Ravenloft (module) - Reception

Reception

Ravenloft won one award, and was included on two "best of" lists. In 1984, it won the Strategists' Club Award for Outstanding Play Aid. The book Dungeon Master For Dummies chose the module as one of the ten best classic adventures, saying it is "perhaps our favorite D&D adventure of all time", Ravenloft "takes the Dracula legend and gives it a D&D spin", and praised the detailed yet concise plot and isometric maps. The book also claims that Ravenloft "inspired game designers and Dungeon Masters to take the art of adventure to the next level."

In 2004, on the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game, Dungeon magazine ranked the module as the second greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time—behind Queen of the Spiders. The editor of Dungeon praised the placement of treasure, and Strahd's motivation was described as "a brilliant way to let fate drive the plot and evoke the mystery and mystique of Barovia". Bill Slavicsek, director of Wizards of the Coast's RPGs and Miniatures department, noted that it was the first adventure to "mix tone, story, and dungeon crawl" in a module, and game designer Andy Collins agreed. Clark Peterson, president of Necromancer Games, singled out the maps and Strahd for praise, saying the vampire is "perhaps one of the best villains of all time". Author John Rateliff also applauded the maps and the randomization, as well as Strahd's duality as a vampire/magic-user. The catacombs, where player characters were teleported away and replaced with undead wights, was singled out at as the adventure's "defining moment" by the magazine's editors.

Reviews for Ravenloft were generally positive. In the July 1984 issue of White Dwarf magazine, the module was given 8 out of 10 overall, with the reviewer mentioning its presentation as a positive, and its complexity as a negative. It was likened to a Hammer horror production and praised as enjoyable, although the reviewer said the game's puns were tedious and detracted from the spooky atmosphere. Reviewer Dave Morris said it "should be a lot of fun – 'light, relief' of a nerve-wracking and deadly sort." Morris concluded that Ravenloft is "full of clever touches", and "features some first-class illustration and graphics". In a review for the January 1984 issue of Dragon magazine (published by a subsidiary of TSR), game designer Ken Rolston argued that, despite its design innovations, Ravenloft was still in essence a dungeon-style adventure. Rolston praised the randomization, the maps, and the player text (which is read aloud to the players by the DM). He said the player text "consistently develops an atmosphere of darkness and decay." Despite this, Rolston felt that the adventure has trouble in developing a frightening tone. He singles out its use of common monsters in D&D, an abundance of traps, and frequent combat interludes as elements that detract from the adventure's spookiness by interrupting the module's flow. Ultimately, he felt that in "AD&D terms it is a masterpiece", but not a work of "Gothic horror". Tracy Hickman stated in 1998, "I still believe the original Ravenloft modules were perhaps the best that ever had my name on them."