Mercule
Adventurer
Unfortunately, I suspect you're right. The insipid multiculturalism in 4e is possibly the most annoying aspect of the PoL, in the first place. Adding it to Ravenloft is beyond ridiculous.
4e Ravenloft - Dragon 368
- Thread starter Shroomy
- Start date
malraux
First Post
I disagree; I think that if WotC wants to put x races in the PHB, the WotC settings should support those x races.
CORE?! 
I reveled in the fact that it wasn't easy to get sucked into or get out of the Domain of Dread.
And whats this I hear about each domain possibly being an Island of Terror? Me. So. Mad.
I reveled in the fact that it wasn't easy to get sucked into or get out of the Domain of Dread.
And whats this I hear about each domain possibly being an Island of Terror? Me. So. Mad.
Vocenoctum
First Post
I was not really "into" D&D at the time, but from what I recall it has nothing to do with SovPress, but with the authors. Ravenloft co-opted Soth, and when Weis/Hickman made another DL novel, they ignored Ravenloft entirely, keeping Soth always/forever in DL.
TSR then came up with a RL excuse for it, to cover the settings.
Irda Ranger
First Post
What's the point of having different campaign settings then if they're all just the same races, classes and cultures? Different maps?
malraux
First Post
I have no idea what the point of that would be. I also don't see anyone here arguing for it.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Sure, but 4e in particular has a few weirdnesses that are going to make it more difficult.
For one, tieflings.
"Hey, what's with the horns? You a goat-man or summat?"
"My ancestors swore an unholy pact with Asmodeus for power, and --"
LYNCHMOB'D!
For two, eladrin.
"Hey, I closed the door! How'd you get in!"
"You see, I can cross between worlds for a moment, so mortal walls are no barrier to my --"
LYNCHMOB'D!
For three, warlocks.
"Sir, how did you slay that monster?"
"I sold my soul to unspeakable otherworldly forces for the power to fart magic!"
LYNCHMOB'D!
For four, dragonborn.
"OH SWEET JESUS IT BREATHES FIRE AND WALKS AS A MAN! STAB IT! STAB IT NOW!"
Elves, dwarves, halflings...these critters can pass as "funny-lookin'" pretty okay. And most classes won't make the PC's stand out any more than they do in a normal campaign, anyway. But a couple of 4e-isms just plain don't work in a campaign that is trying to evoke isolation, distrust, and terror of the unknown and different. It would be like throwing a fish-man race in a Cthulu campaign. No, these things are not heroes in this setting. Even if they might be in other settings, it ruins the mood here. They are horrific monsters, beasts of tremendous danger, and even that kid with the pointy ears should probably not be on the street after nightfall.
Not that they won't make it work. They will. My guess is this will all be glossed over in about a sentence or two regarding how scary-xenophobic the place is and how the DM should play this up by having the PC's get a cold reception wherever they go. That will be enough for most people, I'm sure. But a 4e tiefling warlock is not a hero for a Gothic Europe-esque setting. It's a fine hero for a Fantasy Hodgepodge, but part of the appeal of other settings is that they aren't a Fantasy Hodgepodge. For a lot of purists, this will basically be blasphemy.
I solve this problem like I solve all my 4e problems: I don't DM 4e.
Edit: I'm now DMing 4e. I like it. But I still wouldn't have warlocks in my Ravenloft campaign.
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Shemeska
Adventurer
I agree with literally every point you made in your last post, but that line there was made of awesome. Just saying.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
Something like that. It's a little more complicated.
I suppose this is an example of Darwinismn? Eladrin that teleport around carelessly are not fit to survive in a world full of lynch job?
" am trained in the arcana arts."
LYNCHMOB'D!
Sorry, it doesn't really matter that you sold your soul to the devil. Either spellcasters are hated and feared, or they are not. If they are not, it's trivially easy to avoid prosecution from lynch-mobs.
Why is the Dragonborn breathing fire in public? Do you think they sneeze fire or what?
"Funny-looking?" That's exactly what will get you killed in a paranoid, xenophobic culture. Pointy Ears, strange customs, unusual height? Who would trust them?
Sure, you can create a world where only a subset of the funny-looking guys are feared and subject to xenophobic lynch mobs. But the "realistic" approach is to say that most societies only sport one race, and each other is feared or hated.
If I am not mistaken, the world of Ravenloft assumes that entire landscapes have been taken into the world. If an integrated community has been taken, it can only go two ways - either they destroy each other over their differences, or they keep integrated.
So either you have some integrated communities that got adopted, or you have only isolated communities where one race keeps to itself and fears everything alien.
Story-Wise, the only hope for these communities is probably to overcome their fears and work together, and envoys like adventurers might be your only choice.
