D&D General Ravenloft: Monsters vs Darklords

[Micah Sweet]

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'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.

There's a lot of Ravenloft material over the years that involves the darklord in a tangential way at best. It sounds like you agree with WotC on the Hickman-style "weekend in hell" concept. I very much subscribe to the whole setting view.

 

[Minigiant]

There's a lot of Ravenloft material over the years that involves the darklord in a tangential way at best. It sounds like you agree with WotC on the Hickman-style "weekend in hell" concept. I very much subscribe to the whole setting view.

You don't have to do a "weekend in hell" adventure. You can do Ravenloft as domain natives, Ravenloft native, or a long term Mist-Grabee.

My opinion is that even if you are using some random monster, mage, slasher, cult, or vampire as your enemies, it's not Ravenloft if they aren't linked to a darklord. Tortured by them, created by them, funded by them, rivaling them (on their way to be one themselves)

Even in a darklord-less place like late Darkon, you are still dealing with nonsense the lich left behind and the fear that he comes back. And there is probably some idiot trying to bring the darklord back, call in other one, or transform into one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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?

I dislike with a passion the darklord hunting gameplay the boxed set inspired, so I'm avoiding the trope in my current Ravenloft campaign. The PCs meet darklords occasionally, but they are background characters, not antagonists.

 

[GrimCo]

In one of the games i ran, players met Sthrad only once. When he came to congratulate them for effective removing some of the troublesome and rebellious subjects. Whole game, they were under impression that they are working against Darklord, killing of his minions, sabotaging their plans etc, only to find out in the end that they were being used as useful idiots. No good deed goes unpunished in the Domains of Dread.

For 5e Ravenloft i have decent amount of house rules that tone down power levels of PC characters and run it more in theme with old 2ed Ravenloft (i use those materials as main source on lore).

Only Darklords my players ever killed were 2 Darklords of Borca - Ivana Boritsi and Ivan Dilisnya. They are probably least powerful Darklords in Ravenloft. I updated their statblock to 5e, they are both weak in direct physical confrontation. (in 2e they had like 8HP, AC10 and THAC0 20, they are lv 0 humans).

 

[DEFCON 1]

It sounds like folks are coming at this from two different perspectives... is Ravenloft a location, or is Ravenloft a theme?

Those that consider Ravenloft a location or a "setting" can accomplish any type of adventure they want-- with or without Darklord interference-- because so long as it takes place in or references any of the domains that the campaign book identifies, the qualities of the people, places, and locations reflect the domains as written in the setting book, and most of the tropes that the Ravenloft book gives to us are followed... then you are playing Ravenloft.

But if you consider Ravenloft to be a theme of a game and not just a location where adventuring takes place... that's when @Minigiant 's point take hold. Ravenloft is about cursed and evil dark lords forever being tortured by dangling what they utmost want in front of them but never giving it to them. Sisyphus in gothic horror. And the entire rest of the land and people that Darklord rules over are all there merely in service of the torture the Dark Forces have put in place to tantalize the Darklord. And anything you play that doesn't have that thematic thread underpinning the adventure, the characters, and the locations could basically just be considered standard Gothic Horror. Which is fine if that's what people want to play, but it's not "Ravenloft".

This argument is really no different than any other campaign setting discussion. Is an Eberron game an "Eberron" game if the Last War was not a thing and none of the Five Nations reference it or act as though they've just come out of it after 100 years and could see it all fall apart and plunge themselves back into it if their politics break down? Without that thematic underpinning is Eberron merely a generic magitech setting?

And this dichotomy is also exactly the same sort of thing that inspires some people to claim that there's "No difference!" between Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms campaign settings because they see them both merely as "bog-standard generic fantasy" settings-- while completing ignoring or being ignorant of the politics and thematic ties both settings have that make their worlds distinct.

Deciding on how one feels about what campaign settings are meant to do will go a long way in determining which way you might look at it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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?

