1) d&d class analysis: The Bard. From nigh-unattainable requirements to a fan favorite, this class has changed quite a bit since its inception. 2) Death of the Editions. A discussion about what killed off each version of the game. 3) Tales from the Infinite Staircase adventure walkthrough: an introduction to Anthology Adventures, as well as the Planescape campaign setting. 4) Dwarves, Cavaliers and Warlords, Oh My! Classes lost to the ages. 5) Expedition to the Barrier Peaks adventure walkthrough: Aliens in D&D! 6) The Dragon: About D&D's most prolific magazine. 7) New series idea: Campaign Setting Overview. Discuss Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, and more.
It's nice he is labeling the creative content he is using as filler-shots in the videos, but I bet you this is still stealing other people's work for one's own financial benefit. He needs to write ALL the people he is stealing from and get their written permission to use their content. I like the videos too but I hate this culture of blatant stealing on YT..
@@KS-nm6rt you have one of the most self absorbed and self righteous opinions I have ever seen. Imagine! I'd have to contact Stan Lee from across the grave everytime I wanted to make a presentation using one of his comic books! Or call Nail Gaiman everytime I wished to talk about the plot of American Gods or Sandman. Do yoy not understand how bothersome that would be for everyone incolved? Do you think the authors of a 30 yo dnd adventure want you to call them to talk about your adventure in your video?
I'm doing a documentary on New Zealand. It's for profit and it will be published to the public. I will use a lot of footage from LotR cause it's also from New Zealand. Is that fair use? Can I just use everything I want for my docu that I aim to make money from? What about music? As long as I credit people it's all good? @@viktord2025 It's not I can tell you.. If you are doing a review on LotR you can use footage from LotR. It's really quite simple..
@@KS-nm6rt You don't understand fair use. This is absolutely a transformative video and the content he uses is completely fair game legally and ethically. This is not a replacement for any of the products used, at all, therefore transformative... Therefore, fair use. Read the Copyright Act of 1976, section 107. He is ticking several boxes of what is considered fair use, this is a unique and transformative take on all of the content used within the video. He honestly doesn't even have to source a lot of what he does, it's just a courtesy. Legally and ethically, this is super okay.
I love the D&D Walkthrough series. These have made me want to run most if not all of the modules you've covered. I'd really love to see you cover Dark Tower by Paul Jaquays
Glad to see a new video! Anyone else catch that the text describes the bone bridges at 22:24 as “wet with moisture”. This gives strong vibes of trying to reach the required word count in a middle school essay.
Tbf specifying the liquid is kind of important in context, since the bridge is made of bones, so something like "wet with blood" could also make sense, but would give very different implications. Always better to clarify.
Love this. I started with 2E, and Ravenloft has ALWAYS been my favorite campaign. I lost all of my originals in a house fire, so seeing this made me amazingly nostalgic. Well presented, and much appreciated!
@@shagohad3 Vecna did this in a module where the sole intent from WotC is to at least TPK the party, and at most end your campaign world, for a clean slate with a rewritten Greyhawk(and other settings) going into 3e. Same with The Apocalypse Stone. When the new company selling a game is trying to hit the reset button, it's not surprising when they ignore the rules and laws set in place for that game.
A lot of the AD&D Ravenloft catalogue is pretty much like this. Great to scavenge ideas, maps, and encounters, but horrible to run as they are. Adam's Wrath is another good one for that. Awful railroady mess of an adventure, but provides a couple of useful tools for a campaign set in Lamordia. A contingency plan if the party gets wiped (assuming they won't get eaten by the killers). The corpses of the party someway will make their way to Mordenheims lab, who will procede to resurrect them as Flesh Golems, and will promise to clone them bodies similar to their original ones, if they do a favor for him. The concept of "Adam's Children", a tight-knit community of flesh golems, made by Adam himself, who eventually turned rogue and abandoned their creator, and created their own family in an abandoned monastery. Detailed maps of a few critical locations. Adam's Icy lair on the Isle of Agony. Mordenheims Manor and laboratory. The monastery of Adam's Children. Schloss von Aubreker, the manor of the ruling political elite of Lamordia (currently infested by Madness Fleas).
