Honestly, I find Ravenloft tough to buy at first blush. To me, it's always been about mixing Conan with Count Dracula. It's just a funny mash-up that strains credibility. Adding a tiefling or a warlock will hardly break the setting any more than it's already been broken. And goliaths & dragonborn are no more inherently silly than elves with many-voweled names.
The 'rollplaying' crack is unnecessary and obnoxious, but the difference in styles is, I think, a fact.
I think the part where I disagree is ... well, I guess everything, now that I think about it.I am going to be unapologetic about this. (Not just the above quote, but everyone who felt the need to respond.) My intent wasn't to be 'obnoxious'...it was to simply observe that Ravenloft has a "less superhero" approach to D&D (for most RL gamers) and that 4th edition is all about playing cinematic action-heroes.
Ravenloft is absolutely playable with 4th edition, but it seems to me (in my opinion) that it's ill-fitting and goes against RL's themes of 'everyman' heroes against overwhelming adversity.
I've been gaming and buying the books for both Ravenloft and 4th edition since the day they came out, so my feelings about their compatibility aren't based on lack of experience with either.
Matthew's post actually said it much more eloquently compared to the way that I intended in my original post. Now, let's move on please.
Look at the perfect Raveloft movie, "Sleepy Hollow". That is how Ravenloft feels to me, as opposed to the ealier "FR characters get drawn into gothic setting".To some degree, I concurr. It always seemed that, if there was ever a novel penned or film directed about a particular creature, the writers were forced to fit it into the Ravenloft setting somehow. I mean, it has zombies, werewolves, ghosts, mummies, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, ad nauseum.
People can (and no doubt will) say that every monster of Ravenloft is a unique gem of creativity that owes no debt to modern movie monsters or classic Horror fiction. All this tells me is that such people haven't watched too many modern monster movies or read very much classic Horror fiction. For better or worse, I've been exposed to a lot of both.
This being the case, when Ravenloft borrows so much from better known genre works in such blatant ways, it borders on satire for the people familiar with said sources. It can be overwhelming at times. Despite this, I still like Ravenloft a lot (I'd say that it is my second favorite official AD&D setting, surpassed only by Greyhawk).
That said, I don't recall Ravenloft containing any rules that made it any more 'role-play' oriented than other D&D settings, though I guess that the Tarokka was an attempt at such rules (albeit one that never seemed to work out very well for publishers). For me, Ravenloft always seemed like bog standard D&D steeped in the tropes of Horror easily indentified as originating from other sources (which, incidentally, is why I like it).
Look at the perfect Raveloft movie, "Sleepy Hollow". That is how Ravenloft feels to me, as opposed to the ealier "FR characters get drawn into gothic setting".
The thing with Ravenloft is that every monster or NPC, while based on familar -- even clichéd -- tropes, has its own backstory and personality. It's never "werewolf #2", it's "Karl Yugsbern, werewolf".
I agree. I think I would rather see Greyhawk and Dragonlance than Dark Sun and Ravenloft for this reason.
It is, however, kind of disappointing to me that 4e won't embrace are re-definition of its own terms. I play different settings to play different types of heroes, to re-define the kinds of adventures and the kinds of characters I play. Different settings appeal to me as different genrea.
It's kind of disappointing that 4e is all the same game, just with different names.