Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 10:31:49 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 10:23:56 AMGreetings!

Everything with D&D recently from WOTC is watered-down, happy goo covered in bubblewrap. The same trends can be seen with WOTC's interpretation and presentation of Ravenloft. Everything is bright, feminine, and gooey.

I think Ravenloft needs more mind-blasting horror, more chomping teeth, blood, and fire.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Ravenloft takes inspiration from gothic romances and classic horror so I think it is find to have things like feminine elements to it. A lot of gothic horror is about very atmospheric, dreamy, sensual and subtle horror, and some of its most well known writers were women. I just think this looks too modern, too Josh Whedon or something. The attitude is all wrong

Greetings!

Hey there, BedrockBrendan! Yeah, the literature and stories are great fun. As a campaign setting though, I have usually found the entire Gothic Horror and Victorian Age environment, itself, as being too modern for my campaign world. My campaign milieu has always had a more Dark Ages, 6th to 12th century kind of atmosphere. Very much *NOT* in a 19th century setting. *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jeff37923 on October 30, 2024, 11:44:54 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 10:23:56 AMEverything with D&D recently from WOTC is watered-down, happy goo covered in bubblewrap. The same trends can be seen with WOTC's interpretation and presentation of Ravenloft. Everything is bright, feminine, and gooey.

I agree.

With the caveat that recently means since 4E.

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 10:23:56 AMI think Ravenloft needs more mind-blasting horror, more chomping teeth, blood, and fire.

I disagree.

With the caveat that with gothic horror, you should be trying to achieve what Rod Serling did with The Twilight Zone and The Night Gallery. The horror shouldn't be the standard Hollywood jump scare or splatter punk, but the more personal horror of watching the standards that the character lives by subverted by the character themselves to accomplish a dubious goal. This is like a PC being offered a Ring of Three Wishes if they betray the party and kill them off or a Raise Dead is used to bring back a favorite NPC or PC and they return but as an undead or at the cost of an innocent character.

I'm not saying that this would be easy, but it would be far more satisfying to the Players.

I agree. Ravenloft was almost antagonistic to gore and hollywood jump scares. The black box in particular has a strong point of view on this (it was antagonistic to slashers too and it wasn't until the guide to the created that they found a way to fit a Michael Myers concept into the setting)

QuoteThose are very good examples

I agree that stuff ForgottenF posted is great and shows a mature understanding of the Gothic Horror genre (maybe not such a great understanding of D&D)
I think it's just a bit of a shame that the whole Ravenloft as a campaign setting construction, Ravenloft as the Demiplane of Dread, is fundamentally opposed to Gothic Horror. Gothic Horror very much requires the intrusion of Evil into a nominally familiar, relatively comfortable world. Even Masque of the Red Death got it wrong by setting up a Gnostic "The Red Death is the Real Power Here" premise. Gothic Horror requires a default Good, from which Evil is a deviation, a corruption. Ravenloft reminds me of a lot of 1980s and 1990s Horror (Hellraiser is one example, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow film, or even the Bram Stoker's Dracula film) that just doesn't quite get this, because it's written by atheists and agnostics in a post-Christian moral frame. Gothic Horror, and the Hammer Horror films of the 60s and 70s, still inhabit a fundamentally Christian moral Universe.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 12:44:03 PM

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 12:31:52 PMAnd, as the DM, I also admit that seeking to implement such a Gothic Horror, Victorian Age environment into a more Dark Ages, Sword & Sorcery milieu, feels problematic and jarring, if that makes sense. There are too very different genres there, and they do not really play nice with each other. *Laughing*

Yeah, I have the same difficulty. I mostly run Wilderlands which is VERY VERY far from Victorian Gothic tropes, and have never run Ravenloft although I'd like to run it, & especially Ravenloft 2. Ironically, "playing" with the Seaart.ai AI chatbot recently, it frequently generates quasi-Victorian damsel PCs adventuring in my Wilderlands sword & sorcery setting, which is incongruous but kind of fun. It doesn't do badly as a player either, there's a lot of "Amelia's bosom heaved as she.. (absolutely anything)" but its choices are at least as good as the average player. It sometimes misses clues, but it's good at running away when outmatched, and not thinking it needs to kill everything to win.

