is much the same as many other dungeons published today: a keyed map with room descriptions and boxed text. No surprises there for the modern reader. Stylistically however, there is a great deal of difference. The pages are packed dense with small text in double column format and little art (although what art exists is indeed gorgeous). A 40 page dungeon in 1983 is much bigger than a 40 page dungeon published 40 years later. Readers approaching Ravenloft today might be taken aback by the amount of information in here that I would describe as "useless fluff". For example: room K73 of the castle appears to players as a simple long hallway filled to their knees with water, however, the Hickmans have provided an impossibly intricate trap for them to navigate:
The floor beneath the water is not as solid as it may seem. There is a safe path (see Diagram A), but the rest of the floor is covered with special weight-sensitive trap doors. There is a 5% chance per 100 gp (10 lbs.) of weight that a person standing on the false floor will cause the trap to open. The pit under each trap door is a teleport that is activated by the opening door.
The numbers on the floor in Diagram A are the cells the traps teleport to. If a character sets off a trap, other characters in the hall see an explosion of air and water fly up around the trapped character (air that was trapped in the pit is released suddenly when the trap door opens). The trapped character suddenly falls from sight. The trap doors automatically reset themselves, leaving only a slowly dissipating swirl in the water. Trapped characters are teleported into dungeon cells, closed with iron bars, the floor 5 feet under water (see areas K74 and K75). Strahd attacks lone characters here if he can.
Rooms like these are where the wargaming lineage of D&D comes to the fore. Unless your players are calling out their precise movements over a strict grid—even out of combat—there's no way to run this as written. Most players will simply narrate their characters crossing the hall, and most GMs will just call for a save, assuming they don't outright cut the trap, as I did. Ravenloft is full of these. Just getting into the castle requires the characters to cross a so-rare-you-might-not-even-bother pitfall:
The drawbridge creaks and groans under any weight but is relatively sturdy. Each time anyone except Strahd crosses the drawbridge, there is a 5% chance of a cross board breaking. If a cross board breaks, the character on it must make a dexterity check or fall to the bottom of the cliffs, 1,000 feet below.
A patch of green slime hangs over the entry tunnel. It turns living flesh into green slime in 1-4 melee rounds and eats through metal within 3 melee rounds. It can be scraped off quickly (if the scraper is discarded), excised, frozen, or burned. A cure disease kills green slime. The slime will not fall on characters entering the castle.
While the thought of a player plummeting to their death before they even get into the castle tickles me pink, it's an unrealistic proposition. The fun is in the castle, just get them in there! This weird edge case is just a bit of humor for the reader but ultimately a waste of space on the page. It's a recurring theme in Ravenloft, and other classic modules I'm sure, that the authors have offered highly specific scenarios, explanations, solutions, and contingencies that have no real practical application at the table. In explaining the poisonous mists of Barovia, the Hickmans offer this unhelpful detail:
No one has left Barovia for centuries. This is because of the trapping fog that exists everywhere in Barovia. [...] The gypsies were given a potion by Strahd that cancels the effects of the fog. This potion is jealously guarded by Madam Eva, who buried it in a secret place. It is impossible for the PCs to discover the potion. The fog is magically produced by Strahd and disappears entirely upon his destruction.
What am I supposed to do with this information? It raises more questions than it answers. It would be better not to mention the existence of a potion at all. There are so many strange digressions in this book. Readers of Ravenloft are almost immediately instructed that "the entire adventure centers around the vampire". However, as written, that is not the case. As demonstrated by the green slimes at the drawbridge, there are a lot of encounters in here that make you question their presence—rust monsters being the least thematically appropriate, offensive Balkan stereotypes being the most.
Without the GM stepping in to insert Strahd's presence, the chance of meeting him outside of his foretold location is quite low. In the village, there's a 60% chance each quarter of the day that he finds the players and attacks. That sounds decent enough, but if you're hustling your players towards the castle, there's not much opportunity. In the castle—his very lair!—there's a 2-in-6 chance of a random encounter, which has a 2-in-12 chance of being a special encounter, which in turn has a 1-in-6 chance of being Strahd himself. As written, the players will spend more time incinerating giant spiders than trying to outsmart Strahd.
