Halloween '21 Part 2: Ravenloft a Great Starting Place

 

Surviving Ravenloft Stuff

I can't say I've ever played Ravenloft. But boy have I bought and read plenty of its material. Pictured here is a portion of D&D's 2ed. material that I acquired back in the day (the 90s). Some of it would be used in my T&T campaigns if the names were changed but most of it was for reading. It supplemented the paperbacks that I was reading in the same setting. Hey folks, while dork culture was getting more acceptable back then, it was really hard to find weird fiction that wasn't TSR influenced that was worth cracking the pages. I am pretty sure I have some other Ravenloft materials, mostly 2e and the 4e "Ravenloft" scenario, somewhere but these were the ones that I used.

Strahd, always a source of mirth in my mind, would become Count Vulgarr for my T&T Halloween specials and later the linchpin for my Gothic campaigns for Crawlspace. Having read the original scenario, it is straight up blood-soaked Velveeta in my book. These days, I have to say that Strahd's ill-fated romantic life has influenced our modern Dracula tale more than its original author. I actually threw Strahd, with his own name, into a Mage scenario when White Wolf's cheesiness got too noticeable in my mind's eye.

The Mask of the Red Death would be the start of my personal tradition of mixing historical figures into my RPG campaigns back in the late 90s. I would use Basic Role-Playing rules. The Red Death was Vulgarr's daughter, Lolita Pushkin. She did things things like like enslave Pushkin's great grandfather before losing him in a poker game to the Czar, Peter the first. She convinced my PCs playing Lord Byron and Mary Shelly to create Frankenstein on a lark during a particularly bad summer storm-- the players so played along. The PCs, then using their own characters, would then start chasing her down while fixing her vexations and creations that was left in her wake. The PCs were in Paris and Hamburg Europe then New York, New Orleans, and St Louis USA during the gaslight age. The campaign finale would have four PCs in their 60s and 70s in 1932 San Francisco taking on "Lola" (Lolita took the name on during the 20s) and the lich Azalin, going by the name of Lance Henriksen.

All of these have a Vistani-derivative NPC culture which I call to this day, the Gypsies. These people had connections to the unseen world that is the supernatural in my works. They were both the guardians of the real world as well as more than a few henchmen of various villains. 

Oh I've had some good times with Ravenloft. One day there will be more.