D&D 5E Everything We Know About The Ravenloft Book

Bedrockgames · Feb 27, 2021

Ruin Explorer said:
"Gameable" is a meaningless term here because is no setting so bad, so poorly put together, so fundamentally dull that some DM doesn't consider "gameable". And they're probably right that it is! But it's just an incredibly low bar.

I strongly disagree with this. Gameable is one of the most meaningful terms you can use in gaming. There are plenty of great settings that read well, that are 100% hard to game. They are not gameable. And I found Ravenloft particularly gameable as a setting. I think a lot of the people arguing on my side here, are doing so because they did as well. Again, you put the black box together with van richten books, and some of the advice in feast of goblyns and that gives you a solid road map for years long campaigns. I know, that is exactly what i did.

Chaosmancer · Feb 27, 2021

Bedrockgames said:
In Ravenloft an Island of Terror is isolated in the sea of mists. I agree that doesn't mean it has to be entrapped (it might just be hard to navigate to). But I was responding to people who said they need to be islands of dread that are not connected so that you can have all entrapment scenarios.

I think if you look at the core in the 2E boxed set, you see it is pretty easy to have domains be connected as part of a central landmass, with some resembling one another geographically, others being more oddly 'stitched on', and still have those realms reflect the darklord and serve well as their prison for punishment. With Falkovnia, they need places on their border to attack. And it makes sense those places should be other domains. I suppose the mists could just have places for him to invade inside his domain. I think it was more interesting have it be Darkon so that he was a constant pest to Azlin, and the lich lord could send back his solders as undead.

The Vecna Domain, if I recall, wasn't created for the line till Domains of Dread** (though its possible it appeared in the Red Boxed set or some other supplement and I forgot). Technically it though those were two connected domains (these were a concept called clusters that were introduced after the black boxed set and they were essentially like miniature cores). The core is really just, for lack of a better word, a Ravenloft continent made up of domains that are connected to one another. A cluster is just a smaller continent. The cluster was called The Burning Peaks, but it was made up of two domains: Covitius (whose lord was Vecna) and Tovag (whose lord is Kas). And some of the core domains could even have co-domain lords. But overall the borders in the core, generally corresponded to the borders of the realm as well.

Basically in the 90s TSR version of Ravenloft you had a core, which was the main continent, and this had tens of domains in it (it is where Barovia, Lamordia, Falkovnia, Tepest, Darkon, Kartakass, etc were located). There was a sea here, and later on they added a sea on the other side so it eventually had two coasts. This entire area was surrounded by mists. Beyond those mists were the Islands of terror and the clusters. In addition you had smaller domains that could show up within other domains (haunted houses, rooms, that kind of thing). It all worked really well. You had the core which provided a regular place for the players to exist in, but you had the more amorphous landscape deeper in the surrounding mists where islands of terror could be found.

I don't know. If the core doesn't work for you as a concept, that is fine. I just think it was such an obviously workable idea in practice, from all the years of play I had at the table, I don't understand why this is being treated as a controversial opinion.

**A note about this because this term seems to be causing a lot of confusion: I am talking about the Domains of Dread rulebook, released for 2E in 1997. The Ravenloft 2E line starts with the Realm of Terror Boxed set (the black boxed set, which expands the original ravenloft module and the house on gryphon hill into a complete setting), followed by the Ravenloft Campaign Setting (the red boxed set, which reshapes rravenloft according to the events of the Grand Conjunction: which were part of a series of modules), then that was followed by Domains of Dread. There were also lots of supplements in between for new domains, and a boxed set called Forbidden Lore (expanded rules with fortune telling dice and cool methods for bringing visitani fortune telling into the game). A lot of the modules also kind of served as setting supplements, like Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn.

I think it is because you keep claiming that something important is being lost by it not being a connected continent... and I don't know what it is you are actually losing. Like, you keep making the claim then going on a tangent.

Sure, I guess that one domain about the misogynist warmonger needed to have women and wizards next to him to have him lose wars needs the concept to work, but other than that, what about running a campaign in Barovia is truly lost if you can't casually walk out of it and into a different domain?

Even @Paul Farquhar wasn't saying that you need all entrapment all the time, he was saying that if you can just casually leave the situation, then it is incredibly difficult to make it horrific, because if you know you don't have to engage with the no-win scenario... then you don't engage with it. So, for him, the idea of the core "needing" to exist so that the players can casually and without consequence travel between domains, creates more problems than it solves.

And I think that is compounded by the constant answer as well of all problems being solved because the Dark Powers enforce the status quo to keep the punishments cycling for all eternity. Yes, that is what they do, but the more blatant and the more often you need to reference them, the less effective they are.

And, with discussions of Mistways and shipping routes, I don't see how breaking up the core really makes that big of a difference in the terms of the players feeling less trapped. But it also gives you a less... overt way to trap them. Instead of "Strahd raises the border and none can leave" it could be as simple as "the next boat doesn't arrive for three days". It gives a knob to turn, that doesn't require overt actions. And combining that with the lack of me seeing what the problem is except that you liked the idea of walking from one domain to the other, I'm not sure what you are trying to convince us of except that you ran successful campaigns in the old version. Which is great, but that doesn't tell me why the new version is bad.