Hitchcock, who popularized the term 'McGuffin', also coined the term 'icebox scene'. Icebox scenes are scenes that appear convincing during the movie but are logically implausible/impossible, but that implausibility can only be discerned after the emotional impact of the situation has ebbed, i.e. when you're at the fridge indulging in a midnight snack. Hitchcock's position wasn't than these were tools to be used as a last resort to fix plots, but were in fact the very soul of the psychological drama. And he saw his own virtuosity in using them as one of his principle skills as a filmmaker. The challenge for reviewing modules is trying to determine how easy it is for DMs to make the implausible/illogical seem logical at the moment. The Ravenloft setting assists in this by providing a setting that's already off-kilter with a crush of backstory with onion skins of motivation and plot developments. The player never learns everything, so the mystery is never fully solved. I think the DM with a strong personality with cooperative players wouldn't find it difficult to subtly (or not so subtly) lead characters though the adventure with them feeling railroaded. This was my experience in my one experience DMing the Ravenloft world. Adding, I love this series for trying to put classic modules in a historical context, and avoiding many of the tropes of fandom which is wrecking much contemporary creative output. But acknowledging reception® along with a serious attempt at reappraisal.
I have Feast of Goblyns and tried to prep to DM it a few times. It has so many interesting ideas and great style, but ultimately it should be cannibalized for parts - which is why I've kept it. Thanks for the review! I'm inspired to sneak some of these elements into games again!
Dude, love your channel. Can't wait to see what you cover next. Hope you eventually do Castle Amber. Would love to see a walkthrough of that. Or maybe, also, something from the Bloodstone pass saga. Specifically H4 The Throne of Bloodstone. Oh, also The Ruins of Undermountain. Lol! Man, there's a ton of content at your disposal!
So great to have another of your wonderfully crafted videos. DM It All was one of the channels that got me through the Pandemic; and motivated to start running games myself. Thank you, and always looking forward to the next one.
Ravenloft has always been my favorite part of Dungeons and Dragons. I just turned 50 a few days ago and I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was about 7.
Man, I haven't even started watching and you get rhe "Like" just for the nostalgia feels. Loved the early Ravenloft setting adventures and the accompanying Van Richten's guides. Now to watch the video.
Glad to see your comeback, I had this adventure, but I never played it, not looked at it, now that you explained it, I can alter it to play it in my campaign out of Ravenloft.
When people talk about Ravenloft, so many people don't realize that the module is only a small piece of a much larger whole... Yeah I6 absolutely is historically important to D&D, but I've always been a huge fan of the full campaign setting and get sad when people don't realize that it's so great or that it even exists. Feast of Goblyns isn't the best actual Ravenloft module by a long shot... It was clearly designed to be more dungeon crawly which kind of doesn't really fit with the nature of the setting. So it's not a surprise that the module itself is kind of at war with how D&D adventurers would try to approach an adventure like the one presented. As it's literally the first module of the new setting and nothing like the Ravenloft setting had been tried before by TSR having an uneven tone was to be expected. The setting will struggle with balancing its D&D roots and its nature as a horror setting for a bit of time... Especially problematic is the setting's insistence at first at being a kind of a pseudo setting rather than a full campaign setting on its own. Grabbing characters from other settings as a "Weekend in Hell" type of gameplay where escaping is the primary goal. While this is a perfectly valid way of playing Ravenloft it really weakens a lot of the narrative cleverness of the Demiplane as a whole. During the last few years of D&D 2nd edition, Ravenloft the setting starts to seriously move away from the "Weekend in Hell" format and starts actually including rules for Native to Ravenloft PC's the first time appearing in the 2nd revision of the Ravenloft Campaign Setting during 2nd edition. (A hard cover book called Domains of Dread. Yes, Ravenloft went through 2 revisions during 2nd edition. ) A lot of the more hardcore Ravenloft setting fans tend to had already been using native PC's and had also been fiddling with the various modules to make that a viable option. There are lots of good things in 2nd edition of course... Setting Books, Modules, Boxed Sets, there was a bunch of lore and fun stuff tucked away into various books that made the setting more cohesive. In the shift to 3rd edition, Ravenloft was given the backburner by Wizards of the Coast. Instead of working on the setting themselves, they gave over the Ravenloft license to the Swords & Sorcery imprint over at one of their biggest rivals White Wolf (Creators of the World of Darkness games). Personally, it was in my opinion the golden age of Ravenloft as a setting. The primary developers hired to work on the setting were hardcore fans of the setting and they expanded the world incredibly to make it a full setting in it's own right. While the setting still had bumps this is the age of some of the best supplements for the setting. Including the gold standard of Ravenloft books the Gazetteers which fleshed out the domains of the setting making them more than simple sandboxes with the Darklords at their center. Unfortunately, there was some drama behind the scenes and the setting hit some serious blocks near the end of 3rd editions run (WotC also released a 3.5 edition version of I6 that ignored all the white wolf setting stuff.) . When 4th edition hit WotC simply did not renew their relationship with White Wolf and folded Ravenloft back into their portfolio... They chose, not to do anything with the setting during the 4th edition at all except to release a board game version of I6. So for a long while, there was almost no Ravenloft setting-specific stuff. Eventually as 5th edition became more popular, as was typical, I6 was remade again (the original module has been remade several times, in some format at least once, sometimes multiple times, for each edition) calling it Curse of Strahd. It's popularity renewed interest in the full setting which recently was given a full hardback release as Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft . This new version of the setting is pretty much a complete reboot of the older setting stuff not building on any of the 2nd edition or 3rd edition lore. It also tends to go back to the "Weekend in Hell" format that 2nd and 3rd edition had tried to drift away from. It kind of has a mixed reputation among long time Ravenloft setting fans. I'm glad to see Ravenloft being covered on this channel as a huge fan of the setting, and I can't wait to see you cover other Ravenloft modules.
