It's been a while since Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft came out, and given that I am someone who seems to only run long, epic campaigns that take years (we're now 4 years and two months into my Ravnica campaign) I haven't had an opportunity to put the book's setting into practice.
I've actually been thinking about the possibility of, once this campaign is over, or perhaps when the Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign I'm in ends (we're only two sessions in and haven't entered the Feywild yet, so not any time soon) how I might consider trying my hand at actually running a published adventure, and if there's one that has really stuck with me it's got to be Curse of Strahd (the DM for our WbtW campaign has also always wanted to play in that one, so it would feel like a good opportunity).
Still, given that one of my players (my best friend) has read that one already (he ran the one I was playing in a few years ago that got pretty far - we had hit level 8 and were in the Amber Temple) and, well, my own desire to create my own stories, I had some thoughts.
As any reader of this blog can attest, I'm kind of obsessed with Alan Wake and Control. The former, especially with its sequel (while I think I might like Control better, I think Alan Wake II is the best Remedy game I've played, which is admittedly from a sample size of three) being more in the horror genre, feels like a touchstone for me.
I'm also someone who has read a fair amount of Stephen King - a key inspiration for Alan Wake, along with David Lynch (whose work I'm also reasonably familiar with) - and I think there's a point of inspiration here to consider:
Curse of Strahd is likely one of the most-played 5th Edition adventures (that and Lost Mines of Phandelver, I'd guess). I mean, I had read it before I played in it (and did a decent job, I think, of not meta-gaming too much, acting on the knowledge my character had rather than what I had as a player).
While the specific events of Curse of Strahd are, I think, meant to represent a singular period in Barovia, the nature of the Domains of Dread is that Strahd will always return so that he can be eternally tormented, and nothing truly changes.
In other words, it's kind of a loop.
And in that loop, there's some familiarity - people might have played this adventure before, might have a general sense of its shape and its arc.
So (and boy, if you're one of my players and read this blog, stop doing so now) overall, there would be a few things I'd tweak.
For one thing, we'd probably divorce the campaign entirely from anything Forgotten Realms-related. We'd also likely make use of elements of Van Richten's, like allowing Gothic Lineages, possibly Dark Gifts. That's all well and good. We'd of course include all the updates and new character options to come out since Curse of Strahd did way back when it did. And, you know, probably incorporate some of the better cultural sensitivity that came with Revamped.
But that's all window dressing.
I think we would start off small. Maybe we have the players find a Mist Talisman in Barovia or Vallaki that leads to another Domain. Perhaps we'd introduce a new NPC or two who aren't in the book.
Indeed, I think I'd try to get players to come up with more elaborate backstories than what a pre-fab adventure usually calls for, and incorporate hooks and quests that relate to those - the kind of thing that I think a good DM should try to do even when running a published adventure.
And then, when the party finally makes their first visit to Castle Ravenloft...
Blow it the fuck up.
That's right, climbing the perilous path to the great manor overlooking the cursed town of Barovia, the party rounds a bend, and the great castle of Strahd von Zarovich erupts in a massive fireball, stone fragments of its towers and parapets raining down.
What the hell just happened? The characters and the players should both be asking that question.
And from there on, all bets are off - all the assumptions that the players might have had about how things are likely to go in this adventure are called into question. Was Strahd caught in the blast? Is he dead? Can that happen?
And who is this friendly archmage Firan Zal'honen who has invited us to delve deeper into the mystery?
While I tend to write stories with a lot of horror elements, I've always been drawn more to the sense of confusion and disorientation that horror often trades in more than the pit-of-the-stomach dread and visceral disgust at gore and violence. Though I know Stephen King didn't like its departures from the novel's ideas, Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining is my go-to favorite horror film, because of the way that it makes you feel like you're getting details wrong - I think it puts us very effectively in the shoes of Danny Torrance, being a young enough kid that you're not sure if the weirdness around you is actually out of the ordinary or if it's just the way that the world is and you just haven't yet learned about that aspect of it yet.
