The only problem I ever had with Ravenloft was the agency of the Dark Powers in 'stealing' archvillains from other realms, and relying on Star Wars level plot armor to get away with it. Some of the darklords had been agents of evil gods, and said deities tend to be REALLY crabby when someone comes along stealing their favorite minion. Sooner or later, Takhisis is going to come looking for her toy.

(On a side note, I am amused at how Margaret Weis threw a titanic shitfit over Lord Soth getting yanked into the Demiplane of Dread.)

Not to mention the amazing chutzpah it took to try and confine Vecna for fuck's sake. Well, we all know how THAT turned out.

I'd rather write out the Dark Powers entirely and make the tendencies of Ravenloft an inherent issue. The Dark Powers aren't causing you trouble, it's just that the demiplane is so fucked up that things turn out that way.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1141961Sooner or later, Takhisis is going to come looking for her toy.

(On a side note, I am amused at how Margaret Weis threw a titanic shitfit over Lord Soth getting yanked into the Demiplane of Dread.)

Prophecy achieved.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1141961The only problem I ever had with Ravenloft was the agency of the Dark Powers in 'stealing' archvillains from other realms, and relying on Star Wars level plot armor to get away with it. Some of the darklords had been agents of evil gods, and said deities tend to be REALLY crabby when someone comes along stealing their favorite minion. Sooner or later, Takhisis is going to come looking for her toy.

  I think Soth, Vecna and Kas are both the only pre-existing darklords and the only ones with that level of divine attention. But all things considered, I'm quite willing to concede that Soth and the Vistani were both more trouble than they were worth.

QuoteI'd rather write out the Dark Powers entirely and make the tendencies of Ravenloft an inherent issue. The Dark Powers aren't causing you trouble, it's just that the demiplane is so fucked up that things turn out that way.

  I do have a mental model of the Dark Powers as a 'grand and lingering curse' for some versions of Ravenloft--Strahd's dark magic, unholy pact, and horrific crimes set off something that not only kicked Barovia into a demiplane and changed the rules, but that is still running and able to latch onto, absorb, and draw power from individuals who meet similar parameters, even on the Prime Material, to the point of being able to shape the Ethereal into inanimate matter and borrow non-sapient life from obscure Primes. (Sapient beings are victims of the Mists, refugees from other domains, and descendants thereof.)

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1141791Interested in finding out what aspects of the 2E Ravenloft line worked for people who were into it (if you were not a fan feel free to weigh in and say why as well----but particularly interested in those who played or ran it frequently and had thoughts on the way different parts of the setting and mechanics functioned). What were the parts you really liked, the parts you disliked and was there anything you were excited when you read but in practice it simply didn't work?

I liked that there were domains that weren't so outlandish and fulfilled the 'starkly beautiful' side of Ravenloft. Even in Ravenloft, PCs should have a chance to take a breather.

I loved the original two Ravenloft modules, but I thought the whole idea of the "Demi-plane of Dread" was meta and counter-productive to horror.

I've run a bunch of gothic horror, and I think it works much better if you *don't* say "This is an offshoot of the ordinary world where the laws of reality are stacked against you." I much prefer to run horror scenarios set in whatever ordinary world there is for that game. So in D&D, the Ravenloft modules were set in the usual D&D background, not in a separate demi-plane.

Still, there was some nice-looking material produced for the Ravenloft setting, that I occasionally put into adventures set in another universe.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1141969I do have a mental model of the Dark Powers as a 'grand and lingering curse' for some versions of Ravenloft--Strahd's dark magic, unholy pact, and horrific crimes set off something that not only kicked Barovia into a demiplane and changed the rules, but that is still running and able to latch onto, absorb, and draw power from individuals who meet similar parameters, even on the Prime Material, to the point of being able to shape the Ethereal into inanimate matter and borrow non-sapient life from obscure Primes. (Sapient beings are victims of the Mists, refugees from other domains, and descendants thereof.)

Exactly. In the D&D cosmology, order, chaos, good and evil aren't just philosophical points; they're active forces in the multiverse as tangible as magnetism, gravity, and rolling a 1 when you needed to to make that saving throw. Who needs active, inscrutable 'powers' when just the nature of evil suffices?

If you conceptualize evil as being akin to gravity, then the Demiplane of Dread is something like an evil-aligned singularity or black hole. When a possible darklord reaches a certain point (a 'moral event horizon'?) and the stars are right, he or she or it might be drawn into the Mists.

I might go back through the Ravenloft campaign setting books and see if some of the other Darklords were more... important in their world than others.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1141980Exactly. In the D&D cosmology, order, chaos, good and evil aren't just philosophical points; they're active forces in the multiverse as tangible as magnetism, gravity, and rolling a 1 when you needed to to make that saving throw. Who needs active, inscrutable 'powers' when just the nature of evil suffices?

If you conceptualize evil as being akin to gravity, then the Demiplane of Dread is something like an evil-aligned singularity or black hole. When a possible darklord reaches a certain point (a 'moral event horizon'?) and the stars are right, he or she or it might be drawn into the Mists.

I might go back through the Ravenloft campaign setting books and see if some of the other Darklords were more... important in their world than others.

Excellent description. Which opens up the possibility of cross-genre Darklords, if you are so inclined. What might a Sith Lord's domain look like?

Quote from: jhkim;1141973I loved the original two Ravenloft modules, but I thought the whole idea of the "Demi-plane of Dread" was meta and counter-productive to horror.

I've run a bunch of gothic horror, and I think it works much better if you *don't* say "This is an offshoot of the ordinary world where the laws of reality are stacked against you." I much prefer to run horror scenarios set in whatever ordinary world there is for that game. So in D&D, the Ravenloft modules were set in the usual D&D background, not in a separate demi-plane.

