Ravenloft: Strahd's Comparison

See below for the module's analogue.

        

I enjoyed Ravenloft, but I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if it had been my only exposure to the Ravenloft setting. In all Dungeons & Dragons computer games, there's a sense of being part of a larger, ongoing world, and the player's enjoyment of those games is heightened if he catches various allusions and references. I personally don't catch most of them, I hasten to add, but it happens a few times per game.

   

A player who comes to Ravenloft solely through the CRPG doesn't learn that much about Strahd or his world. It's mysterious, somehow disconnected from the rest of the universe by magic mists, inhabited by classic Slavic mythological archetypes. Strahd von Zarovich's origins, his title of Count, his position of lord of the land, and other elements are never explained. We learn that Strahd had a brother named Sergei. Though destined to be a priest, Sergei fell in love with a peasant woman named Tatyana. Strahd scoffed at the match, then fell in love with the woman himself when he met her. His transformation into a vampire may have had something to do with his love for the woman. He seems to have killed his brother, then made a move for Tatyana, who killed herself rather than submit to him.

        

This turns out to be the distillation of an entire novel.

      

We know that after these events, he ruled the land as a tyrant, opposed by a group of were-ravens and some cabal called the Ba'al Verzi. He was greatly reduced at least once, but not killed, by the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, which his subjects later sought so they could try to kill him again.

   

We know that Strahd wants to escape Ravenloft, that he has explored several methods of doing so. There are at least three: the portal in the western caves, although it disappeared after we tried to use it; Trimia's Catalogue, which we ultimately used; and some method that the burglar who started this whole quest learned from an ancient lich (probably Azalin, the Lord of Darkon, mentioned in a different letter). A mage's journal also refers to "lifting the curse of Alabain" and "finding the date of the Great Alignment of Southern Stars" as potential avenues out of here.

   

I think that about covers it, and so I go back to the original module looking for further answers.

        

Strahd's family?

      

Let's start with Barovia itself. My understanding is that it could be dropped into the fringes of any campaign, whether Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or otherwise. Strahd's Possession does a decent job rendering what the module says about it. Principally, there are gates on the Old Svalich Road blocking the way out, and the entire land is surrounded by a fog. "Once it is breathed, it infuses itself around a character's vital organs as a neutralized poison." PCs who try to leave choke to death unless they re-enter Barovia within 24 hours. The fog is generated by Strahd himself and only dissipates if he dies. Strahd has given the gypsies an antidote to the fog's effects, but the PCs in the module can never discover or possess it. The same potion appears in the game, of course, but its uses are different owing to the changes in the nature of the fog between the 1983 module and the 1990 box set.

    

The module begins with the party outside Barovia, in a busy tavern. A gypsy arrives and hands them a letter, putatively from Burgomaster Kolyan Indrirovich, asking the party to come to Barovia and save the "love of his life," Ireena Kolyana, who has been "afflicted by an evil so deadly that even the good people of our town cannot protect her." A letter that the party can find on a dead villager on the road indicates that Ireena is Kolyan's adopted daughter and that she has been bitten by Strahd. The first letter turns out to be a forgery, written by Strahd to lure the PCs to Barovia, but the circumstances that it relates are accurate: Ireena is languishing from a vampire's bite. The PCs can meet the girl's adopted brother, Ismark, and both siblings can join the party. Ireena's origins are mysterious; her adoptive father found her in the woods.

          

The map is quite different. The Old Svalich Road goes east-west in the module; the church is to the northwest of town rather than the northeast; the cemetery is to the north of the church rather than the east, and it does not have explorable mausoleums; and while there are plenty of woods, none of them have caves. Castle Ravenloft is approached from the west rather than the south. There are rivers and bridges that the game doesn't have the graphics to depict. Barovia is the same dull, dispirited, half-abandoned place, with the same hapless subjects cowering in their homes. It is governed by a Burgomaster, although he's been dead for a week as the module begins. His estate is to the south of the village rather than the west.

     

If you rotate this map 90 degrees, you basically have the map used by the CRPG.

             

The Barovia of the module does have a store, called Bildrath's Mercantile, where everything costs 10 times its price outside of Barovia. The tavern is called Blood of the Vine, as it is in the CRPG, but the bartender's name is Arik rather than Bray. The church outside the town has not been rendered unholy by Strahd's invasion, and a priest named Donavich still tends it. There is no basement to explore.

 

One area in which the CRPG is faithful to the module is in the monsters the party encounters. Random encounters in the module deliver worg wolves, bats, zombies, ghouls, wights, wraiths, and vampires. But the party can also be attacked by villagers and gypsies, too. There is a gypsy camp on the way to the castle, where the PCs can meet Madam Eva and have their fortunes told.

   

Overall, the road, the church, the village of Barovia, and the gypsy camp have a few encounters, but their importance is minimized in the module. The party is meant to get to Castle Ravenloft as quickly as possible, and the majority of the game takes place there. They can find a carriage on the road, enter it, and automatically travel the rest of the way to the castle. Much as in the CRPG, they cross a bridge and travel through a portcullis. There is a small outdoor area that the players of the CRPG don't get to explore.

          

The module's depiction of a coach approaching Castle Ravenloft.

        

The castle layout is similar to the one in the game. Its levels are named the same (e.g., Larders of Ill Omen, Court of the Count). It has major and minor spires. Some of the specific rooms are recognizable, like the long Hall of Faith with its inert statues, the wine cellar with its casks, the chapel, and the dining hall—although they're not always in the same place. Some of its monsters are the same: wraiths, zombies, gargoyles, vampires, specters. The module castle also has mini red dragons, angry villagers, and rust monsters. There is no mention of doom guards or zombie golems.

    

The module of course has more interesting encounters than the CRPG, which was more limited by its engine and programming. Some things I would have loved to see in Strahd's Possession include an illusion of Strahd playing the pipe organ, traps that animate suits of armor (more to scare the party than actually attack), a coven of witches clustered around a cauldron, a torture room, and a couple of unique monsters and NPCs like Lief Lipsiege, Strahd's accountant, and a vampire named Helga who has chosen to be with Strahd but tries to convince the party otherwise.

     

The dungeon with its many crypts appears in the module, but the crypts are so much more interesting. Instead of just random treasures and zombie golems, they each have plaques with names and backstories for the various people interred there. One of them is Sergei's. Several of them are "wives" that Strahd has lured or kidnapped from Barovia over the centuries. One has a nightmare (the horse). The only thing I see from the list of interesting encounters and treasures that survived into the CRPG are a couple of crypts that teleport the PCs around the area.

         

The closest thing we get in the game to the many inscriptions in the module.

         

The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is given as one of the special treasures of the module—a powerful lawful good holy symbol once worn by the High Priest of Ravenloft. It doesn't shoot a beam of light as in the game; rather it generates the light of the sun for 1-10 rounds, damaging and potentially destroying any vampires in its radius. However, it can only be used once per week, not repeatedly amidst short cooldowns. Its origins are not mentioned; there are no were-ravens in the game; and it was not hidden in an oak. There is another artifact that can harm Strahd: an undead-killing Sunsword once owned by Sergei. Strahd had it destroyed, blade separated from hilt, but the blade disappeared and the hilt is in Castle Ravenloft. The PCs unknowingly have the blade and can reunite it with the hilt.

   

That leaves Strahd himself. His story in the module is told in his own diary. He  was once a holy warrior, but after years of war, he decided to settle down in the place his army happened to be at the time, the lands of Barovia. He sent for his family members, including his younger brother Sergei, though nothing is said of his brother being on the path to priesthood. He did fall into a love triangle with Sergei and Tatyana, but the diary does not say that Sergei was the one that introduced him to Tatyana. Strahd made a "pact with death" to become a vampire because he thought the reason Tatyana rejected him was that he was too old. Sergei's murder and Tatyana's dive from the castle walls are related as in the CRPG, but Tatyana's body was never found, and Strahd thinks she's somehow still alive: "I have even felt her within my grasp, but she escapes."

      

An image from the module was used for the portrait of Tatian in the CRPG. It is likely meant to be Tatyana in the portrait and Ireena standing next to it.

         

Strahd has four potential goals for luring the PCs to Ravenloft, chosen randomly by the dungeon master at the beginning of the module by dealing from a deck of cards.

   

• Strahd wants to leave Ravenloft and settle elsewhere by committing a little identity theft. He will try to polymorph one of the PCs into a vampire, then polymorph himself into the PC.

• Strahd is trying to make a magical "sphere of darkness" but lacks the final component. He believes incorrectly that the PCs have it.

• Strahd wants Ireena Kolyana to love him. He plans to charm the PCs into attacking her, then swoop in and save her.

