D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Paul Farquhar]

It isn't fantasy escapism though, it is gothic horror.

There is nothing gothic about it. It's a historical horror.

The gothic genre has a fundamental unreality about it, a dreamlike quality, where the boundaries between the waking and the sleeping world are blurred.

Really? Against the Slave Lords is a classic adventure series that covers the themes and in referring to Marvel Agents of Shield did two seasons that featured either the Nazi--esque Hydra World, or the dystopian future where Humanity is enslaved by Kree who auction off Inhuman slaves.

Hydra, like the daleks and Indiana Jones Nazis are cartoon Nazis. Unreal. The real ones where far worse, and the portrayal in Ravenloft is far too close to the reality.

Slave Lords is also far too close to real world issues to ever be republished by WotC.

Falkovia does need more subtlety, but I do think Zombie Apocalypse is a terrible change

Any change is an improvement, and I hear zombie apocalipses are all the rage these days.

 

[Alzrius]

Slave Lords is also far too close to real world issues to ever be republished by WotC.

Except for when they republished A0-A4 Against the Slave Lords (affiliate link) in 2013. (They even added a new adventure when they did, A0 Danger at Darkshelf Quarry.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Except for when they republished A0-A4 Against the Slave Lords (affiliate link) in 2013. (They even added a new adventure when they did, A0 Danger at Darkshelf Quarry.)

To ever be republished now. WotC where fairly oblivious (like much of the rest of the world) to modern slavery back in 2013.

 

[Alzrius]

To ever be republished now. WotC where fairly oblivious (like much of the rest of the world) to modern slavery back in 2013.

I wonder if that would be enough to put them off. The fan-made conversion of, for instance, A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (affiliate link) on the DMs Guild is a gold seller, and highly-rated. So I don't think any potential backlash to WotC reprinting those adventures would be so bad.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder if that would be enough to put them off. The fan-made conversion of, for instance, In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (affiliate link) on the DMs Guild is a gold seller, and highly-rated. So I don't think the backlash to WotC reprinting those adventures would be so bad.

There is a big difference between what fans can do an what a big international toy company can do.

These days Hasbro won't move without putting something like this in every publication: "Before running an adventure with a new group of players, have a candid out-of-game conversation with them about hard and soft limits on what topics can be broached in-game. Your players might have phobias and triggers you aren’t aware of. Any topic or theme that makes a player feel unsafe should be avoided." - Candlekeep Mysteries.

 

[Remathilis]

I wonder if that would be enough to put them off. The fan-made conversion of, for instance, A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (affiliate link) on the DMs Guild is a gold seller, and highly-rated. So I don't think any potential backlash to WotC reprinting those adventures would be so bad.

You'll have to forgive my ignorance (since I'm not familiar with the Slave Lord series, one of the few I've never read/ran), but my inkling is that the slavers are running an illegal operation where they are kidnapping and trafficking any unfortunate soul they think they can sell off as slavery. They aren't targeting any particular race/species, gender, or similar. You wake up in a slaver's prison and need to escape before you're sold off.

That, conceptually, is different than Falkovia where the minority of non-humans are property of the state with no rights and whose only purpose is to work in camps until death. The latter is a terrible mixture of American Southern Slavery and Auschwitz style Nazi work camps. For a lot of people, that dredges up some terrible memories regarding some of the worst atrocities and playing them for sport.

In general, I think it would probably be a good idea to avoid state-sponsored race-based slavery appearing in the fantasy elf game. What you do in your game is between you and your players, but I think it's probably wise to avoid copying real-world atrocities as fodder for inspiration.

 

[humble minion]

Edit: Also, from a purely logistical standpoint, I found that always made Falkovnia serve an interesting function in terms of travel. Parties would often avoid it, but if they were in a rush they may risk a venture through Falkovnia to get somewhere else and accept the risk.

This is a good point. Something i didn't emphasise enough in my writeup was the useful role Falkovnia did serve in the Core model of the setting. The in-world inhabitants of places like Mordent don't know that Drakov is doomed to pratfall whenever he tried to invade someone, and so he's the catalyst for a lot of political and espionage-type stuff. And it's actually easier to run escape-from-the-domain or infiltrate-the-domain or pass-through-the-domain-unnoticed type plots in Falkovnia than pretty much anywhere else, because Drakov's a one-track-mind type who's never come to terms with the metaphysical truths of what he is now, so he's never actually learned that he can close the borders.

