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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8211170" data-attributes="member: 18">I think the issue for me is that, in Sideshow Bob's immortal words, "There's no Nobel prize for attempted chemistry!". Certainly all of them had some kind of horror angle in mind and attempted it (albeit several not Gothic Horror, contrary to the supposed conceit of that era of Ravenloft, as George notes), but some were total failures at it any kind of inherent horror, instead ending up as small dark fantasy settings with a usually humanocentric vibe. Which like, I get that appeals to some people (c.f. the success of 3PP dark fantasy stuff in the early 3E/OGL era), but seemed like a retrenchment from the actual concept they pushed so hard initially. A vaguely oppressive region with a bad guy and his forces in charge isn't horror, it's just a fairly typical part of a D&D setting. I mean, jeez, some of the city-states in Dark Sun were creepier/scarier than some of the domains in old Ravenloft.Sure, but I don't think I was alone, and given the 1990s, I'm pretty sure, personally, if they'd embraced their own conceit rather than getting lost in it, Ravenloft could have had even more success.To me, Ravenloft was extremely good concept, with some very strong domains, weighted down by a lot of much weaker design which seemed to be edging it into mere "dark fantasy" territory over time, especially as people tried to make this inherently fantastical concept "make sense". Hopefully WotC have reversed that, and it sounds like it for sure.</blockquote>

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