Chaosmancer · Feb 27, 2021

Bedrockgames said:
When it came out we all thought of it as a horror RPG (at least everyone I knew did, things were not as connected back then so maybe it was different outside my area). It was a horror RPG with an almost directly opposite school of thought from Ravenloft, but still horror (it was horror in the style of something like Anne Rice, where the horror comes from the loss of your humanity). I was very into horror at the time. There were different camps. Ravenloft was more subtle horror (it was based in gothic, but I considered it a game for classic horror fans). But at the time slashers were a big genre (classic horror fans would often look down at slasher films, but I liked them too, and they were still horror). Then you had more body horror stuff like clive barker. Just different flavors. Vampire was a bit more romantic and gothic as I recall. I tended to prefer games where you are facing the horror rather than becoming the horror. But it is worth pointing out that vampire proved so popular it gave TSR a run for its money, and Ravenloft actually did eventually provide rules for playing things like undead if I remember (and at the time I felt it was a response to Vampire's popularity).

I guess it never struck me as horror because "losing your humanity" is very difficult to pull off in a game. Plus, I've got friends who'd jump into it feet first just for the fun of it.

Chaosmancer · Feb 27, 2021

QuentinGeorge said:
As stated earlier Vecna and Kas were in different domains and their punishment was slightly different. Vecna was denied power and freedom (he wanted to be a god, didn't really care about Kas that much) whereas Kas was cursed in never being able to actually beat Vecna, as well as being denied his powerful sword. (And teased with swords that looked like it continually appearing in his domain).

shrug

The game I was in that featured imploded violently (not physical) but it was never once presented as two seperate domains to us. The only borders were surrounding the two. not between them. I mean, sure, there were mountains, but it wasn't a border that either one of them could do anything about, so it felt like a single domain, just split in half.

It was also just... a bad experience. Assist Vecna or Assist Kas there is no other choice, was the name of the game, and it got heavy handed with the railroading

Bedrockgames · Feb 27, 2021

Chaosmancer said:
I think it is because you keep claiming that something important is being lost by it not being a connected continent... and I don't know what it is you are actually losing. Like, you keep making the claim then going on a tangent.

Sure, I guess that one domain about the misogynist warmonger needed to have women and wizards next to him to have him lose wars needs the concept to work, but other than that, what about running a campaign in Barovia is truly lost if you can't casually walk out of it and into a different domain?

Even @Paul Farquhar wasn't saying that you need all entrapment all the time, he was saying that if you can just casually leave the situation, then it is incredibly difficult to make it horrific, because if you know you don't have to engage with the no-win scenario... then you don't engage with it. So, for him, the idea of the core "needing" to exist so that the players can casually and without consequence travel between domains, creates more problems than it solves.

And I think that is compounded by the constant answer as well of all problems being solved because the Dark Powers enforce the status quo to keep the punishments cycling for all eternity. Yes, that is what they do, but the more blatant and the more often you need to reference them, the less effective they are.

And, with discussions of Mistways and shipping routes, I don't see how breaking up the core really makes that big of a difference in the terms of the players feeling less trapped. But it also gives you a less... overt way to trap them. Instead of "Strahd raises the border and none can leave" it could be as simple as "the next boat doesn't arrive for three days". It gives a knob to turn, that doesn't require overt actions. And combining that with the lack of me seeing what the problem is except that you liked the idea of walking from one domain to the other, I'm not sure what you are trying to convince us of except that you ran successful campaigns in the old version. Which is great, but that doesn't tell me why the new version is bad.

I think I have laid out clearly what is being lost. If you are not persuaded by it you aren't. But I honestly can't imagine running ravenloft without a core. It really made a big difference. And the point so many of us are making is classic ravenloft had BOTH. You can do exactly what you are talking about in Ravenloft during the 90s using islands of terror, and you had the option of using the core as a domains connected together and formed into a kind of continent. If having the core works for so many people (like me and many other posters here) why would you make it all islands of terror?

And I think there is a substantial difference in a setting between lands that are physically connected and ones that are connected by waterways. That changes the flavor of the places themselves (because it is very different to be reliant on that kind of delayed communication and transport) and it changes the way the players interact with those settings.

What is lost about Barovia and other lands that you can't walk out of, is it makes it harder to have a real ongoing campaign where the players want to actually adventure in the setting. Nothing is really connected to anything else. They are just isolated places to explore. In the setting as presented in the black box, you can't just walk out of Barovia if Strahd doesn't want you to. But movement from Barovia to Gundarak, or to Borca, or another connected domain, is a possibility. That allows the players to hear about places, seek them out, get a sense of the overall shape of the land. It matters.

Again, I think I am as perplexed as some of the other posters about the antagonism toward this idea. I don't understand what folks think is so special about limiting Ravenloft to being isolated islands. Especially when isolated islands already exist in abundance in the setting alongside the core

Bedrockgames · Feb 27, 2021

Chaosmancer said:
I guess it never struck me as horror because "losing your humanity" is very difficult to pull off in a game. Plus, I've got friends who'd jump into it feet first just for the fun of it.

Personally not a fan of vampire myself. But just because I don't particularly like a game or setting concept, that doesn't mean it isn't horror. But it is pretty clear it belongs to the horror genre

Bedrockgames · Feb 27, 2021

Chaosmancer said:
shrug

The game I was in that featured imploded violently (not physical) but it was never once presented as two seperate domains to us. The only borders were surrounding the two. not between them. I mean, sure, there were mountains, but it wasn't a border that either one of them could do anything about, so it felt like a single domain, just split in half.

It was also just... a bad experience. Assist Vecna or Assist Kas there is no other choice, was the name of the game, and it got heavy handed with the railroading

If you look at the entry in Domains of Dread, they are two separate domains

Chaosmancer · Feb 27, 2021

QuentinGeorge said:
But you can chart a course with the map. Thousands of people make the journey from Lamordia to Borca all the time. Not many go to Valachan but that's because its a backwater. The Mistways provide generally reliable routes to most of the other places.

Yeah this is blatantly not true. They removed the domains from the Core that didn't belong there after the Red Box setting. (Zherisia, Bluetspur, the Nightmare lands etc). The remaining fit quite well - Dementileu, Mordent, Richemulot share a common culture and language. Lamordia is close culturally as well. Borca and Barovia share a language, as do Kartakass, Valachan, Hazlan and Nova Vaasa. Nova Vaasa and Hazlan share a religion. They all fit pretty well and their are cohesive cross-border socio-cultural links. It's no less hodgepodge than the Forgotten Realms.

And again, the realms are not "influenced" by their Darklord. The realms function in a way to maximise the torment of its "ruler". Let's take Farelle, an Island of Terror ruled by a human-hating jackalwere. He has to watch his subjects grow, beat back the wilderness and generally suceed at building civilisation because the Dark Powers know that's what the darklord would hate!

But that wilderness is exactly what the jackalwere wants right? It is created to his specifications? And he is the one who can close the border to Farelle, just like Strahd, right?

Sure, he is always going to lose, because plot, but that has nothing to do with what I am saying.

And, I guess, if Dementileu, Mordent, Richemulot, Lamordia, Borca, Barovia, Kartakass, Valachan, Hazlan and Nova Vaasa are all so similiar... how does that fit with these Dark Lords being taken from across the multiverse?

You had Soth from DL, a jackalwere in the forest, an egyptian kingdom ruled by a mummy. I mean, I thought some of those were big name places, the mummy one wasn't part of the Core? And how did these dozen or so darklords all come from basically the same place? That seems... odd.

Bedrockgames · Feb 27, 2021

Chaosmancer said:
Even @Paul Farquhar wasn't saying that you need all entrapment all the time, he was saying that if you can just casually leave the situation, then it is incredibly difficult to make it horrific, because if you know you don't have to engage with the no-win scenario... then you don't engage with it. So, for him, the idea of the core "needing" to exist so that the players can casually and without consequence travel between domains, creates more problems than it solves.

Again, you can't just casually leave if the domain lord doesn't want you to. There is nothing stopping the GM from preventing the players from leaving by having the dark lord close the borders. Also the village and castle of Barovia still have a poisonous fog that, once breathed in by the players, mean they can't leave that area without Strahd's permission. So even with the core, you still have a clear device for entrapment at Strahd's doorstep. I really don't see how it creates problems if it still retains the ability to have players entrapped there if you need it, but also gives the players more of an ability to explore the domains and for the domains to create a sense of a real interconnected place.

Bedrockgames · Feb 27, 2021

Chaosmancer said:
But that wilderness is exactly what the jackalwere wants right? It is created to his specifications? And he is the one who can close the border to Farelle, just like Strahd, right?

Sure, he is always going to lose, because plot, but that has nothing to do with what I am saying.

And, I guess, if Dementileu, Mordent, Richemulot, Lamordia, Borca, Barovia, Kartakass, Valachan, Hazlan and Nova Vaasa are all so similiar... how does that fit with these Dark Lords being taken from across the multiverse?

You had Soth from DL, a jackalwere in the forest, an egyptian kingdom ruled by a mummy. I mean, I thought some of those were big name places, the mummy one wasn't part of the Core? And how did these dozen or so darklords all come from basically the same place? That seems... odd.

Ravenloft is like a lot of places that border each other with different languages being spoken. People in Europe managed it. I don't see why Ravenloft can't. Some of the domains were spawned by inhabitants of existing domains. For example Borca's dark lords families were from Barovia. The core fo Ravenloft has its own timeline that explains when and how each domain was created. Some domains came from the same campaign world. There are dark lords from grey hawk, from forgotten realms, from the dragon lance settings etc.

How much control dark lords have over the land and domain itself is very individual. But generally their main power is an ability to close the borders. They often have other abilities that connect them to the land. It isn't usually anything like an ability to customize their prison though (and the domains are their prisons)

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