I brought this back in the day, I remember the poster folded up that came with the module, hung it up in my room ( bad idea since I had night terrors lol)
Yeah, I bought this along with the first boxed set. It looks gorgeous and the details are amazing. But you'd definitely need to do some rewriting to make it playable as is. Oh, and the cover is basically a Ravenloft DM screen and includes a Ravenloft character sheet.
@@666lupine666 they got to the inn in skald tpk. Back ups got to the cave graveyard and stopped. Never made it to the hag. It’s something I point to about how hard 2nd was. But I’m wanting to run 2nd again.
Played it in the 90s as part of my first D&D campaign, but the party broke up; then years later the group reformed with different characters, and finished the journey. We lost it when the skeletons swung by their feet to attack us, had to pause for the night; hilarious. The Ending was vague for our 18yo GM - just show up at the event, fight random evil-looking baddies, and then a "you get swallowed by lava, jk, you're alive and back home" 2e Ravenloft ending. Remember feeling it needed to be reworked, but still: we completed the adventure! Still, I think the problem is the linear adventure with no guidance at the end. McGuffin crown is toxic evil, which is unusable as it makes a character into an NPC. Could use a Remix by The Alexandrian or another GM, you know? The Inn map is legendary, especially given the description in the intro; we didn't do it, but I was inspired to do descriptions like suggested here, to create atmosphere - even if there's no werewolf! As for the giant skeleton - my group had played through menzobaranzan first, so my fighter "Conan" had a +4 broadsword and the bracers of blinding strike, doubling his attacks every round. He was 8th level iirc, so 4 attacks per round, I did 48 damage to the skeleton. My GM "created" an attack to break his sword as a result (still bugs me, but we were kids; I suggest talking to the players first!), but oh well, good fun. The "wolfweres" always bothered me; I'd have just made them werewolves, as getting my head around animals in human form never feels right, or adds up to "lets dress up and run a pub". Plus The Howling was fun, so why not! The Ravenloft Setting domains make no sense. Akriel shouldn't have been aware, as it's not the same as ruling territory in a setting. Unlike Castle Ravenloft, the domains were not dungeons with "rules" for defeating the darklord. This is probably why the adventures kind of don't work, imo, as you don't really engage with Ravenloft so much as wandering around scenery on a railroad.
Hello, i wanted to comment that I adore these videos and the video editing format, style, and narration. I hope that someday we can have more frequent uploads. I'm not asking for anything weekly, but maybe something every few months? That would be delightful. Take your time for sure, but please keep making stuff. Thank you.
I'm about to run this adventure and I'm going to have to modify the hell out of it as our Ravenloft campaign isn't quite so combat focused as this module demands. Thanks for this, as it helps with my difficulty focusing on reading every page of the adventure in PDF form. Damn brain.
I wanted to like this module more but it was somewhat haphazardly put togther. It felt like bits were missing thats needed for the narrative. I dunno Has a lot to offer but the DM has a lot of work to do.
Best video I ever saw on Ravenloft so I subbed and saved it. I can enjoy this more than once. What's crazy for ME is I never got into Ravenloft in the day. In the early 80s my group was ultra focused on our Wonderland (yes the one with Alice) campaign we were so stoked on. I was not and still really am not much into Vampires though. I got Curse of Strahd really cheap. And I'm cheap so I made my own Torakka cards just by writing on cheap standard playing cards. I've always liked doing lots of little homebrew type stuff period. Anyway...I've been very happy enjoying Curse of Strahd. All the Vampire shenanigans I could/would want all in one whack. This video was great...lots of history on the creation and lore. I think it's tons of fun to dabble or dive into this stuff of Strahd. Thanks!!
