The new Ravenloft novel shows that no one involved knows anything about Heroic Fantasy or Victorian Horror, and makes a woke mockery of the setting. 

Greetings!

Good video, Pundit! Yeah, the Woke morons at WOTC have absolutely corrupted the D&D game. They have zero respect for the game's foundations, history, or essential game themes.

It's all about Seattle 2024.

Oh, and yes. The artwork on the novel is terrible, but perfectly in-keeping with the rest of WOTC's recent art direction. Full of Woke stupidity and BS.

These people are empty, shallow husks inside, and want everyone else to be as crushed in despair and misery as they are.

Keep up the good work, Pundit!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The cover for this book is absolutely not what I am looking for with Ravenloft. Folks should google the cover for Heart of Midnight, Vampire of the Mist, Knight of the Black Rose, etc just to see how much different the vibe was for the older novels

Pundit, you're just whoring for outrage and not even taking a moment to consider the context. I say this after watching the video.

The cover makes more sense if you read the blurb on it:

Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.

The point is that these characters are from outside of Ravenloft and pulled into it. They come from a more "typical" D&D world (where oddball characters like these have been commonplace for over a decade, and they don't fit into the Demiplane, at least initially. This has been the case with many Ravenloft experiences and is not new to this novel.

Now it would certainly be fitting if these characters are not accepted by the denizens of Barovia, but neither of us have read the novel (and I don't really intend to), so we'll have to wait to see if that is the case.

Quote from: HappyDaze on October 30, 2024, 01:40:57 AMFive strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.

Sounds like they cribbed notes from a Puffin Forest video. ahem.

Never heard of the author before. Heirs of Strahd? Really? Whats next? Love Babies of Soth?

Quote from: HappyDaze on October 30, 2024, 01:40:57 AMPundit, you're just whoring for outrage and not even taking a moment to consider the context. I say this after watching the video.

The cover makes more sense if you read the blurb on it:

Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.

The point is that these characters are from outside of Ravenloft and pulled into it. They come from a more "typical" D&D world (where oddball characters like these have been commonplace for over a decade, and they don't fit into the Demiplane, at least initially. This has been the case with many Ravenloft experiences and is not new to this novel.

Now it would certainly be fitting if these characters are not accepted by the denizens of Barovia, but neither of us have read the novel (and I don't really intend to), so we'll have to wait to see if that is the case.

I literally did read the very same blurb in the video. Proves you didn't watch, I guess. It changes nothing; you can't have a Victorian Horror setting where the characters are half-monster hipster narcissists. I mean, sure, if the novel was about how they all get horribly massacred or suffer the consequences of their corrupt lives, that could technically count, but I'm 99.9% sure that's not how the novel will go. Instead they'll use the power of wokeness and inclusion to defeat the evil patriarchal racist transphobe setting.

>>Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.<<

While this is utterly laughable, I never felt TSR had any real grasp of Victorian Horror either. It's not Gnostic, Evil is not Strongest, the Dark Powers make no sense within that Christian moral frame. The horror is in estrangement from God, not that Satan is stronger than God.

Quote from: HappyDaze on October 30, 2024, 01:40:57 AMThe point is that these characters are from outside of Ravenloft and pulled into it. They come from a more "typical" D&D world (where oddball characters like these have been commonplace for over a decade, and they don't fit into the Demiplane, at least initially. This has been the case with many Ravenloft experiences and is not new to this novel.

Now it would certainly be fitting if these characters are not accepted by the denizens of Barovia, but neither of us have read the novel (and I don't really intend to), so we'll have to wait to see if that is the case.

The premise of most Ravenloft novels and most early Ravenloft campaigns were characters pulled in from regular settings, but they still had sinister covers that fit the genre. The problem is this looks like the cover of a a horror comedy or post 2000s TV show with snarky writing, or modern urban fantasy. The tone, and the aesthetics are just all off for Ravenloft (at least for how a lot of people see the setting).

Certainly the book itself could be different in tone than the art, but the blurb seems like it is about the characters learning to be friends. It is very twee sounding

Quote from: HappyDaze on October 30, 2024, 01:40:57 AMPundit, you're just whoring for outrage and not even taking a moment to consider the context. I say this after watching the video.

