But having individual islands of terror (which basically all that is being done here to the domains) is just as ham fisted and obvious, and dull over time. If every place I go is an island I have to escape from: that premise will bore me to tears eventually. My whole point about the mists earlier, and about entrapment in general, is these are things you should use sparingly, not all the time. Structuring the campaign setting so that is destined to happen at every location, frankly seems like a horrible idea to me.
And I think this is a major problem you seem to have that I don't understand.
Why do you think making them islands means that every place is going to have the same concept of "I must escape this island?". If you want to do that, I think this makes it easier. All the Core seems to do is make each place seem less like a prison tailored made to torture a bad person and more like a whole bunch of bad people just happen to live in the same region.
My point is they are blending Vlad the Impaler with the concept of a highly militarized domain. Personally I think that is a great backdrop for horror. Obviously if you just try to achieve that by saying "they live in a military dictatorship ruled by endless war" that isn't going to work. If, on the other hand, you run a political campaign (and Ravenloft lends itself well to politics) where they must survive being in Drakov's court or inner circle --I ran something like this once---it can be truly terrifying. And there plenty of other concepts that can work in Falkovnia for horror adventures. My advice is read the entry on Falkovnia from domains of dread or black box. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. All I can do is report my reaction to it to you, and I think it is a pretty good domain.
Dude, you are the one who described it to me as "a military dictatorship ruled by endless war". I know less than nothing about this place, and that is how you presented it. So when I responded that that doesn't seem very horrific, well, it seems obviously not, because now you are saying that of course that isn't very horrific, which is why the domain is so much more than that.
Do you see the problem? Heck, you did it again in just this post. Vlad the Impaler already lived in an highly militarized country. That is why he is famous for his defense of his country in war. "Highly Militarized" isn't torture, it isn't human experimentation, it isn't racism and slavery. All things other people are telling me are part of this domain. That makes a huge difference.
I am not really following how this connects to what I said
You said the new book is ignoring the trope. Half of the leaked examples from the new book are that trope. So, how are they ignoring it? What more do you want? Not all of them, because you said that was boring. So... why claim they are ignoring the trope?
Again, I think this really needs to be restated: GMs were pretty discouraged from making their campaigns all about dark lords. And in practice making them about dark lords just wasn't the best thing because it got old so fast. The Van Richten books were very much about making the heart of play other monsters, and about making Generic Vampire #56 into a unique, fleshed out, compelling and difficult to defeat opponent (and this was just an elaboration of concepts laid out in the black boxed set). This is really important to understanding what made classic ravenloft work. If you reduce ravenloft to battles with dark lords, you really are missing out on what makes the setting tick.
But again, the Van Richtem tool set is not labeled with "for use in Ravenloft only, do not take to other settings"
Sure, that is great that they provided those tools, and they sound like great tools, but the draw of Ravenloft isn't that you can make a super unique and compelling Vampire. The draw of Ravenloft if that it has a super unique and compelling Vampire in the figure of Strahd.
I think you have completely meshed the tool set and the setting, because you are an old fan who got the tool set for the setting and have been using them together for years, but I'm not. And so saying "but the Van Richten books allowed me to make great monsters" doesn't sell me on Ravenloft. It doesn't even sell me on Van Richten, because I'd have to convert those 2e books anyways. This is a breakdown in communication, you are telling me about a 2e toolset and trying to sell me on a 2e story.
I have been responding to your posts clearly. My aim wasn't to provide you with a complete description of Falkovnia, it was to reply to your posts. Someone said it wasn't horrific, so I mentioned the undead armies returning from attacking Falkovnia. That is why I brought that up. I didn't bring it up to give an overview of the domain. Besides, I mentioned the torture and slavery elsewhere (and a number of posters gave very complete descriptions of falkovnia in the course of the discussion)
I'm the one who said it wasn't horrifying, because all I was told was
1) Always going to war
2) Lord was a misogynist who hated losing
3) If he invaded this wizard guy then his soldiers were turned to zombies and attacked their living brethren.
All of that taken together... isn't horrific. The torture, the slavery, the experimentation, that all is horrific, and none of it was mentioned until later, or if it was I didn't connect it to this place of war.
I fully believe that you think you are being perfectly clear, but you aren't to me, because I keep getting more and more turned around in what you want to say except that islands are bad because they will always be used for entrapment, and Ravenloft is your favorite setting. And since the first thing isn't true, all you seem to be doing is wanting to tell us how you've run all of these successful campaigns in this setting and you love it.
But I do think you should at least take a look at the original material because it sounds like you are going off completely second hand information and that you don't have a clear idea about what it was trying to do.
Was the fact that I told you I had no idea about the setting, not enough to let you know I was going off second hand information? I'm trying to ask questions to clarify what the problem is, but it just seems to be that you think making them islands somehow makes them more isolated when it seems they were already incredibly isolated.
Making them islands doesn't seem to have changed anything, except the method of travel through the mists. And that doesn't seem to be a big deal in any way.
www.enworld.org