One of the most interesting takes in a campaign I've seen was having Tatyana reborn as a PC, a female Paladiness (haunted by tragedy) who was drawn to Ravenloft with the rest of the party. Visually, she resembled Shanoa from that one Castlevania game. It really played up the whole gothic horror element, with the bleak joke being that this was the one reincarnation who was most attracted to Strahd, yet utterly opposed to everything he was.
Late Responds but I have to say, I love the D&D Walkthroughs. They just give an insight on a diffrent philosophy of stories and honestly gives me quite new ideas! Also I do wonder if Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is on the list of Walkthroughts? Fingers crossed here
Can you imagine that emotional bright ray of light once your medieval sorcerer/paladin/mage/fighter is able to use the unfiltered joyful convenience of using a toilet?
Great review. I tried running this game when it first came out, and it 's a railroady mess. I agree that there are some really nice aspects to this game. The best way to "run" this game is probably to break it up into smaller, tighter games that aren't connected.
Yo DM it all. If you can, please do a video about the history of Fred Funk, from what I understand he was a policeman who was an original tester of DnD, he would host these big games that were in the newspaper with his own crazy huge DnD world. This one guy called Jon’s DnD vlog used to have a super cool video about him, but he’s a weird conservative guy and said that the libs were coming for him and took it down (only exaggerating slightly). I am too busy making my own dnd world to make an informational essay about this guy but his tabletop work was insanely cool from what I’ve seen of it, I think he’s a homebrew hercules we ought to remember. Hopefully these leads have been good, thanks for reading!
![SAFEPLANET - ดาวเคราะห์ [ THE PLANET ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4X1XL3I_k3c/mqdefault.jpg)
Any adventure that contains the phrase "the Second Decoy Bedroom" is on another level
Indeed 😊
Gygaxian is the adjective that comes to mind.
I personally don’t know if that other level is good. One decoy room is already really goofy and over the top, two is just too much.
1) d&d class analysis: The Bard. From nigh-unattainable requirements to a fan favorite, this class has changed quite a bit since its inception.
2) Death of the Editions. A discussion about what killed off each version of the game.
3) Tales from the Infinite Staircase adventure walkthrough: an introduction to Anthology Adventures, as well as the Planescape campaign setting.
4) Dwarves, Cavaliers and Warlords, Oh My! Classes lost to the ages.
5) Expedition to the Barrier Peaks adventure walkthrough: Aliens in D&D!
6) The Dragon: About D&D's most prolific magazine.
7) New series idea: Campaign Setting Overview. Discuss Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, and more.
This channel is the epitome of Quality over Quantity
When the world needed him most, he came back! Love these videos so much.
It's nice he is labeling the creative content he is using as filler-shots in the videos, but I bet you this is still stealing other people's work for one's own financial benefit. He needs to write ALL the people he is stealing from and get their written permission to use their content. I like the videos too but I hate this culture of blatant stealing on YT..
@@KS-nm6rt you have one of the most self absorbed and self righteous opinions I have ever seen. Imagine! I'd have to contact Stan Lee from across the grave everytime I wanted to make a presentation using one of his comic books! Or call Nail Gaiman everytime I wished to talk about the plot of American Gods or Sandman.
Do yoy not understand how bothersome that would be for everyone incolved? Do you think the authors of a 30 yo dnd adventure want you to call them to talk about your adventure in your video?
@@KS-nm6rt What? Is fair use no longer a thing or something?
I'm doing a documentary on New Zealand. It's for profit and it will be published to the public. I will use a lot of footage from LotR cause it's also from New Zealand. Is that fair use? Can I just use everything I want for my docu that I aim to make money from? What about music? As long as I credit people it's all good? @@viktord2025 It's not I can tell you.. If you are doing a review on LotR you can use footage from LotR. It's really quite simple..
@@KS-nm6rt You don't understand fair use. This is absolutely a transformative video and the content he uses is completely fair game legally and ethically. This is not a replacement for any of the products used, at all, therefore transformative... Therefore, fair use.
Read the Copyright Act of 1976, section 107. He is ticking several boxes of what is considered fair use, this is a unique and transformative take on all of the content used within the video. He honestly doesn't even have to source a lot of what he does, it's just a courtesy. Legally and ethically, this is super okay.
"Press X to doubt the modules main hook"
great video
I love the D&D Walkthrough series. These have made me want to run most if not all of the modules you've covered.