I don't think Pundit is being a grumpy outlier here. People are reacting negatively to this cover all over, not just here

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 05:33:19 AMWhile this is utterly laughable, I never felt TSR had any real grasp of Victorian Horror either. It's not Gnostic, Evil is not Strongest, the Dark Powers make no sense within that Christian moral frame. The horror is in estrangement from God, not that Satan is stronger than God.

   This is one of the philosophical problems with Ravenloft, agreed, although WotC has made it worse by adding the "most people are soulless". These days, I tend to favor it as 'Twilight Zone' spots in a regular world. You can square the circle by leaning into the "Evil cannot make, it can only mock" approach of having the domains be shadowy copies of locations in the real world.

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 07:47:19 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on October 30, 2024, 01:40:57 AMPundit, you're just whoring for outrage and not even taking a moment to consider the context. I say this after watching the video.

I don't think Pundit is being a grumpy outlier here. People are reacting negatively to this cover all over, not just here

Exactly, it's a terrible cover. With a Benetton commercial cast as the PC's.

Quote from: RPGPundit on October 30, 2024, 02:19:11 AMI literally did read the very same blurb in the video. Proves you didn't watch, I guess.

I must have missed that in your "weave" -- this certainly wasn't one of your better videos.

I like the cover art, because it really shows how different modern D&D is from classical fantasy. It's been interesting to watch "fantasy" change from the early 80's up to today. From Lord of the Rings, to World of Warcraft, to I guess the Mercer Effect and Seattle/woke influence.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 05:33:19 AM>>Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.<<

While this is utterly laughable, I never felt TSR had any real grasp of Victorian Horror either. It's not Gnostic, Evil is not Strongest, the Dark Powers make no sense within that Christian moral frame. The horror is in estrangement from God, not that Satan is stronger than God.

The dark powers were never defined though. They could have been anything (from God, to the Devil, to D&D gods or even powerful spell casters). And I don't think the point was that evil was more powerful than good, it was that evil is a seductive path that changes you and warps your soul. They do establish that it is on the edge of the ethereal plan, but you could easily read it as a place like purgatory, or as a place like hell (you being in hell doesn't make satan more powerful than God). You could also run it as a world where evil is more powerful than good, satan is more powerful than God. But it also doesn't have to be an exact analog for Victorian Christianity to be heavily inspired by those things. Ravenloft worked because it took the tropes classic horror, like Frankenstein, Castle of Otranto and Dracula, and the hammer studios films, old universal movies, and filtered them into a D&D setting that was quite gameable.

Quote from: Dracones on October 30, 2024, 10:00:26 AMI like the cover art, because it really shows how different modern D&D is from classical fantasy. It's been interesting to watch "fantasy" change from the early 80's up to today. From Lord of the Rings, to World of Warcraft, to I guess the Mercer Effect and Seattle/woke influence.

The problem is Ravenloft was never classical fantasy or standard fantasy. It was a gothic horror setting. There were varying degrees of fantasy to it for sure, but the emphasis was on classic horror. During 2E it wasn't unusual for players to have unusual characters, because of Drizzt and the complete books, but Ravenloft was like the one setting that was almost all human, and anyone that wasn't human was subject to suspicion. But the bigger issue is the tone. I am struggling to find the word to describe the feel of that cover, but it is somewhere between triumphant and sassy. It just doesn't work for Ravenloft in terms of mood. Maybe the book will be great, I don't know. I know nothing about the writer. The synopsis, combined with what I know of Ravenloft under WOTC in recent years (and D&D in general lately), leads me to think is going to take a direction that I would likely not enjoy for the setting (but I must admit it really depends on what is meant by and how it executes this aspect of it:

QuoteTo survive the twisted enigmas of Strahd and his haunted home, the adventurers must confront the dark secrets in their own hearts and find a way to shift from strangers to comrades—before the mists of Barovia claim them forever.

Confronting internal darkness could definitely be in keeping with the setting (I could see it being real genuine spiritual struggles, but I think it is more likely to be something along the lines of the kinds of things Pundit mentioned in his video). If they do something like have the cheery lady be werewolf who eats the rest of that party, and Strahd uses that to turn her toward his aims, I could see that being interesting. I am not terribly interested in a party of strangers becoming friends through some kind of group therapy in the halls of Castle Ravenloft (which is more the sort of thing I am expecting it to be)