Look at the map links I shared with you and you can see clearly what I am talking about. If you make them islands of terror, they are isolated domains floating in the mist. Traveling via the mists, even in iterations of Ravenloft where it is more feasible, is no simple undertaking. To say the least. It is much easier to travel from one domain to another that is part of the core, than it is to go from place to place among the islands of terror
Okay... but travel is only as difficult as you want to make it. It is trivially easy to decide to make travel along certain ways safer and easier, or that it is dangerous unless you have the proper guides.
I mean, if that is the extent of your complaint about the island set up "it is theoritically harder to travel" that isn't much of a complaint.
That isn't my description of Falkovnia. I was describing it across multiple posts, and you seem to have picked up a handful of mine, and mixed them with some other peoples. But either way: the soldiers turned into zombies is horror. I don't care how you cut that, it is horror. Whether it is successful at horrifying the players, depends on how it is done.
The slavery I definitely mentioned. The torture I believe i mentioned (and if I didn't another poster responding mentioned). Like I said, you should read the entry yourself and decide if it is sufficiently horrific. I believe it is because Falkovnia is the one domain almost every group I ran Ravenloft with circled around when they traveled. They would go through Kartakass no problem. They would go through Barovia even, no problem. But they avoided Falkovnia, even if there were no demihumans in the party. So it clearly made an impact. I would say it is one of the more horrifying domains, and one of the hardest to run well (but definitely worth it if you can pull it off)
Well, as I said before, your tendency to shatter posts and respond to them out of order and seemingly at random makes it incredibly difficult to talk to you. Saying you described it across multiple posts does not help me at all.
And I think, since I've explained now how poorly this place was presented to me in this thread, you can see where my original point was coming from. What you described as "horrific" wasn't, without being able to see the whole of it. I mean, you may find zombie soldiers horrific, but when you are playing a game where you might fight a necromancer raising zombies at level 2, they really lose a lot of the horror.
Maybe it is a "familiarity breeds contempt" thing, but I've seen it so many times, that unless you zoom in and make it personal it isn't horror. It becomes the same as bombs or machine gun fire, just another devastating tactic of war. You have to zoom in, be the soldier now fighting the dead body of the comrade they shared drinks with to have that horror impact. From a distance, it just doesn't work.
I wasnt' offended, you simply quoted me inaccurately and attributed statements to me that i believe were made by other posters, and you paraphrase me inaccurately.
Well, that was a uselesslt vague description that doesn't help me at all. I guess you must have been talking about me saying you described Falkovia to me, but since you won't elaborate I have no clue.
First, the van richten books like any other supplement, can be kludged to another setting or game. But the books are largely written in the first person from the perspective of Rudolph Van Richten, and all the accounts he gives are of things happening inside ravenloft. So while you can use the tools elsewhere, they are designed with Ravenloft in mind, and the flavor of all the accounts are happening in the setting.
Volo's Guide for 5e was written from the perspective of Volo and with the Forgotten Realms in mind. Hasn't stopped me from using it in multiple other settings. They may have been made for Ravenloft decades ago, but they don't change my point that using the Van richten guides as a reason to play Ravenloft is a flawed argument. First, because those guides can be used elsewhere, Second because those Guides had to be purchased separately.
I will not fight you at all that the Van Richten Guides seem to have been an excellent resource, but they can't be used as a reason to go to Ravenloft, because the two things can be seperated with no issue.
I reject the idea that the draw is Strahd. I think you can say strahd is a kind of mascot or figurehead, but in terms of what you are meant to do in ravenloft, you are very much meant to have adventures with all kinds of other monsters other than domain lords. Domain Lords are meant to be used very, very rarely. They help provide the backdrop. The purpose of the Van Richten books is largely to equip the GM with tools so they can run long term campaigns featuring monsters like vampires, flesh golems, lycanthropes, ghosts, etc. You can get so much more mileage out of those books than you can with domain lord confrontations.
But the van richten books were released when the setting came out. They were part of the line. They elaborated on material in the black boxed set. They are essential for understanding what Ravenloft was all about and how you were supposed to craft villains and monstrous opponents. This is not a controversial opinion.
I think you are missing the point, so I'll elaborate with some dates.
Ravenloft was launched for 2e in 1990.
The First Van Richten Guide was released in 1992
If you are correct, that the Van Richten books were essential for understanding Ravenloft (which according to the bold text, is your claim). Then Ravenloft spent two years incomplete. Two years of its release being focused on the wrong part of the setting. Because, even from the beginning, the Dark Lords were there. If the true draw to the setting was Van Richten;s 1992 release, then why did Ravenloft win awards in 1991? Why was it made into a setting after the 1984 one-shot adventure?
Again, I have no problem with the claim that the Van Richten books were amazing. I have no problem with the claim that they elevated Ravenloft to new heights. But if you don't think the setting works without them... that is a problem with the design of the setting. Not the design we ended up with, but the design we started with.
Yes these were made for 2E. But we are talking about a setting based on the 2E material. That is where it comes from. And one thing an old fan can help provide is an understanding of why that setting worked. One of the things that worked well about it was the van richten books. If the new setting material isn't providing the tools that the van richten books provided, then it is truly missing something essential.
Now that I can agree with. Altering monsters is a key component to making DnD feel horrific. I don't know if the new books will give a lot in that regard, but they are including new monsters so that will likely help a little.
because the setting isn’t just about the lords, it is about the domains: that is where the players will be adventuring and most times they will never meet the lord. But even so, having Borca and barovia close to one another means strahd has reach across the border (even if he can’t go there), politicking can happen between the borders, intrigue is more of a possibility, adventures spanning domains are a possibility (for example an ‘on the road adventure’). It simply opens up more adventure structures and more adventure possibilities
None of which is prevented by making them islands. See the Philippines or Hawaii or any other island chain in the real world. Politics and reach can happen without needing a land border.
And if you don't want that, making them islands makes it easier to separate the domains and not deal with international politics or anything else.
www.enworld.org
