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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8271045">It has been some time since my peak days of running Ravenloft so my memory is pretty fuzzy on details. These days I run it more as a once in a while thing between my regular campaigns. But I can say my memory is initially Valachan was a domain I overlooked. But if I remember there was a Dungeon Adventure set there in 1994, and that really made the domain pop for me. I don't recall exactly why, but it had something to do with giving me a better sense of towns or locals or something. Whatever it was, I started fleshing out the domain a lot more (black box Ravenloft you really were expected to extrapolate and it was a question of whether the domain spoke to you and inspired you). Generally the way I used domains wasn't to center them on the main figures in them. If you do that most are pretty lean actually (they would basically just be places to go domain lord hunting). Instead I used domain lords as models and blueprints for the logic of the domain. So I had a lot of Nosferatu vampires, but because he was a panther, I also ran a lot of cat people or sleepwalkers style adventures (I remember making a monster entry for creatures based on the movie sleepwalkers and using them). I imagined clusters of Nosferatu in the cemeteries and countryside. Also there was some mention of Valachan I believe in one of the Van Richten books. I can't remember the details. But those books often gave me a knew way of seeing domains because you were plunged into many of Van Richten's hunts. And I think I got inspiration for some kind of bog golem or were bear scenario there (I really can't get it straight in my memory, but I do recall doing stuff based off that). In terms of geography, Valachan shifted quite a bit during 2E. So there is the very remote version in black box, and the less remote version in red box and DoD. I liked both placements for different reasons. The latter placement had it bordering mordent, verbrek and sithicus, which worked really well for me. I had a lot of Kartakass domains and Mordent is a good home base for lots of adventures because of Van Richten. So in that instance, there was always a good reason to pass through and I remember having a lot of 'on the road' adventures through Valachan and Sithicus (and the on the road stuff was often the best). But as a remote domain it worked too. I think it worked very well for example for a kind of Dracula style adventure. The domain is similar in  lots of ways to Barovia, but has a much different vampire lord. And because Nosferatu drain con, that is a little less lethal for a low level party, and also a little more in line with how things are described in Dracula. I believe the 94 dungeon adventure was built around this type of scenario. But any nosferatu scenario involving Baron von Kharkov, his vampire slaves, or another cluster of Nosferatu led by some NPC (this is the sort of adventure I tended to prefer). Also with its wilderness it was the kind of place that was easy to imagine having anything you needed for an adventure (an old forgotten tomb, a creature ravaging homesteads, etc). I don't t think it was introduced till after the black box (the domain was pretty lean in black box: von Kharkov didn't even get an entry until the Darklord book if I remember). But I remember really liking that the domain had inhabitants who were black with straight black hair but culturally it seemed vaguely German to me (they might have been going for something else, but the names to me resonated as German). I think the reason it struck me as interesting was just the world building. It reflected the dark lord, but also it separated culture from ethnicity. I am sure it had been done many times before but this was my first encounter with that in a game product and it influenced how I approached world building as a GM (I still see merit in both approaches, since sometimes you want to clearly invoke a historical period or something). But I remember quite liking this detail (especially since it was just kind of expected, if a place sounded German, the people would look German).</blockquote>

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