Agree 100%. "You're in Hell" might work as the LAST line of a horror story - never the first!

Quote from: S'mon;1141986Agree 100%. "You're in Hell" might work as the LAST line of a horror story - never the first!

In fairness, I could think of a couple scenarios where "You're in Hell!" (MUAHAHAHAHA!) could be an interesting start for a story or game adventure (Escape from Hell!), I just don't think that Ravenloft is that setting. The whole idea that the Demiplane just makes a copy of the world and then drags the evil with it just removes that essence of evil from its original context--where it would have been interesting and had earth-shattering consequences for that region--and robs it of its significance, turning it into a pale imitation of itself, suspended in a separate plane where nothing ever changes.

I think part of what makes gothic horror interesting is the idea of dark forces invading our reality and forcing us to confront them. But the Demiplane of Dread just steals these dark forces from the world and locks them away in a hell dimension, preventing them from interacting with the environment that gave them meaning.

Rather than the opening line being: "A dark cloud has fallen over X [inset town or region name]..." the opening line becomes "A dark cloud took X away, never to be seen again...(the end)". BUT if you happen to be in the place where the dark cloud took X away to, you may interact with it, even though X has nothing to do with your world of origin and you have no reason to care what happens with X. Because..."Dread".

Quote from: VisionStorm;1141994In fairness, I could think of a couple scenarios where "You're in Hell!" (MUAHAHAHAHA!) could be an interesting start for a story or game adventure (Escape from Hell!), I just don't think that Ravenloft is that setting. The whole idea that the Demiplane just makes a copy of the world and then drags the evil with it just removes that essence of evil from its original context--where it would have been interesting and had earth-shattering consequences for that region--and robs it of its significance, turning it into a pale imitation of itself, suspended in a separate plane where nothing ever changes.

I think part of what makes gothic horror interesting is the idea of dark forces invading our reality and forcing us to confront them. But the Demiplane of Dread just steals these dark forces from the world and locks them away in a hell dimension, preventing them from interacting with the environment that gave them meaning.

Rather than the opening line being: "A dark cloud has fallen over X [inset town or region name]..." the opening line becomes "A dark cloud took X away, never to be seen again...(the end)". BUT if you happen to be in the place where the dark cloud took X away to, you may interact with it, even though X has nothing to do with your world of origin and you have no reason to care what happens with X. Because..."Dread".

Yeah, I agree with all of that.

Dracula the book works by juxtaposing 'nice, safe' Victorian England, with the invasive alien horror. Pretty much all actual horror does that.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1141961The only problem I ever had with Ravenloft was the agency of the Dark Powers in 'stealing' archvillains from other realms, and relying on Star Wars level plot armor to get away with it. Some of the darklords had been agents of evil gods, and said deities tend to be REALLY crabby when someone comes along stealing their favorite minion. Sooner or later, Takhisis is going to come looking for her toy.

Lord Soth has been around for hundreds of years, mostly sitting in his Castle.  I get the feeling that with his kind of Pride he is not one of Takhisis's favourite toys.

What didn't work in Ravenloft is what never works anywhere, even in horror - misery porn. That was never inherent in the setting materials I read, but it was always lurking in discussions about the setting.

Quote from: RandyB;1142027What didn't work in Ravenloft is what never works anywhere, even in horror - misery porn. That was never inherent in the setting materials I read, but it was always lurking in discussions about the setting.

  Oh, yes, that's been one of the most frustrating bits of 'fanon' out there.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1141980Who needs active, inscrutable 'powers' when just the nature of evil suffices?

  Early Ravenloft plays up the Land as a living, reactive, but not necessarily sapient entity. It's not until a year or two in that the "Dark Powers" start to be highlighted as potentially distinct and conscious entities.

QuoteI might go back through the Ravenloft campaign setting books and see if some of the other Darklords were more... important in their world than others.

  To the best of my knowledge, five characters in Ravenloft were pre-existing outside of those taken from I6 and I10--Soth, Gondegal, the sorcerer-king Kalid-Ma from Dark Sun (although that might be parallel creation, as his background was brought in only two months after the release of the Dark Sun boxed set), Vecna and Kas.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1141994I think part of what makes gothic horror interesting is the idea of dark forces invading our reality and forcing us to confront them. But the Demiplane of Dread just steals these dark forces from the world and locks them away in a hell dimension, preventing them from interacting with the environment that gave them meaning.

  I think the intent was to allow Ravenloft adventures to be mixed into regular campaigns with a "Twilight Zone" feel, but that was undercut by the establishment of large
stretches of connected domain territories and the underuse of the 'conjunction' concept from the original boxed set. Another experiment I've wanted to try is to take the Known World and sprinkle Ravenloft's domains throughout it.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1142035To the best of my knowledge, five characters in Ravenloft were pre-existing outside of those taken from I6 and I10--Soth, Gondegal, the sorcerer-king Kalid-Ma from Dark Sun (although that might be parallel creation, as his background was brought in only two months after the release of the Dark Sun boxed set), Vecna and Kas.
 

I'm not necessarily looking for pre-existing characters so much as I'm looking for villains who would be missed by their homeworlds. Someone just important enough that a proverbial search party might get sent out after them.

Quote from: S'mon;1141986Agree 100%. "You're in Hell" might work as the LAST line of a horror story - never the first!

It works (kinda) in one of my favourite comic book series ever: Hellblazer. John Constantine is not (always) in Hell, but lives like if it his surrounded by it.

Which leads to the need of rolling characters adequate to the setting - i.e. Gothic Horror archetypes, minimum. I once successfully ran a D&D adventure inspired by "Seven" by David Fincher set in Waterdeep, and I managed to make it work. In Ravenloft it would have been a week like another.