D&D 4E How would you re-envision Ravenloft for 4e.

[Jon Wake]

I've been thinking about his for a little while now. I cut my teeth on Ravenloft.
Instead of trying to fight the action elements of 4e (because action and horror are pretty much diametrically opposed genres), the setting should embrace them.

Ravenloft needs to still be gothic horror, and should avoid "Van Helsing"ing, but D&D does not do 'powerlessness' well. 4e sounds like it really, really won't do powerless well (what with characters being less dependent on gadgets).

What it does do well is 'outclassed'. The feeling of Ravenloft battles should be one of pitched desperation, where their skills and powers are the only reason the players are not immediately overwhelmed, but its their wits that will get them out of it alive. This probably means putting encounter CRs a few levels higher than them, and emphasizing puzzles.

The real meat and potatoes of Ravenloft is the descent into darkness theme. Because D&D is intrinsically heroic, the horror of Ravenloft is that the more you do, the more the powers that be look at you. So perhaps a score similar to Taint, but instead it is an ever rising DC that has to be overcome to avoid the Dark Powers attention. When they do notice you, prepare for bad things. The Mists rise, and monstrous beings are sent after you. No one around you is safe...however, the Taint score is a DM secret, so you never know if it's you who's drawing the wrath of the werewolves, or your buddies.

To geek out (more so), the feeling of Angel, particularly the last season, sums it up well. There are implacable forces at work, but you can't live with yourself if you don't fight them, even though the more you fight the more irritated they become with you.

I've never been a fan of Fear and Horror checks, even though they were one of the better parts of Ravenloft. A Sanity score similar to HPs might be useful, though, adding a new element to encounters. Maybe based on CHA and WIS. Personally, I'd like to see the fear and horror mechanics folded into Taint somehow.

 

[Darrius Adler]

Hum... I will add that one Eberron-made Isle or Terror or DOmain would be cool. Something like the Thief games plus gothic or chthuluesque elements, or a dark, freaky jungle... or an even darker riedra....
frighteing, too...

How about Cyre.... now you know what really happened on the day of Mourning

 

[Darrius Adler]

I'm not sure if there's a place for that, or if it's just distracting from the Transylvanian feel that it's going for. Cthulu certainly isn't necessary to scare PC's; if vampires aren't scaring PC's, it's because the DM is doing something wrong. Anything can be scary. I mean, Cujo is about a dog.

Ravenloft is hard to DM because, like Planescape and Dark Sun, it's as much about mood as any rule or setting sourcebook. You have to work at making sure that everything you do supports this mood, and doesn't detract from it. DM's who use vampires or were-wolves as just another monster to fight (and gives the PC's all the magical gear they need to dispatch them easily) shouldn't be surprised if the "Ravenloft mood" never materializes. You have to use pacing and word choice and all those other "writers tools" to keep it working.

The least scary story is the one you know the ending to. The key is suspense. At first you don't even know what your enemy is (people just disappear). Once you figure out it's a vampire, you don't know who or where it is. Once you do that, you still can't know if you'll win (this is important; the fights should be hard, and any PC that falls to a vampire or were-wolf or necromancer, and gets left behind, should be used by the DM to come back and attack the remaining PC's to remind them of the price of failure). And all along you don't know if you solve the puzzle in time to save your allies, your friends or yourself.

I suspect that Ravenloft's greatest diversion from 4E may be the return of near-instant kills. Part of playing in a horror game is the reminder of your own mortality, and that just can't happen when you have 100+ HP and no way of losing them except slow attrition. To do his job a DM needs to be able to kill you with a silent knife in the dark, or a single soul-sucking kiss.

I am with you on most of this, Ravenloft is very much about atmosphere. Using descriptions to evoke the mood and to hide the nature of the beast staring at the PCs. One of my players has commented that he is on edge in my games often because the description never mentions what the creature is. He can't rattle off the abilities of the creature because he is not 100% certain of what he is facing at times. As to the near-insta kills, I have never used them against players in 2e, or 3e. Ignored level drain as well. To be honest, it has not mattered as far as mood/horror feel. NPCs die quickly as dictated by the plot but the heroes are made of stronger stuff. Though to be fair my players have never gotten a kiss from Ivana Boritsi either and I would have gone with the auto kill there as its part of the Darklord's curse.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

How about Cyre.... now you know what really happened on the day of Mourning

That's a good idea...

