What are your thoughts on I6 Ravenloft, or any of its remakes? The original is supposedly one of the best modules ever published and it ends up on Top 10 lists. But what do you think of it? Why does it work, assuming it works?

Boring, the beginning of serious railroads in terms of "plot" (you can walk away from any of the older modules and go adventuring elsewhere; the DM is told directly that "barovia" is surrounded by a fog that stops the characters from leaving and ONLY lifts after they've run the dungeon).

Pretty map by Dave Sutherland, though.

I'd drop the fog and add it as an adventure locale in Greyhawk.

I personally think it is a great module, but it may require a veteran dm to shine. Works best for players that are not jaded ravenloft veterans.
As with most modules; its as good as the gm makes it.
But it does have a ton of cool stuff inside.

A vampire that is actually dangerous.
Spooky village with sinister castle looming over it. Huuuuge castle.
Deadly monsters lurking about.
Vistani are a gold mine if handled well.

Great module, lots of fun in play. One of the best ever? Dunno, I find it hard to make such judgements, particularly since it's tied to one's preferred style of play. I6 is a really good adventure locale, however, with tons of interesting (and gameable) detail.

As mentioned, the fog around Barovia is ridiculously heavy-handed, and is probably the most glaring issue with the module. Having said that, the notion that the party being able to just walk away is always a virtue rings hollow to me. In the real world not everyone is running a sandbox, and a DM running a module is, more often than not, doing so precisely because they don't have a plethora of other material for the party to wander into. The party "walking away" in these cases means the players not engaging with the material the DM is running, and is really a table problem that the participants need to sort out.

At some level the players either engage with something the DM is presenting, or nothing happens and everybody watches TV for the evening, instead.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714493Great module, lots of fun in play. One of the best ever? Dunno, I find it hard to make such judgements, particularly since it's tied to one's preferred style of play. I6 is a really good adventure locale, however, with tons of interesting (and gameable) detail.

As mentioned, the fog around Barovia is ridiculously heavy-handed, and is probably the most glaring issue with the module. Having said that, the notion that the party being able to just walk away is always a virtue rings hollow to me. In the real world not everyone is running a sandbox, and a DM running a module is, more often than not, doing so precisely because they don't have a plethora of other material for the party to wander into. The party "walking away" in these cases means the players not engaging with the material the DM is running, and is really a table problem that the participants need to sort out.

At some level the players either engage with something the DM is presenting, or nothing happens and everybody watches TV for the evening, instead.

Also, the fog here is a bit of a trap. Yes it does confine the party to that location, you want be careful about that kind of stuff in general, but it works for the horror mood the module has in mind.

I'd call it one of my favorite adventures ever.  It had some neat elements -- the fact that a lot of the core elements shift based on the card setup was nice, and Strahd was an impressive villain, meant to be engage the DM's "evil genius" gears.  It also had a very sharp sense of humor, which later iterations, like the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, don't capture.  

OTOH, I always thought the fog was too railroady, and some of the monsters didn't fit the atmosphere.  (IIRC, there was a bigass dragon roosting in the top of the tower, and I'd have liked to either see it replaced with something more atmospheric or tied into Strahd's backstory in some way.)

But overall, a really great adventure, IMO.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714493At some level the players either engage with something the DM is presenting, or nothing happens and everybody watches TV for the evening, instead.

Seriously. When I and the rest of the table were 14 year old boys it made sense to add that sort of hammer to the DM's tools. We are generally middle aged now, and we respect our DM and his time enough that we aren't going to intentionally be jerks.

On a recent re-read, I was impressed by how evocative yet efficient the text of the original module is. It is something all the subsequent rewrites and sequels lacked.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714493Great module, lots of fun in play. One of the best ever? Dunno, I find it hard to make such judgements, particularly since it's tied to one's preferred style of play. I6 is a really good adventure locale, however, with tons of interesting (and gameable) detail.

As mentioned, the fog around Barovia is ridiculously heavy-handed, and is probably the most glaring issue with the module. Having said that, the notion that the party being able to just walk away is always a virtue rings hollow to me. In the real world not everyone is running a sandbox, and a DM running a module is, more often than not, doing so precisely because they don't have a plethora of other material for the party to wander into. The party "walking away" in these cases means the players not engaging with the material the DM is running, and is really a table problem that the participants need to sort out.

At some level the players either engage with something the DM is presenting, or nothing happens and everybody watches TV for the evening, instead.

You don't really need to trap anyone in Barovia with the Mist. Let them leave.
I would reccomend giving them a reason to want to investigate the area.

Quote from: Bill;714540You don't really need to trap anyone in Barovia with the Mist. Let them leave.
I would reccomend giving them a reason to want to investigate the area.