 

[humble minion]

There is nothing gothic about it. It's a historical horror.

The gothic genre has a fundamental unreality about it, a dreamlike quality, where the boundaries between the waking and the sleeping world are blurred.

Ravenloft did become a less consciously Gothic setting over time, mind you. The first handful of domains are all classic Gothic horror tropes, but it didn't take long to branch out into other subgenres of horror, or more often, fantasy with a coat of black paint (even though there was quite a lot of effort to retcon the Gothic back in later on). Aside from Falkovnia, there's not really a lot that's classically gothic about Hazlan, or Bluetspur, or Timor, or Cavitus, or the Nocturnal Sea for instance.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is nothing gothic about it. It's a historical horror.

The gothic genre has a fundamental unreality about it, a dreamlike quality, where the boundaries between the waking and the sleeping world are blurred.

i am not expert on gothic horror, and I feel like we had this discussion before, so probably covering similar ground, but just based on the gothic horror stories I have read (and playing Ravenloft in the early 90s led me down that road of reading all the stories I could), I feel the influence is there, and even though I can't say dreaminess is a quality I associate with gothic horror (again just in my opinion, like I said I am no expert, maybe it is essential and that just flew over my head), I always found Ravenloft, particularly the black box era, very dream-like in a lot of ways----right down to the mists and how those can shape and change reality, as well as down to things like the nightmare lands. But ALLL that said, classic horror is probably a better label because I think it feels a lot like a blend of classic horror stories and classic horror movies. Either way though, I think the key thing is, at least as it is laid out in black box (this definitely changes as the line advances), it wasn't really about fantasy horror. In a lot of ways I'd say the black box was really making an effort to strip a lot of that out in order to emphasize the horror more.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I came into it from a Castlevania mindset: the land is overrun with horrors and you are the only ones who can stop them. It's Fantasy with a coat of black paint and some gothic tropes rather than a emulation of a real horror genre (something D&D is a poor match for due to it's emphasis on heroic fantasy).

Don't get me wrong, Castlevania was a great game (that was up with with games like Kings Quest and Bards Tale for me growing up). But I definitely did come at this as a kid who watched a lot of old horror, and my entry point was actually Knight of the Black rose. For me that wa sa bit instructive because, I knew Soth, not Strahd, and Soth was the ultimate bad-ass in Krynn, a sort of Darth Vader figure. To see his frustration as powerful as he was, not be able to deal with a simple vampire, was fascinating. And I think this gets at how black box approached the issue of emulating horror in D&D. Let me preface by saying I think there is truth in what you say, when I made my horror RPG, I set PC health very low, and while characters could advance up to ten levels (totally different system than D&D keep in mind), I kept a close eye on how powerful they got because I felt it was important for horror, to have PCs that are vulnerable to it. So I definitely this "D&D can't do horror" has a strong grain of truth to it. What is brilliant about black box and some of the early supplements that really embraced the black box philosophy is how well they undermine D&D's ability to nerf horror. And I think a big part of that, was the Soth effect, taking characters who should otherwise be powerful, but have the physics of Ravenloft itself working against them. You see this not only in how spells were adjusted, but also in how monsters were very customizable and how their immunities were often extensive. It was very easy to make a monster that powerful characters had a hard time affecting or killing permanently unless they 1) found the right tool for the job, or 2) found a way to undo whatever curse was plaguing the creature. Again, definitely not quite the same as being super vulnerable to powerful foes, these still are characters with impressive ablates and lots of HP. But even advancement was slow in Ravenloft because you just weren't having the same number of encounters (it was more about quality of individual encounters than quantity), and things like magic items were so much more scarce. It definitely took some work. Wasn't perfect, but I do remember being very impressed with how it managed to make D&D work with horror.

EDIT: Also to be clear, I am not knocking your opinion. I think it is interesting we have such strikingly different takes and views on Ravenloft. But also I think I understand where you are coming from (you are presenting a very consistent perspective on the setting).