 

[Toben the Many]

I suspect that Ravenloft's greatest diversion from 4E may be the return of near-instant kills. Part of playing in a horror game is the reminder of your own mortality, and that just can't happen when you have 100+ HP and no way of losing them except slow attrition. To do his job a DM needs to be able to kill you with a silent knife in the dark, or a single soul-sucking kiss.

Nah. Like someone said, "In role-playing, there's no scaring a dead man."

Once a PC dies, that player is shocked back into reality and reminded that they are playing a game. They promptly get up from the table and go get some Mountain Dew. Meanwhile, often the rest of the players are shocked out of the game by trying to backtrack.

"Dude. Are you sure you're dead? Did you remember that you have Bless? What about that healing that you got?"

In a horror game, dying is actually a release. The insidious thing about a horror game is that dying is one of the least of your worried. Becoming the very thing that you fight...that's more of a real concern. Losing your loved ones? Yep. That's up there too. How about failing to stop the evil so that the whole town is infected with some kind of Evil Thing? Yep. That also qualifies.

 

[Jon Wake]

Why not completely reinvision the setting? It worked for Battlestar Galactica.

C'mon, forget about the convoluted backstory, the really forced cosmology.

You have a clean slate. What makes Ravenloft a favorite setting? Think of it as Ultimate Ravenloft.

It's a world born in evil and blood. There's something outside of space and time, handing out favors to those that embrace cruelty and maliciousness. Thick fog clings to everything, and sometimes it seems like it has a mind of its own.

The history of the realm is a history of conquest and bloodshed, of deposed tyrants and slaughtered uprisings. Everywhere you go you see evidence that something has gone terribly wrong. Gibbets hang from the crossroads packed with misshapen skeletons. The old men say that if you taste their flesh you'll learn the secrets of the grave. Children dare each other to do it and every season a few children come down with night terrors that take their lives.

There's a manor deep in the woods where only a black coach goes, pulled by horses that reek of grave earth. People know better than to look the driver in the face. A faerie circle in the deepining woods is avoided even by the elegant eldarin, who refuse to speak of that place and the screams that sound from it on winter nights.

There are some who do not hide from these things. All have been touched by that vile intelligence in some way. Some touched the dead hand of their loved one and knew that behind it was more than just a random murder. Others delved into the oldest secrets and learned the corrupting names of the still-born. Some simply asked too many questions. But all learned the same thing.

The world is wrong.

Someone has to fix it.

 

[jdrakeh]

The only problem that I've ever really had with Ravenloft is the 'a werewolf in every wood, a vampire in every coffin' syndrome that the setting seems to suffer from. Ravenloft has always been very heavy on the supernatural but in a world where vampires, werewolves, and zombies are as commonplace as domesticated cats and dogs are on Earth, there isn't a lot to be afraid of as-written.

 

[Jon Wake]

The only problem that I've ever really had with Ravenloft is the 'a werewolf in every wood, a vampire in every coffin' syndrome that the setting seems to suffer from. Ravenloft has always been very heavy on the supernatural but in a world where vampires, werewolves, and zombies are as commonplace as domesticated cats and dogs are on Earth, there isn't a lot to be afraid of as-written.

Definitely. It's a pretty universal failing of D&D, though. The fantastic isn't all that fantastic when it's commonplace.

That is why the setting needs a revamp. Let there be a base level of fantasy: elves, dwarves the savage people out on the fringes. But save the big weird things for rarities.

 

[Relique du Madde]

In a horror game, dying is actually a release. The insidious thing about a horror game is that dying is one of the least of your worried. Becoming the very thing that you fight...that's more of a real concern. Losing your loved ones? Yep. That's up there too. How about failing to stop the evil so that the whole town is infected with some kind of Evil Thing? Yep. That also qualifies.

Unfortunately, some players take the seduction of darkness with glee and only hasten their own character's damnation just so that they could have more power for the brief moment they are allowed to use that doomed character.

 

[Steely Dan]

I would make it a little (maybe a lot) more lovecraftian.
Ravenloft should be the scary campaing setting, but vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mummies and sinister gipsies don't scare D&D players.
Unspeakable and unknown terrors from beyond imagination and nightmare, with an alien and unthinkable agenda, do.

That's what Bluetspur is for – Ravenloft can encompass many genres of horror.