At the same time, as I just noted, this is still, at base, a dungeon crawl and an occasionally non-sensical one at that, given that, for all its Gothic horror trappings, we find sometimes find monsters not at all in keeping with that style of writing. Now, I think it's all too easy to emphasize how much Ravenloft differed from its predecessors. I'd go so far as to say that they're emblematic of Ravenloft itself: attractive, innovative, and a clear break from the past. The problem, of course, is that, in play, they're quite unwieldy and sometimes even a little confusing. I know I drooled over these maps for many hours as a younger man and, even now, looking at them, I find it hard not to be won over by them. Dave Sutherland's three-dimensional maps of Castle Ravenloft were amazingly innovative for the time, providing a superb sense of how all the pieces of this vast dungeon - for dungeon is it was - fit together. The actions of the PCs are, in many ways, beside the point, because their sole purpose is to help to facilitate a melodrama of lust, betrayal, despair, and love beyond the grave in which NPCs are the primary actors.Īnd then there were the maps. Moreso than most modules published before or at that time, Ravenloft is about its villain. That he's the central figure in a story that provides a backdrop to the PCs' actions only made him more attractive. He's immensely powerful, well nigh indestructible, and fun to roleplay - an angst-ridden anti-hero before White Wolf made such things a staple of the hobby. Strahd von Zarovich, while sporting one of the most ridiculous faux Eastern European names in gaming, seems tailor-made for referees looking for a pet NPC. There are other factors too in why my youthful self loved Ravenloft. Ravenloft's evocation of Gothic horror was also unlike most other modules at the time and, given my relative unfamiliarity with that genre of fiction - I'd not yet read Dracula in 1983 - I found it all very compelling. Module I6 is a very "moody" piece of work, unlike most previous AD&D modules, which achieved their moods much more haphazardly or at least less self-consciously. Unlike the Dragonlance modules, which, even at the time, I liked more in theory than in practice, I used to love Ravenloft. I give Dragonlance a lot of grief - deservedly so, I think - for the role it played in forever changing both Dungeons & Dragons and the way it's been sold, but Dragonlance was merely expanding on ideas first put forward in earlier modules penned by Tracy Hickman, particularly 1983's Ravenloft.