I have the chance of buying a bunch of the ol' TSR Ravenloft stuff, but what to go for and what to stay away from?

I got Realm of Terror (bought for around 15$, and with the surprise bonus of the original Ravenloft module + House on Gryphon Hill hiding in the box) and just got my hands on Forbidden Lore (with tarokka cards and dice), but that's about it.

What's the don't miss of Ravenloft? I remember people here praising Feast of Goblyns, but which of the other scenarios are worth picking up, and how about the boxes? And are there any stinkers?

I always liked the Van Richten's guides, though some are better than others. Vampires, Liches, and Mummies are good, Demons less so.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;754444I have the chance of buying a bunch of the ol' TSR Ravenloft stuff, but what to go for and what to stay away from?

I got Realm of Terror (bought for around 15$, and with the surprise bonus of the original Ravenloft module + House on Gryphon Hill hiding in the box) and just got my hands on Forbidden Lore (with tarokka cards and dice), but that's about it.

What's the don't miss of Ravenloft? I remember people here praising Feast of Goblyns, but which of the other scenarios are worth picking up, and how about the boxes? And are there any stinkers?

Opinions vary a lot. While I can't say it is my favorite, a lot of people really love Domains of Dread, so I would pick it up if I were you.

You definitely want the Van Richten Guide Books. Those kind of give you a blue print for running long term "monster hunt" Ravenloft campaigns, and just show you how to use monsters in the setting (they also provide tons of mechanical options for creating interesting variants). I recommend the Guide to the Created, The Guide to the Ancient Dead, Guide to the Lich and the Guide to the Werebeast. The Guide to Ghosts is pretty helpful too. If you only get one, make it the Guide to the Ancient Dead.

Adventures I would suggest: Castles Forlorn is quite solid. Night of the Walking Dead is really fun. Feast of Goblyns is a must.

You might also want to check out the red boxed set. That gives you an update of the setting post Grand Conjunction (which was the metaplot of the adventures that centered on the Hyskosa prophecy. All the stuff from that era is pretty useable in my opinion, but I would avoid the Grim Harvest material (the grand conjunction was a bit unnecessary but did sort of fix the core up a bit, whereas Grim Harvest did things I really couldn't stand).

The first nine Van Richten guides come in three different collections, if you want to (possibly) save money. The last three are kinda meh, in my opinion. (Hags, Demons, Vistani). But I think it's mainly that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel by then. Ghosts is good, and Mummies is surprisingly good.

Some of the old modules are free online (released by TSR), and some of them really suck. I'd read several reviews before getting _any_ Ravenloft adventure, actually. Most have aged very poorly.

The Shadow Rift was a pretty good adventure/setting book, though. (EDIT: Feast of Goblyns is also pretty decent.)

The Monstrous Compendiums are also good (and the first two come in a combined compendium if you wnat that.)

EDIT: Oh, and the Domains of Dread hardback that came out near the end of 2e is probably the best campaign setting book since it includes a ton of later domains and such. But it's hardly mandatory.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;754447Opinions vary a lot. While I can't say it is my favorite, a lot of people really love Domains of Dread, so I would pick it up if I were you...
Adventures I would suggest: Castles Forlorn is quite solid...

I second these two opinions.

I also got a ton of at-the-table mileage out of Children of the Night: The Created, even outside of Ravenloft campaigns.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;754446I always liked the Van Richten's guides, though some are better than others. Vampires, Liches, and Mummies are good, Demons less so.

I have limited exposure, but in my opinion ancient dead (mummies) is excellent, liches is solid, and werebeasts and ghosts are relatively poor.

I found Domains of Dread to be useful, but I never found anything beyond the core box to be mandatory.

Quote from: Spinachcat;754578I found Domains of Dread to be useful, but I never found anything beyond the core box to be mandatory.

  The closest you'll get to 'mandatory' is the first Monstrous Compendium Appendix; get that (either standalone or in the compilation volume with II) and one of the three core sets (Black Box, Red Box, Domains of Dread) and you're good to go. Note that Domains of Dread is where the line really switches to focusing on Ravenloft as a standalone setting instead of the "Twilight Zone of D&D". The Red Box has the benefit of including stats for a lot of darklords who weren't in the Black Box, as well as a Cliff Notes version of the first six Van Richten's Guides.

  The Van Richten's Guides have already been noted; my personal favorites are Vampires, Ghosts and Fiends, with Werebeasts, Vistani and Witches at the bottom. The Children of the Night collections are full of short adventures/NPCs.

  Sourcebooks: Darklords is a personal favorite (see my Let's Read of it over on TBP). Islands of Terror is a mixed bag of new domains; Forged of Darkness is similar with magic items. Carnival is a gem of a supplement in every sense of the word--small, rare, beautiful and nearly perfectly shaped. Champions of the Mists is really only useful if you want to focus heavily on Ravenloft-native PCs.

  For adventures, a lot of the big good ones have been mentioned. Some smaller gems include The Created, The Evil Eye, and Neither Man Nor Beast (D&D does The Island of Lost Souls--and it's by Jeff Grubb!).

  Stinkers? Book of Crypts, Thoughts of Darkness, A Light in the Belfry, and the Grim Harvest adventures (Death Unchained, Death Ascendant, Death Triumphant/Requiem: The Grim Harvest). Hour of the Knife, Adam's Wrath, From the Shadows, and a few others suffer from the "TPK as scene-setter/turn the PCs into monsters" tropes that were common in the line for a while. Hour of the Knife was a tournament adventure, and IMO, it shows.

