Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 3974545" data-attributes="member: 7635">Honestly?Chuck the Demiplane. There, I said it.Ravenloft began life as a hodge-podge of every possible horror trope in fantasy. It had no rhyme or reason, no cohesion, no theme except "evil". Darkon (pretty much a D&D world in darkness) sat next to Falkovia (Vlad the Impaler) next to Lamordia (Victorian England + Frankenstein) with no real cohesion. Lamordia is higher tech (firearms) but Falkovia is Iron-Age. Darokin harbors no special fear of demi-humans, Falkovia and Lamordia do. Each domain becomes an isolated pocket with no trade, religion, or even language unifying them and the "pulled from outside" element usually only serves to make PCs WANT to go home the quickest route possible.To start again, make the world a REAL planet, not a hodge-podge demi-plane. Chuck EVERY reference to a TSR/WotC world that came before (Soth, Haazlin, etc) and assume every dark lord, hero, and monster is native to that world and not drawn in. Dump the domain borders, they are artificial creations designed to railroad PCs. Make the dark lords powerful, but not the linchpin to the setting (or, make them destroyable). Lastly, make the dark powers a true malevolent force to face, not just an enigmatic DM plot-tool. The final product would be akin to Midnight, and sound a little like this.The world was peaceful once. It was good and free. But those times are at an end. The time of darkness has come.They say it began with Strahd, the Ancient one, when he made a pact with Dark Entities beyond our world. He allowed them access, and once here, they took over. These Dark Powers made pacts with many, and to war these Champions of Darkness went. Some went willingly: Drakov marched his armies over several kingdoms. Otherse less so: no one knows why the artificer Mordenheim joined, or even if he knew he was when his perfect creation was born. But now the land is overtaken, and the Champions have carved up the land like a ham on the festival day. But that doesn't stop their own squabbles, their own desire to be first. The lich-lord Azalin makes no secret his desire for greater power, but still the Original, Strahd, acts as the leader and greatest among the Dark Power's Champions.Since the coming of Darkness, things are not as they should. The nights are colder, darker. Magic has become fickle, and untrustable. The god's of light grow silent, and only a few still hear their call. The beasts and monsters grew bolder, and under the sway of their evil dark masters, threaten to overtake the last remaining beacons of hope left. Now is the time for Heroes. Though few still live with the power to challenge the Dark Powers and their minions of evil, new heroes have come to save our dying lands. It is up to them to find the relics of good still untouched by evils stain, rally the people to aid them, and face off against Markov the Changer, Godfrey the Undying, Misori the Necromancer, Anhktepot the Guardian and other servants of darkness. If they succeed, the long night will be over. If not, we're all doomed, here in Ravenloft</blockquote>

Verification