To sing Ravenloft praises for a minute: the isometric maps provided are fantastic and invite the curious mind to imagine rummaging around for holy relics and fleeing from the creatures lurking in the dark. The layout of rooms feels believable enough and provides a decent number of options for PCs to enter, exit, or bypass altogether. My players avoided the main entrance and instead entered the castle through the servant's quarters. Real dramatic stuff. Besides a few tricky spots (namely the various tower stairs) it reads well on the fly. Once you have refined the writing of the rooms to your liking, you can run the dungeon with no further prep. All it requires is some discerning judgment on what to cut or rework.
Map of Castle Ravenloft. Illustration by Dave Sutherland
The Writing
In my opinion, despite its reputation, Ravenloft is poorly written and requires significant rewrites. The boxed texts to read aloud are incredibly repetitive. The fog presses in, the wind mournfully howls, the rooms are thick with cobwebs and covered with dust, and rafters strain at the sagging ceilings. Apt descriptions, but the sheer number of keyed rooms beats you over the head with it/ This issue is most apparent right at the start, when the players are on their linear journey through the Svalich Woods to the village of Barovia. (As an aside, there's no reason to run this as a hexcrawl as the book presents it).
A. The Old Svalich Road
Black pools of water stand like dark mirrors about the muddy roadway. Thick, cold mists spread a pallor over the road. Giant tree trunks stand on both sides of the road, their branches clawing into the mists. In every direction the mists grow thicker and the forest grows more oppressive.
B. The Gates of Barovia
Jutting from the impenetrable woods on both sides of the road, high stone buttresses loom up gray in the fog. Huge iron gates hang on the stonework. Dew clings with cold tenacity to the rusted bars. Two statues of armed guardians silently flank the gate. Their heads, missing from their shoulders, now lie among the weeds at their feet. They greet you only with silence.
C. The Svalich Woods
Towering trees, whose tops are lost in heavy gray mist, block out all save a death-gray light. The tree trunks almost touch. The thick, damp undergrowth presses in on you, making it impossible even to see one another at all times. The woods have the silence of a forgotten grave, yet exude the feeling of an unsounded scream.
There are fairly brief scenes to play out at each of these stops, but in actual play, these texts tend to get read off in rapid succession and they all make the same point: there's a dense fog and thick forest. It feels a bit awkward to recite. Individual room descriptions are also prone to repetition:
K54. Familiar Room
As you enter this room, an evil essence embraces you. Torn and broken couches lie in heaps, haphazardly strewn about the 20-foot-square room. The low ceiling seems to press down upon you. Deep claw marks cover the hardwood furniture. Claw marks have also sliced the once lush upholstery to shreds. From the dark shadows amid the rubble, three pairs of green eyes stare back at you.
The second and third sentences are plainly restated in the fourth, and boy does it not roll off the tongue. Repetition aside, Ravenloft often triggers one of my biggest pet peeves with RPG writing. It drives me a bit batty when writers or GMs describe something as "seeming" to happen. Here are but a few examples from the book:
"Suddenly, a hush falls over the tavern. Even the flagons of ale seem to silence themselves."
"The road seems to pass close by this camp."
"Glints of light seem to flash from a crystal ball on the table as a hunched figure peers into its depths."
"The low ceiling seems to press down upon you."
"Several tables stand throughout the room, their legs seeming to barely support the glass jars and bottles that sit atop them."
How does a road seem to pass close to the camp? Does the light flash from the crystal ball? It either does or it does not! What did they even mean by a flagon of ale seeming to silence itself?! Perhaps more confusing is the use of "appears to be"…
K86. Tomb of Strahd Von Zarovich
A darkness clouds this room and the essence of evil permeates the very air. The smell of freshly turned earth is here. This room appears to be 50 feet long from east to west and 30 feet across. There are three empty alcoves in the south wall. [...]
