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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8211314" data-attributes="member: 6801228">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.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. 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.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 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 1992If 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.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.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.</blockquote>

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