Faolyn
(she/her)
So you're saying that you don't believe that the lore is optional.If people believed that, no one would be irritated by lore they don't like. The human brain doesn't work that way. If you like something, you care about it. If you care about it, you probably don't want other people to change it. You especially don't want other people to change it while also talking about how much the original version you liked sucks.
I care a lot about Ravenloft. It's my absolute favorite setting. But guess what? I changed tons of it back when I was running it in... GURPS and Fate (and one ill-fated attempt in Prime Time Adventures), actually, since I never DMed 2e or 3x. And I continue to change tons of it now. I never bought any of the older modules (I have Curse of Strahd, to which I made major changes) and I've read maybe two of the novels and I think a collection of short stories. There were lots of things I didn't like or just didn't care about in 2e and 3x, so out they went.
If people are saying that parts of the original Ravenloft sucked, then depending on what they are saying and why they are saying it, I can either agree with them or ignore them, or take what they are saying and use it to adapt what I'm currently running, if I think they have a good point.
And I said it before and I'll say it again: if 5e's Ravenloft had just been a continuation of the 3e/3x stuff, then I would have had absolutely no reason to buy it. I already have all that stuff!
And older Ravenloft--as with Dragonlance--did in fact have a lot of stuff that sucked. While I personally like the caliban, I'm glad that they're not in the books anymore because their concept is pretty awful. I'm glad that the female darklords have a reason for being evil other than being desperate for a man or hating all men. And, of course, I'm glad that the Vistani have been revamped. There are bits of VGR that I'm not thrilled with, but they're things that are easy to change or ignore as necessary. Likewise, there are bits of Dragonlance, like the joke races, that desperately need an overhaul or just a complete removal because they are equally awful.