It appears to be 50 x 30 feet because it plainly is! There's not even any secret rooms to discover. There is no need to cast aspersions over perfectly mundane facts.
Running the Game
Clearly there is much to change when preparing to run this module. My initial intention was to run this as a Halloween one shot, and in my research I discovered two videos I highly recommend to anyone else planning the same. Professor Dungeonmaster's adaptation was my favorite of the two, although it took the most liberties. Seth Skorkowsky has some great suggestions that keeps the bulk of the module intact and expands on the vanilla experience. In the end, I used some of Seth's ideas to flesh out the first act, but opted to adhere as close as possible to the original castle for two reasons:
I wanted to experience what GMs and players experienced back in 1983.
The castle map is too damn cool to not share with players, and radically paring down the adventure makes it useless!
With that in mind, my goal was to cut only the most baffling elements and substitute thematic elements whenever possible. Here is how I ran the adventure:
Preparation
Rewrite any awkward boxed texts, merge repetitive ones, but also leave as many intact as you can. Your own note-taking style will dictate how you go about this.
Fortunes of Ravenloft
I began the session as Madam Eva speaking directly to the players, not their characters. She sizes them up and surmises that they seem quite capable. "This is not your first adventure, I see. Perhaps you'll succeed where others, for many decades now, failed". Then she reads their fortunes. Afterwards, she fades away with a screeching cackle, and we enter the adventure in medias res.
The Svalich Woods
Describe the spooky woods and tell them they've accepted an request from the Burgomaster of Barovia to save his daughter from a great evil. Read the forged letter aloud, then shuffle them off to the Gates of Barovia where they meet a mysterious Watchman. The Watchman is studying a dead messenger—half eaten by wolves—clutching the real letter. Once read, the gates open up to invite the characters in. The Watchman warns them that they need to be inside one hour after the church bell rings. On their way to the village, the PCs spot the hungry wolves stalking them from the treeline. If provoked, they attack.
The Village of Barovia
The church bell rings as they arrive, putting a strict curfew on their activities, but there are only three points of interest here: the inn and tavern, the church, and the Burgomaster's home. The innkeeper is uncanny, but obliging. He offers them a place to stay and reiterates the Watchman's warning. At night, the village is assaulted by wolves and a cloud of vampire bats. I played the innkeeper like the Fireman from Twin Peaks and it drove my players insane. I could have run an entire arc about just him, but alas, this adventure centers around the vampire! The priest is a broad figure with a bellowing voice and dramatic timbre. He refers to Strahd only as "The Devil, Strahd'' and spits after every utterance to remove the foul taste of the name. He tries to rally the players against The Devil, Strahd and will assist them in any way he can. The Burgomaster's home and the Ireena plot remained as written.
Carel Struycken as The Fireman in Twin Peaks (1990).
Madam Eva's Camp
This is a good place to start the second session. After leaving town, the characters meet Madam Eva for the first time, although she alludes to knowing them already. She basks in their aura and tells them she can see their past lives. I got a bit Psycho Mantis with it, and cryptically described a past life for each player, referring to one of their characters from other games we've played. At this point, I offered to read their fortunes again to re-roll their fate.
Castle Ravenloft
I narrated them straight up the mountainside and through the castle gates. Once inside, I ran the rest of the module almost entirely as the Hickman's intended. My few alterations are described below.
Random Encounters
The random encounters table does not support the notion that this adventure centers around the vampire, so here's how I changed it: there's 1-in-6 chance of an encounter every 15-minutes or so. If an encounter is rolled and it makes sense for it to be Strahd, it simply is. If you want an element of chaos, it's only a 50% chance of being Strahd. Otherwise, roll on another d6 table of thematic and sensible encounters.
Traps and Pitfalls
The last thing I'm ever going to do is calculate the weight of a player's inventory and cross-check it with a chance to trigger a trap. If a trap seemed fun or interesting, I left it in, albeit simplified. They were mostly just a call for a save if the players were being reckless.
