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Everything We Know About The Ravenloft Book
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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8210092" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>Many things are part of horror. The issue is you don't have to make those things present all the time. I liked running long Ravenloft campaigns, and if you entrapped them all the time, it really just frustrated players. Also you have to have contrast for horror to work. If the players are always entrapped, they become numb to it. However if they are typically not, when they do become entrapped, they will feel it more. You can mix up the elements. It depends on what you want. If you want every single adventure and every single moment to feel exactly like a horror movie, well you probably shouldn't be using D&D in the first place for a horror game. However if you want a world inspired by horror, that has interesting mechanics for emulating it, and you want a long term campaign, I found the classic Ravenloft stuff works provided you use things like entrapment, and the power the mists give the GM sparingly. And I also found, more often than not, I was able to achieve a sense of horror and dread. For me, having a long, ongoing campaign was important. I didn't like the idea of a horror one shot weekend in hell as much as I liked the idea of basing my campaigns in a setting inspired by classic horror. I played Ravenloft all through the 90s, and in my opinion the weekend in hell thing was the worst advertisement for the setting because it just made players hate Ravenloft. Right off the bat I ran them as long term campaigns, with the players all buying into the idea that they were outsiders sucked into Ravenloft from elsewhere (and that worked great). </p><p></p><p>All that said, D&D and levels 1-20 are tough for pure horror. But Ravenloft is probably better than most places for achieving it because it throws so many curve balls at the PCs. Vampires often require much different methods to be killed for example. This is actually true of most monsters in Ravenloft. The Van Richten books give you blueprints and tools for creating foes who can scale up in power and who are unique enough that the players often can't simply kill them with the swing of a sword or the launching of a fireball.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 8210092, member: 85555"] Many things are part of horror. The issue is you don't have to make those things present all the time. I liked running long Ravenloft campaigns, and if you entrapped them all the time, it really just frustrated players. Also you have to have contrast for horror to work. If the players are always entrapped, they become numb to it. However if they are typically not, when they do become entrapped, they will feel it more. You can mix up the elements. It depends on what you want. If you want every single adventure and every single moment to feel exactly like a horror movie, well you probably shouldn't be using D&D in the first place for a horror game. However if you want a world inspired by horror, that has interesting mechanics for emulating it, and you want a long term campaign, I found the classic Ravenloft stuff works provided you use things like entrapment, and the power the mists give the GM sparingly. And I also found, more often than not, I was able to achieve a sense of horror and dread. For me, having a long, ongoing campaign was important. I didn't like the idea of a horror one shot weekend in hell as much as I liked the idea of basing my campaigns in a setting inspired by classic horror. I played Ravenloft all through the 90s, and in my opinion the weekend in hell thing was the worst advertisement for the setting because it just made players hate Ravenloft. Right off the bat I ran them as long term campaigns, with the players all buying into the idea that they were outsiders sucked into Ravenloft from elsewhere (and that worked great). All that said, D&D and levels 1-20 are tough for pure horror. But Ravenloft is probably better than most places for achieving it because it throws so many curve balls at the PCs. Vampires often require much different methods to be killed for example. This is actually true of most monsters in Ravenloft. The Van Richten books give you blueprints and tools for creating foes who can scale up in power and who are unique enough that the players often can't simply kill them with the swing of a sword or the launching of a fireball. [/QUOTE]
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