I almost exclusively go with monsters, rather than Dark Lords. Nothing wrong with using Dark Lords. I just prefer using them very occasionally, because if you are always using them, it feels like the point of the setting becomes killing individual domain lords. Also, generally I like the feel of them as background figures. That said I have run modules where players contend with Strahd, Azlin, Mordenheim, Harkon Lukas, etc. I've also had this kind of confrontation come up without modules. I recall a player getting into it with Ivan Dilisyna back when Dorvnia was still a Domain (he was always one of my favorites because I interpreted as being heavily based on John Hurt's portrayal of Caligula). The player blew up the Dilisnya Estate with a combination of fireballs and science (as a GM I may have been overly generous in that moment). And remember running Castles Forlorn as well where Tristen ApBlanc comes up. I know others have also emerged in play. Also I tended to be more likely to use Dark Lords on Islands of Terror. So even only doing it occasionally over thirty+ years of play in the setting, many of the dark lords have come up. And often I had different groups. And if was a spontaneous campaign, I might run some of those modules as one shots. Most were long campaigns. I preferred Ravenloft, even in the black box era, as a main setting for me to run. But I would still say my percentage is probably something like 99% monsters, 1% Dark Lords (maybe 2 percent).

Also something important to consider, in Ravenloft, villains of all stripes usually function similar to Domain lords in that they were shaped through their own evil actions by the dark powers and the powers check system. So you don't need Dark Lords to have every adventure have the same level of villainy as a dark lords. As a setting it lends itself very well to pitting the players against unique monsters and villains laboring under strange curses. And you can make your own domain lords, and domain lords can exist in very very small areas, within an existing domain (the House of Lament for example).

 

[Remathilis]

I almost exclusively go with monsters, rather than Dark Lords. Nothing wrong with using Dark Lords. I just prefer using them very occasionally, because if you are always using them, it feels like the point of the setting becomes killing individual domain lords. Also, generally I like the feel of them as background figures. That said I have run modules where players contend with Strahd, Azlin, Mordenheim, Harkon Lukas, etc. I've also had this kind of confrontation come up without modules. I recall a player getting into it with Ivan Dilisyna back when Dorvnia was still a Domain (he was always one of my favorites because I interpreted as being heavily based on John Hurt's portrayal of Caligula). The player blew up the Dilisnya Estate with a combination of fireballs and science (as a GM I may have been overly generous in that moment). And remember running Castles Forlorn as well where Tristen ApBlanc comes up. I know others have also emerged in play. Also I tended to be more likely to use Dark Lords on Islands of Terror. So even only doing it occasionally over thirty+ years of play in the setting, many of the dark lords have come up. And often I had different groups. And if was a spontaneous campaign, I might run some of those modules as one shots. Most were long campaigns. I preferred Ravenloft, even in the black box era, as a main setting for me to run. But I would still say my percentage is probably something like 99% monsters, 1% Dark Lords (maybe 2 percent).

Also something important to consider, in Ravenloft, villains of all stripes usually function similar to Domain lords in that they were shaped through their own evil actions by the dark powers and the powers check system. So you don't need Dark Lords to have every adventure have the same level of villainy as a dark lords. As a setting it lends itself very well to pitting the players against unique monsters and villains laboring under strange curses. And you can make your own domain lords, and domain lords can exist in very very small areas, within an existing domain (the House of Lament for example).

I've been doing the same. I've done a few domains within a domain (House of Lament, I ran GG's Cage of Delirium as a micro domain in Mordent) and references to different lords, but the group has mainly fought against rivals, minor villains, and enemies of their own making, but not many dark lords (canonical or homebrew). However, I had a moment when I questioned if I should have been using dark lords directly rather than use them as background elements.

 

[GrimCo]

And to be fair, some monsters are scarier and tougher in direct combat than some of the Darklords.

For example, before mentioned Ivana & Ivan. LV 1 fighter with greatsword and str 16 can one shot them with average damage roll. They have 1HD, no armor, no magic per se ( except their poison tricks). They are Darklords, but besides good ability scores, have very little combat provess. On the other end of the spectrum, we have likes of Vecna (demigod), Kas the Destroyer and Lord Soth. Those buggers are nasty in combat.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I've been doing the same. I've done a few domains within a domain (House of Lament, I ran GG's Cage of Delirium as a micro domain in Mordent) and references to different lords, but the group has mainly fought against rivals, minor villains, and enemies of their own making, but not many dark lords (canonical or homebrew). However, I had a moment when I questioned if I should have been using dark lords directly rather than use them as background elements.

I think it is entirely up to you. Personally I found the settings feels deeper if the players aren’t always confronting dark lords. If they are primarily facing dark lords, it can feel small. Shifting focus to other threats inside Ravenloft forces you to expand the setting more. It also is more stable as a setting if the focus is on individual monsters (domains aren’t constantly reconfiguring or disappearing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ravenloft is equal parts horror B movie parody and mind screw.