Quote from: Habitual Gamer on May 28, 2021, 02:15:56 PM

Quote from: jhkim on May 27, 2021, 08:23:15 PM
While there is some connection between the claims and the text, the specifics seem like hyperbole at best.

"Quiet you!  Can't you see I'm protecting my games!"

I admit, I haven't done a fine-toothed witch hunt for wrong think text, but it really reminds me of classical vistani presentations.  Except if they were previously "morally gray, with a shade of black" now they're "morally gray, with a shade of white".  Maybe.  Either way, not enough to be worth clutching pearls over.  I remember worse ethnic sensitivity nonsense in the Nightmare Lands sourcebox, and that was pre-3ed, pre-internet, pre-constant universal outrage over everything.   

Please quote things in their new description that is even slightly "morally gray". I haven't seen any text about Vistani from the new book that isn't ebulliantly gushing with praise about how wonderful and good they are and helpful and caring and just generally better than anyone else.  Paladins are given more bad press than Vistani in the Nu-Ravenloft.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 28, 2021, 11:11:21 PMPaladins are given more bad press than Vistani in the Nu-Ravenloft.

Well, duh, classic paladins are basically everything woke types hate.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 28, 2021, 10:55:31 PM

Quote from: Jame Rowe on May 27, 2021, 08:14:31 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 27, 2021, 08:05:53 PM
Speaking of the Dark Powers, I heard they eliminated Dark Powers checks from the new Ravenloft. Can anyone confirm or deny?

No, they weren't removed.

I think they were changed, in that somehow PCs could contact them. I may have read it wrong.

Yes, I bought the book; I enjoy it as an adventure setting, and maybe I'll use it someday with changes inspired by 2e.

I'm sorry, but are there Dark Power CHECKS in the system? if so, can you cite the page, since you bought the book? Because I was hearing that there were no check mechanics. And that people can start with a Dark Gift at level one and its just basically a cool superpower with no mechanical consequences.

I heard someobe complain about there being some form of consequences on another board, but i dint think there are checks, the DM just asks if you want one sometimes.

While there was room to modify powers checks (demanding a powers check for leveling up is just stupid), it appears WotC has watered down the system in favor of 'Dark Gifts' that give you an ability and a kind of half-assed penalty. A very weak substitute, IMO.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 29, 2021, 12:14:28 AM
While there was room to modify powers checks (demanding a powers check for leveling up is just stupid), it appears WotC has watered down the system in favor of 'Dark Gifts' that give you an ability and a kind of half-assed penalty. A very weak substitute, IMO.

That's the understatement of the year. This changes the entire Ravenloft campaign experience from being an internal and external struggle against the corrupting power of temptation/sin, into being a kind of scooby-doo scary-ride theme park that also gives you superpowers.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 29, 2021, 12:53:30 AMThat's the understatement of the year. This changes the entire Ravenloft campaign experience from being an internal and external struggle against the corrupting power of temptation/sin, into being a kind of scooby-doo scary-ride theme park that also gives you superpowers.

The way it works is that whenever you roll a 1 on an attack, ability check, or saving throw, you get a an effect. The effect is random, usually 1 to 6 with most of the results being bad for you or your party.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 28, 2021, 11:11:21 PMPlease quote things in their new description that is even slightly "morally gray". I haven't seen any text about Vistani from the new book that isn't ebulliantly gushing with praise about how wonderful and good they are and helpful and caring and just generally better than anyone else.  Paladins are given more bad press than Vistani in the Nu-Ravenloft.

Morally grey? I'm assuming that means anything outside of an idealised communist utopia. In which case would these phrases count:
"They're protective of their families, which includes members of other caravans."
"Most don't discuss their culture or beliefs with outsiders."

To me this suggests that they are xenophobic and organised like a clan. Which fits the Romani stereotype well enough, so I'm surprised that made the cut.

Quote from: Palleon on May 25, 2021, 06:38:49 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 24, 2021, 09:37:47 PM
All that said. The other reason Tasha and probably now Wokenloft sell is as noted earlier in the thread. That Tasha had a new class and new class paths. And Wokenloft here also has new class paths. Not sure how many. But thats bound to attract a few extra sales just for those.

Yes, someone had a brilliant idea with 5E.  Including about 5 player options in a splat book ensures it's not just the DMs buying the titles.

Least they are playtested.

