D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Paul Farquhar]

And yet, there's still the prevailing trope that women capital-N Need a man or child or else are incomplete.

I would be incomplete without my family. Indeed, I would consider my life a complete waste of time. And I aint no woman.

There has long been a tradition of belittling men who value family more than career. Now that belittlement is being extended to women as well. Progress?

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think both of you are reading way too much into this. Dark lords don't have careers, they have hobbies. And neither male nor female dark lords are commentary on what real men and women ought to be (they are meant to be scary, entertaining, possibly tap into something inside you that makes you uncomfortable....but I think Ravenloft was never like Vampire, in that it wasn't trying to convey a strong political or social message)

 

[Faolyn]

On a side note, I'd love to see a domain in the new Ravenloft where the Darklord isn't some towering flamboyant exemplar of evil, but an obscure grey little bureacrat, anonymous in the system, who justifies his participation in and contribution to massed industrial-scale atrocity with 'I'm just doing my job'. Surely the Dark Powers are capricious enough to do that?

That would be a lot of fun! Obviously, this Darklord would need to have a lot more influence in their Domain one way or another, even if it's more a passive influence than an active one. But I can also see (part of) their curse as being haunted--perhaps literally--by the manifestations of subconscious guilt.

 

[Remathilis]

I would be incomplete without my family. Indeed, I would consider my life a complete waste of time. And I aint no woman.

There has long been a tradition of belittling men who value family more than career. Now that belittlement is being extended to women as well. Progress?

Azalin lost his son and wants to get him back. Tristessa lost her child and wants to get them back. Azalin also runs the largest political region in the core, heads a secret police, founded a false religion, does magical experiments and mundane research, spies on his enemies like Strahd, repels Drakov's forces, and deals with interlopers trying to use his magic book to get their memories back all while looking for a way to get it of Ravenloft. Tristessa has what other aspects to her character? What else defines her?

 

[Faolyn]

I would be incomplete without my family. Indeed, I would consider my life a complete waste of time. And I aint no woman.

Imagine, if you will, you didn't have your family. If you never had your family. Would that make you evil?

Most of the female Darklords are evil because they don't have husbands and children and are jealous of those who do.

None of the male Darklords, even the most women-focused of them, are evil because they don't have wives or children.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We are talking about a different society. They most of women couldn't be independient workers. Everybody wants to feel loved and respected, ones with a family, others with power and social status.

A evil queen as dark lord may be possible, but I am afraid anybody wouldn't feel very confortable with characters suspected to be allegories about the Victory or the Elisabeth queens. It is curious because Ravenloft hasn't got a female vampire as dark lord, or a female as ruler of a domain.

Not only the gothic horror, but too many female antagonists from soap-operas written by and for women have got jealous as main cause against the heroines and not the simple greed.

* Lovecraft's "the Mound" may be an example of underground dread domain, with zombies used as slaves.

* The demiplane of the dread is not a prison in the classic sense we think. In a prison the jailers control to avoid the prisoners kill each other, but in the dread domains the cursed dark lords are allowed to cause more suffering and injustice against innocent citizens.

 

[Faolyn]

She is cursed to desire love and to be rejected.

This is just as bad.

No one is saying you shouldn't' have more varied female dark lords. I have said over and over, there should have been more female dark lords, and if you had more, they would have been more varied. But my point is you shouldn't get rid of or avoid characters like Ivana Boritsi, Jacqueline Renier or Gabrielle Aderre because those are three of the best dark lords from the original line

And as I kept saying--and you kept ignoring--those characters need more to them than just their romantic plot. They need to be active, and proactive, in many ways.

Don't classify great female dark lords as weak, lazy or bad design, simply because there were not more varied entries (the lack of a female equivalent to Azalin doesn't make Jacqueline Renier less interesting or cool: she is a much better domain lord than Azalin).

Everything she has done has been backstory stuff. She doesn't actively do anything interesting that isn't motivated by her need for love. How is she a better political leader? Yes, the people like her, but she also has a much smaller population to deal with and far fewer active threats than Azalin does.

Seriously: what makes her a better political leader or Dark Lord?

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is just as bad.

No it isn't. You don't like it. I think it works well for a compelling villain male or female. It is basically a phantom of the opera type situation, with a bit horror centered around the 'unmasking' due to the transformation. And this isn't all the character is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And as I kept saying--and you kept ignoring--those characters need more to them than just their romantic plot. They need to be active, and proactive, in many ways.

No, we keep disagreeing (which is fine, we can have different opinions about these characters), and you keep ignoring where i say I think Ravenloft always needed more female dark lords (and that more varied types of characters ought to come with that). But these characters can still be interesting and have romantic plots. And they are proactive. Gabrielle Aderre is one of the most pro-active, plotting lords in the setting. Same with Ivan Boritsi and same with Jacqueline Renier. These are not passive characters by any stretch IMO.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's a "I don't feel like doing a ton of research to figure out what historical or media villain plots would make for cool Darklords when it's a lot easier for me to make something up, particularly because I almost never use the Darklords in my Ravenloft games to begin with."

When I originally asked the question it was because you seem to be setting the bar extremely high with wanting not just one but many female darklords that don't tick this box that box come near these other boxes. If the bar of expectations your setting for wotc to meet then all of fiction & human history should have a slew of options that could simply be rattled off or you are instead asking that WotC somehow elevate themselves into some form of higher being not present often enough to record the history of or write fiction involving individuals meeting your bar often enough to name even one or two off the top of your head.