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View Full Version : Help needed-Adapting Expedition to Castle Ravenloft to the originale Ravenloft module



FeAnPi
2009-06-01, 01:42 AM
The title explains well what I would like to do.

I bought in 2007 the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure, and now I have found people interested in playing it -a friend of mine even tried to "steal" the adventure, I had to flank -thanks to another friend- and "sneak attack" him with a latex sword in order to prevent the theft. :smallbiggrin:

But the more I read it, the more I dislike the 3.5 adaptation of the original Ravenloft module: to make a 224-pages handbook from a roughly 40 pages adventure many things were added, and I do not like even the half of them.
The players I have found to use this module are, as I am, a bit traditionalists on regards of RPG, so we would prefer a true adaptation of the original adventure, not an elf-turning-old-man-Strahd, hagged-Madame-Eva, poorly-justified-power added, lots-of-handbook-reliant module.

And so, the big question: has someone adapted Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (2006 adventure) removing all the added parts in order to have a 3.5 version of the original module?

Many thanks,

FeAnPi


PS: as always, forgive me if I committed mistakes... I'm Italian and I'm praticing other languages more than English in those months.
(and Sanskrit and Old Greek are not suited for forum posting, I suppose)

Al-Ashrad
2009-06-01, 03:26 PM
Greetings,

I don't own, nor have I read, the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure. However, I have taken various old-school modules (the "Against the Giants" series, for example), and adapted them to 3.5 on my own for my Forgotten Realms campaign. I would suggest that you find an old copy of Ravenloft and do the same thing. You might be able to find it on ebay if you don't have a copy of the old Ravenloft adventure.

One thing to think about is the power level of various monsters has changed from original AD&D to the new 3.5. For example, in G1, "The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief", one of the rooms has around 30 (!) Hill Giants in it. While this was quite a challenge to the party back in Original AD&D, in 3.5 that amount of Hill Giants will almost assuredly be a TPK.

So, this needs to be considered when altering Ravenloft to 3.5. After all, what was challenging in original AD&D may not be challenging now, or may be almost an impossible task.

Good luck.

FeAnPi
2009-06-06, 05:22 AM
Thank you, Al-Ashrad. I was waiting some more answers before writing my reply, but it seems that my hopes were vain.

Anyway, I am now converting the adventure myself; I must remove many things, but at least the maps from the EtCR handbook are useful, and I have found the stats for a "normal" Strahd in an old Dragon/Dungeon (I don't know which one, in Italy they were printed together as "Dragon & Dungeon").


And you are right: I must change many monsters: I do not have the Libris Mortis (or Liber Mortis, as it was correctly translated in Italy), so I will not use the "new" undeads proposed in EtCR, but 10 simple zombies are not a threat for 6-10 level characters.

I was thinking to apply a "simple power-up", i e to give them +4 HD and the elite set of ability scores. Thus, a zombie will have a CR of 3, 6 HD, 42 HP, STR 18 and a +7 (1d6+6) slam attack.

Al-Ashrad
2009-06-06, 07:21 AM
Thank you, Al-Ashrad. I was waiting some more answers before writing my reply, but it seems that my hopes were vain.

Anyway, I am now converting the adventure myself; I must remove many things, but at least the maps from the EtCR handbook are useful, and I have found the stats for a "normal" Strahd in an old Dragon/Dungeon (I don't know which one, in Italy they were printed together as "Dragon & Dungeon").


And you are right: I must change many monsters: I do not have the Libris Mortis (or Liber Mortis, as it was correctly translated in Italy), so I will not use the "new" undeads proposed in EtCR, but 10 simple zombies are not a threat for 6-10 level characters.

I was thinking to apply a "simple power-up", i e to give them +4 HD and the elite set of ability scores. Thus, a zombie will have a CR of 3, 6 HD, 42 HP, STR 18 and a +7 (1d6+6) slam attack.


No worries.

I'm not entirely sure if 10-CR3 Zombies will be much of a challenge either. However, I do remember that some of the spells and turning abilities for Clerics were dramatically changed in Ravenloft, even in the original adventure, so they may be a bit more challenging.

The Forgotten Realms setting also has Revenants, and while they are undead that are not evil, they are still challenging. They could have been some of Strahd's old soldiers, captains of the guard, or bodyguards who decided to still serve their old master.

Also, if you want to be a real pain, you can always make your adventures' Big Boss a "gestalt character". All of the Big Bosses and mini-Bosses in my adventures are gestalt characters.