Alan Wake (both games, but especially the second) very much trade in this idea of a questionable reality, and I think there's a grand potential in the Ravenloft setting if you really hammer home the idea that this is not the prime material plane, where things need to have some underlying logic that adheres to how we generally expect things to work (even if, simply by virtue of existing in the fantasy genre, any D&D game can have elements that break those rules).
Obviously also an element in Alan Wake II, I find the motif of doppelgangers to be a really fascinating potential element in a horror story. Psychological horror and Gothic Horror often find monsters within the main characters' psyche - the threat of a doppelganger carries a lot of potential sources of fear: you could find a double of yourself trying to take over your life and lay claim to the aspects of your identity. You could fear being held responsible for the actions performed by your double. You could fear that what you believe to be you is actually a lie, and that you are the double, who could reconcile the dissonance of your existence by committing a heinous act of murder and stealing their identity. You might fear that a villainous double is no double at all, but another facet of your own personality.
I don't know that this concept would be central to my alternative Curse of Strahd game, but in the distant likelihood that any of my friends find this blog, I'm going to throw this behind a spoiler cut.
The not-terribly-subtle-but-still-subtle story that is told in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is that one of the "Mistwalker NPCs" you might encounter in the setting, Firan Zal'honen, is in fact Azalin the Lich, the Darklord of Darkon.
Darkon, one of the most populous Domains of Dread, is gradually collapsing into non-existence because of the absence of its Darklord. The Darklords are not supposed to be able to escape their domains - the whole point is that they remain eternally tormented there, stuck in a loop.
But Azalin is a brilliant wizard (I mean, to be a Lich he kind of has to be) and there is, of course, precedent for a Lich escaping the Domains (though that lich was Vecna, so we're talking absolute top-tier Lich here).
So I suspect that Azalin might have found a hack of some sort that has allowed him to escape.
Notably, Firan is given a generic Archmage stat block - which is humanoid, rather than a Lich. Sure maybe he's actually undead and using Nystul's Magic Aura (a spell I recommend any DM use if they want to keep the Lich-ness of an NPC hidden,) but I have a crazier idea, which is that Azalin escaped by making a copy of himself.
The Dark Powers are never really defined, and seem to act as god-like, or Great Old One-like beings that truly rule over the Ravenloft setting. But I could imagine that a being like Azalin might be able to figure out a way to contact them and make some sort of deal with them.
He wants to escape the Domains of Dread, as anyone would. So perhaps he creates a copy of himself that is not bound in the same way that his decrepit Lich form is - and thus, we get our humanoid Firan Zal'honen (a name that has long been established as Azalin's actual name - Azalin just being the term for "Wizard King" in his native tongue).
And I think that, as an ally to the party (an ally who does probably some very horrible things behind the scenes) he might present this to them as a means to escape - perhaps the party can do some things to help him with his overall goal, which is to escape not just Darkon but the Domains entirely.
All the while, though, I think that there is a motif of doubles and doppelgangers. Perhaps we start by encountering doubles in Barovia - maybe some familiar NPC from the Curse of Strahd adventure is unexpected killed, only for us to encounter a person who looks just like them.
This perhaps begins as something innocuous. But then, perhaps, we start finding more doubles, and eventually, doubles of members of the party. Or are they doubles? Perhaps when a player is missing (such as for real-world reasons) the rest of the party encounters an NPC who looks just like them but act as if they've never met. Maybe that person is even a villain, a monster.
And we leave it ambiguous - was that actually our friend?
Sure, ok, how this relates to Castle Ravenloft blowing up might need some work, and maybe these are actually two separate concepts, but I think eventually, the way that this adventure/campaign ends is that the party is presented with an opportunity by the Dark Powers (maybe climaxing in the Amber Temple). The Dark Powers offer to create copies of the party members. For each pair - original and copy (and that's if you truly believe you are the original) - one is allowed to depart the Mists and return to the world they think of as home. The other, though? Damned eternally to the Domains of Dread.
And neither will ever know if they are the copy or the original.
Yeah, that's the kind of gut-punch horror story ending that I think would be very appropriate to the setting.
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