Greetings!

S'mon, my friend! Indeed, there are certainly aspects and elements of the Gothic Horror genre that I especially enjoy, and much of it is very fun!

However, yeah, as a DM, from a world-building approach, as you know with your Wilderlands milieu, there are whole swaths of ideas and tropes within Victorian Age frameworks that simply do not mesh with an older, more barbaric, and savage kind of milieu.

Things like the Church being established and triumphant--instead of new, and beleagured. Things like how governments are formed and legitimized--in more savage environments, governments are secured by armies and an iron fist--not by parliaments, laws, and public popularity. The supremacy of technology, the whole "Modernism" and "Civilized" world views baked into the Victorian mindset, these kinds of deep-rooted ideas are entirely incompatible with an older, barbaric, savage environment.

It is all of those ideas that are the sinews that make up the foundations of Gothic Horror, set firmly within a Victorian Age environment. If you start taking those sinews out, plank by plank, then the whole foundation for Gothic Horror becomes diluted, and thus, dissolves entirely.

*Sigh* Yes, lamentable, I know. *Laughing* There is so much cool stuff in Gothic Horror, but not everything is appropriate in every world, based first on what kind of genre and milieu you have set up. That's how it goes though, right? We can't have everything.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 12:45:53 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 10:31:49 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 10:23:56 AMGreetings!

Everything with D&D recently from WOTC is watered-down, happy goo covered in bubblewrap. The same trends can be seen with WOTC's interpretation and presentation of Ravenloft. Everything is bright, feminine, and gooey.

I think Ravenloft needs more mind-blasting horror, more chomping teeth, blood, and fire.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Ravenloft takes inspiration from gothic romances and classic horror so I think it is find to have things like feminine elements to it. A lot of gothic horror is about very atmospheric, dreamy, sensual and subtle horror, and some of its most well known writers were women. I just think this looks too modern, too Josh Whedon or something. The attitude is all wrong

Greetings!

Hey there, BedrockBrendan! Yeah, the literature and stories are great fun. As a campaign setting though, I have usually found the entire Gothic Horror and Victorian Age environment, itself, as being too modern for my campaign world. My campaign milieu has always had a more Dark Ages, 6th to 12th century kind of atmosphere. Very much *NOT* in a 19th century setting. *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

That is fair but I think when you are talking about Ravenloft and its fanbase, there is an expectation of gothic. However, I will say the line evolved and shifted over time. By the time you get to the Domains of Dread book, they are bringing in more fantasy elements, trying to connect it more to regular D&D, so the fanbase itself has long had a split (and DoD brought in cultural levels to clarify, so some domains were more advanced, while others weren't, though they hedged their bets by trying to stick as close to medieval or renaissance as possible). But I think the Victorian, hammer studio, classic horror sensibilities Pundit mentioned in his video were there through the entire 2E line. Just to take some of the art for example (it had a real baroque to victorian feel often)

These are not the greatest pictures from the line, but they were the first random 'not medieval' I found again on a quick peruse. And to be clear, plenty of art isn't like this. There is stuff that is medieval, renaissance, dark ages, and even stone age in the setting (as each domain is unique). But there is a lot of stuff that feels more 18th or 19th century

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 12:57:33 PM

QuoteThose are very good examples

I agree that stuff ForgottenF posted is great and shows a mature understanding of the Gothic Horror genre (maybe not such a great understanding of D&D)
I think it's just a bit of a shame that the whole Ravenloft as a campaign setting construction, Ravenloft as the Demiplane of Dread, is fundamentally opposed to Gothic Horror. Gothic Horror very much requires the intrusion of Evil into a nominally familiar, relatively comfortable world. Even Masque of the Red Death got it wrong by setting up a Gnostic "The Red Death is the Real Power Here" premise. Gothic Horror requires a default Good, from which Evil is a deviation, a corruption. Ravenloft reminds me of a lot of 1980s and 1990s Horror (Hellraiser is one example, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow film, or even the Bram Stoker's Dracula film) that just doesn't quite get this, because it's written by atheists and agnostics in a post-Christian moral frame. Gothic Horror, and the Hammer Horror films of the 60s and 70s, still inhabit a fundamentally Christian moral Universe.

