As a note, it is incredibly difficult to respond when you chop up a single post into three different sections, then respond to them out of order.
The lord of Falkovnia is based on Vlad the Impaler. With any genre there is going to be blending of flavors, and there is definitely room for the kind of horror you found in Falkovnia. This kind of horror was like the opening to the 92 Dracula movie. That combined with the way it handled demi-humans, made it a great backdrop for all kinds of horror adventures. It was one of the most popular domains for a reason: it worked.
Nothing you are describing is "military dictatorship" though. Vlad the Impaler leaving the corpses of his enemies impaled as a warning is a type of horror, yes, but you can't get that across by saying "they live in a military dictatorship ruled by endless war".
That is like saying "they live in a capitalist society" to describe mega-corps that literally own and sell every aspect of a person's life, making you either a cog in the machine or invisible trash.
This might be part of the problem, you are assuming I know what you are talking about so summarizing away the parts that make this different. "War" is not the kind of horror you are now talking about. Now you are talking about body horror and torture. Very different.
Two points about this: one the classic ravenloft still gave you tools for closing the domain and entrapping the pcs. If you needed to prevent escape, or needed to entrap the pcs in some way: you could. Nothing at all was stopping you. Making them disconnected islands doesn't make that easier to do (because even core domains could close their borders).
The second point is, a little complex. Yes domain lords can't leave their domains, but some domains are not bound by simple geography. Some have whole rivers, oceans or roads as their domain (stretching over many domains). Some have domains that can appear anywhere. So there are domain lords who can come after you. Also, domain lords can't chase you, but their minions can. One benefit of a connected core, is domain lords can send their minions over the border for all kinds of things. Finally, Ravenloft isn't really just about fighting with domain lords. There are so many other types of opponents to face.
Sure there are other foes, but that doesn't change the fact that the Domain Lords are the major draw.
And, now I am even more confused. There is a domain lord whose realm was an entire ocean? Why not... have that be the ocean the other domains are in? Also, their minions can still chase you, using the same exact ways the PCs leave.
Yeah, if it is teleport in, teleport out, then that doesn't work. But if you are following a route to get from one island to the next, then the enemy can do the exact same thing. You have lost nothing, anything the PCs can do, the Minions can do too.
And as I stated in a different post. The problem with making it about closing the borders if the amount of attention that requires or implies. While making them islands allows it to be much more subtle or bad luck. It is kind of the difference between someone sabotaging the car in a horror movie, and the car just breaking down on its own. The appearance of it simply being bad luck makes it less intrusive.
Sure if you are just passing through. But because the core is connected, the whole point is players start developing connections to different places. If they are based out of Falkovnia, that stuff is going to matter more (in some campaigns those dead comrades could be their fellow PCs). But it is also not something they are just going to watch passively. An army of undead isn't scenery, it is a threat. Sure players might be jaded and less scared of that, especially if the GM isn't building atmosphere: but that is true of anything horrifying that people have seen before. That is why so much of the advice on achieving horror is important. And overtime you develop a sense of how to maintain horror. Definitely having features in a setting like an endless war where the dead rise and march back on their homeland can be useful toward that end. Doesn't have to be though. If it doesn't resonate with you, then you don't use. I always found different things in Ravenloft resonated with different GMs. I always found stuff like the Kartakan Inn and lycanthropy particular fruitful for my campaigns. For some people Falkovnia will register for others it won't. If your like me, you ignored it for a while until you found a cool way to make use of it (I ended up running several very successful campaigns set in Falkovnia).
See, but you are agreeing with exactly my point.
Falkovnia is scary and horrific
when you are part of it. If this place is your home base, then you are living there, and that makes a massive difference, where if you are just passing through... yeah, it is terrible, but it isn't really horror. That army of the undead is just scenery, because you are just passing through and you want nothing to do with it.
But, if you start setting down roots, you have changed the whole game, and that was my point. As an
outsider, the place isn't horrific in the way that some of the other concepts seemed to be. But, then again, you seem to be assuming a lot of details that I've got no idea about, but from what you described, it isn't horrific to the group passing through it to some other terrible place.
Classic Ravenloft wasn't 30 stories of humans are the real monsters. And the old domains were far from boring, I promise you. Everyone has different taste of course, but I thought the domains were plenty entertaining and gameable.
Which is great for you, but when you claim we are "ignoring the trope" when we've got so few details, and a lot of those six settings described are exactly what you seem to want in terms of it being humans that are the worst, then I'm not sure what you want.
www.enworld.org
