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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 3975245" data-attributes="member: 37579">Ravenloft does not need to be changed for 4E, other than a slight nip-n-tuck for the planar elements and the new races. Period. End of sentence.Now, the why is the interesting part. Primarily this is because there wasn’t a lot of changed with 3E. The developers and writers knew the setting was only a rental so they just updated and described while adding new details. And its tenure in 2E was short with half the products of other worlds. There are no massive contradictions or huge card houses propped hazardly up or lengthy updates for new rules systems. Not a lot has been changed and not a lot needs to be changed back or undone or rethought. There is no convoluted origin to the world as we’re not entirely sure of the whys and whos only that Strahd was the first  and he made a pact with Death before killing his brother on his wedding day. Can Ravenloft be changed? Yes. In many ways the world would work better in less of a planar aspect or with no darklords or no strict domain borders. But too many people like those to wipe those casually away. Unlike other settings there’s no large vocal consensus. Everyone who looks long and hard at the Realms wonders “why doesn’t Elminister or one of the other 1000 high level guys just step in?”What are the problems with Ravenloft?1) It’s a demiplane in the ethereal sea. The latter doesn’t exist anymore and the former is fantastic and instantly removes some element of normality. However, making it a real world makes it harder to have it ‘steal’ lands and people. Solution: avoid directly saying what and where Ravenloft is. Simply state what it does and leave its nature mysterious. 2) It’s teeny-tiny. However, enlarging it removes all the claustrophobic elements and also requires changing things like population and redoing things like the size of cities on the fly. Solution: avoid scale. Let individual DMs decide how big it should be. Or offer alternatives. 3) Its static with all the politics and threats of war between lands being paper tigers as the actual borders can’t shift? But removing domains altogether changes how darklords work and the reflection of the person on the land. Solution: below4) Players feel it’s a no-win, PC meat grinder setting. No, that’s Call of Cthulu because, as many people pointed out, you can’t frighten a dead PC. And no change to the setting will prevent DMs from using it to insta-kill munchkins. Solution: none. We can emphasise the point-of-light aspects to the campaign and encourage a mix of the helplessness of the gothic with the necessary heroism as well as encouraging DMs to give out “the win” when necessary. So, back to the point on the thread, how would I update Ravenloft for 4E?First, I’d have some event in the past that shook up the planes adding the shadowfell and feywild. I believe some members of the fan community are working on this already, but really all it needs to be is a nebulous even in the past. The two side planes border the mainland but also overlap in places with the feywild having many points of crossing in Sithicus and the Shadow Rift being a nexus between all three worlds. Sithicans easily take the role of eladrin, as the more magical and wild of fey, while Darkonian elves are just elves.Tieflings and warlocks fit so effortlessly in the setting it’s hardly even worth commenting on. Dragonborn? They’re not going to fit…I’d downplay the darklords as a physical threat. Taking a step back to the 3rd Edition book that didn’t feature stats I’d actually keep that. Leave the darklords statless save as nebulous foes pulling strings, or not. Giving them stats just encourages people to try and fight them. They might work better as figures entirely behind the scenes or simply so powerful (or hidden) that you just can’t confront them. If they were ever stated out it’d be a good idea to give them multiple statblocks instead of one authoritarian lump. Give them a lvl20 write-up, a lvl30 and then a beefed-up lvl30 so they can be used in multiple campaigns or modified. Timeline? I’d keep up the current trend of advancing one year in the setting for one year in the real world. This would mean it’s currently 762, or four years after the publication of the last campaign setting. Or more likely it’ll five or six years between campaign settings by the time Ravenloft sees any 4E attention. That’s plenty of time to squeeze in a minor apocalypse and have some local political changes and upheaval. Now here’s the big change: I’d differentiate political borders from domain borders. Domain borders would not shift or change but the rulers of lands and political borders would. For example, Mordent, Richemulot, and Dementlieu would all be a single nation divided into three rough regions. The above nation, Valachan and Invidia would be fighting over borders and who can claim the wild wood of Verbrek and its resources. Meanwhile, Falkovnia would be in the middle of an invasion of Borca, which would not have some of Barovia as its territory. Nova Vassa would also subsume Hazlan. Smaller lands like Karatakas, Tepest and the like as well as much of Barovia would be smaller city-states ruled by local lords who sometimes offer protection money to larger lords or neighboring nations. Meanwhile, the actual domain boundaries would be unchanged. Some lords would be the leaders of respective nations or provinces while others would prefer to remain behind the scenes.The big idea for change always seems to be “the darklords should be able to leave their domains”. I’m almost tempted to dismiss it just because it’s so popular. But I agree with it. Darklords should be able to move between lands, but they should be weakened while doing so. Thus they usually stay at the centre of their power where they have the strongest tie to the land.This might work well as a justification for the multiple stats for the truly anal fans. In their lairs at the peak of their power they have statblock-A. Elsewhere in the domain the have statblock-B. And when they cross a border their power drops to its weakest, statblock-C.I might be tempted to kill a lord or two. Malken, for example, is just getting too damn old for what the character should be. It’s easy enough to have the curse passed to another family member and it might be interesting to keep it a mystery as to who the lord really is. Ditto Vlad Drakov, although, since the setting is now missing one, I might have him die and be resurrected as a deathknight. Ivana would fake her own death and come back after half a decade as her own daughter. She might be a lord-in-exile living in Dementlieu, while her brother desperately tries to hold the border from the Falkovnian hordes.The best change might be presentation. Online publication would be the best way to present Ravenloft. Go back to its roots and encourage DMs to use it for one-shot games, the traditional Weekend in Hell adventures. Either as a break between campaigns or as a place in a larger story. If published on D&DI/Dragon it would let the setting reach a wider audience who could then pick the setting for monsters, adventures, places, villains or use for a one-shot tale of horror. Instead of a large world that has to be used as a whole, the campaign should be presented with multiple uses from the get-go. It can be the location of a full campaign. It can be the location of a Weekened-in-hell adventure. It can be used to pull a land that can be inserted in an existing campaign. This especially works with the modular nature of the setting where land can be described as a microcosm instead of as a piece of a larger whole. The main ‘rules’ and setting information could easily be published as a major article online and then the smaller lands could be filled in as time passes.</blockquote>

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