I disagree. It is highly preferable that the backstory comes into play, but I do not consider it a necessity, especially if the book is "Villain's Gallery" rather then an adventure.

Everyone has a history. Is it not a part of a living world, that you see the Bad and the Good Guys as more then what the party just encounters?

Quote from: misterguignol;520161I can see what you mean, but there are a lot of Dark Lords in Ravenloft that have ridiculously convoluted backstories that in no way link in to any adventures or investigations.  Especially when the backstory occurred on a plane the PCs have no access to!

I agree there is a lot of pointless background in domain lord entries. For me the threshold isn't just whether it links to adventures (which is important) but whether it helps me run the character. It is much more useful in my opinion to frontload personality traits in an npc entry, then supply background information relevant to playing the npc. So if it isn't direclty useful to the players (say for an investigation) that is okay as long as it is useful to me. But I absolutely need the info that would come up in an investigation (and having interesting nuggets in there always helps).

Quote from: Rincewind1;520279I disagree. It is highly preferable that the backstory comes into play, but I do not consider it a necessity, especially if the book is "Villain's Gallery" rather then an adventure.

Everyone has a history. Is it not a part of a living world, that you see the Bad and the Good Guys as more then what the party just encounters?

Sure, but is more effective and believable in my opinion to suggest the noc's background through his actions, rather than have him explicitly rattle off details about his past. What matters to me is presenting an interesting and believable character to the players. They dont need to know his life story, but it should be clear through his personality and behavior that he has a life story.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;520305Sure, but is more effective and believable in my opinion to suggest the noc's background through his actions, rather than have him explicitly rattle off details about his past. What matters to me is presenting an interesting and believable character to the players. They dont need to know his life story, but it should be clear through his personality and behavior that he has a life story.

I agree - it's same as with monologues. Good for films (until they went terrible cliche), bad for RPGs.

Still, let's not suddenly say that "Backstory = Failed Novelism". Backstories are a part of a coherent setting.

Quote from: Rincewind1;520311I agree - it's same as with monologues. Good for films (until they went terrible cliche), bad for RPGs.

Still, let's not suddenly say that "Backstory = Failed Novelism". Backstories are a part of a coherent setting.

No one disputing that. Pundit was saying that it is failed novelism if the background information is not useful for the players or the gm.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;520318No one disputing that. Pundit was saying that it is failed novelism if the background information is not useful for the players or the gm.

Ah, arright.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;520318No one disputing that. Pundit was saying that it is failed novelism if the background information is not useful for the players or the gm.

Exactly.  I use lots of backstory in my settings; I try to make sure its stuff that will actually be usable.  With a lot of settings, you get the feeling that the material is there to be read, to show off the "author's" creativity, and not to actually be in any way relevant to its use as a game setting.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;520517Exactly.  I use lots of backstory in my settings; I try to make sure its stuff that will actually be usable.  With a lot of settings, you get the feeling that the material is there to be read, to show off the "author's" creativity, and not to actually be in any way relevant to its use as a game setting.

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And it wouldn't be a bad thing on its own suppose, except ot actually interferes with my ability to grasp the key info about important characters. When the backstory gets too deep for anything in a gaming product, i find it is very easy to lose track of what is important. This is actually one of my issues witht the 3E Ravenloft gazeteers. Most people seem to like them, so take this with a grain of salt, but I found them too densley packed with setting scenery. They ended up being less useful to me than if the domain entries had been each cut in half.

Since The Butcher brought the thematic connection up in the movies thread, I will go ahead and suggest The Phantom of the Opera (1925 Lon Chaney version) as a possible source of inspiration (e.g. Appendix N or what have you). The opera house of the movie is an excellent gothic environment while also possible to be viewed as a honest-to-goodness D&Desque dungeon. It is set in a more modern era than the baseline you are looking at, but opera houses have been around for a while, and who knows what might have been hidden underneath tehm.

Quote from: Melan;520926Since The Butcher brought the thematic connection up in the movies thread, I will go ahead and suggest The Phantom of the Opera (1925 Lon Chaney version) as a possible source of inspiration (e.g. Appendix N or what have you). The opera house of the movie is an excellent gothic environment while also possible to be viewed as a honest-to-goodness D&Desque dungeon. It is set in a more modern era than the baseline you are looking at, but opera houses have been around for a while, and who knows what might have been hidden underneath tehm.

Yes, I did.

I am inevitably reminded of "Dark Thane Macbeth", an AD&D 2e adventure that came out on Dungeon magazine (can't remember which issue, it was circa the tail-end of the TSR era), which featured, you guessed it, a D&D-fied version of Shakespeare's Macbeth as an adventure. I remember that MacDuff was a high elf, and the Lord and Lady Macbeth were drow (I shit you not), but precious little about the adventure itself; it was probably a classic 2e railroad.

But a less self-aware version of the same story (or rather, the same characters, with the same plans) might make for an interesting Gothic D&D session. Think about it; meeting some of Shakespeare's most infamous characters, killing them, and taking their stuff. Macbeth is not properly Gothic literature, I know, but I feel several of its elements fit with the sort of game I think misterguignol's aiming at here.

Quote from: The Butcher;520958Macbeth is not properly Gothic literature, I know, but I feel several of its elements fit with the sort of game I think misterguignol's aiming at here.

Actually, I've been making the argument in my academic work for a long time now that the Gothic was really an 18th century version of the early modern "revenge tragedy."  (Especially when it comes to the Gothic's political content.)  Also, Shakespeare was Horace Walpole's primary influence when he wrote The Castle of Otranto; Otranto functions as a "Gothic Hamlet," but he certainly borrowed a bit from Macbeth and King Lear as well.

Quote from: The Butcher;520958Yes, I did.

I am inevitably reminded of "Dark Thane Macbeth", an AD&D 2e adventure that came out on Dungeon magazine (can't remember which issue, it was circa the tail-end of the TSR era), which featured, you guessed it, a D&D-fied version of Shakespeare's Macbeth as an adventure. I remember that MacDuff was a high elf, and the Lord and Lady Macbeth were drow (I shit you not), but precious little about the adventure itself; it was probably a classic 2e railroad.

But a less self-aware version of the same story (or rather, the same characters, with the same plans) might make for an interesting Gothic D&D session. Think about it; meeting some of Shakespeare's most infamous characters, killing them, and taking their stuff. Macbeth is not properly Gothic literature, I know, but I feel several of its elements fit with the sort of game I think misterguignol's aiming at here.

The entire ravenloft line was Kind of like that. Castles Forlorn (if I recall) was a take on MacBeth, and the created was a redo of Pinnocchio. Most of the stuff was ripped wholesale from the sources (Adam= franksenstein's monster, Srahd=dracula, Vlad Drakov=Vlad Tepes, Van Richten=peter cushing's van helsing--IMO--, etc).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;520522And it wouldn't be a bad thing on its own suppose, except ot actually interferes with my ability to grasp the key info about important characters. When the backstory gets too deep for anything in a gaming product, i find it is very easy to lose track of what is important. This is actually one of my issues witht the 3E Ravenloft gazeteers. Most people seem to like them, so take this with a grain of salt, but I found them too densley packed with setting scenery. They ended up being less useful to me than if the domain entries had been each cut in half.

Yes, that catches a very good point about what exactly the problem is with this kind of thing.

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