And So far these have not been spaltbooks like we saw in 2 and 3e. WOTC has been surprisingly frugal with expansions so far.
We have had 3 official setting books. Sword Coast, Eberron and one other forget what was. I guess this new Wokenloft is another?
We have had 2 monster manuals that double as ecology books of a sort. Volo and Mordenkainen.
We have had 2 expansion books. Xanithar and Tasha.
And about 2 or so campaign modules a year.

Of those new player material has been mostly concentrated in the two expansions and the rest tends to be in the setting books and semi-setting themed.

I do not count the various sideline collaboration stuff like Acquisitions, that Role 20 (Wildermont?) book and so on.

No one can complain about an excess of new books.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy on May 28, 2021, 11:34:29 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 28, 2021, 11:11:21 PMPaladins are given more bad press than Vistani in the Nu-Ravenloft.

Well, duh, classic paladins are basically everything woke types hate.

That is only because Paladins have the power to Detect Woke and cause extra damage when smiting them.

Quote from: Habitual Gamer on May 27, 2021, 11:42:20 AMI'll put on my pedantic hat for a second.

The cosms were the actual home world the invaders came from, the realms were their places on our earth.

So while the Nile Empire got a realm -and- cosm book (and was the only invader to do so, if I recall right), Orrorsh did not.

Late to this but... er? TORG or fake new torg?

TORG indeed had an Orrorsh book. Covered the realm and Gaea since unlike some other raiders the Gaunt Mans cosm destroys each it invades before moving on so there is no home cosm left.

Just to give people the details on how powers checks used to work in 2E (keeping in mind this changed over the course of the line), is whenever a character attracted the attention of the dark powers by committing an evil act, they would have to make a powers check (this was a percentile roll with a 1-10% chance of the player failing and being changed by the dark powers: with 10% being for especially egregious acts of evil). If you failed you advance to one of the stages of corruptions. In the black box there were six stages (DoD has 13 with the first three stages still being relatively pure and not having any real effects on you). Every stage gives a reward and a punishment.

This is how it first appeared in the black box. It got refined in the red box, and further developed in the Domains of Dread book. I think a lot of people developed their own approach to it based on how it was described in the introduction (the actual stages are interesting and good I think but in some instances they fall a bit short of the promise laid out in the section leading up to the stages. Also worth noting these changes are supposed to reflect the evil act and one common approach was for the GM to think of an endpoint based on the trajectory so that each stage makes sense and contributes to the overall transformation (rather than being a bunch of random things that happen to the character). 

Stage one is the enticement, which usually gives some kind of small bonus or a very minor attack that does 1-2 damage, the punishment is your evil becomes more visible in some way (voice sounds evil, eyes glow in dark, forked tongue, etc). 

Stage two is the invitation. This raises the rewards to things like larger bonuses (examples include +4 to HP, +2 on a single ability), to abilities like cause disease once a day, charm person once a day, to attacks that do 1-4 damage. The punishment is a major physical change (examples include growing a tail, fingers becoming tentacles, needing to drink blood once a day, face becomes that of an animal, etc)

Stage Three is the touch of Darkness. The reward is at the level of a minor power (it states usually something like a spell that becomes a natural ability). Examples include gaining 1 level of XP, Ray of Enfeeblement three times a day, drinking blood causing your strength to increase by 1d4+2 for 10 rounds, Tasha's uncontrollable hideous laughter by touch three times a day. Punishments are physical changes that accompany the reward. A list of example punishments isn't offered, this is more described, though in this description it says that a character who drinks blood may develop fangs and red eyes when his strength is increased, or a character who gains the ability to warp wood may develop hands that are dark with curving black nails. The character also acquires a difficult to control temper at this stage.

Stage Four is the embrace. Characters develop things like resist magic or abilities at the level of Flying at will, controlling undead, being immune to attacks (and only hit by things like silver or magic), level drain, raise dead by touch once a day, etc. The punishment is further physical transformation to reflect the ability gained. The example provided is a character who gains spin webs from hands may have hands that look like two spiders dangling from his wrists (this example I think can work or come off as silly depending on how you visualize it). Also the character really starts to lose control of their behavior. Basically if the character faces something they desire, they have to save versus spell to resist stealing it. If he fails he does whatever he can to get what he wants.

Stage Five is you become a creature of ravenloft. This is left vague but basically you are completely transformed into a monster of some kind and you lose control for days at a time.

Stage six is you become a lord of ravenloft. Basically if you enter the misty borders a new domain is created for you. You become an NPC at this stage.