The Witches
As written, rooms K54-K56 are occupied by a coven of seven witches and their familiars. I think not. Dracula has vampire concubines, and so shall Strahd. I replaced the coven with three lesser vampires, determining their stats to be about a third of Strahd's. I also swapped the order of the keyed rooms as follows:
K54 was originally the Familiar Room. With the witches removed, there were no more familiars, so I replaced it entirely with the contents of K55. Element Room.
The now vacant K55 was replaced with the contents K56. Cauldron.
Lastly, K56 was turned into a coffin room for the concubines.
Monica Bellucci, Michaela Bercu, and Florina Kendrick in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).
Tower Hall of Honor
I cut the Guardian of Sorrow and I deeply regret it. During my preparations, I thought it seemed like a pain to run and didn't thematically fit. I was wrong. In hindsight, it's actually quite a cool set piece and it prevents one of the main arteries of the castle from being a cakewalk. However, there was a silver lining. It just so happened that it was one of the first rooms my players explored, and they waltzed right up to the Tome of Strahd which was foretold to be at its peak. I was worried about the players missing the lore dump—this adventure is about the narrative after all—but it all worked out. If I were to run this again, I would definitely include the Guardian.
The Crypts
As with every other review I've read, I did not include the plethora of horrible joke crypts. I cut them all except Ireena's prepared crypt.
After Action Report
I ran this adventure across four sessions, each about four hours long, using Worlds Without Number. None of us ended up enjoying the system, but that's neither here nor there. It is only worth noting because I ran the vampires complete with their level-draining capabilities, which did not work so well with the system's more complex character builds (as opposed to Old School Essentials). However, it was to the players' benefit that the vampiric level drain first burned through their pool of System Strain, giving them a bit of a buffer. I should also mention that I sent them in there using pre-built characters that, between them, only had two magic weapons. One of which was a mere stiletto. When they encountered the vampires, there was little they could do but flee. They had to scour the castle for the resources needed to succeed. As a warning: I was the only one that enjoyed the level draining, so proceed with caution on that one.
After reaching the castle, the players dodged the main entrance and skirted around the back. They tried to break into the chapel, but discovered Strahd was awaiting them (he was foretold to be there). They instead entered through the servant's quarters, went straight up the tall tower and discovered the Tome of Strahd. On the way back down, they ran into the three concubines. Two of them were miraculously killed, but the third concubine escaped, falling through the trap door when the Mage accidentally triggered it on a luck roll. The PCs set up a stake-trap in her coffin so that when they killed her in the future, she would be instantly impaled when she reconstituted from her gaseous form.
As they rummaged through the rest of the rooms in the upper floors, they were repeatedly harassed by Strahd's minions until the surviving concubine returned with Strahd himself in tow. Levels were drained and they came to hate The Devil, Strahd with a burning passion. When they discovered his living quarters, they utterly defiled it. Tatyana/Ireena's portrait was used as a kindling for a bonfire that soon included his wardrobe, letters, and bedframe. The naive girl from the village, Gertruda, was murdered when she threatened to go find Strahd. "The players mused that maybe they should go back and kill Ireena too, just to really turn the screws. They settled for pissing on the bonfire. It was "incredibly cathartic" for them. Even better was their discovery of Strahd's hoard in the obvious secret room behind his fireplace. After equipping the generous +3 magic weapons in there, they took the time to ferry all of his wealth outside and dumped it over the ramparts and down the mountainside.
Ireena Kolyana posing next to a portrait of Tatyana. Illustration by Clyde Caldwell
They continued downward, met Cyrus Belview, a genial sword pervert that lusted for their gear, and pressed him for information. Carrying on, they met the secret Werewolf in "distress" (still loyal to Strahd) in the flooded cell. They let him out and he played the helpful guide, pointing them to the crypts. The path forward took them to the puzzle room with the hourglass, golems, and colored gems. The PCs decided to stay outside the room and hurl shit at the hourglass until it broke. I could see no other ruling besides disabling the puzzle entirely because its core mechanic was destroyed before it could be triggered. Brute force got them through the set of triple doors at the other end of the room. Once the second door was opened, the Mage sauntered off to the crypts alone, leaving the party behind. Without being aware, he evaded the pitfall that could have dumped him into a flooded cell of his own.
