Innsmouth added as new Ravenloft Domain of Dread, bringing Lovecraft to D&D

Innsmouth, the iconic home of several HP Lovecraft stories, is being incorporated into Ravenloft as a new Domain of Dread. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast revealed the contents of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, including the number of subclasses, ancestries, and new creature statblocks in the game. Wizards also revealed that 16 Domains of Dread will be profiled in the book, including the new domain Innsmouth. Assumably, its Darklord will be Cthulhu, who was previously confirmed to be in Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, complete with a statblock.

Cosmic horror has long had a place in Dungeons & Dragons lore, with Cthulhu originally appearing in early copies of Deities and Demigods. Due to a licensing dispute with Chaosium, TSR removed Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian creatures from later printings of the book. Cthulhu along with Lovecraft's other creations have since passed into the public domain, thus removing any restrictions on featuring the characters in a D&D book.

Of course, Innsmouth (at least in Lovecraft's work) is supposed to be a turn of the century New England coastal town, which doesn't exactly jive with the high fantasy trappings of Dungeons & Dragons. We'll have to see how much of Innsmouth is changed to line up with D&D when Ravenloft: The Horrors Within releases later this summer.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The PC's are inanimate game constructs, they are no more capable of an emotion like fear then the dog in Monopoly is capable of financial planning. Chatgpt has more emotional capacity through a prompt like "imagine you are scared by xxx and $prompt" yet nobody who understands it would claim it capable of emotion.

Wow, just wow, I guess I shouldn't have gotten the Monopoly Dog to do my taxes then, oops.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wow, just wow, I guess I shouldn't have gotten the Monopoly Dog to do my taxes then, oops.

The distinction I mentioned matters because absent the capability to be something other than an inanimate game construct it requires the mechanics do the supporting job of carrying things like "horror" and fear in a way that is relevant enough to matter for the player. Simply claiming that PCs!=Players doesn't do anything to address the gaping mechanical absence.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There's a big difference between seeing it right in front of you (as a person involved) and watching it on TV as a spectator. For example, you might see a traffic accident on the news, but if it happens in the street right in front of you, you'd be in shock.

The horror genre in role-playing games is not like in classic literature because there is no script armor and no one can predict what will happen, and the challenge is a balance between vulnerability and the possibilities of survival or even defeating the villain.

Horror is not about (almost) everybody dies. "The dirty dozen" or "Games of Thrones" have got a low survival rate but they aren't horror titles. The Raven(1963) is fantasy horror, "The Watcher in the Wood" and "House"(1985) are other examples of horror with a low-death-rate.

And now we are too used used to monsters to accept our characters could suffer mental stress because they have watched a living pokemon with tentacles.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The distinction I mentioned matters because absent the capability to be something other than an inanimate game construct it requires the mechanics do the supporting job of carrying things like "horror" and fear in a way that is relevant enough to matter for the player. Simply claiming that PCs!=Players doesn't do anything to address the gaping mechanical absence.

I think “D&D PCs are fantasy heroes” is a feature, not a bug. A zero level commoner like the SoI narrator has plenty of reason to be afraid of 2HD Deep Ones. It’s just a matter of scaling the threat accordingly. So we bring in Cthulhu in person.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think “D&D PCs are fantasy heroes” is a feature, not a bug. A zero level commoner like the SoI narrator has plenty of reason to be afraid of 2HD Deep Ones. It’s just a matter of scaling the threat accordingly. So we bring in Cthulhu in person.

There is an ocean of difference between "fantasy hero" and "invulnerable Gary Stu". Those "fantasy heroes" are found in a fantasy world, Ravenloft itself and domains like innsmouth however are incredibly distant from Equestria & the thousand acre wood.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There is an ocean of difference between "fantasy hero" and "invulnerable Gary Stu". Those "fantasy heroes" are found in a fantasy world, Ravenloft itself and domains like innsmouth however are incredibly distant from Equestria & the thousand acre wood.

PCs are generally transported to Ravenloft from regular fantasy worlds, bringing their experiences with them.

Conan was the original invulnerable Gary Stu, and he was a huge influence on D&D.

When Conan goes to Innsmouth he makes sushi.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There were a Lovecraftian touch in some tales of Conan.

