D&D General Ravenloft: Monsters vs Darklords

[Bedrockgames]

And that's what I mean.

Ravenloft is defined by their darklords.

Ravenloft is defined by the dark powers. The dark lords are merely their prisoners and their most prized display items

If you are running Borca but sic random machete mask maniacs at the party who are unconnected to Ivan or Ivana then is it still Borca and still Ravenloft?

Why would the maniac have to be connected to Ivana? The whole point of the Dark Lord influencing the shape of a domain is the domain will have a feel. Poison, intrigue and creatures like Emordenungs are likely to come up in Borca. This gives it a very different feel from Barovia even if you never encounter Ivana or Strahd. You are still there, you are still experiencing it. And you are clearly in a world shaped by the dark powers and mists

 

[Minigiant]

Yes, you just aren't meeting the dark lords of those domains. But you are still there. I have never met the governor of Massachusetts, but I still very much live in Massachusetts and feel the effects of each administration

Yes, because you are in Massachusetts and interact with Massachusetts.

If you go to Massachusetts and interact with no one from Massachusetts and experience none of the culture of Massachusetts, did you experience Massachusetts?

If you run solely monsters and villains unconnected to the darklords and domain's theme, I feel you miss most of the point of running Ravenloft over some other horror setting that might handle it better.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, because you are in Massachusetts and interact with Massachusetts.

If you go to Massachusetts and interact with no one from Massachusetts and experience none of the culture of Massachusetts, did you experience Massachusetts?

If you run solely monsters and villains unconnected to the darklords and domain's theme, I feel you miss most of the point of running Ravenloft over some other horror setting that might handle it better.

Depends on what your goals are. I can easily see someone using Ravenloft as their setting because they like D&D and think undead and lycanthropes are cool. And I'm sure everyone would get along just fine.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes, because you are in Massachusetts and interact with Massachusetts.

If you go to Massachusetts and interact with no one from Massachusetts and experience none of the culture of Massachusetts, did you experience Massachusetts?

Well I would still be in Massachusetts, but I might be missing out. However these things are not equivalent. Not meeting the governor is equivalent to not meeting Strahd. You can not meet the governor and still interact with people from Massachusetts and see sights in massachusetts.

Not encountering Starhd in Barovia isn't the same as not encountering anyone in barovia.

But to continue with this analogy, to me if I am in a Ravenloft game and the first thing the GM does is have Strahd show up. That is like going to massachusetts and hitting the Witch Museum. It feels like a tourist trap

If you run solely monsters and villains unconnected to the darklords and domain's theme, I feel you miss most of the point of running Ravenloft over some other horror setting that might handle it better.

Now you are adding things though. The question is whether the dark lords are featured, not whether you also eschew a domain's themes. I mean if I set an adventure in Kartakass, wolfweres, music and werewolves are going to feature in. But Harkon Lukas doesn't have to show up to make sure we are playing Ravenloft the right way. I don't know, I have been running Ravenloft since the black boxed set came out and while I certainly have had players face off or deal directly with dark lords, those instances always feel too on the nose for me, and its the sessions that are modeled more after the monster hunts in the Van Richten books that really feel like Ravnloft to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well I would still be in Massachusetts, but I might be missing out. However these things are not equivalent. Not meeting the governor is equivalent to not meeting Strahd. You can not meet the governor and still interact with people from Massachusetts and see sights in massachusetts.

Not encountering Starhd in Barovia isn't the same as not encountering anyone in barovia.

But to continue with this analogy, to me if I am in a Ravenloft game and the first thing the GM does is have Strahd show up. That is like going to massachusetts and hitting the Witch Museum. It feels like a tourist trap



Now you are adding things though. The question is whether the dark lords are featured, not whether you also eschew a domain's themes. I mean if I set an adventure in Kartakass, wolfweres, music and werewolves are going to feature in. But Harkon Lukas doesn't have to show up to make sure we are playing Ravenloft the right way. I don't know, I have been running Ravenloft since the black boxed set came out and while I certainly have had players face off or deal directly with dark lords, those instances always feel too on the nose for me, and its the sessions that are modeled more after the monster hunts in the Van Richten books that really feel like Ravnloft to me.