I'd really love to see you cover Dark Tower by Paul Jaquays
Glad to see a new video! Anyone else catch that the text describes the bone bridges at 22:24 as “wet with moisture”. This gives strong vibes of trying to reach the required word count in a middle school essay.
There were some real classics like that in boxed text, I miss it so much.
Tbf specifying the liquid is kind of important in context, since the bridge is made of bones, so something like "wet with blood" could also make sense, but would give very different implications. Always better to clarify.
Moisture is not a specific type of liquid. Something covered with blood is also wet with moisture.
@@jonahsalyers5979 that's what he said. what are you going on about?
Is moisture wetter than water, or blood? Truth matters! ;-)
Love this. I started with 2E, and Ravenloft has ALWAYS been my favorite campaign. I lost all of my originals in a house fire, so seeing this made me amazingly nostalgic.
Well presented, and much appreciated!
I was not expecting to hear the name Bruce Nesmith as I keep seeing interviews about his time at Bethesda. This sounds like a cool module.
The Demilich’s curse is probably the coolest trap I’ve ever heard of.
What a surprise on a beautiful Sunday morning. Welcome back sir.
The three absolute truths of D&D:
Elminster knows more than he lets on. You don't mess with the Lady of Pain. Nobody and NOBODY escapes Ravenloft.
Didn't Lord Soth get out?
@@warriorjubei Did Soth want to get out? Get to comfy in your domain and the dark powers will jank the chain.
Vecna got out. And he almost beat the Lady of Pain.
In a fantasy story, an absolute truth only exists until a writer can think of a fun way to subvert it.
@@shagohad3 Vecna did this in a module where the sole intent from WotC is to at least TPK the party, and at most end your campaign world, for a clean slate with a rewritten Greyhawk(and other settings) going into 3e. Same with The Apocalypse Stone. When the new company selling a game is trying to hit the reset button, it's not surprising when they ignore the rules and laws set in place for that game.
More of these please! So many box sets & modules for Ravenloft 2nd edition that need detailed and discussion!
A lot of the AD&D Ravenloft catalogue is pretty much like this. Great to scavenge ideas, maps, and encounters, but horrible to run as they are.
Adam's Wrath is another good one for that. Awful railroady mess of an adventure, but provides a couple of useful tools for a campaign set in Lamordia.
A contingency plan if the party gets wiped (assuming they won't get eaten by the killers). The corpses of the party someway will make their way to Mordenheims lab, who will procede to resurrect them as Flesh Golems, and will promise to clone them bodies similar to their original ones, if they do a favor for him.
The concept of "Adam's Children", a tight-knit community of flesh golems, made by Adam himself, who eventually turned rogue and abandoned their creator, and created their own family in an abandoned monastery.
Detailed maps of a few critical locations. Adam's Icy lair on the Isle of Agony. Mordenheims Manor and laboratory. The monastery of Adam's Children. Schloss von Aubreker, the manor of the ruling political elite of Lamordia (currently infested by Madness Fleas).
Ah my favorite channel that I continuously forget that I'm subscribed to.
Hitchcock, who popularized the term 'McGuffin', also coined the term 'icebox scene'. Icebox scenes are scenes that appear convincing during the movie but are logically implausible/impossible, but that implausibility can only be discerned after the emotional impact of the situation has ebbed, i.e. when you're at the fridge indulging in a midnight snack.
Hitchcock's position wasn't than these were tools to be used as a last resort to fix plots, but were in fact the very soul of the psychological drama. And he saw his own virtuosity in using them as one of his principle skills as a filmmaker.
The challenge for reviewing modules is trying to determine how easy it is for DMs to make the implausible/illogical seem logical at the moment. The Ravenloft setting assists in this by providing a setting that's already off-kilter with a crush of backstory with onion skins of motivation and plot developments. The player never learns everything, so the mystery is never fully solved. I think the DM with a strong personality with cooperative players wouldn't find it difficult to subtly (or not so subtly) lead characters though the adventure with them feeling railroaded. This was my experience in my one experience DMing the Ravenloft world.
Adding, I love this series for trying to put classic modules in a historical context, and avoiding many of the tropes of fandom which is wrecking much contemporary creative output. But acknowledging reception® along with a serious attempt at reappraisal.
Fantastic! I love these deep dives into TSR modules and adventures
Small correction, but Dominiana *does* appear in the 5th edition iteration of the setting, under the list of minor domains.
I ran this adventure in the 90s when I was a teenager. TPK at the end 😂 it was very fun though.
