Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 01:50:41 PMI 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

  They were. Most of the references to it as "Ravenloft" come from the Black Box, RR1 Darklords, RR2 Book of Crypts, and products of similar vintage. The last in-character use of it I recall is in van Richten's introduction to a set of monster entries in DRAGON #174, October 1991.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 01:09:48 PMYes, 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?

I would lean in to the Victorian Gothic Horror. Set it in a vague setting that is at least implicitly early 19th century, between Waterloo and the Crimean War. Humans only. A Ghastly Affair (OSR RPG) did this sort of thing nicely for Gothic Romance. D&D is a pretty terrible ruleset for the genre though, I'd go with Mini Six probably, maybe BRP. I wouldn't go with New School system like Year Zero Engine since I do like something a bit meaty.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 01:55:37 PMYeah, 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 think it was a combination of that and imbibing an overly pro-Enlightenment view of history for Masque, what with the adoption of the "evil St. Cyril vs. good Hypatia" myth as a key part of the setting's history and the presence of a heroic French qabal literally called the Enlightenment, along with the implications that "classical civilization=the Red Death=all evil," which really doesn't work if anyone looks at pre-Columbian American history ...

  OTOH, the Gothic Earth Gazetteer paints a positive portrait of Pope Leo XIII and makes him a close friend and ally of Dr. van Helsing.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 01:55:37 PMI 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.

You ever watch Hammer Horror movies about the Karnsteins? That's literally the explanation for why only some victims become vampires whereas others die. Apparently, there's few enough evil people in the world that they don't suffer a population explosion.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 02:02:31 PMI would lean in to the Victorian Gothic Horror. Set it in a vague setting that is at least implicitly early 19th century, between Waterloo and the Crimean War. Humans only.

So Stokerverse?

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 02:02:31 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 01:09:48 PMYes, 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?

I would lean in to the Victorian Gothic Horror. Set it in a vague setting that is at least implicitly early 19th century, between Waterloo and the Crimean War. Humans only. A Ghastly Affair (OSR RPG) did this sort of thing nicely for Gothic Romance. D&D is a pretty terrible ruleset for the genre though, I'd go with Mini Six probably, maybe BRP. I wouldn't go with New School system like Year Zero Engine since I do like something a bit meaty.

I think that is very doable. I tried something like that a few years ago (but for whatever reason I scrapped what I had and turned it into a modern New England horror setting). I didn't do OSR though

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 02:06:09 PM

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 01:55:37 PMI 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.

You ever watch Hammer Horror movies about the Karnsteins? That's literally the explanation for why only some victims become vampires whereas others die. Apparently, there's few enough evil people in the world that they don't suffer a population explosion.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 02:02:31 PMI would lean in to the Victorian Gothic Horror. Set it in a vague setting that is at least implicitly early 19th century, between Waterloo and the Crimean War. Humans only.

So Stokerverse?

I was just watching these again the other night. The Vampire Lovers is what prompted me to read Le Fanu in higschool 

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 02:06:09 PMSo Stokerverse?

Well I wouldn't go with a Splatterpunk art style. I love the sexy Clyde Caldwell style for Gothic Horror, the interior Ravenloft art style works well there too. The same artist did Dawn of the Emperors & other Mystara Gazetteers, which are definitely not Gothic - there it looks distracting.

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 02:16:55 PMI think that is very doable. I tried something like that a few years ago (but for whatever reason I scrapped what I had and turned it into a modern New England horror setting). I didn't do OSR though

I quite often fantasise* about running Ravenloft 2 in its own setting as depicted in the module; I have the good fortune to possess an original copy. Suitable systems I know of include D6/Mini Six, and the Interlock system used in the Cyberpunk RPGs, The Witcher RPG, other RTG games.  Really hard to get D&D to work well for Gothic Romance IMO, either the PCs are too squishy or they're casting Fireball.

*I probably don't have enough players currently who would really buy into the concept. Kimberly is an author & friend of Bob Salvatore, she'd love it. Most of my players are London geezers who turn everything into Lock Stock & Two Smoking Hobbits.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 02:06:09 PMYou ever watch Hammer Horror movies about the Karnsteins?

Checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Karnstein_Trilogy I think I only watched a bit of Twins of Evil. Lust for a Vampire does sound right up my street though.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 01:55:37 PM

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 kind of agree in that characters from settings like Forgotten Realms are dealing regularly with really powerful monsters, and having way more encounters than they would in Ravenloft. Ravenloft is more about tone and how you present an encounter (and it leans into planned encounters). One reason I just started running Ravenloft as its own setting is the premise of characters doing a weekend in hell just got old and you had to do this thing where players pretended they didn't know they were in Ravenloft. That said Ravenloft could be very challenging because one of the core ideas (which is baked into the original module but made explicit in the Black Box) is monsters like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc are unique in Ravenloft, often being more powerful than their counterparts in other worlds, being harder to kill with special weaknesses that are difficult to learn unless you research the monster, etc. So if the GM handled the rules around that stuff well he could densely put a Forgotten Realms party through a weekend in hell (especially with the aid of things like the Van Richten books, but those really just expand on the core tools presented in the rulebook). The other thing that made it challenging was the domain structure. If the players were dealing with something like a domain lord, they often had so much power over the land, and were so hard to kill (though not all of them were) that TPKs were pretty easy if the GM let the dice fall where they may.

On Masque of the Red Death I largely agree with your critique of it. I liked Masque of the Red Death. I ran a number of small campaigns with it. But it was missing something. On the one hand, it just wasn't built with the same degree of atmosphere as Ravenloft itself in my opinion (it is hard to put my finger on it but a lot of the books felt too dry for me). And I didn't quite like the backstory to the setting. But that said it was a wonderful effort to bring 2E to a modern setting. A lot of that stuff worked really well at my table.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 02:38:17 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 30, 2024, 02:06:09 PMYou ever watch Hammer Horror movies about the Karnsteins?

Checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Karnstein_Trilogy I think I only watched a bit of Twins of Evil. Lust for a Vampire does sound right up my street though.

They are worth checking out

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 02:51:46 PMOn Masque of the Red Death I largely agree with your critique of it. I liked Masque of the Red Death. I ran a number of small campaigns with it. But it was missing something. On the one hand, it just wasn't built with the same degree of atmosphere as Ravenloft itself in my opinion (it is hard to put my finger on it but a lot of the books felt too dry for me). And I didn't quite like the backstory to the setting. But that said it was a wonderful effort to bring 2E to a modern setting. A lot of that stuff worked really well at my table.

Yeah I felt the rules work adapting 2e AD&D to a more modern setting was very solid indeed, better than WoTC's d20 Modern. I had not read William Hope Hodgson at the time, but his muscular 19th century Survival Horror would have been a great fit with the ruleset. The more action-oriented the horror is, the better it can accommodate the class/level system I think. In The Boats of the Glen Carrig you can practically see the protagonists level up during the story - the GM was definitely using "XP for Monster Kills"

Quote from: SHARK on October 30, 2024, 12:31:52 PM

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.

Greetings!

Yeah, Jeff! I remember Rod Sterling very well, with The Twilight Zone and The Night Gallery! I loved those programs!

And yes, Gothic Horror traditions are very dark, romantic, sensual, and all that. Women love it. That's all fine, of course, though honestly, Gothic Horror is firmly rooted within a 19th Century Victorian Age. So many assumptions, standards, "Tropes" and so on are absolutely anchored within a Victorian Age framework and sensibility.

The problem I have usually faced with this set-up is that my campaign world is far away from anything like the Victorian Age and the 19th Century. It is more like the 6th Century to the 12th Century, but with dragons, monsters everywhere, huge empires and armies marching. Furthermore, when you have player characters that have been fighting in dark dungeons, slaughtering hordes of savage monsters, dueling enemies on a blood-soaked and fire-scorched battlefield for 5, 6 or 8 levels, suddenly dropping them into a Gothic Horror, Victorian Age environment...doesn't really work that well. The dissonance, the cross-angled goals and assumptions, the entire mental framework, just isn't really meshing well. Even when I, for example, am more than capable of threading that needle and making various adjustments, many players simply are not prepared or interested in doing so.

And, 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*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I can see where you are coming from and have run into that problem as well when running D&D, but I don't run into it as often when I run science fiction or superhero genre. I've always dismissed it as the problem with D&D adventures focusing on killing things and taking their stuff so often, even when versions existed that allowed for experience to be gained by overcoming more general challenges.

Quote from: S'mon on October 30, 2024, 03:06:06 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on October 30, 2024, 02:51:46 PMOn Masque of the Red Death I largely agree with your critique of it. I liked Masque of the Red Death. I ran a number of small campaigns with it. But it was missing something. On the one hand, it just wasn't built with the same degree of atmosphere as Ravenloft itself in my opinion (it is hard to put my finger on it but a lot of the books felt too dry for me). And I didn't quite like the backstory to the setting. But that said it was a wonderful effort to bring 2E to a modern setting. A lot of that stuff worked really well at my table.

Yeah I felt the rules work adapting 2e AD&D to a more modern setting was very solid indeed, better than WoTC's d20 Modern. I had not read William Hope Hodgson at the time, but his muscular 19th century Survival Horror would have been a great fit with the ruleset. The more action-oriented the horror is, the better it can accommodate the class/level system I think. In The Boats of the Glen Carrig you can practically see the protagonists level up during the story - the GM was definitely using "XP for Monster Kills"

It sounds cruel but leaning on level drain goes a long way to instilling fear in standard D&D. The gradual nerfing go level drain is one of the things that has made the setting worked less with each edition. Aging touch from ghosts is also pretty effective

Greetings!

Yeah, way back in the day, I ran a group of Marines through some of Ravenloft. The group was accustomed to being in a world of huge armies, hordes of monsters everywhere, mass death and dark plagues wiping out entire villages. Weird, bloodthirsty packs of evil chickens running about, treacherous witches and sorcerer women, terrifying bands of marauding beastmen and savage Chaos warriors running roughshod over the land, slaughtering and plundering. Whole villages being full of insane mutants. Packs of mutated bandits roaming the countryside, sacrificing wagons full of victims under moonlight and bonfire ceremonies.

They hit the Ravenloft areas with fireballs, waterskins full of Holy Water, hammers inscribed with crosses on the hammer-head and blessed by the high priest. No one goes off alone, anywhere, at any time. Everyone stocks together. Everything encountered is first forced to drink a waterskin of blessed Holy Water. Refusals were met with a fireball, or three. No mercy, no negotiation. Everything dies. Everything gets hacked down, fireballed, cross-hammer to the forehead, and a nun's habit soaked in Holy Water thrown over the creature's head. Every room, every hallway, gets hacked and burned. Every nook and cranny is searched out, with coffins and beds soaked in Holy Water and fireballed. Yes, women, they get mowed down as well. Children--they are possessed by demons, and get the fireball. Even stuffed animals are not benign and good--they get the blowtorch as well. Animals? The animals are evil, demonic beings that must always be killed swiftly, with no mercy.

When everything has screamed and died, and been burned to ashes, then it's time to gather up the treasure from every chest and hiding place. Go back to the temple, and sing praises in the Halls of the Righteous.

The land has been protected from Darkness.

Terminator mode engaged. *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK