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Ravenloft Campaigns: What’s the meta-point?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4666269" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I think we have strayed a good deal from the original topic, which was, "Why do people play Ravenloft?", into various versions of "Why don't people play Ravenloft?" Whilie I'm perfectly fine with thread creep, I think its useful to look back on the original question from time to time to see how we got here.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>When we stray into, "What was wrong with Ravenloft as a setting for Gothic Horror?", we are both assuming the answer to the question and suggesting that you didn't like Ravenloft to begin with. If you are a Ravenloft dissident, either as a player or a DM, then I think you need to be careful how you contribute to a discussion with people who really liked the setting and want to recreate it - including perhaps features you didn't like. </p><p></p><p>One of the problems with assuming the motivation for playing Ravenloft was recreating Gothic horror stories is that if Ravenloft wasn't always a good vehical for that you first have to answer whether it was attractive to some people precisely because it wasn't just limited to Gothic horror. You also have just moved the starting question to, "What is Gothic horror and what are its essential features?"</p><p></p><p>From my perspective, I think that the Dark Powers, Domains, Darklords and so forth all fall collectively under 'DM Toolbag'. Things that are in the DM toolbag don't have to be manifestly evident features of a campaign. It certainly doesn't have to be true that average citizens of a given Domain know that they are in Ravenloft, or about the Dark Powers, or who the local Dark Lord is (at least in those terms), or even that they live in a Domain (at least in those terms). And its certainly not true that from a given Domain anyone would have knowledge of every other domain. So when you get to arguing about big cosmological issues like the nature of Domains, I feel like you are arguing about something that happens in a black box that the players don't have to be aware of and as such never need necessarily be the topic of in game conversation. </p><p></p><p>The Ravenloft campaign setting was designed in a hodge podge fashion I think rather deliberately to allow any sort of horror campaign to occur if the DM desired it, and, if the DM desired it, to allow easy transitions between settings with different tropes while still having the same unified underpinnings if the DM choose to emphasize these things. There is no particular reason why the PC's would manifest in character knowledge of Dark Lords, Domains, and Dark Powers. There is no particular reason why they wouldn't refer to Ravenloft as 'the world' and by and large believe that it followed rules that are quite ordinary. From inside the 'Dark City', it just looks like a city. You have to wake up to what lies beneath and behind and in the in between spaces. Traveling from domain to domain can involve either continuity or discontinuity as the DM feels is appropriate to the particular journey. Nothing is tying the DM's hands. He can get out of the DM's toolbag what he needs, and leave in what he doesn't.</p><p></p><p>To a certain extent I see complaining about the domains not as complaining about the setting, but as complaining about the job a DM is doing making the setting come alive. These are matters of DM skill, and not I think huge drawbacks in the setting. To the extent that the questions sometimes seem to revolve around trust in the DM because they involve fiat, I'm having a hard time finding sympathy for that. If the barbarous horde thunders off the stepes, this too involves DM fiat from how big the horde is, to the causes that led to the invasion, to the motivations and powers of the major NPCs. If the dragon cult launches an invasion of the known lands, once again this is DM fiat. Huge overarching campaigns themes are almost always simply dependent on DM fiat. </p><p></p><p>Most importantly, I don't think that a setting with domains and all the cosmology that entails or without domains fundamentally changes the core story of a Ravenloft game. Similarly, I don't think adopting a Gothic horror tone, or a slasher tone, or a psychological terror tone, or a disaster movie tone, or post-apocalyptic, or b-movie horror in the tone of Hammer film or George Romero zombie pic significantly changes the core story or necessarily the core motivation of the players. Sure, it might take a masterful DM to pull off all those changes in tone successfully, but I don't think anyone is required to have that as their amibition just because the setting could in theory support it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4666269, member: 4937"] I think we have strayed a good deal from the original topic, which was, "Why do people play Ravenloft?", into various versions of "Why don't people play Ravenloft?" Whilie I'm perfectly fine with thread creep, I think its useful to look back on the original question from time to time to see how we got here. When we stray into, "What was wrong with Ravenloft as a setting for Gothic Horror?", we are both assuming the answer to the question and suggesting that you didn't like Ravenloft to begin with. If you are a Ravenloft dissident, either as a player or a DM, then I think you need to be careful how you contribute to a discussion with people who really liked the setting and want to recreate it - including perhaps features you didn't like. One of the problems with assuming the motivation for playing Ravenloft was recreating Gothic horror stories is that if Ravenloft wasn't always a good vehical for that you first have to answer whether it was attractive to some people precisely because it wasn't just limited to Gothic horror. You also have just moved the starting question to, "What is Gothic horror and what are its essential features?" From my perspective, I think that the Dark Powers, Domains, Darklords and so forth all fall collectively under 'DM Toolbag'. Things that are in the DM toolbag don't have to be manifestly evident features of a campaign. It certainly doesn't have to be true that average citizens of a given Domain know that they are in Ravenloft, or about the Dark Powers, or who the local Dark Lord is (at least in those terms), or even that they live in a Domain (at least in those terms). And its certainly not true that from a given Domain anyone would have knowledge of every other domain. So when you get to arguing about big cosmological issues like the nature of Domains, I feel like you are arguing about something that happens in a black box that the players don't have to be aware of and as such never need necessarily be the topic of in game conversation. The Ravenloft campaign setting was designed in a hodge podge fashion I think rather deliberately to allow any sort of horror campaign to occur if the DM desired it, and, if the DM desired it, to allow easy transitions between settings with different tropes while still having the same unified underpinnings if the DM choose to emphasize these things. There is no particular reason why the PC's would manifest in character knowledge of Dark Lords, Domains, and Dark Powers. There is no particular reason why they wouldn't refer to Ravenloft as 'the world' and by and large believe that it followed rules that are quite ordinary. From inside the 'Dark City', it just looks like a city. You have to wake up to what lies beneath and behind and in the in between spaces. Traveling from domain to domain can involve either continuity or discontinuity as the DM feels is appropriate to the particular journey. Nothing is tying the DM's hands. He can get out of the DM's toolbag what he needs, and leave in what he doesn't. To a certain extent I see complaining about the domains not as complaining about the setting, but as complaining about the job a DM is doing making the setting come alive. These are matters of DM skill, and not I think huge drawbacks in the setting. To the extent that the questions sometimes seem to revolve around trust in the DM because they involve fiat, I'm having a hard time finding sympathy for that. If the barbarous horde thunders off the stepes, this too involves DM fiat from how big the horde is, to the causes that led to the invasion, to the motivations and powers of the major NPCs. If the dragon cult launches an invasion of the known lands, once again this is DM fiat. Huge overarching campaigns themes are almost always simply dependent on DM fiat. Most importantly, I don't think that a setting with domains and all the cosmology that entails or without domains fundamentally changes the core story of a Ravenloft game. Similarly, I don't think adopting a Gothic horror tone, or a slasher tone, or a psychological terror tone, or a disaster movie tone, or post-apocalyptic, or b-movie horror in the tone of Hammer film or George Romero zombie pic significantly changes the core story or necessarily the core motivation of the players. Sure, it might take a masterful DM to pull off all those changes in tone successfully, but I don't think anyone is required to have that as their amibition just because the setting could in theory support it. [/QUOTE]
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