I don't think I agree with the second part of this. I mean sure if you are writing a gothic horror story, you probably want evil intruding on a relatively comfortable world. But Ravenloft is about taking gothic to a dungeons and dragons structure (which I think works), and about having a setting that can feature all the highlights of hammer, universal and the gothic classics. They do make a point though of having contrast. Not all of Ravenloft is meant to be dour or unhappy. But the core idea was usually character get drawn into Ravenloft from their more comfortable setting for a nightmarish adventure. I did run it as a long term campaign though when I ran it (and I ran Ravenloft from when the black box came out until well after 3E). And I was reading a ton of gothic horror at that time. I didn't really find a problem with it. Granted that is just my view. My experience with genres is everyone has a way they would like it to function at the game table, so I am not saying Ravenloft was a resounding success on Gothic for everyone. But I've never personally had the complaints about it, that I have seen from others. For me it is a perfect setting for bringing something like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Brides of Dracula to a D&D campaign. I thin this is especially the case with the black box

Yes, Ravenloft is a hodgepodge of genres that don't really play well together. Medieval fantasy, Victorian Gothic horror, Gnosticism... What do you suggest as a solution?

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 12:57:33 PM

QuoteThose are very good examples

Ravenloft reminds me of a lot of 1980s and 1990s Horror (Hellraiser is one example, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow film, or even the Bram Stoker's Dracula film) that just doesn't quite get this, because it's written by atheists and agnostics in a post-Christian moral frame. Gothic Horror, and the Hammer Horror films of the 60s and 70s, still inhabit a fundamentally Christian moral Universe.

Sure, gothic horror is written within a Christian worldview, but any time you make a setting for D&D you are taking whatever worldview the source material has and filtering it into D&Disms. You can do that and still be gothic. And if you look at how the dark powers operate, they are essentially governed by Christian morality for the most part (in terms of what the dark powers respond to). To me Ravenloft feels very at home with stuff like Dante

I am not familiar with the religion of the writers, but I never got a strong atheist vibe from the Ravenloft line. There were a lot of writers though so they may have had quite a range. The black box has a very "These darn kids and their 80s slasher movies) tone to it. I do think Bram Stokers Dracula (which I like, and I think does capture a lot of the gothic mood) would be at home in Ravenloft, but so would Nosferatu or the original Dracula or Bram Stoker's novel (the black box makes reference to it all the time, and Strahd is basically Stoker's Dracula with the Jack Palance reincarnation plot layered on top). But Hellraiser never really struck me as at home in Ravenloft. There are a handful of things (like the living wall) that were a bit Barkerish. But mostly the game was contrary to that style of horror. I will say, if you read the Ravenloft line, it is generally much more old fashioned than things like Vampire and other 90s games (there was something notably uncool about Ravenloft when the line was most active)

Again, I don't think a setting explicitly has to be Christian to be Gothic (you can easily have a fantasy world with the gothic tropes that isn't based on Christian gods). But I would also re-emphasize that there is  good in Ravenloft. That is why you have characters like Van Richten. And if you look at teh stories it is based on, things like Frankenstein, or the Castle of Otranto, these are stories that paint a bleak picture of the landscape and mood. So I think having a darker tone for the setting overall, generally matches the source material.

One thing I will say is like a lot of 2E stuff, the line wasn't always consistent. They had lots of writers and some were better at staying true to the spirit of the setting than others. One notable example is in Booko of Crypts a character announces to the players "Welcome to Ravenloft" but that wasn't the actual name of the world

Ravenloft was originally built as a crossover/transitional setting for players to step into on occasion, but quickly acquired a fanbase that was interested in the setting in its own right and for long-term play. The official line moved into that in the later 2E days (under Steve Miller's editorial tenure and beyond) and in the 3E days.

"Serving two masters"--'Twilight Zone' and homeworld, D&D fantasy and Gothic horror--is something of Ravenloft's trademark, and it's no surprise that the stitches of the construct sometimes show through.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 30, 2024, 01:28:29 PMRavenloft was originally built as a crossover/transitional setting for players to step into on occasion, but quickly acquired a fanbase that was interested in the setting in its own right and for long-term play. The official line moved into that in the later 2E days (under Steve Miller's editorial tenure and beyond) and in the 3E days.
 