  Finally, the old netbooks are still up at //www.kargatane.com if you want a taste of what fans (some of whom went on to bigger things) did with the setting.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;754651The closest you'll get to 'mandatory' is the first Monstrous Compendium Appendix; get that

Heh - that actually was another bonus in the Realm of Terror box that I bought (that, and the adventure Touch of Death), so that's great.

And thanx for the advice and suggestions all, great pointers and explanations.

If I have the red box, what am I missing that's in Domains of Dread, and are there any alternate places to get that information aside from Domains of Dread?

Quote from: Warthur;754661If I have the red box, what am I missing that's in Domains of Dread, and are there any alternate places to get that information aside from Domains of Dread?

  Hmmm...updates to the past ten (in-setting years) of metaplot, which means Azalin's MIA and Darkon's been shaken up, Gabrielle Aderre is now wrestling with her half-fiend son for political power, van Richten is dead, and Tepest has gone from a vaguely hinted at 'fairy tale horror' theme to an overt 'Inquisition vs. witches horror' theme (the twist being that the witches and other threats are real). There's a new sea to the east of the Core, and some darklords have changed a little in the interim (Anton Misroi of Souragne has been revised to fit the novel version better without invalidating the Red Box version entirely).

 Also, several islands have combined into clusters:

• Har'Akir, Pharazia and Sebua have become the Amber Wastes
• Zherisia (now called Paridon) and the sewers of Timor have been stacked on top of each other to produce a new Zherisia cluster.
• Sri Raji, Saragoss and the Wildlands have combined to form the Steaming Lands (not detailed)
• Avonleigh/the Phantasmal Forest, Nidala and Shadowborn Manor have formed the Shadowborn Cluster (also not detailed)
• Two new domains make up the Burning Peaks Cluster--this is where Kas and Vecna's domains were. It blew up at the end of 2E.

  The fear/horror/madness and Powers Checks systems got revamped, and there were also rules for half-Vistani, native Ravenloft PCs, four new character classes (typically variants on the core four, although the gypsy is pretty pathetic).

  It's not essential if you've got the Red Box, but there's a lot of stuff that never shows up anywhere else, and it provides a different angle on the setting. My recommendation for the casual fan would be to decide what style of Ravenloft game you want to run--'Twilight Zone' games will work better with the Red Box, while Ravenloft-centric games will be done better with DoD. My advice to someone who really wants to immerse themselves in Ravenloft would be to buy both and mix and match, since there are also things in the Red Box--like the Tarokka and rules for it, the Van Richten's cliff notes (if you don't have the Guides), and several darklords and domain descriptions--that aren't in Domains of Dread.

Thanks!

On balance I'm not sure I like the idea of specific rules for Ravenloft PCs (shouldn't they be mostly based on the worlds the domains were plucked from?) and if I were to run Ravenloft it'd be in the Twilight Zone style (or maybe, for a longer-term campaign, a travelogue in which the PCs face off against dire threats of the week as they roam around looking for a way out... holy shit, guys, the D&D cartoon was set in Ravenloft...).

The way I see it, the inhabitants of the Domains would fall into two types: those who either lose hope of getting out (or, if they don't realise they're in Ravenloft, lack the curiosity and drive to try and understand their predicament or challenge the local Darklord), who I would expect to increasingly be less PC-worthy and more like pressganged supporting characters in their Darklords' torment, and those with the gumption to want to either escape Ravenloft, take down their Darklord, or at the very least understand the predicament they are in constitute 99% doomed fools and 1% your pool of PCs.

In other words, in my Ravenloft the difference between a PC who's a new visitor to the Domains and a PC who's a fifth generation native who's decided to join the party is that the new visitor knows the sweet taste of freedom, whilst the fifth generation local is descended from four generations of doomed failures but might have a hope of accomplishing what they failed to by getting home...

So far as I can make out, for anyone who finds themselves in Ravenloft and actually understands their situation the rational course of action is to try to either leave or fight the Darklords (and fighting the Darklords is arguably futile since there's always another one coming along), and if you don't understand your predicament you should be trying to understand it. That's the axiom any Ravenloft game I run would work under, anyway. So I don't think DoD would be for me.

Also, I found Vecna's cross-setting escapades at the end of 2E profoundly silly and prefer not to be reminded of them.

Quote from: Warthur;754661If I have the red box, what am I missing that's in Domains of Dread, and are there any alternate places to get that information aside from Domains of Dread?

You can always check out the sword and sorcery Ravenloft book. That is d20 and has some of the DoD material (plus a bit more in terms of setting content). Makes some changes as well. One of the frustrating things about DoD to be aware of is it was made with the intent you would buy the other supplements so there are sections that refer to other products or contain very little real info. But what it does do is treat Ravenloft more as a complete setting.

Personally I ran Ravenloft as a campaign but preferred working mainly from the red and black boxes with a bit of forbidden lore. I also wasn't crazy about some of the rules revisions in DoD. That said I definitely seem to be in the minority. I did still keep DoD handy though.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;754846You can always check out the sword and sorcery Ravenloft book. That is d20 and has some of the DoD material (plus a bit more in terms of setting content).

Yeah, if you're willing to go beyond TSR era, the D20 Ravenloft gazetteers are really useful and 90% fluff that works in any edition of D&D. Several domains that used to just be single-session gimmicks became legitimate places you could campaign in in this product line. It's a shame the line ended, but at least they covered all the most important stuff in the detail it deserved.

On the other hand, the Ravenloft d20 main book was oddly incomplete; it chose, for unfathomable reasons, to not include information about who the Dark Lords were for each realm.  As in, they don't even tell you "this guy is the dark lord here". You're left to guess.