Very often, the trick for "aliens" to avoid lynchmobs is not being there when something bad happens. Lynchmobs usually don't form just because you have a different skin or pointy ears, they form because the daughter of the tavern owner has disappeared and livestock was found dead. Then you'll start the lynch mobs.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Mudstrum_Ridcully said:
Hahaha, true. But if they don't, think about what Eladrin are, from a flavor POV. They're otherworldly creatures from another realm, inscrutable and unusual. In a xenophobic place, they're monsters. I LOVE monsters-as-PC's (as my DMs will most surely attest!), but it's just disruptive in a campaign where the foreign is always considered evil. Ravenloft, from my experiences, was partially fun because of that. If you shun a half-elf for being "different," what is your reaction going to be to the inscrutable foreigner?
Core 4e D&D is very "modernist" like this. It's very Tru Blood. Vampires are people, too, just people that can't enter houses unless you invite them, kind of thing.
Ravenloft's mood would, I think, be ruined by this kind of acceptance. And because a world where you're always getting lynched isn't much fun for most PC's, the general answer to the question of "Can I play a creature regarded as a horrible monster?" should be "No." In Ravenloft, "horrible monster" is a pretty broad category that includes anything foreign. If it looks a bit like you, maybe it might be okay to let sleep on the street while the guards keep a sharp eye on it, but in a place of horror, trust gets you killed. The mists of Ravenloft were more than evocative window-dressing, they were a metaphor for the utter isolation of a world where the unknown killed you.
I mean, the night sky, in regular D&D, is a place of wonder and magic. In Cthulu, it's a place of madness and apathy. In Ravenloft, it's a place of death and terror. A campaign setting colors your world, and you shouldn't expect to be able to get away with the same things you could in D&D in Cthulu.
That's extremely disingenuous. Of course it mattes. Not all magic in D&D is the same -- clerics and paladins call on gods, wizards stick their noses in books, sword mages dance about, warlocks make pacts with otherworldly entities.
In an insular society, only one of those brings the outside to face you in a torrent of hellfire and damnation, and that's warlocks. When your setting is defined in part by fear of the other someone that deliberately calls on the Other for power is something to be feared and killed, not something to hire to take care of your little vampire problem.
Are all battles in your campaigns fought in a dark room with no one watching? Aren't there survivors, battle scars, evidence for what they can do? Do your PC's only magically gain the ability to use their powers when in battle, or do they use it as part of their character, lighting fires with fire breath and using teleportation to skip that patch of horse muck in the road?
Also, don't the dragonborn look like big lizard people with sharp pointy teeth and scaly skin and beaks?
Anything I'd be scared to meet in a dark alley at night would probably be inappropriate for Ravenloft PC's, because the entire setting is the "dark alley at night" of D&D. This broadly probably includes frightening lizard-people who could eat you.
You wouldn't be easily trusted, but you'd be familiar enough. Human variation produced every genetic "freak" at every circus ever. In Ravenloft, these are the children left to die as signs that the family lineage is cursed. Pointy ears happen, but they're not trusted. Unusual height happens, but it's not trusted. If such a creature were to survive to adulthood, you might recognize it as vaguely human, because such tragic beasts happen, but you wouldn't trust it.
There is a threshold for freakiness. Part of the appeal of Ravenloft, to me, was that the threshold was significantly lower than it was in most D&D campaigns. The non-humans all were considered to be varying levels of accursed, depending on how "foriegn" they were to humans. If you don't consider Eladrin and Dragonborn and Tieflings to be more foriegn than elves, then I don't think you're quite properly grokking what xenophobic horror is really all about. If Elves are weird (and, in previous editions of Ravenloft, elves were weird), then what should be the reaction to tieflings, who are MUCH weirder than any elf?
I'll put it in some more context: Ravenloft has a "gypsy people" (the Vistani). These gypsy people are, for all intents and purposes, humans. They are mistrusted wherever they go, seen as unholy, godless people without morals, who practice dark arts, and probably eat babies. They are thrown out of villages and become the scapegoats for whatever problems crop up.
These are humans who just don't live in towns. They inspire that level of fear. If someone with dark skin makes you freak out, then some guy with devil horns and a tail is going to blow your effin' gasket.
Though, to be honest, I really wouldn't have much of a problem with making Ravenloft a human-only setting. Add something to show some cultural variation for some mechanical choice (is your character Vistani? Barovian?), and I'd be perfectly happy with it. Gothic horror doesn't need dwarves.
Part of that depends on how 4e treats Ravenloft. If it still draws domains into itself, then integration is plausible. If it is it's own land off in the mountains somewhere, isolated and remote, it's less plausible.
I would argue that this assumes a much less paranoid world than I have fun with. People close and lock their doors and shutter their windows when humans with a slightly different culture pass by. You don't take risks when the critter is massive and has scales and pointy teeth. You call on the local heroes to slay the thing.
This is because in Ravenloft, when "something bad happens," it's not just dead livestock and a disappearing daughter. It's "Your daughter gave birth to an unholy devil-child who then devoured her and all of your cattle and sits in a cocoon inside a cavern out back, slowly transforming into a hideous beast, all the while sending haunting nightmares to you and the rest of the town, which have a disturbing tendency to cause people to kill themselves in the middle of the night." You don't take chances in a setting like that.
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