I understand that for some, Ravenloft marks a turn toward a different style of play than the early days. Since I was never into the game beforehand, that fact didn't impact me. Yes, I know the story is ham-fisted and riddled with cliché. Most of what they wrote had that tendency. But there was an atmosphere to the whole package. It delivered on the presentation. The cover screamed Gothic Horror. And in the end, it delivered.
First, the cover. Not only did you know what the point of the module was going to be, you still had that wonderful ability to invoke a universal image. It was 1983. Frank Langella's Dracula had just come out a few years earlier, but even it still played off of the traditional images of the Count. For most human beings, if you said Dracula, you thought Lugosi. Perhaps Christopher Lee. But that was it. You still had a common canvas upon which to build an image. Today you would need to ask 'do we me Twilight Vampires, Interview with a Vampire vampires, Underworld vampires, classic (Universal) vampires?' Back then, there was a shared narrative that most of market could be counted on for knowing. Caldwell's art took full advantage of that fact.
Second, the inside cover. Call me crazy, but I loved the surrounding lands map. The village and the castle. Because it wasn't just some scattered bunch of dots representing the village, and it wasn't an X or a square representing the castle. It was a scale representation of both. When you looked at the tiny black castle, with its fine details, and then looked at the inside maps, you could imagine seeing what the castle stencil only hinted at. That's important. The one thing this game always held for me was the excitement of discovery. You're in a room with two doors, which one do you take? You see the small outline of a tower or a little battlement, what is really in those that only the maps show?
Third, the artwork. I've learned that across the OSR blogs, Clyde Caldwell gets about as much praise as Benedict Arnold used to get in American schools. And there is some truth to that. Much of that period artwork is technically wonderful, yet in some ways stale. Antiseptic. Clean. I can't explain it, but it often fails to tap into the same feelings that a Trampier or a Sutherland work could manage. But in this case, it works. The back page teaser, written in a much tighter prose than some of the interior text, matches perfectly the Gothic spirit that old Strahd captures in his pose upon Castle Ravenloft. You really want to know where he is in the castle. Perhaps it's indicative of that period's artwork that there is no place on the maps that matches the cover. But that's for another post.
Finally, you have the complete package. It doesn't miss a trope. From gypsies to waterfalls to beautifully mysterious forests, filled with mists and wolves, it has it all. The module touches on everything that a consumer in 1983 would associate with the genre. For my part, I found playing the maps more difficult, as James points out, than it was worth. And I completely ditched the sappy love story, edited Strahd's tome, and reworked many of the encounters. But I left much of the framework. The old church with sinking steeple, the boarded up village, the leaves blowing about the castle courtyard, the abandoned chapel, the simultaneously foggy and rainy night - why the list goes on! It was a module that delivered what its packaging promised, and that alone makes it great among a list of greats, and a perfect romp for a drizzly All Hallow's Eve.
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