Ravenloft Before the Setting: I6 and The House on Gryphon Hill

The two adventures before the larger setting

The I6 card and I10 card identify the original products. The most useful evidence for I10's relationship to I6 is its own prologue, available in the licensed preview.

The credits are more precise than a cover name

The I10 credits identify an outline by Tracy and Laura Hickman. They also name a design team: David Cook, Jeff Grubb, the Hickmans, Harold Johnson and Douglas Niles. Johnson is credited as editor. The distinction is visible on the credits page; it does not depend on reconstructing office conversations from later memories. Record that distinction if you are tracing an author's work. A cover credit is a useful catalog field, but it may summarize contributions that the interior describes more carefully. This is especially relevant when comparing two products whose title pages make their relationship look straightforward.

The credits alone do not show which contributor wrote a particular encounter. Nor do they prove why a design decision was made. A responsible history can acknowledge collaborative development without inventing a division of labor. Stu Horvath's Vintage RPG discussion offers a later critical reading; the printed credits remain the source for the names and roles listed here.

Prepare I10 on two tracks

I10's prologue distinguishes events driven primarily by time from encounters driven primarily by location. That gives the referee two different questions to answer. What happens while the characters are elsewhere? What becomes available when they enter a place?

Prepare a short event record alongside the location notes. For each event, record its trigger and where its consequences will become apparent. For a location, record what the party can discover now and what an earlier event may change. A timed occurrence should not disappear simply because nobody stepped into a particular room.

The preview also tells the DM to work through the Mesmerist's Pendulum before play. Treat that instruction as part of preparing the mystery. Reading the room key while leaving the variable setup unresolved makes it harder to distinguish intentional uncertainty for the players from missing information in the referee's notes. A useful preparation sheet has four columns: person or place, what is currently true, what the party believes and what can change that belief. Fill the first column from the adventure. Keep the belief column in pencil. Characters are allowed to misunderstand a mystery; the DM needs a stable record of what their evidence actually supports.

Three ways to choose a campaign relationship

Run I10 independently. This is expressly supported by its prologue. Introduce its people and immediate problem without requiring the players to remember a previous visit to Barovia. Familiarity with Ravenloft's reputation can create expectations, but it is not a substitute for presenting the adventure's own clues.

Use it after an I6 campaign. First record what happened in your game. Who survived? What did the characters learn? Which names or places will they recognize? Decide how to frame those memories before play begins. A referee who silently replaces a completed campaign with a different account risks making the players' earlier decisions feel disposable.

Use the published combined option. Consult the Dream of Barovia appendix in the full I10 text. Its existence is confirmed by the contents and prologue, but owning both booklets is only the start of preparation. Keep separate location records and a clear account of the party's current situation. The preview does not contain all the directions, so it cannot supply the complete combined procedure.

For a first reading, choose one mode and annotate accordingly. An explanation of every possible relationship is less useful at the table than knowing which one this campaign has adopted.

The loose material carries part of the adventure

I10's contents list places several play aids on the map or cover rather than in the numbered chapters. These include an events record, pregenerated heroes and reference material for personalities and monsters. A booklet-only copy may therefore omit aids a referee expects to find while following the contents page.

Inspect the accessory material with the contents page open. For a digital edition, follow the same references and check legibility. A folder that is inconvenient to display during a session can still be kept beside a separate working event record.

The later AD&D 2e setting expands the campaign's geography and procedures. That is a different purchase and a different comparison. See our Ravenloft 2e box guide if the question is which setting version to use. Start here when the question concerns the original pair of adventures.