D&D General Ravenloft: Monsters vs Darklords

[Remathilis]

I very rarely use Darklords. Simply put, most PCs are not significant enough to get attention from the Big Bad. If they survive long enough and poke their nose enough in Darklords business, then they get noticed. And even then, Darklords first send their henchmen to deal with trouble makers.

For me, it works best if Darklord is evil presence looming in background, making his moves behind curtains. PCs hear about them, see some of the outcomes of their deeds, but they can't interact with them and can't go directly against them ( i mean, they can, if they want to storm Castle Ravenloft as lv 5 group, their funeral, squad of vampire guards will wipe them out before they even set foot inside of castle).

My favourite is show them how futile their attempts are. No matter how hard they try to cleanse the Domain, they can't stop every monster, they can't save every NPC, and in the end, they cannot win ( winning is surviving to fight uphill battle another day).

My own campaign has more or less been like this. They have faced a few minor darklords (like the House of Lament) and had brushes with them (attending the Duchess's Ball) but I've not dealt directly with them. The biggest mystery that has been going on is what happened to Azalin (in a mixture of Requiem and 5e Darkon) and that will come to a head soon, but overall my villains have been residents of domains, not the lords themselves.

 

[Minigiant]

Oh, I'm not advocating for not using Darklords, but I am asking how often they are the focus of the adventure.

Let's take for example that you want to run a relentless slasher/Jack the Ripper style antagonist. Classic horror, right? You could do it one of two ways: place the killer on the streets of any urban area (Dementieu, Il Akuk, Saint Ronges) or make a new "foggy streets of London" domain. Both have pros and cons to the approach. I was just wondering how often people opt for the former idea (a villain doing things in a domain unrelated to its darklord) vs making a new domain to focus on the villain. The latter seems like it would get old rather quickly, but I can't deny the amount of creative freedom is tempting.

You can do both.

My opinion is the "foggy streets of London" domain where the relentless slasher isn't named and the focus is just not Ravenloft.
It can be fun but it isn't Ravenloft.
Ravenloft is a setting warped around the primary villain in some way. If you don't fell that presence, it isn't Ravenloft. That minor villain has to be connected to or allowed to exist by the darklord and this must be eventually revealed.

I guess a secondary question that is hiding in this quandary is how often do you run adventure in a domain where the darklord isn't the focus (or maybe even involved). Some domains are big enough that you can adventure for a long time and never meet the darklord (Mordent and Darkon are good examples) others are so small (like Keening) or tied to their lord it seems impossible (I've never seen a Barovian adventure that didn't prominently feature Strahd, for example).

I've never experienced it. But to me, the darklord s the point of Ravenloft.

Ifthe DM says he r she is running Ravenloft,sitting at the table is agreeing to and expecting to deal with a darklord.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My personal preference is to keep the Darklords in the background, as I don't think most PCs are "special" enough to merit being noticed by them, outside of specific scenarios like Curse of Strahd. But I can certainly understand why people would feel like they're the defining characteristics of the setting and should be foregrounded. But my tastes generally aren't to have PCs interact with the big names in any setting.

 

[Voadam]

Oh, I'm not advocating for not using Darklords, but I am asking how often they are the focus of the adventure.

Let's take for example that you want to run a relentless slasher/Jack the Ripper style antagonist. Classic horror, right? You could do it one of two ways: place the killer on the streets of any urban area (Dementieu, Il Akuk, Saint Ronges) or make a new "foggy streets of London" domain.

Foggy streets of London. Maybe something like a mix of London and Paris, call it Paridon.

Maybe make a whole full adventure out of this mystery of the Hour of the Knife murders.

Just please don't make it one of the worst modules in Ravenloft with the terrible trope of a PC (or multiple) in the campaign at the table dies off screen for a one off horrible reveal.

For the other option of the non-darklord slasher there is a module with one who is not a darklord and in my opinion it is one of the best in the Ravenloft line of modules

Spoiler: spoilered to preserve the surprise

RQ1 Night of the Walking Dead, a cool secondary villain tying into a family trauma theme that affects multiple members of a family the party deals with.

Both have pros and cons to the approach. I was just wondering how often people opt for the former idea (a villain doing things in a domain unrelated to its darklord) vs making a new domain to focus on the villain. The latter seems like it would get old rather quickly, but I can't deny the amount of creative freedom is tempting.

I guess a secondary question that is hiding in this quandary is how often do you run adventure in a domain where the darklord isn't the focus (or maybe even involved). Some domains are big enough that you can adventure for a long time and never meet the darklord (Mordent and Darkon are good examples) others are so small (like Keening) or tied to their lord it seems impossible (I've never seen a Barovian adventure that didn't prominently feature Strahd, for example).

I ran a bunch of the 2e modules and did sandboxing adventures in two campaigns that lasted years.

I can remember the two parties confronting a total of four Darklords, running away from two, interacting directly with another, and tangentially dealing with stuff that involved two more. There were a lot more plots involving villains on a lower national scale who could not control mists to trap a party or have immortality clauses.