One thing to understand about these stages is they are not really hard and fast rules. They are more like flexible examples. For powers checks to work you always had to tailor them to the actions, the character and the direction they were heading. I think if there was one area of the black box most in need of revision and clarification this would be it (it was a brilliant idea, and the concept totally worked, but there were some rough edges in the descriptions of the stages that I recall taking some time for me to navigate as a GM: and I think they got better at describing the process as the line went on).

Same friend who had one of the other books off D&D Beyond, for reasons unfathomable, picked up the Ravenloft book in its Beyond format and I had a quick glance through to see what they did with the Vistani. Not an easy thing to find and about 2/3rds down in the book.

Assuming this is the same as the print book. Heres what I saw.
1: They are no longer bound to Barovia and accept no master.
2: They wander all over the domains and outside even.
3: They are welcome in many towns as bringers of news. And even towns distrustfull will allow them in for the news.
4: Madam Eva is now a "controversial" figure because she deals with Strahd.
5: There are now non human Vistani. One being a halfling who helps souls escape the demiplane. Though in the original module there is an elven gypsy. So nothing new really I guess.

And what the fuck is this "Ez" d'Avenir? Ez. Really?

I got tired of searching after that. Seems standard Politically Correct scrub job to remove anything "offensive". I did not see anything about fake Vistani. Well aside from these new PC fake Vistani.

Though keep in mind the original Ravenloft module flip-flopped in just what the hell the gypsies were and ended up contradicting themselves. In the main module they are just kind of there. But the monster entry at the pack presents them as evil and always out to mislead and cheat the PCs. But nothing in the module backs that up other than one random encounter in the castle with some evil gypsies. And the ones with Eva are for who knows what reason listed as NE in their stat block which contradicts their actions. The rest are CN or LN or such. You actually do not really learn as a DM that they are evil till the end of the module.

My boxed set is in storage so can not check how they were presented in that.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 29, 2021, 12:53:30 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 29, 2021, 12:14:28 AM
While there was room to modify powers checks (demanding a powers check for leveling up is just stupid), it appears WotC has watered down the system in favor of 'Dark Gifts' that give you an ability and a kind of half-assed penalty. A very weak substitute, IMO.

That's the understatement of the year. This changes the entire Ravenloft campaign experience from being an internal and external struggle against the corrupting power of temptation/sin, into being a kind of scooby-doo scary-ride theme park that also gives you superpowers.

I do try. And you're right. This is like stripping the sanity-eroding nature of Cthulhu Mythos knowledge out of Call of Cthulhu. What's the point?

(Speaking of CoC, I once pitched an idea for a PC that was, essentially, a Yithian that had gone native. Instead of sanity, he had an Empathy trait, and the lower it went the harder it was to hide that he was Not Human despite being in a human body.)

But yeah, this turns Ravenloft into Generic Darker-Than-Average Fantasy Realm #145. Hoo-fucking-ray.

From my glance through the Beyond version it seems like the horror is still there. Theres ample advice on how to make things more terrifying and how to make it personal too. Which flies in the face of the online statements of what the book would be. This advice is very NOT safe space.

One thing I did notice though is a third or more of the book is advice and tables and little lists of suggestions. Page after page of this and it feels like padding the way its formatted. The pages I stopped on all seemed ok to some degree and nothing really leaped out as off kilter other than the lack of alignment listings for monsters or NPCs and the scrubbing of the Vistani, who were already not necessarily evil to begin with because the original writers apparently couldnt make up their minds.

What I came away with is that it is a big "How to DM horror" and a big "suggestions" book with little info on the domains really. Another of those "they spend alot of time saying very little" when it comes to describing things.

Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 11:35:19 AM
From my glance through the Beyond version it seems like the horror is still there. Theres ample advice on how to make things more terrifying and how to make it personal too. Which flies in the face of the online statements of what the book would be. This advice is very NOT safe space.

One thing I did notice though is a third or more of the book is advice and tables and little lists of suggestions. Page after page of this and it feels like padding the way its formatted. The pages I stopped on all seemed ok to some degree and nothing really leaped out as off kilter other than the lack of alignment listings for monsters or NPCs and the scrubbing of the Vistani, who were already not necessarily evil to begin with because the original writers apparently couldnt make up their minds.

What I came away with is that it is a big "How to DM horror" and a big "suggestions" book with little info on the domains really. Another of those "they spend alot of time saying very little" when it comes to describing things.

So, despite being billed as a setting book, it's more of a horror genre sourcebook (of questionable quality) than an exploration of the Ravenloft domains. That's not really what I'd buy a setting book for. I certainly didn't buy the Eberron book for details on running games in a post-war (or between wars pulpy) period; I bought it for setting details (and I was somewhat disappointed).