Ravenloft is introduced as Gothic horror but after in the tabletop players choose their own style and usually this is action-horror, like castlevania videogames.


I feel curiosity about a possible update of survivor classes. The idea is interesting when you would rather a faster and simple creation of PCs instead more powerfuls. Other option is PCs are relatively powerful but they need the help of their sidekicks and these next to them are "nerferd".

In 1920s Lovecraft fiction was very weird for the standards of that age but today they are only "the monster of the week". Now it is the age of "new weird fiction".

Could aboleth to cause troubles in this domain? What about a cult funded and controlled by a linnord?

In Eldraine(Magic: the Gathering) Korvold was a greedy king cursed by the faes and turned into a dragon. Maybe in Ravenloft there is a hex-dragon with a similar origin.

* Let's remember Iuz has got his own reasons to hate Vecna.

* Now I am thinking the darlord Easan the mad could be interested into he investigation of the psionic and the incarnum. He could become a quasi-deity.

 

[tetrasodium]

PCs are generally transported to Ravenloft from regular fantasy worlds, bringing their experiences with them.

And Conan was the original invulnerable Gary Stu, and he was a huge influence on D&D.

When Conan goes to Innsmouth he makes sushi.

Yes Gary Stu, the PCs are no longer in their familiar fantasy world after being transported to Ravenloft. You openly admit it but it seems like you are incapable of accepting the idea that such a shift is capable of having any impact whatsoever by virtue of being a different fantasy world with different baselines in anything at all.

Doubling down on that brick wall by tossing out labels like "fantasy heroes" to justify why the player should be able to simply ignore those differing baselines affecting their PC shows clearly why past edition versions of the Ravenloft setting books included modifications to core rules and base PC abilities/spells/etc. the hypothetical PCs and players you are spotlighting as "fantasy heroes" from a "fantasy world" are being described as extremely clear examples of why the terms Mary Sue & Gary Stu became common player/PC descriptors many years ago.

 

[Selas]

Yes Gary Stu, the PCs are no longer in their familiar fantasy world after being transported to Ravenloft. You openly admit it but it seems like you are incapable of accepting the idea that such a shift is capable of having any impact whatsoever by virtue of being a different fantasy world with different baselines in anything at all.

Doubling down on that brick wall by tossing out labels like "fantasy heroes" to justify why the player should be able to simply ignore those suffering baselines affecting their PC shows clearly why past edition versions of the Ravenloft setting books included modifications to core rules and base PC abilities/spells/etc. the hypothetical PCs and players you are spotlighting as "fantasy heroes" from a "fantasy world" are being described as extremely clear examples of why the terms Mary Sue & Gary Stu became common player/PC descriptors many years ago.

This was the point I was trying to make, but you covered it better. Just because the players might know the story doesn't mean the PCs do, and just because they come from a fantasy setting doesn't mean that things will work the way they are used to from wherever they come from.

I find Edge of Midnight from Avantris is a good example of what happens when fantasy heroes meets Ravenloft (folk horror homebrew setting). Although unfinished, the DM and players did an amazing job balancing both aspects to create tension that felt natural for players and PCs. It's the reason Crooked Moon sold as much as it did.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes Gary Stu, the PCs are no longer in their familiar fantasy world

Sure, but they bring the things they learned from their fantasy world, such as fish people and hybrids are perfectly normal (some are even friendly), monsters are things to be fought and killed, not feared, and so on. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail (even if you take the hammer to a different world), to a fantasy hero every monster looks something to kill (and steal its stuff). There are other things they might find alien and frightening, from the early 20th C technology to the racist attitudes, but monsters are comfortably familiar.

And fantasy heroes is the whole point of D&D. If players wanted to play a game where they were weak commoners facing monsters they would play a different game. There are plenty available, and they all do it better than D&D ever can. Ravenloft was created so fantasy heroes could face off against Dracula. The 2nd edition boxed set made the mistake of trying to compete with CoC by copying it. That’s always an error, because the original is always better at being itself than any copy. D&D can best compete with horror games by focusing on being itself, a big bad hero game, not trying to be something else.

There is no point in creating something the same as something that already exists. “Innsmouth” already exists in CoC. The point of this “Innsmouth” is it is different to that one. It’s a D&D favoured one.