The rest of the party, still in the puzzle room, was ambushed by Strahd and his remaining concubine. It's worth noting that they had given the Werewolf one of their mundane weapons to help out, which helped sell his charade when he fiercely but ineffectually attacked Strahd with it. In response, the vampires collectively summoned fourteen direwolves and it was a bloodbath. The Monk and the Cleric rushed down the concubine, quickly slaying her once and for all, then turned their attention to Strahd. They inflicted some good damage that made him retreat, but not before the Monk was thoroughly devoured by the wolves. The Werewolf, feigning fear "escaped" through the hall to follow the Mage. The Dwarf was not far behind, but lacking any foreknowledge, fell victim to the pitfall that dumped him in a flooded cell. The Cleric held the wolves at the door to enable their escape, but turning to flee herself, the Cleric also triggered the trap and was dumped in the cell with the Dwarf. At least she escaped the wolves!
In the crypts, the Mage had been studying the teleportation trap guarding Strahd's tomb. She overturned one of the tiles to break the magic seal, but was then bonked on the head by the Werewolf—dead. We picked up the final session with two fresh PCs letting the imprisoned PCs out. They carried on to the crypts, killed the Werewolf when they didn't buy his story, then broke into Sergei's tomb and looted the legendary Sunsword. Before leaving, they also broke into Strahd's tomb and set up a stake-trap much like they had for his concubine.
Seeking the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, they made haste through the castle to its foretold location in the throne room. On the way there, the Dwarf, with 1 HP remaining, was almost killed by a trapped suit of armor in K19 that threw out a mean left hook. Fortunately for him, he had an ability that let him shrug off death once per session.
Returning to the chapel where they first encountered Strahd, they confidently strode in, paralyzed him with the holy symbol, then tortured him to death. They chased his gaseous form back to his coffin and found him impaled through the heart, struggling to break free and terrified of their awesome power. His eyes were pecked out by a PCs crow familiar and he disintegrated. Barovia was saved.
Conclusion
Ironically, I think Ravenloft's strength is its dungeon filled with enemies, traps, and treasures to pillage and kill. The narrative was never really a huge draw for us, as evidenced by my player's desire to kill Ireena, rather than save her. The hook was weak and only really pursued out of obligation, but I still managed to make Strahd a loathsome menace. If I were to run this again, I would make some drastic changes to cut this down to a two-shot. I have seen it recommended to remove Ireena and make one of the PCs the reincarnation of Tatyana to add some personal stakes. That could work, but I might instead just talk through the story with the players ahead of time and encourage them to lean into it. This is a collaborative medium after all. Despite my love for the castle maps, I think it is also worth paring it down to just the best rooms. You gotta kill your favorites.
It is easy to appreciate everything Ravenloft does right, but its faults—which are really only faults with four decades of hindsight—are keenly felt today. Although somewhat rudimentary now, I certainly appreciate the innovations it brought to D&D and role playing games as a whole. Ravenloft's legacy is well deserved, and to be fair, its issues are mostly GM-facing. Despite tearing it to shreds in this review, my players and I enjoyed the module. It's just plain fun to stomp around a haunted castle and fight ghoulies with your friends. Hard to go wrong there. I would recommend this module to any GM with an interest in the history of the hobby, and anyone who can do a halfway decent Dracula voice. Now is your time to shine, Boyar.
You can purchase I6 Ravenloft by Tracy and Laura Hickman on DriveThruRPG.
Nice review! It seemed as if at least some of your frustration over things that didn't work because you were rushing through them, didn't work because you were rushing through them. On a side note, I6 Ravenloft was for AD&D. The reprint/rework RM4 House of Strahd was for AD&D 2nd edition.