When I found this channel I loved binging all the episodes, but now having to wait. It is like getting a gift every time a new video goes up.
Please come back, DM it all!
I love Ravenloft, it's my favorite setting.
I fucking love this channel. I recommend to everybody who will listen, keep up the good work!
I'm so glad you're back. Missed your uploads
So happy to see a new video from you, man. This has truly brightened my day
I just started rewatching all your old content. Welcome back!
I have Feast of Goblyns and tried to prep to DM it a few times. It has so many interesting ideas and great style, but ultimately it should be cannibalized for parts - which is why I've kept it. Thanks for the review! I'm inspired to sneak some of these elements into games again!
Missed you DM! Hope all has been well and thank you for the video.
I was just lamenting last night about how you haven't uploaded in a while then I woke up to this pleasant surprise. Thank you!
Dude, love your channel. Can't wait to see what you cover next. Hope you eventually do Castle Amber. Would love to see a walkthrough of that. Or maybe, also, something from the Bloodstone pass saga. Specifically H4 The Throne of Bloodstone. Oh, also The Ruins of Undermountain. Lol! Man, there's a ton of content at your disposal!
I thought this channel died! Glad to see you're still going, love the videos!
My birthday was this week so this counts as a birthday present!
Absolutely wonderful video! Great narration and your willingness to credit artists and sources should be the gold standard.
Always a fantastic day when you upload. Shame TH-cam gobbles this video up and only got around to it.
YES, I have missed y'all so much. One of the only channels on youtube where I will rewatch endlessly.
So great to have another of your wonderfully crafted videos. DM It All was one of the channels that got me through the Pandemic; and motivated to start running games myself. Thank you, and always looking forward to the next one.
Another quality upload but I am very excited for the next one to come
Great to see you back!!!
Best channel on d&dyoutube. Even if it drops twice a year.
The way this channel presents these modules is inspiring! As a DM, I thank you!
Ravenloft has always been my favorite part of Dungeons and Dragons. I just turned 50 a few days ago and I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was about 7.
Missed your work! And for the first module I ever ran.
You know it's gonna be a good day when you wake up to a new DM it All video, love your work!
Woohoo!!! A new video. Thank you for this. Always get so much enjoyment out of these documentaries =D
Was wondering about you last month.
Appreciate what must be a lot of editing effort to make these videos.
Your channel rocks. Thanks for these deep dives.
Man, I haven't even started watching and you get rhe "Like" just for the nostalgia feels. Loved the early Ravenloft setting adventures and the accompanying Van Richten's guides.
Now to watch the video.
Googling the mysterious Blake Mobely turns up an intriguing character indeed.
So happy to see a new video from you. Heres to more in the next year! And maybe a look at some 13th age and other non dnd adventures too!
Great Video!
It's always a treat getting a video from DMitall!
Glad to see your comeback, I had this adventure, but I never played it, not looked at it, now that you explained it, I can alter it to play it in my campaign out of Ravenloft.
GRAAAAAAAH New DM It All video!!!! I am Strahd's strongest soldier! Good job as always!!
When people talk about Ravenloft, so many people don't realize that the module is only a small piece of a much larger whole... Yeah I6 absolutely is historically important to D&D, but I've always been a huge fan of the full campaign setting and get sad when people don't realize that it's so great or that it even exists.
Feast of Goblyns isn't the best actual Ravenloft module by a long shot... It was clearly designed to be more dungeon crawly which kind of doesn't really fit with the nature of the setting. So it's not a surprise that the module itself is kind of at war with how D&D adventurers would try to approach an adventure like the one presented. As it's literally the first module of the new setting and nothing like the Ravenloft setting had been tried before by TSR having an uneven tone was to be expected.
The setting will struggle with balancing its D&D roots and its nature as a horror setting for a bit of time... Especially problematic is the setting's insistence at first at being a kind of a pseudo setting rather than a full campaign setting on its own. Grabbing characters from other settings as a "Weekend in Hell" type of gameplay where escaping is the primary goal. While this is a perfectly valid way of playing Ravenloft it really weakens a lot of the narrative cleverness of the Demiplane as a whole.
During the last few years of D&D 2nd edition, Ravenloft the setting starts to seriously move away from the "Weekend in Hell" format and starts actually including rules for Native to Ravenloft PC's the first time appearing in the 2nd revision of the Ravenloft Campaign Setting during 2nd edition. (A hard cover book called Domains of Dread. Yes, Ravenloft went through 2 revisions during 2nd edition. )
A lot of the more hardcore Ravenloft setting fans tend to had already been using native PC's and had also been fiddling with the various modules to make that a viable option. There are lots of good things in 2nd edition of course... Setting Books, Modules, Boxed Sets, there was a bunch of lore and fun stuff tucked away into various books that made the setting more cohesive.
