Assault on Castle Ravenloft

Hi Rodrigo,
Thanks for purchasing! Absolutely, the intension when writing is that this would be run as a one-shot, prior to running CoS. Something I think is fun would be for your player's one-shot characters (who they would name) to become the revenants in Argynvostholt.

The adventure was written for 5th level characters, but is scalable without much additional work. No pregens were included.

Hi James,

Thanks so much for purchase & feedback - it's really appreciated. We totally understand this reimaging of how Argynvost's forces fell at the hands of Strahd might not jive with all of the previous incarnations of Ravenloft lore, but we wanted to create something that works easily with Curse of Strahd, made for players who don't know (or don't care to learn) about the rewrites of lore over the decades.

Don't get me wrong, we're huge fans of Ravenloft, but for a small stand-alone project like this, we felt it would be a unique way for DMs to introduce some of the major players in Curse of Strahd to their players, without the need to dive into ~50 years of lore.

Well, I appreciate that, but like I said, CoS is a hot mess. Just as an example.. Esmerelda has TWO different backgrounds.. in the CoS campaign book. VRGtR adds a 3rd one. Another example.. Strahd's stat sheet.. in CoS? ..yeah, it doesn't even remotely resemble his abilities as they're described in CoS. There are many examples. CHILDREN! Children are murdered in nearly every single scenario in the CoS campaign. I'll guaranty you that neither Chris Perkins nor the Hickman's authorized that nonsense. That was from someone on the WotC editorial staff that needs about a dozen therapy sessions concerning their hatred towards children. Need proof? Nearly every single encounter in CoS has a combination of creatures with abilities that can give just about any party a run for their money. Yet.. there is not one word about how to use these advanced tactics in the CoS book. You can bet good money that Chris Perkins, being the tactical genius that he is, set all of those up, then some.. person.. on the WotC editorial staff...See more cut and pasted them in to the trash can.

You SHOULD question "canon" in CoS. Sometimes it conflicts with itself. Ignore it outright in VRGtR. Everyone trying to run a CoS campaign NEEDS to reach out to 3rd party sources to try to make the campaign sensible. The other side of that coin is that the third party content creators need to create responsible content.

You can do the silly Argynvost attack the way you laid it out, but my version makes more sense. Still, you do you. Madame Eva, though? Can't be Strahd's sister. Pick some other Vistani clan leader if your version of Strahd HAS to have a sister. No worries. There are at least 6-7 documented clans, and others not mentioned. Any of them could have a Vistana leader who is Strahd's sister. Except Madame Eva. That's a no-starter.

I need to finish by saying.. this is the FIRST thing you guys have published that I didn't love. I'm pretty sure I own all of your CoS related content. ;)