The module, and Ravenloft generally, are not new to me. As myself and others have mentioned, the problem is with the idea that, even after you've provided said reasons to investigate, the players should be able to just decide to leave. This notion is all well and good, and works fine in a sandbox environment, but it ignores the reality of many tables where the module in question is what's for dinner tonight, and if you don't like it you're going to go hungry.

Forget the heavy-handedness of the mist (even if it kinda fits the module, like Brendan said), there's a table expectation that the players are here to play what the DM has prepped. Going off-script is fine, and to be expected, maybe even encouraged. Deciding that, "Nah. We're not gonna play that!" is not.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714546The module, and Ravenloft generally, are not new to me. As myself and others have mentioned, the problem is with the idea that, even after you've provided said reasons to investigate, the players should be able to just decide to leave. This notion is all well and good, and works fine in a sandbox environment, but it ignores the reality of many tables where the module in question is what's for dinner tonight, and if you don't like it you're going to go hungry.

Forget the heavy-handedness of the mist (even if it kinda fits the module, like Brendan said), there's a table expectation that the players are here to play what the DM has prepped. Going off-script is fine, and to be expected, maybe even encouraged. Deciding that, "Nah. We're not gonna play that!" is not.

So let them leave. Its only a problem if you, as the gm, make it a problem.

The map is great, and the setting material is presented in a very thorough and attractive manner way for the time. But it is a railroad. My players (unintentionally) broke it when they:

*************SPOILERS*********************

A) Threatened the girl Straad loved in order to make him appear at a time and place of their choosing.

B) After a wounded Straad fled, they scouted the premises of the castle, rappelled down the cliff at back, smashed through the dungeon-level windows, made a bee-line for his coffin, and spiked him.

So it took us about 90 minutes to finish the thing.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714546Forget the heavy-handedness of the mist (even if it kinda fits the module, like Brendan said), there's a table expectation that the players are here to play what the DM has prepped. Going off-script is fine, and to be expected, maybe even encouraged. Deciding that, "Nah. We're not gonna play that!" is not.

The question is whether 'what the DM has prepped' is the setting, or the setting and story. If your formative years of playing D&D involved the DM presenting the setting and the players generating the story in play, then fixed plots are an unwelcome imposition, and likely to be broken by players without any malice or breach of table expectation.

Quote from: Bill;714550So let them leave. Its only a problem if you, as the gm, make it a problem.

Bill, I have really no idea what your point is. As I've pointed out, "letting them leave," in the sense of allowing them to go do something else, may or may not be an option compatible with playing the game that night. If it isn't, "We're leaving!" is a table problem, and one that I don't think the mists around Barovia actually fix.

The DM not having something else prepared, or not feeling like coming up with something completely different on the fly when there was already a scenario prepared, is not the DM "making it a problem." It's a table problem rooted in some sort of mismatched expectations. I might even go so far as to say it's a problem with the players; if they really don't want to even engage with what the DM preps, perhaps one of them needs to put on their big person pants and run the game themselves...

Quote from: Haffrung;714551The map is great, and the setting material is presented in a very thorough and attractive manner way for the time. But it is a railroad.

The only portion I found truly railroady was the mists, and I've yet to have a party run into trouble with them. Ignore those and there was still more than enough to keep the players engaged.

Quote from: Haffrung;714551My players (unintentionally) broke it when they:

That's not breaking it, that's clever play. I actually see problems with the latter part of the plan, and have seen something along those lines attempted and go completely pear-shaped, but hey! I wasn't there, and it worked, so good on 'em.

Quote from: Haffrung;714551The question is whether 'what the DM has prepped' is the setting, or the setting and story. If your formative years of playing D&D involved the DM presenting the setting and the players generating the story in play, then fixed plots are an unwelcome imposition, and likely to be broken by players without any malice or breach of table expectation.

This is all true, but, I think, still missing the point. If the DM has prepped a module (as in: pre-made adventure), consisting of a location, or series of locations, along with some NPCs and/or situations for the PCs to interact with, and the players decide, "Nah, let's go do something totally different!" there is a problem of mismatched expectations at the table.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714560This is all true, but, I think, still missing the point. If the DM has prepped a module (as in: pre-made adventure), consisting of a location, or series of locations, along with some NPCs and/or situations for the PCs to interact with, and the players decide, "Nah, let's go do something totally different!" there is a problem of mismatched expectations at the table.

Agreed. If you sit down at the table to play I6 Castle Ravenloft, and the players get bored after half an hour and decide to wander off the map to find an orc lair to assault, then you have problems at the table.

There are degrees of sandbox. I generally reject any sort of scripted plot. However, unless a campaign is explicitly about open-ended geographical exploration, I don't think I recall PCs simply walking away from the adventure setting mid-session. And when the PCs have wandered afield, players don't expect to find anything more than random encounters out in the wilds.