• Strahd wants to destroy the Sunsword once and for all. He knows the PCs have the blade (which appears as a regular longsword while divorced from the hilt). The PCs don't know they have it. I don't know how this plays out if none of the PCs carries a regular longsword. Is the DM supposed to force them to take one? That's suspicious.

  

Strahd is supposed to attack the PCs repeatedly throughout the module, but he has several abilities that allow him to flee if necessary. He is always encountered in his own crypt, much like in the CRPG. He has a lot of spells at his disposal, not just "Fireball."

       

The module asks the DM to randomize Strahd's motivation and the locations of certain treasures by dealing cards.

        

The module ends when the PCs have destroyed Strahd. If Ireena Kolyana is with the party, they can get an ending in which the ghost of Sergei appears to beckon Ireena to join him in the afterlife. Ireena is revealed as Tatyana, or perhaps the reincarnation of Tatyana. She departs with Sergei, the mists disperse, and the sun comes beaming through.

   

If the module were the only Ravenloft property to exist other than the CRPG, we would probably have to conclude that the CRPG takes place before the module. The Burgomaster is still alive (although it could easily be a different Burgomaster). The party's recovery of the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is a prelude to it being more accessible to the party in the module. Most importantly, the party does not kill Strahd in the CRPG, so he's still around for the module. The only things that I cannot reconcile are that a) the church has lost its sanctity in the CRPG but not the module, and b) there's a store open in Barovia in the module but not the CRPG.

     

The Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990) box turned Ravenloft from a module into an entire campaign setting.

       

But between the module and the CRPG, TSR released Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990) and published a novel called I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire (1993). These properties moved Ravenloft to the ethereal plane, in a special pocket dimension called the "Demiplane of Dread," of which Strahd is both ruler and prisoner. The geography is greatly expanded to include 34 lands and eight "islands of terror" separated from other parts of the land by mists; the Undead Forest in the CRPG is clearly one of these. These lands were slowly added to the Demiplane as additional prisons/domains for various dark powers, including Azalin the lich. There are gates from the various other campaign settings that can bring people here. The heroes of the original module canonically failed. There's an entry for 528 on the Barovian calendar: "Powerful heroes assault Castle Ravenloft and perish."

       

The maps of Barovia and Castle Ravenloft do not seem much changed from the original module, though. The book is over 200 pages, so I haven't read it all, but I don't see any mention of the Ba'al Verzi, Sasha, Pyoor Twohundredsummers, or any of the joinable NPCs in the game, although I understand there were additional books in the Realm of Terror box.

 

The game follows Realm of Terror in the different ways that people can leave Ravenloft. Portals open on particular calendar dates or phases of the moon or when particular quests are achieved. The DM is given some freedom here, and  it strikes me that Trimia's Catalogue aligns with the spirit of this flexibility.

         

The "mage's journal" in the game describes some of the ways to get out of the Demiplane.

         

Finally, I, Strahd explains why so many women keep appearing who look like Tatyana: it's part of the curse that the mysterious "dark powers" have inflicted upon Strahd as part of his imprisonment. He is doomed to keep meeting facsimiles of Tatyana over the centuries, all of them rejecting him or dying before he can possess them. Tatian is clearly meant to be one of these incarnations. I didn't keep her in the party, so I missed some unique dialogue. When the party (with Tatian) meets Vladislav (Strahd in disguise) in the caverns, he is momentarily taken aback, saying that he thought he recognized "an old flame." He keeps getting distracted by her throughout the rest of the dialogue. Then, from what I read online, if the party has Tatian when they go through the portal, she disappears along with Strahd. Then again, so does Irmgarde. Does every NPC who goes through the portal disappear?

      

Strahd is flustered by Tatian.

         

I, Strahd has a framing story in which a vampire hunter named Rudolph von Richten infiltrates Strahd's castle, finds his journal (which the party also finds), and reads it. Richten is also given as the author of the Strahd's Possession cluebook. Since Richten managed to make it all the way into Strahd's private study, it would make complete sense if he related his own adventures through each of the maps, but instead the hints and clues are given as a bunch of papers that Richten happened to find.

      

And that's what I can tell you about the relation between the CRPG and the existing Ravenloft media. Of course, there was a lot more to come for the setting, all the way into the current year, but none of that influenced Strahd's Possession, so we'll leave it here. When I come back in a few days, we'll wrap up this enjoyable title.

   

****

    

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Further reading:

• The original Ravenloft module (1983)  
• The Ravenloft: Realm of Terror box set (1990) 

11/06/2026