Quote from: misterguignol;477341Heh, maybe I dislike RoT so much because they spelled Edgar Allan Poe's name wrong.  (And didn't mention Walpole, Radcliffe, or Lewis as authors to read!)

I have heard a number of people complain about the reading list (usually for including books that fall outside gothic in their opinion but also for the reason you state). I think that is a fair criticism. As the line developed, I believe they often quoted people like Walpole but they never did do a good job of going back in later books and getting more into the gothic tradition (something they probably should have done by the red boxed set).

I guess from where I was coming from at the time, RoT's suggested reading and history of Gothic was enough to get me going down a road I wouldn't have otherwise taken. I also recall getting ideas from writers they quoted modules and supplements (I believe they quoted Walpole in some of the Van Richten Guides).

Were you already reading (or teaching gothic lit.) by the time RoT came out?

QuoteYeah, that is by far the most annoying part of the DoD for sure.  Parts of it are so GO READ THIS OTHER BOOK you wonder why they even bothered.

It was especially problematic this time around because I no longer had many of the other books. Also the map in the book is a little hard to use and read in practice (it is just a bit too dark in B&W), whereas the old poster maps were pretty easy to see. So I had some trouble mapping stuff out this time with DoD.

I will say this though, having run Ravenloft with the 3E material since its release, going back to 2E produced a very different game.

It may also be that I am remembering RoT through rose colored glasses (and it has been a while since I've looked it over).

This is something I found with the old modules. I repurchased many of the modules I remembered loving dearly and discovered they weren't as good as I remembered them. My favorite adventures were: Feast of Goblyns, Ship of Horror, Castles Forlorn, Night of the Walking Dead and The Created.

I couldn't track down Castles Forlorn or Night of the Walking Dead, but I found the other three.

Ship of Horror had some serious problems that I had either never noticed or just forgotten about. There were major issues with the hook, the threads connecting different parts of the module and overall clarity.

The Created had such major problems I had to change much of the content. The biggest issue with the Created is they seemed to be going for a storyteller approach to the game with dramatic scenes. There were key points where the railroading was very heavy. There was one NPC it made inviincible (basically saying outright "no matter how much damage Guiseppe takes don't let him die). In the big final scene in a theatre, rather than let the players finish of the evil puppet it has ghosts of his victims rise up and burn the place down. Overall it felt too scripted and too many things were off limits for the PCs.

Feast of Goblyns is still a classic in my opinion (and I never got the chance to run it in this campaign), but it had its share of issues as well.

One of the major things I think Ravenloft got wrong actually (and this is covered both in RoT and Feast of Goblyns) is how to describe an encounter in order to generate a mood of horror. The idea of speaking in long speaky prose with evocative adjectives and dramatic voice looks great on paper, but I don't think it ever worked in practice. Long descriptions tend to tune people out (not matter how good they are). It is much beter IMO to use your natural voice.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;477366One of the major things I think Ravenloft got wrong actually (and this is covered both in RoT and Feast of Goblyns) is how to describe an encounter in order to generate a mood of horror. The idea of speaking in long speaky prose with evocative adjectives and dramatic voice looks great on paper, but I don't think it ever worked in practice. Long descriptions tend to tune people out (not matter how good they are).

Agreed. Horror in games should come from events, plot, character, maybe even setting - but not from prose, spoken or otherwise.

Quote from: misterguignol;477344One thing I've done is simply drop Barovia, and no other part of Ravenloft, into the hinterlands of a different setting.  That makes Barovia and Strahd feel more unique, instead of having him and his realm be one of dozens of "domains of dread."  

I think there is a guy with a blog who did the same by dropping Barovia into Greyhawk!

Yep, I dropped Barovia into another setting too. Worked much better that way, imo. Ironically, though the setting didn't contain anything like all of Greyhawk, it did contain Restenford from the Secret of Bone Hill and Assassin's Knot adventures (L1 and L2, I think they were).

I like the whole "gothic pastiche" thing, and using tried and true inspirations for classic horror, that have persevered for a reason.
But I do pretty well agree with points 2 and 3.  Point 2 does have a saving grace, that the setting always seemed to leave a lot of room (due to the fault of absence, I guess) for the GM to make the setting more his own.

RPGPundit

Quote from: YcoreRixle;477342IMO, they should have made Ravenloft the setting simply Barovia. Strahd on the throne where he belongs. Adding in other darklords just weakens him by giving him equals (or near equals). Which seems more real, more alive (pun intended), more threatening? Definitely Barovia, not some wait-what artificial dimension with ten different conceits about mists and darklords and yadda yadda yadda Strahd=goth Elminster.

Agreed. Make Barovia the setting. Let it be larger, and maybe have some border lands, all of which you can use to set "monsters" in--they don't need to be dark lords to be scary. They just need to have the tone maintained.

I don't know, some of the other domains were cheesy, but some were quite good.  And the thing  is an all-barovia ravenloft might end up being unidimensional; vampirific.

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;477733I don't know, some of the other domains were cheesy, but some were quite good.  And the thing  is an all-barovia ravenloft might end up being unidimensional; vampirific.

RPGpundit

Exactly. At least with a domain under the control of Death itself, that's kind of cool. I think anyway...

