For this year's Halloween game I'm doing something a little different with the original I6: Ravenloft. I've run it many times, and what I like most is how easily the basic story bends without losing what makes Ravenloft work. This time I'm moving Barovia forward into a sort of pseudo 1800s. The familiar locations and characters are still there, but the valley now has gas lamps, revolvers (silver bullets!), telegraphs and railroads. Industry has started creeping into the countryside too, with mills and factories vomiting soot over villages that were there long before any of it.
Strahd is also a railroad tycoon. This is not steampunk Ravenloft. That would change the setting too much for my taste. Barovia just kept developing while Strahd stayed exactly where he's always been. He already controls the land, the roads and who comes and goes, so when the railroad showed up, of course he ended up controlling that too.
Here are my current notes, roughly in the order the party would run into things.
The hook. In I6 the characters are lured in by a forged letter from the Burgomaster. Now it's a telegram asking them to come help Ireena. Once they're in the valley they find the dead courier carrying Kolyan's real warning telling outsiders to stay away. I'm keeping the original trick because it works.
The train into Barovia. The party arrives by train instead of road. Somewhere along the way the locomotive passes through the Mists and eventually reaches the old iron gates. The train goes through, and the gates close behind the last car. There are schedules posted at the station and tracks leading back the way they came, but no train is taking anyone out. I'm still not 100% sure how I want to stage the gates. Probably just a slam right as the last car clears.
Village of Barovia. Still the miserable, frightened place from I6, except now it has a small station, a telegraph office and gas lamps on a few streets. Mills have gone up around the outskirts. Most of the old businesses are shuttered, and people still lock themselves in when it gets dark. Bildrath's Mercantile is an easy one: he already charges outrageous prices because nobody has anywhere else to shop, so it becomes a company store that takes Zarovich scrip.
The Burgomaster's house. Barely changes. It's still barricaded and battered from repeated attacks, Kolyan is dead inside, and Ireena has been bitten twice. I'll add revolvers, empty cartridge boxes and a doctor's bag to show they tried the modern fixes first. Maybe a local doctor insists it's anemia or consumption. Everyone else in the house knows better.
Donavich's church and cemetery. I want the church to look ancient next to everything changing around it. Gas lamps outside, Donavich inside with candles, praying all night. The midnight procession stays because it's one of my favorite creepy bits of the original: the dead rise and march for Castle Ravenloft. Now their route crosses the tracks, and I'd love to have a locomotive roar straight through them while they just keep walking.
Madam Eva. Basically untouched. The wagons, the fire and the cards all work as they are. I might put the camp under a railway trestle so a train rumbles overhead mid-reading. She'll also smoke a small cigar, which Barovians would see as lower class and outside polite society. That suits her.
The black carriage. Stays. Strahd's line ends at a small private station below the castle, and the carriage is waiting there to take the party up the mountain.
Castle Ravenloft. The upper floors have picked up some modern improvements: gas fixtures, plumbing, maybe a telegraph room, and a proper office where Strahd runs his business interests. Railway maps, property deeds and payroll books get mixed in with everything else. The great dinner stays almost as written, with the chandeliers, silver, crystal and organ. He's still Count von Zarovich. He just owns the railroad now.
Going deeper. The big room of gears and pulleys that drives the moving stone compartment becomes an old freight lift, something added later. The deeper the party goes, the less new stuff I want around. Gas fixtures give way to candles and torches, pipes and telegraph wires disappear, and eventually it's old Ravenloft again.
The Sunsword, Holy Symbol and Tome of Strahd. Leaving these alone, especially the Tome. I like the idea of the party finding Strahd's handwritten confession in the same study as his railway ledgers. Freight records, land purchases and payroll on one desk, and nearby, the story of Sergei, Tatyana and what he did to them.
By the time they reach the crypts there shouldn't be anything 1800s left. Strahd's down there in a coffin full of dirt.
There's plenty of smaller stuff I still need to work out, but this is enough to start. Now I just have to finish the details and see how badly Strahd ruins everyone's evening.