In the shift to 3rd edition, Ravenloft was given the backburner by Wizards of the Coast. Instead of working on the setting themselves, they gave over the Ravenloft license to the Swords & Sorcery imprint over at one of their biggest rivals White Wolf (Creators of the World of Darkness games). Personally, it was in my opinion the golden age of Ravenloft as a setting.
The primary developers hired to work on the setting were hardcore fans of the setting and they expanded the world incredibly to make it a full setting in it's own right. While the setting still had bumps this is the age of some of the best supplements for the setting. Including the gold standard of Ravenloft books the Gazetteers which fleshed out the domains of the setting making them more than simple sandboxes with the Darklords at their center.
Unfortunately, there was some drama behind the scenes and the setting hit some serious blocks near the end of 3rd editions run (WotC also released a 3.5 edition version of I6 that ignored all the white wolf setting stuff.) . When 4th edition hit WotC simply did not renew their relationship with White Wolf and folded Ravenloft back into their portfolio... They chose, not to do anything with the setting during the 4th edition at all except to release a board game version of I6.
So for a long while, there was almost no Ravenloft setting-specific stuff. Eventually as 5th edition became more popular, as was typical, I6 was remade again (the original module has been remade several times, in some format at least once, sometimes multiple times, for each edition) calling it Curse of Strahd. It's popularity renewed interest in the full setting which recently was given a full hardback release as Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft .
This new version of the setting is pretty much a complete reboot of the older setting stuff not building on any of the 2nd edition or 3rd edition lore. It also tends to go back to the "Weekend in Hell" format that 2nd and 3rd edition had tried to drift away from. It kind of has a mixed reputation among long time Ravenloft setting fans.
I'm glad to see Ravenloft being covered on this channel as a huge fan of the setting, and I can't wait to see you cover other Ravenloft modules.
I brought this back in the day, I remember the poster folded up that came with the module, hung it up in my room ( bad idea since I had night terrors lol)
Always happy to see another video here! Great work!
Yeah, I bought this along with the first boxed set. It looks gorgeous and the details are amazing. But you'd definitely need to do some rewriting to make it playable as is.
Oh, and the cover is basically a Ravenloft DM screen and includes a Ravenloft character sheet.
Nice! I'm always happy to see a new video from you guys, and this is perfect for Halloween. Thanks for sharing this here.
In the 90s this was the first ravenloft game I ran for my group
how did it go?
@@666lupine666 they got to the inn in skald tpk. Back ups got to the cave graveyard and stopped. Never made it to the hag. It’s something I point to about how hard 2nd was. But I’m wanting to run 2nd again.
Fantastic video!
The return of the king
I'm running a bunch of the Ravenloft mods that I converted to Pathfinder, this is one of them
My dad's favorite ravenloft adventure
We were waiting for another video a long time, and finally it's here. Great video as always and welcome back!
IT’S BACK
AWESOME
Automatic like and comment, missed your uploads!
Played it in the 90s as part of my first D&D campaign, but the party broke up; then years later the group reformed with different characters, and finished the journey.
We lost it when the skeletons swung by their feet to attack us, had to pause for the night; hilarious.
The Ending was vague for our 18yo GM - just show up at the event, fight random evil-looking baddies, and then a "you get swallowed by lava, jk, you're alive and back home" 2e Ravenloft ending. Remember feeling it needed to be reworked, but still: we completed the adventure! Still, I think the problem is the linear adventure with no guidance at the end. McGuffin crown is toxic evil, which is unusable as it makes a character into an NPC. Could use a Remix by The Alexandrian or another GM, you know?
The Inn map is legendary, especially given the description in the intro; we didn't do it, but I was inspired to do descriptions like suggested here, to create atmosphere - even if there's no werewolf!
As for the giant skeleton - my group had played through menzobaranzan first, so my fighter "Conan" had a +4 broadsword and the bracers of blinding strike, doubling his attacks every round. He was 8th level iirc, so 4 attacks per round, I did 48 damage to the skeleton. My GM "created" an attack to break his sword as a result (still bugs me, but we were kids; I suggest talking to the players first!), but oh well, good fun.
The "wolfweres" always bothered me; I'd have just made them werewolves, as getting my head around animals in human form never feels right, or adds up to "lets dress up and run a pub". Plus The Howling was fun, so why not!