Quote from: RPGPundit;477733I don't know, some of the other domains were cheesy, but some were quite good.  And the thing  is an all-barovia ravenloft might end up being unidimensional; vampirific.

RPGpundit

It might. On the other hand, it might be a great way to set up smaller more intimate horror stories. The Werewolf that kills is not longer some creature in a random village who happens to be the bar-keep. Instead its Gustav, the bar keep you share stories with every time you come to town. Making the horror, and choices, all the more interesting.

Maybe so, but at that scale it doesn't take too long before you get smallville syndrome (everyone has superpowers!; or you could call it True-blood syndrome; everyone's a supernatural creature!).  For longer campaigns, I want something broader.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;477908Maybe so, but at that scale it doesn't take too long before you get smallville syndrome (everyone has superpowers!; or you could call it True-blood syndrome; everyone's a supernatural creature!).  For longer campaigns, I want something broader.

RPGPundit

It is also a matter of variety. Barovia is great, but the flavor is very specific. I found the core as written is great because you have so many different options for setting. Personally my favorite domain is Kartakass. But Ravenloft domains are small and relatively homogenous, so even when I based  a campaign in the domain, I'd have opportunities to go into Forlorn, Invidia and Sithicus to mix things up.

Another thing to keep in mind. The PCs don't have to fight every dark lord. It can get a little silly if they face Strahd, then Adam, then Harkon Lukas. The setting feels less like the pastiche the OP references if you don't drop domain lords on the party all the time. In my own campaigns I think I had one group of PCs fight a darklord and one other group of PCs encounter and interact with a dark lord (though they didn't realize who it was till much later). And that is over about 15 years of regular Ravenloft sessions. The darklords are an important feature of Ravenloft (especially when the PCs thing they are getting bad-ass), but they don't need to be the focus of your adventures there.

We played RL 2e for a very long time. We've also played RL with C&C and Labyrinth Lord.

In all that time the only encounter we had with a dark lord was with Strahd in the original Ravenloft adventure.

We enjoyed it for the dreary gothic setting, not the big video game baddie of the week. The charm of the domains for us is their familiar themes of gothic weirdness and threats and the non-Tolkien inspired settings. Unlike Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc domains are not filled with armies of orcs and humanoids, dragons, etc. We enjoyed the more personal and smaller threats (not less dangerous to characters mind you, just less kingdom-wide). The smaller scope of the encounters and adventures feel more personal, more familiar and entertaining to us. It feels like we're playing in a fantasy Hammer horror film.

Quote from: misterguignol;4773291) Ravenloft cleaves too closely to its points of inspiration. For example, in Ravenloft there is a mad scientist who creates a man out of corpses who comes to hate his creator.  What this does is make NPCs who should be mysterious and original into known quantities: "Oh, it's like Frankenstein and his monster!"

How to fix this: Re-orient Ravenloft away from Gothic pastiche and use it as a spring-board to make new Gothic villains, areas, etc. that carry the Gothic influence into new, gamable arenas.

Agreed and this is what our groups did over the years.
The big bad domain lords get BORING. Over powered and overhyped and almost everyone over the years know or have heard of them.
Smaller, more personal evils are the bread and butter of a good RL game. Make the threat interesting but defeatable.

Quote from: misterguignol;4773292) Ravenloft often doesn't feel like a setting that breaths.  The severity of this problem varies with the version of the setting, but Ravenloft tends to lack those little details that make a setting come alive.  The Domains of Dread hardback detailed some organizations in Ravenloft...and those were great because they gave plot hooks and NPCs for the characters to interact with.  (Sadly, they weren't mentioned much in the 3.0 version of the setting.)  The 3.0 version of the setting did finally detail (briefly) the religions at home in Ravenloft; why wasn't that something that figured into the setting all along, especially since religion is so important in Gothic novels?

How to fix this: More information on human-level organizations, religions, secret societies, cabals, factions, etc. that can motivate adventures and provide some much-needed color and flavor.

Of course, more information like this is always a plus for when you do need it.

Quote from: misterguignol;4773293) Ravenloft's villains have too much backstory that doesn't really matter.  Indeed, in some versions of the setting the Dark Lords' stories receive as much space as the lands they rule.  Of course, each ruler should have a story to make them interesting, but they definitely don't require the suggestions that you go read the novel about them.

How to fix this: Less info on what happened to the villains before the characters got involved, more info on what the villains are up to RIGHT NOW and how the characters might get mixed up in their plots.  Make the setting gameable, not an exercise in failed fiction writing ala White Wolf!

I'd happily trade up a lot of the backstories of the major villains for more domain info and more minor villains for game us.

I always read Ravenloft as akin to the Dark world in Jack of shadows.

So I am happy with evil lords each with their own domains in fact I play up that element and have boarder struggles between the various lords. I also give them more control on their Domains and have their power regulared by the domain they control so as they loose land they loose power.

This kind of fixes the whole too many dark lords spoil the broth situation and creates an excellent play hook as all the dark lord sare seeking to extend their own domains at the expense of the others so there is space for the PCs in that power struggle.

This also fits really nicely with how hell is portrayed in the Vertigo comic world of Lucifer, Sandman etc. Except their the currency of Hell is souls which again is an easy thing to add to the Ravenloft mix.