One of my favorite Ravenloft modules I ran, Howls in the Night is essentially a ghost story murder mystery one that relies much more on Van Richten's guides for its villain customization and the Darklord of the Realm does not make an appearance.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For DMs who run Ravenloft, I have a philosophical question. When you are setting up an adventure involving a villain or monsters, how often do you make them a Darklord vs how often do they exist as residents of an existing domain?

For me, it's a question of centrality and tier.

If I'm cooking up a multi-level adventure that ends in the teens or something, a darklord is a viable villain candidate. I get to build roots and minions and really go deep on the theme.

If it's a quicker adventure or something lower-tier, I shy away from darklords. Threats are more smaller-scale and more about the impact on individuals or towns.

There's exceptions, of course. Darklords don't NEED to be high-level threats, and RL can be home to high-CR monsters that AREN'T darklords. But directionally, that's my vibe.

 

[Shardstone]

For me, the setting serves two different fronts:

1.) It's essentially a more gothic version of the Witcher
2.) Dealing with the Darklords and their posse over an everescalating series of conflicts in the domain

When I run without a focus on the Darklords, its usually for one-shots or side stories. Think the hags in Curse of Strahd. You don't need to focus on the Darklords, and in fact, if you want a monster of the week-style of Ravenloft, you probably shouldn't focus on them. And you can always have weird things pulled into domains with their own agendas, like the Deva that creates Frankenstein Golems in Curse of Strahd. Some domains of dread, like the one with the Werepanthress, actually lend themselves to entertaining different factions.

Original Domains can be great. If you want a story without a Darklord focus, create a domain that's more "open ended" in idea. This means a Darklord who isn't really concerned too much with their Domain but with some other, more personal torment.

Note: this question will attempt to be as edition neutral as possible. If you want to argue about 5e vs classic Ravenloft, do that elsewhere.

For DMs who run Ravenloft, I have a philosophical question. When you are setting up an adventure involving a villain or monsters, how often do you make them a Darklord vs how often do they exist as residents of an existing domain?

Ravenloft has always done both, of course. MCA 2 was full of a dozen denizens who were evil as they were, and didn't warrant their own domain. But the vast majority of them seem to get their own domain, something encouraged in some versions (like the supplement Dark lords or the 5e version) and less so with others (the living core version of DoD and 3e).

I ask this because, as I design adventures for Ravenloft, I often debate if I should be setting it in an already existing domain or making a brand new one for the adventure. On the one hand, it's refreshing to not have every adventure in a domain be about the dark lord (or, not everything in Barovia needs to be about Strahd) but in the other, having unique monsters and villains not have their own lands and tragic flaws feels like a let down. After all, why shouldn't La Lorrona get her own domain?

Obviously there is no single answer to this, but I wonder what other DMs do when it comes to making villains in Ravenloft; do you err on the side of new Darklords and domains or opt to make them denizens of existing ones?

 

[Remathilis]

Foggy streets of London. Maybe something like a mix of London and Paris, call it Paridon.

Maybe make a whole full adventure out of this mystery of the Hour of the Knife murders.

Just please don't make it one of the worst modules in Ravenloft with the terrible trope of a PC (or multiple) in the campaign at the table dies off screen for a one off horrible reveal.

That was just a quick example I pulled because afaik there is no Ripper darklord. I am aware of Paridon, though

As an aside: I did do a slasher story, but it was based on Ghostface from Scream rather than Jack. It happened during a festival reminiscent of Guy Fawkes Day where people dress up as Father Death and burn him in effigy. I also set it in Il Aluk to celebrate the failure of the Requiem in this version, so there was a nod to Azalin and Death in the story, though the villain was a pair of siblings seeking revenge against a rival family rather than a real supernatural horror or anything Darklord related.

 

[Tonguez]

To me the Tragic backstory of the Darklord should define the Domain.
Other monsters that fit the tragic theme can exist in the Domain and even have their own subdomains (eg a Manor on the Moors within Mordent) and maybe one day will contest domination of the Domain - its all possible

Of course I lifted Mordent out of Ravenloft whole--cloth and dropped it into my homebrew as my England analogue, so I have no issue running all kinds of adventures there including fey, goblins, white wurrms, ghosts, ghoulies and lycanthropes

 

[Incenjucar]

Dark Lords, like deities, can do just fine as background elements rather than campaign cores. Dark Sun isn't just fighting sorcerer kings and Planescape doesn't need to involve getting mazed. You shrink the world if you create inevitable destinations.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So me Ravenloft without darklord focus is just a generic grimdark setting.

It's the twist that makes the famous grimdark settings. Dark Sun has their sand, offense, and lack of religious focus. Ravenloft has it's darklords. The Old World has Chaos!


If the PCs can win without a full confrontation with a darklord, it isn't a Ravenloft campaign. It's like one of those Multiverse or Time travel campaigns.

I have always subscribed to the DoD and Arthas versions of the setting, where its intended to be a real setting and not just a "weekend in hell" situation. In such a case, you generally don't want to make every adventure to be about the darklord, and in fact I believe they say that in the text.