D&D 5E Curse of Strahd: Barovia needs about 10x more people

[PMárk]

Basically, these setting details make no sense when taken together. These details may not bother you at all -- just a game! -- but they irk me... and I think they can be rectified pretty easily without sacrificing the horrific gothic tone of the setting.

Change 1: Barovia needs +/- 30,000 people to support the 3,000 who live in the villages. Most of these people are farmers and ranchers.

Change 2: Strahd and his minions aren't constantly slaughtering people -- maybe he takes a few decades off here and there, waiting for Tatyana to be reincarnated. Sure, he kidnaps people with souls periodically, but he can't be so threatening that the entire economy of the region breaks down. Strahd is basically a farmer of Barovians and he needs to keep his crop healthy if he himself wants to survive. The people in the Village know that Strahd is becoming active again, but they aren't all boarded up in their homes.

Thoughts?

Agree and congratulations, you just reinvented the 2e/3e Ravenloft setting instead of the 5e "even dharkher and bhleakher than thou" take on the old module, which basically lacks every element of a functioning setting. It's a good adventure but it's basically a horror-ride with 5e, not an even remotely plausible ecosystem.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't think any of these things would substantially alter the feeling of the setting. So IMO: feel free to change as you wish.

 

[Draegn]

You might find this to be of interest.

http://ludusludorum.com/2014/10/28/get-medieval-the-village-in-the-middle-ages/

 

[Rils]

As for the wolves/bats/etc, there are other animals they can feed on. Mountain goats are specifically mentioned, as are fish, and I have no reason to believe other than that there are also deer and small game like you would typically find in a mountain valley.

 

[RotGrub]

That's it. The Dark Powers provide and keep anyone from noticing that it's somehow odd

Yes, in addition the population is maintained by the dark powers. Memories can even be wiped clean by them.

Of course, this is the problem with trying to run Ravenloft without first having read a single Ravenloft campaign setting source book.

 

[iserith]

Sure, increase the population as long as I as a player don't have to interview 10 times as many NPCs to get enough exposition to go adventuring.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

Of course you can't have a functioning ecosystem. There is no sun. No direct sunlight means no plants means no animals. The Wizard of Wines have magic gems to keep their crops growing.

And isn't Castle Ravenloft structurally impossible anyway?

 

[ad_hoc]

Of course you can't have a functioning ecosystem. There is no sun. No direct sunlight means no plants means no animals. The Wizard of Wines have magic gems to keep their crops growing.

And isn't Castle Ravenloft structurally impossible anyway?

It is also literally comprised of Dread.

 

[PMárk]

Of course you can't have a functioning ecosystem. There is no sun. No direct sunlight means no plants means no animals. The Wizard of Wines have magic gems to keep their crops growing.

Yeah, that's another thing I didn't like about CoS. For me, it's making the thrill of waiting for the sun to came up and other horror troupes basically nonexistent.

At the end, 5e's Barovia is functioning only as pocket-realm and as the part of the main setting. It isn't it's own functioning 'world'.

Which is okay, it's in line with the domains of dread concept of 4e/5e. It's an okay concept, back to the roots and all. I would probably like it more if there hadn't been the alternative take on it. I just happen to like it much less than the 2e/3e version of Ravenloft. I feel the later one is deeper (not a surprise it has much more material behind it than the 4e/5e reboot version) and have more opportunities in it.

I suspect something very similar from the 5e take on Planescape. Which is somewhat sad. I understand the long-term unsustainability of the old model of fully supporting multiple settings, but we lose so much potential and depth this way.

Paizo did it better by dumping all the themes and tropes in one world and making it working. You just can do more things in and with Golarion. Of course Paizo had the advantage of hindsight. It's somewhat sadly a 22's catch in the case of DnD. You don't want FR? You stuck, because WotC won't support the other settings, they'd incorporate the most iconic parts of them into FR at best. And FR only do FR well, or not even that as things are lately with the lack of a real CG and the ending of the novel line.

And they could do that, because the old setting materials are out there, and 5e is fairly convertible. And fans of the old settings conveniently make material for DMSG.

In the end, the whole mess is understandable from a business standpoint, but the result is the same, so if i want a supported setting, especially one with new material to it, I'll go to Paizo.

So, back to the topic, yeah, Barovia in 5e doesn't make sense as a 'world', it makes sense as a very big lair/prison of a specific villain (ok, the old setting was that/started as that too, but it grew into something bigger) and every inconsistency is handwaved/pointless from that standpoint. If you want a more functional gothic/dark fantasy setting, go for the old Ravenloft material, or Ustalav from Pathfinder, or any other game/setting out there.

 

[77IM]

Who says that Strahd needs to drink the blood of villagers to survive? Classic vampires could subsist just fine on livestock and small animals. They drank human blood because they liked it.