Yeah, something that happened, at least for me, was I had already hacked it into a campaign setting before the DoD came out (because I was just running it all the time and it got old having all teh characters have to come in from other settings, even though we all knew we were playing Ravenloft). I ended up not being able to huge fan of the DoD approach. It is a really good book, and I think most people prefer that one to black box or red box. I like how it is organized. And I like that it provides more details, but because I had already built on the bare bones stuff myself, I found it more confining to use DoD, and I wasn't as into the cultural levels or the heavier fantasy elements

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 30, 2024, 01:28:29 PM"Serving two masters"--'Twilight Zone' and homeworld, D&D fantasy and Gothic horror--is something of Ravenloft's trademark, and it's no surprise that the stitches of the construct sometimes show through.

In a way, it is one of the things that made the game stay more fresh because each GM could lean into different aspects of it more or less, and even different books in the line could do so. But I think if you lean too heavily into the D&D fantasy, which I think post 2E Ravenloft did, it stops being Ravenloft for me (and some of d20 Ravenloft even leaned into White wolf, which worked even less)

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 01:19:43 PMOne notable example is in Booko of Crypts a character announces to the players "Welcome to Ravenloft" but that wasn't the actual name of the world

I had that exact same problem when I was first introduced many years ago. I mistakenly thought Ravenloft was the name of the world, not a specific castle within it. Maybe they should have named the brand after the actual setting or used a different name that wasn't so confusing?

For example, you would probably never have that issue with Warhammer 40,000. Not once have I ever heard any story where a writer wrote a character introducing the galaxy as "Welcome to Warhammer 40,000."

In any case, there's nothing preventing anyone from making their own OSR take on Ravenloft. You can call the setting something gothic, like Gothland, Gothheim, Morgoth, Gothmor, Gothica, or something like that.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 01:35:22 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 01:19:43 PMOne notable example is in Booko of Crypts a character announces to the players "Welcome to Ravenloft" but that wasn't the actual name of the world

I had that exact same problem when I was first introduced many years ago. I mistakenly thought Ravenloft was the name of the world, not a specific castle within it. Maybe they should have named the brand after the actual setting or used a different name that wasn't so confusing?

  For a while, it was the name of the demiplane, but the line moved away from that over the years, both in and out-of-character. Later 2E and 3E tended to have most people just call it 'the world' in-character, and the more scholastic types describe as "the Land of Mists."

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 30, 2024, 01:48:34 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 01:35:22 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 01:19:43 PMOne notable example is in Booko of Crypts a character announces to the players "Welcome to Ravenloft" but that wasn't the actual name of the world

I had that exact same problem when I was first introduced many years ago. I mistakenly thought Ravenloft was the name of the world, not a specific castle within it. Maybe they should have named the brand after the actual setting or used a different name that wasn't so confusing?

  For a while, it was the name of the demiplane, but the line moved away from that over the years, both in and out-of-character. Later 2E and 3E tended to have most people just call it 'the world' in-character, and the more scholastic types describe as "the Land of Mists."

I am a little fuzzy on this, and seeking out this detail seems a bit time consuming. I could be wrong but my recollection is they were very inconsistent about this in the early part of the line in the 90s

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 01:08:31 PMBut the core idea was usually character get drawn into Ravenloft from their more comfortable setting for a nightmarish adventure.

Yeah, that concept never worked for me at all, when PCs from Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk et al inhabit worlds far more overtly savage and brutal than those of Ravenloft, Ravenloft 2, or most of the domains. It's a terrible fit. Masque of the Red Death, which I bought, was certainly a better idea, but still suffered a lot from the Red Death as a kind of Demiurge. I think it was possibly TSR's fear of annoying the Christian Religious Right that made them avoid discussing the important role of Faith in Gothic Romance and made them create an accidentally anti-Christian setting.

I remember reading British horror comics back in the early 1980s that were still steeped in the Gothic world view. A vampire bites two girls, sisters. The Good one dies as her pure heart rejects the Vampire's evil, her soul is untouched. The bad, sinful one is transformed into another vampire. This is not presented as a Good Thing or desirable Power Up.