Forked Thread: Why Ravenloft and 4E May Not Mesh

[Wraith Form]

Its one reason I don't play Call of Cuthlu.

Or, apparently, even know how to spell Cthulhu.

 

[Wraith Form]

it seems more ike mixing the plane of shadow with the negative energy plane, and getting a more shadowy death heavy morose place.

Aha! The Plane of Emo.

 

[Wraith Form]

Wasn't Ravenloft simply a sucky demiplane where gribbly stuff was imprisoned anyway?

Aha! The Plane of Emmmm....never mind.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Anytime a ruleset tries to force me to play my character in a certain way all it does it anger and frustrate me. I'll decide for myself whether something is scary. I don't need a dice roll to force my character to flee. I hate that.

Over my many years of DM'ing I've heard this quite a bit. Sometimes it's legit, but more often than not it's just an excuse from a player who refuses to voluntarily allow something bad to happen to their character.

It's very easy to be a 21st player whose character looks at a horde of rampaging liches, shrugs, and says, "So what?" Those are the situations that fear/horror/madness checks were made for. The Ravenloft rules even went so far as to explicitly state that.

For players who truly immersed themselves in their characters and embraced fear/horror/madness, the rules weren't necessary. But more often than not players wouldn't embrace those themes and would instead reach for the dice and start rolling.

And in those cases I had absolutely no sympathy for players who felt like they were being "controlled."

 

[CapnZapp]

Of course it will mesh. Anything else is just 4E bashing in disguise.

Which is an excellent way to say 'Hey everybody, I'm trying to start a fight!"

Oh, wait. That's not excellent at all. It's annoying, and something we mods don't want to see.

So please - no trolling, flamebaiting or edition wars.

~ Piratecat

 

[ki11erDM]

"You pull your sword from it's sheath, commanding it to burn with fire that will sear your unholy enemy!...But instead, it drips greasy, stinking lard, writhing with squirming maggots!"
(sword now does necrotic damage instead of fire)

THAT is RL. It is not the unplayable cash cow that TSR turned it into, to me at least. I see no reason, at all, why we should be cursed with all that baggage. RL is/was a D&D horror setting of many stories with detailed description and with ever changing rules created by the dark powers. It was created to take super heroes to another world that they did not and COULD NOT fully understand so their players would fear for the lives of their characters and be enveloped by rich story just as there characters were enveloped in the mists.

There is no reason why you can’t do that in 4e. none. In fact now you have tremendous range to do what you want and how you want to do it. No longer are you hampered by that disjointed map in the blackbox and all the random mashed up realms that went with it. When TSR made RL into a campaign setting RL died. 4e might actually be the one thing that can take it back to what it once was… a dark mysterious world that players feared.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I have to agree with other people that it is much more likely that RL will be changed to fit 4e rather than 4e being changed to fit RL.

I've had a chance to work with WOTC for a while due to my volunteer position as an Admin for LFR. I've got a good sense of the philosophy over there regarding 4e. It is pretty much: Concentrate on what D&D does best. Focus on the "Core" gameplay experience and allow all products to be used by all DMs.

If/When RL becomes fully fleshed out for 4e, you will see it's "core" philosophy ported over to 4e, while sacrificing some of the details. Knowing what I do, if I was in charge of converting RL over to 4e using the WOTC philosophy, this is what I'd do:

-Identify the "core" reason why RL is different than standard D&D. In this case because it is a Gothic Horror themed version of the game. Keep this front and center in your mind when writing 4e RL.

-Remove any setting details from RL that would create a barrier to entry for the races classes, or rituals in D&D. So, if the dark powers didn't allow raising of the dead, then remove that restriction. If non-humans are hunted down by angry mobs and killed, remove that. If calling on your god is weakened in RL, remove that.

-Keep things that affect all classes equally and fit the "core" gameplay of RL: The mists, domains, and so on.

-Adapt RL to the 4e cosmology. Put it into the Shadowfell, figure out how the core gods and creatures fit into it.

In essence, the goal would be to find out what makes RL uniquely RL and take that idea and transfer it to the universe of 4e D&D while ignoring any baggage that would be nice, but gets in the way of the core D&D gameplay.

 

[Drkfathr1]

That design philosophy makes me sad.

I understand its goal from a marketing standpoint, but from a creative standpoint is sure seems too restrictive. I always liked the little differences each setting had. That's what really helped make them unique.

Oh well, at least we all have the freedom to run those settings the way we want to, regardless of how they're published. I had considered selling alot of my older sourcebooks and boxed sets, but I realize now how valuable they really are.

 

[Scribble]

We already had a fear mechanic used in 4e. It was in KoTS, so I'm not sure what the big deal about using it again in a ravenloft style thing would be.

That design philosophy makes me sad.

I understand its goal from a marketing standpoint, but from a creative standpoint is sure seems too restrictive. I always liked the little differences each setting had. That's what really helped make them unique.

Oh well, at least we all have the freedom to run those settings the way we want to, regardless of how they're published. I had considered selling alot of my older sourcebooks and boxed sets, but I realize now how valuable they really are.

I don't think it's the little things that are getting the boot... it's the BIG things that make players feel like they're each playing their own D&D that are getting the boot.

Shrug, I don't think it will hinder creativity... I think it might even promote it.

I also think it's a great opportunity for 3pp. WoTC can do the "core" world, and variations on that world, while 3pp can offer worlds that are vastly different then the D&D core, and then they could concentrate on supplying their fanbase wih what it wants without having to worry about splitting their resources around like WoTC would.

If that makes any kind of sense?

 

[Toben the Many]

Very true, and a more correct assessment of the situation than my original. However, there's another side to this that was starting to rear its head in 3E and would be even more problematic in 4E: the balance concerns of changing any abilities that would have to be changed.

(snip)

It's not insurmontable, any more than a paladin in RL in 2E or 3E, but it's something that a 4E Ravenloft would have to be aware of.

So, I'll reiterate - what would need to be changed in 4e? As far as I can see, none of the powers need to be changed in 4e. None of them are the "break module" variety like Detect Evil or Detect Undead sort of thing.

I don't know; I think dragonborn and tieflings are much more likely to get an extreme response, and harder to pass off as humans that dwarves ("short") or halflings ("children"). (Gnomes, admittedly, have all sorts of troubles.)

I agree, but this is easily fixed by nixing these two races from Ravenloft entirely. Why does 4e have to have those two races to work as a game system?

But I don't even see their elimination as necessary. For one, both of these races, for example, could simply get an appearance makeover. Tieflings might have only very small horns, or be like tieflings of 2nd and 3rd Editions, where they have something small and odd about them. Dragonborn could have ophidian eyes and scales on their bodies, but have it be something easier to hide.

Tieflings fit into Ravenloft as much as Calibans do, IMO. They would be heavily avoided and generally thought to be cursed, etc.

Yes, Ravenloft and AD&D were always an odd fit--but AD&D was also more amenable to tinkering and reimagining than 4E seems to be at this juncture. Elements of 4E fit Ravenloft very nicely, but I'm not sure if the whole gestalt of the rules set can fit Ravenloft without one or the other shifting, and I'm not convinced that WotC is willing to make the shifts on the rules side.

I've seen a lot of vague allusions to this - but be specific. What specifically does not work in Ravenloft that is 4e?