I loved those monster hunts! Really felt like you were immersed in the setting.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Excuse you, did you read the rest of what you wrote? You can't say "well, there are two sides to this" and then basically declare that one side are a bunch of morons. Nothing you wrote, in any paragraph, is a Get Out of Jail Free card for the rest of it.

I don't particularly care about Ravenloft one way or another. I do think people running around declaring that playing a certain way "isn't Ravenloft" is gross and incredibly toxic.

I wasn't "declaring" anything, I was restating what some people believed... and I not once stated nor implied the other side were "morons". That is an exceedingly uncharitable view of what I wrote and you didn't even bother to check to see if that is how I meant it. I might have even apologized for the manner in which I wrote it if you felt it was more strident than you thought it deserved and you had said "Hey, I'm getting X from what you are saying and I think that's not a very fair assumption. Do you really mean it like that?"... and I might have tried to restate it to make my analysis more clear.

But now? No thanks. You wanted to immediately assume negative intent on my part, so you know what? Go right ahead. You do you. Just know that at least * I * now know whose opinions I don't need to consider anymore because their analysis skills are not at the point where it's worth it for me to listen to them.

Good day.

 

[Voadam]

Core 2e Ravenloft is definitely set up to do campaigns and not involve Darklords if you don't want to.

You could do a whole campaign as a Van Richten style travelling ghost hunter collective, dealing with a bunch of hugely variant hauntings with stories tied to different places and their themes, and never confront or see a darklord. The setting provides ample official material to do so, Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts, Children of the Night Ghosts, and Howls in the Night come to mind.

Such a campaign would feel very core Ravenloft to me.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Core 2e Ravenloft is definitely set up to do campaigns and not involve Darklords if you don't want to.

You could do a whole campaign as a Van Richten style travelling ghost hunter collective, dealing with a bunch of hugely variant hauntings with stories tied to different places and their themes, and never confront or see a darklord. The setting provides ample official material to do so, Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts, Children of the Night Ghosts, and Howls in the Night come to mind.

Such a campaign would feel very core Ravenloft to me.

This is pretty important I think. One reason that the 5E Ravenloft felt off for me is it seemed to heavily prioritize confronting dark lords as a kind of ‘play loop’. But the 2E line had tons of material that didn’t focus on them, especially the van richten books. Dark Lords mattered, but you could completely run a campaign without using them

 

[Remathilis]

That's exactly the problem with it. Ravenloft isn't supposed to feel real. Gothic horror as a genre isn't supposed to feel real.

This is a difficult needle to thread.

On the one hand, I agree. Horror has a dreamlike quality to it. The nights are abnormally long (or at least feel that way). The streets are unusually quiet. The mist shrouded forest is exceptionally dark. On the other hand, it needs to have that tinge of reality to make the surreal seem strange. People need to have jobs and markets and food to eat. Sometimes you get horror where things are so bad, there is no way people would be able to survive in the towns and villages.

In Ravenloft's case, I think a mixture of the WiH and living world models work best. Having Frankensteinland next to Draculaland doesn't make muchv logical sense, but the setting also needs pilgrims and merchants and travelers to move from place to place. A compromise of the surreal and the real.

 

[Remathilis]

Core 2e Ravenloft is definitely set up to do campaigns and not involve Darklords if you don't want to.

Personally, almost ALL Ravenloft can do that, assuming you have a domain with the proper setup. (some domains, like old Keening or ICath did not lend themselves to anything but a face-the-darklord adventure). Even 5e Ravenloft leaves most domains open enough that you can do adventures not tied to the Darklord (they even give an "adventures in X" table in each domain with adventure ideas that don't all feature the domain lord).