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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8273453" data-attributes="member: 7635">I want to second a lot of these observations. E when I was playing in the 90s, Ravenloft was mind-blowing. It was one of my favorite settings because I love gothic horror. But as I grew older and my tastes changed, my DM style matured, and my worldview expanded, I began to see the cracks in the design. The uneasy marriage between being domains being prisons tailored to specific darklords and the desire for a living breathing world of trade and politics. Darklords who ranged from non-entities in their own domains to being the only possible story that Domain could support. The difficulty of even playing non humans or spellcasters in many domains limiting PC options. And while I didn't see it affect me personally, I saw fans of the setting upset by depictions of race, gender, trans identity, and non-European cultures and wishing for more sensitive depictions. So much so, one author of many DMs Guild products had a list of Domains he refused to cover and never used Vistani in his works. And he was covering Ravenloft domain by domain.D&amp;D has evolved over the course 30 years. It's very different than 2e with it's exceptional strength and race/class limits. The settings need to evolve to. Some have had the chance to do so incrementally like Faerun, while others have 20 year gaps. But it is possible to love something and still want to see it change and evolve.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 8273453, member: 7635"] I want to second a lot of these observations. E when I was playing in the 90s, Ravenloft was mind-blowing. It was one of my favorite settings because I love gothic horror. But as I grew older and my tastes changed, my DM style matured, and my worldview expanded, I began to see the cracks in the design. The uneasy marriage between being domains being prisons tailored to specific darklords and the desire for a living breathing world of trade and politics. Darklords who ranged from non-entities in their own domains to being the only possible story that Domain could support. The difficulty of even playing non humans or spellcasters in many domains limiting PC options. And while I didn't see it affect me personally, I saw fans of the setting upset by depictions of race, gender, trans identity, and non-European cultures and wishing for more sensitive depictions. So much so, one author of many DMs Guild products had a list of Domains he refused to cover and never used Vistani in his works. And he was covering Ravenloft domain by domain. D&D has evolved over the course 30 years. It's very different than 2e with it's exceptional strength and race/class limits. The settings need to evolve to. Some have had the chance to do so incrementally like Faerun, while others have 20 year gaps. But it is possible to love something and still want to see it change and evolve. [/QUOTE]

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