The Ravenloft Setting domains make no sense. Akriel shouldn't have been aware, as it's not the same as ruling territory in a setting. Unlike Castle Ravenloft, the domains were not dungeons with "rules" for defeating the darklord. This is probably why the adventures kind of don't work, imo, as you don't really engage with Ravenloft so much as wandering around scenery on a railroad.
Hello, i wanted to comment that I adore these videos and the video editing format, style, and narration. I hope that someday we can have more frequent uploads. I'm not asking for anything weekly, but maybe something every few months? That would be delightful. Take your time for sure, but please keep making stuff. Thank you.
Ravenloft. The love letter to Classic Horror. That's why I love it.
Wake up babe it's one of the 2 yearly episodes!
One of my first adventures i ran as a dm, was a bit of a mess as i recall but love this overview!
I'm a big fan of TSR business strategy lol
Now I want to run this for my home group using the old rules!
Love these videos, hope to see more Vecna content in the future!
That box set was great
This horror adventure is amazing.
I'm about to run this adventure and I'm going to have to modify the hell out of it as our Ravenloft campaign isn't quite so combat focused as this module demands. Thanks for this, as it helps with my difficulty focusing on reading every page of the adventure in PDF form. Damn brain.
Welcome back :)
I wanted to like this module more but it was somewhat haphazardly put togther. It felt like bits were missing thats needed for the narrative. I dunno Has a lot to offer but the DM has a lot of work to do.
Best video I ever saw on Ravenloft so I subbed and saved it. I can enjoy this more than once. What's crazy for ME is I never got into Ravenloft in the day. In the early 80s my group was ultra focused on our Wonderland (yes the one with Alice) campaign we were so stoked on. I was not and still really am not much into Vampires though. I got Curse of Strahd really cheap. And I'm cheap so I made my own Torakka cards just by writing on cheap standard playing cards. I've always liked doing lots of little homebrew type stuff period. Anyway...I've been very happy enjoying Curse of Strahd. All the Vampire shenanigans I could/would want all in one whack.
This video was great...lots of history on the creation and lore. I think it's tons of fun to dabble or dive into this stuff of Strahd. Thanks!!
Great in time for Halloween. That helmet though...oof....Gothic trap indeed
The return
Thanks for another great video!
😮 SKELETON CHAIR 😮
Guest starring Lazlo Cravensworth as Dominiani, Regular Human Doctor
"this is an excellnt introduction to the world of Ravenloft"
Hello newie level 4 dopes, enjoy a DEMILICH!
One of the most interesting takes in a campaign I've seen was having Tatyana reborn as a PC, a female Paladiness (haunted by tragedy) who was drawn to Ravenloft with the rest of the party. Visually, she resembled Shanoa from that one Castlevania game.
It really played up the whole gothic horror element, with the bleak joke being that this was the one reincarnation who was most attracted to Strahd, yet utterly opposed to everything he was.
Very well done. Thanks for the review!
Late Responds but I have to say, I love the D&D Walkthroughs. They just give an insight on a diffrent philosophy of stories and honestly gives me quite new ideas!
Also I do wonder if Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is on the list of Walkthroughts? Fingers crossed here
Love your channel. Always grateful.
50 minutes, eh? That's the length of video I'd crack a beer open for.
It droped at 9 am this morning kinda early isnt it?
@@scottmcfarlane7524 I'll save it for the evening.
WOOO! LET'S FUCKIN' GO!
Always great to see you!
the goat is back
Can you imagine that emotional bright ray of light once your medieval sorcerer/paladin/mage/fighter is able to use the unfiltered joyful convenience of using a toilet?
Great review. I tried running this game when it first came out, and it 's a railroady mess. I agree that there are some really nice aspects to this game. The best way to "run" this game is probably to break it up into smaller, tighter games that aren't connected.
Yo DM it all. If you can, please do a video about the history of Fred Funk, from what I understand he was a policeman who was an original tester of DnD, he would host these big games that were in the newspaper with his own crazy huge DnD world. This one guy called Jon’s DnD vlog used to have a super cool video about him, but he’s a weird conservative guy and said that the libs were coming for him and took it down (only exaggerating slightly). I am too busy making my own dnd world to make an informational essay about this guy but his tabletop work was insanely cool from what I’ve seen of it, I think he’s a homebrew hercules we ought to remember. Hopefully these leads have been good, thanks for reading!
I wished he made more
Hope to see a new video soon! I love the content
YESSSS NEW DMITALL