D&D 5E Nananananananaaaa BATMAN! (about vampires in D&D and in general, Ravenloft/Curse of Strahd etc.)

[I'm A Banana]

I personally really dislike what they've done to the Dark Powers.

It's the Cardinal Sin of Horror, guys. Once you get a clear look at the man in the rubber suit, the monster just ain't scary anymore.

"Oh, it's not some cosmic morality play, guys, it's just some jerks over in a dungeon. Go visit them for magic powers." Bah!

I also think the distinction between "jilted true love" and "rape monster" is not a bad way to frame the way Strahd views himself vs. the way he ACTUALLY is. He's an apologist, through-and-through, utterly unwiling to admit to his own depravity, always blaming everyone else for his problems, happy to see himself as the victim of some gender-shaming conspiracy

 

[PMárk]

Different tastes and all like that. You don't have to care about them, but for me it adds to the setting to have some vague ehm, powers who do things, but most of the people aren't even aware of them and who are don't know anything for sure. You could decide how much you want to use them. In most D&D worlds things tend to be clearly defined. Sometimes a mystery is best left undiscovered and sometimes it adds to the game to having some vagueness. I like that RL has that even in it's gods and I like that the DPs aren't clear-cut somethings.

That, and as I said, i like the whole corruption theme.

 

[PMárk]

I personally really dislike what they've done to the Dark Powers.

It's the Cardinal Sin of Horror, guys. Once you get a clear look at the man in the rubber suit, the monster just ain't scary anymore.

"Oh, it's not some cosmic morality play, guys, it's just some jerks over in a dungeon. Go visit them for magic powers." Bah!

Exactly.

I might add I liked them most as exactly what you wrote, a cosmic morality play. They grant evil power, yet they also imprison it. They might even lend heroes some help, albeit in a non-clear way, if they are truly heroes.

Or they just want to see, how far evil can go, or they think light shines brighter in the dark. Or they just want to examine the absolute lows and absolute highs of sentient races.

Those questions are exactly why i prefer them to be vague. They could be anything, what matters is the story the GM wants to tell through them.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Vampires don't need to be a rape metaphor, though. Reinterpretation is often a good thing.

Sure. But reinterpreting a character who represents a very specific kind of evil to parallel a common rationalization for real-world perpetrators of that evil? That's a little sketchy. It's like... the Galactic Empire in Star Wars are Nazis, right? I hope we can all agree on that. So if someone came along with an idea for reinterpreting the Empire's actions as justified because they're just trying to preserve the rightful social order against a sinister conspiracy seeking to undermine it, I'd recommend this person think very carefully about the subtextual implications of their idea before running with it.

Twilight is toxic in ways that wouldn't be less toxic if the shiny dude wasn't a vampire.

Of course. Nobody's saying that vampires are the only possible predator/abuser analog in fiction.

But thst isn't even the point, really. Dracula is most interesting when he is a complex character. I plains that are "just evil" because reasons are cartoons. Not the good kind, like adventure time, but the silly kind no one takes seriously, like He-Man.

I have to express a little skepticism at your claim that "no one" takes seriously villains like Iago, Nyarlathotep, Sauron, the Joker, Maleficent, Palpatine, Hannibal Lecter, Hans Landa, Joffrey Baratheon, or the OG Judeo-Christian Devil.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure. But reinterpreting a character who represents a very specific kind of evil to parallel a common rationalization for real-world perpetrators of that evil? That's a little sketchy. It's like... the Galactic Empire in Star Wars are Nazis, right? I hope we can all agree on that. So if someone came along with an idea for reinterpreting the Empire's actions as justified because they're just trying to preserve the rightful social order against a sinister conspiracy seeking to undermine it, I'd recommend this person think very carefully about the subtextual implications of their idea before running with it.

Of course. Nobody's saying that vampires are the only possible predator/abuser analog in fiction.

I have to express a little skepticism at your claim that "no one" takes seriously villains like Iago, Nyarlathotep, Sauron, the Joker, Maleficent, Palpatine, Hannibal Lecter, Hans Landa, Joffrey Baratheon, or the OG Judeo-Christian Devil.

Most of those are terrible villains, yeah. There is a reason so much good fiction reinterprets the devil as a more complex, but still evil, character, for instance.

Not sure where you're going with the metaphor part at the top, in relation to what I said.
And my twilight point isn't that there are other abuser analogs, but that the vampire thing is not why the relationship is toxic. It would be just as toxic, in all the same ways, if he weren't a vampire.

Most of which is tangential.

The main point is, there is nothing weird or wrong with making vampires morally complex, or even sympathetic. A story involving that could be gross, obviously, but it doesn't need to be. The Galactic Empire can't ever not be nazis. That is just what they are. But vampires aren't always rape metaphors in old school folklore, much less in modern fiction, so they very much can be other than that.

 

[77IM]

NPC vampires are monsters; soulless, hollow creatures that live only for the pleasure of inflicting pain.

But when Strahd bites a PC and turns them, they get the chance to struggle against those urges...

 

[PMárk]

This is another review of CoS, which highlights well my main problems with the book: http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.hu/2016/04/review-gothic-gaming-and-curse-of-strahd.html

I think the author makes a good point: CoS is not really a RL modul, it's a general D&D modul with a horror-theme. I suspect that was the intent. It doesn't want continuity with the setting, it's just want to milk the old classic and ride the vampire/horror wave. That's irrelevant for newcomers who doesn't know the setting, but it's pretty glaring for the other camp and i think it's sad, a missed opportunity.

That being said, I still think it's a good adventure for the most part. I'm planning to run it, but if i will, I'll do it with changes that get it in-line with the old setting. Cutting out, or heavily altering the Amber Temple, for start, then using the original backstory. It's doable, I just wish they had done it that way as a default, because it wouldn't be that much effort. Alas, that boat sailed off.

 

[flametitan]

I had a thought as to why they didn't do more to acknowledge the setting: They already do. And not in throwaway lines, either. They directly call out the 1990 box set in a side bar near the beginning of the book. They don't tell you how to get it, but they do say "Yes, this product exists; there's an entire world out there to explore."

Besides, without a proper crash course in how the setting works, it can be a little confusing as to how his control of the borders and his own inability to leave the demiplane interact. Saying "It was whisked away into its own demiplane" is more straightforward to someone unfamiliar with the setting than "It was whisked away into a demiplane made up of numerous bordering kingdoms, but it's not the original world. Strahd is trying to leave but can't, even though to your players it might look like he's the only thing preventing his own exit, unless they find some in universe reason to know it's its own demiplane and he's trying to get back to it."