Gravestones on the DM Screen: A High School Foray into Ravenloft
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, high school was a golden era
of gaming for our group—and few sessions were as brutal or
memorable as our run through I6: Ravenloft. This isn’t a formal
review of the module. Instead, it’s a blood-soaked recollection of
how one sadistic DM tossed us headlong into the Barovian meat
grinder—and gleefully hung gravestones for every fallen PC.
The players were mostly the same usual suspects: Dave, Jim, Daryl, Tom, Mike, and myself. Jeff, of course, was behind the screen. We'd just wrapped THECAMPAIGN and dabbled in some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Twilight 2000 before returning to AD&D for this deadly one-shot.
Jeff gave us some leeway with character creation, including a starting XP allotment and a short list of magic items (subject to DM approval). I rolled up a 6th-level human cavalier named Sir Alexander Silverglade—an absurdly noble name for a high schooler to dream up, though apparently I went all-in: Alexander William Christian Edward Kenneth Silverglade. Upper-Upper Class. Tenth in line to something or other. Clearly royalty, and clearly doomed. Naturally, Sir Alex for short.
I still have the character sheet. He wore full plate, carried a shield +2, and wielded a Rod of Lordly Might Jeff had forgotten the functions of—thankfully for me. My attempt to sneak in a +1 Flame Tongue sword was denied and replaced with a vanilla +2. But with high stats (18s in STR, DEX, and CON), full armor, and a preposterously low AC of -6, he was built like a tank. Cavalier perks from Unearthed Arcana gave him damage absorption, fear immunity, and mind control resistance.
Did it help? Only just, perhaps not even.
We were allowed three magic items. I picked strategically—borderline exploitative, really—but it didn’t save us. The adventure began in classic Ravenloft fashion: dropped into Barovia at dusk, wolves howling, villagers fearful, and death already sniffing around the edges.
We made a brief stop at the “Blood on the Vine” Tavern, then poked around Bildrath’s Mercantile and scraped together what we could. It wasn’t much. With night fast approaching, we barricaded ourselves inside an abandoned house to wait for dawn before approaching Castle Ravenloft.
Big mistake.
If you’ve read I6, you know the nighttime random encounters are no joke. Every three turns, 1–2 on a d6? With encounters like wolves, zombies, wraiths, ghosts—and oh yeah, Strahd himself, with his bat and wolf entourage? We got the full buffet:
- Strahd showed up with wolves and bats.
- Zombies broke through.
- Wraiths seeped in.
- A ghost floated through the walls.
- At least one PC was level-drained.
- My character was aged 40 years by the ghost.
I argued (rules lawyer alert) that my cavalier’s immunity to fear should also cover the ghost’s aging effect. Jeff didn’t buy it. Sir Alexander aged from 22 to 62 in an instant. The following week, Jeff reduced it to 10 years—maybe out of mercy, maybe not. Either way, I claimed a moral victory.
But the real gut punch came when Jeff unveiled a house rule (and a flair for the dramatic): whenever a character died, he’d hang a printed gray tombstone on his DM screen with the fallen’s name written in Sharpie. The first casualty? My squire, William, mauled by wolves in a side room. Jeff hung his gravestone like a trophy, grinning as the rest of us sat in stunned silence.
By the end, the screen was covered in tombstones.
We eventually made it into Castle Ravenloft—barely. Through random encounter rolls and pure chance, we ended up starting on the upper levels, near the “Rooms of Weeping.” I was the party mapper, so I still recall the progression ending abruptly near rooms K36–K46. We didn’t get much farther. Supposedly the hilt I carried was the Sun Sword, and the blade was in K41. Not that it mattered.
The final battle was a bloodbath. I remember Strahd attacking with a pack of specters and wraiths. Our cleric died almost instantly. I think I was the only fighter type left standing. Thanks to my AC and cavalier resistances, I tanked most of the assault while the rest of the group got drained or shredded. I was eventually dropped to 4th level by two wraith hits—but I lived. Barely.
Sir Alexander was the sole survivor.
The game ended there.
Jeff ruled that the mists of Ravenloft wouldn’t let him escape, so in my headcanon he found refuge at the chapel in Barovia, helping Donavich defend it nightly. Still aging, still armored, still bitter. I always thought that if I ever ran I6 myself, I’d reintroduce him as a weary old knight clinging to his code in a world long since lost to darkness.
We never played Ravenloft again. Our group wasn’t that into gothic horror, and while I later picked up the module (still in pristine condition), I’ve always felt the random encounters were more dangerous than the rest of the dungeon. Still, it was a hell of a session—especially the gravestones. That image of Jeff’s DM screen, covered in the names of fallen PCs, has stuck with me for decades.
And no, I’m not being paid for this—but if you want a legal, affordable copy of I6: Ravenloft, you can find it here.
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