FeAnPi
2009-06-06, 07:59 AM
You know, in my regular campaign all the characters are gestalt. There are only 3 PC, and we started with only 2 of them, so we were nearly forced to this choice.

For this adventure, I thought to made all the PC and important NPC gestalts with a PC and a NPC class, but I am not shure of the goodness ot this idea.


In either case (as normal or partial-gestalt) the PC will be of 7th level, so a group of CR 3 zombies will be quite a challange, especially with 6 HD. And I can even create CR 4 zombies with 10 HD.

I prefer to avoid FR-related materials: I do not like them very much as a setting (Dragonlance forever!), and so I do not have any related handbook.
Rather, I would use some of the Nephandum's creatures, but I think that the best thingh is to preserve the original monsters repowering them.

Lord Loss
2009-06-06, 08:15 AM
I'll gladly help I have it too but they add so much bad stuff I think I would rather bang my head on a brick wall then do all the editing required. Ugh. Well, I'll do what I can!

FeAnPi
2009-06-06, 08:40 AM
Thank you.

I have decided to simply ignore all the bull**** they created for the new adventure and put in the right spots of the handbook stats for the original enemies and original descriptions.

Some things are good in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft: some of the new goals of Strahd, for example, are very interesting. But the three hags out of nowere (he's called Strahd, Strahd, not Macbeth, Strahd damn it!), the shapeless spawn (it's gothic horror! gothic! you know, like Walpole, Polidori... not like Lovecraft; yes, Lovecraft is good too, but they are different), the halfling vistani and the dayheart (daywalking vampires? it is Ravenloft, not Bloodrayne) will be totally removed from my adventure.

I also decided to make the players choose among six premade characters (I need to find more players now), three of them being foreigners (a paladin, a cleric, and a wizard/loremaster) and three Barovians (Ireena as a fighter/duelist, a vistani rogue/shadow dancer and a werewolf-bitten ranger).

I will place Barovia in a late-XVI-century-like fantasy Europe, with the three foreigners PC being part of a sort of inquisition, and placing Barovia in the equivalent area of Transylvania. Thus, I would mantain the "regional" feeling of the vampires, and provide to the land a suitable background as an ex-imperial land conquered by a foreigner noble when it was lost for the central power.

Al-Ashrad
2009-06-09, 09:05 AM
For this adventure, I thought to made all the PC and important NPC gestalts with a PC and a NPC class, but I am not shure of the goodness ot this idea.

Well, it does allow for some flexibility, but you might get the same effect if you gestalt them with a Fighter.



I prefer to avoid FR-related materials: I do not like them very much as a setting (Dragonlance forever!), and so I do not have any related handbook.

Blasphemy. However, I can understand if you don't have any FR materials, since there are a crap-ton of them.



I will place Barovia in a late-XVI-century-like fantasy Europe, with the three foreigners PC being part of a sort of inquisition, and placing Barovia in the equivalent area of Transylvania. Thus, I would mantain the "regional" feeling of the vampires, and provide to the land a suitable background as an ex-imperial land conquered by a foreigner noble when it was lost for the central power.

I like this, especially since it may change the attitude of the local people. In the original Ravenloft adventure, IIRC, the local villagers tend to act the same way as the villagers did in "Dracula", being relatively friendly to the adventurers but also showing signs of fear when the subject of Strahd comes up.

With this idea, the locals may now be fairly hostile to the adventurers, since they will be seen as outside agitators in a fairly protective and nationalistic realm. After all, Vlad Tepes is still seen as a national hero in Romania even though he was rather cruel and tyrannical. Now, with this new twist, the villagers may actually want to protect Strahd.

FeAnPi
2009-06-12, 10:34 AM
Eh, the Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms struggle is the real eternal one.:smallbiggrin:

Anyway... I prefere to use NPC-classes gestalts to not change too much the power level: my players are currently using gestalt PC (cleric/fighter, fighter/rogue, barbarian/ranger) in our Nephandum campaign, and the horror feeling is really spoiled by the enhanced power level.
The NPC classes grant some flexibility, some original concepts (a not-fighting cleric, a really-sage wizard), and the extra power granted is very thin.

As regards the reactions of the locals to the PC, three of them will be locals too... but the other ones will be foreigners, and members of a sort of inquisition.
So, the locals will not like them very much, while always fearing and not loving the count.

Vlad could be now a national hero, but he was not very loved...
It is common to celebrate as an hero a person that, while alive, was feared/hated: in Italy we celebrate Mazzini as a national hero, but in life he was regarded as a terrorist, even by many Italians.