Vocenoctum said:
As someone who also disliked the vast majority of RL from WW, I'll try to recall why I stopped buying the line.
First off, I found production standards to be generally "amateurish" in art and writing style. The books were badly laid out in most cases.
That’s obviously a question of taste, as most RL fans do like the b&w art and presentation of the books
Secondly, Denizen's of Darkness was decent enough, but the stats were all cobbled and CR's were randomly assigned. I was running the adventure with the Carrionette's, and started using the 3e stats from the book, before realizing how totally wrong they were. I'm not a big nitpicker, but the monsters are written from imagination, rather than any grounding in 3e Stats.
No question there, I agree. It was written by many authors, but the final editing to smooth it all was absent. So you end up with a book with many flaws that could have been prevented from serious editing. I strongly suggest you do not take a look at the 3.5 update of this book, Denizens of Dread, as it contains much more weird errors easy to spot.
Thirdly, well, more like Second Part B, all the rules material was badly done, there's no sense of balance. PrC's were often just random in feel. Same with rules, like in Arsenal, the weapon additions didn't seem bad, but frankly they were written oddly.
Question of taste too, I guess, since most RL fans I know loved VRArsenal.
Which PRC did you find odd? I have to say that if these are from Heroes of Light and Champions of Darkness, these were books with many flaws, and many PRC in these are not really used by us.
To clarify something, do not think we consider most Ravenloft books have flaws, as reading my answer so far could suggest. Only a few (out of 19 books) have been considered bad (and even uncanon for the CoD book) by the fans: Champions of Darkness and the rehashed 3.5 Ravenloft players book (with incoherent new rules, to say the least) mainly, and in a lesser degree: Heroes of Light, the monster books (texts are OK, stats too, but many odd errors), and MotRD.
Back then, I was running the Undead Sea Scrolls netbook, some kind of spinoff of the Kargatane’s netbook. I then said some of the content of CoDarkness would have been refused in my fan netbook
Fourth, I didn't care for the "everything's Evil" outlook, with regard to familiars and such. I don't recall that from 2e, but may have just ignored it at the time.
This is perhaps a monolithic approach, as everything isn’t evil in Ravenloft
. It’s a low magic setting, and using magical powers is just more dangerous or risky. You have to know what you do or you could end up in trouble by using wrong powers.
Fifth, no support online that I noticed. Sure there was errata for the Core in the Screen, but I didn't see anything else to help the later books.
No question there too. As I often said, WW did promote RL very poorly. Ever saw an ad for RL in the last three years? Ever saw anything interesting about RL on the WW web site? Free downloadable goodies to attract new players? What importance did Ravenloft get in the WW Quarterly PDF magazine?
Sixth, when 3.5 came out, one of the big fears from folks I talk to was that companies would simply republish old books with a couple tweaks. Ravenloft was the ONLY one to do such a thing, and frankly I thought it was a horrible idea, and they even renamed it so folks would buy it thinking it was something different.
Agreed. I’m not in the know about the Ravenloft licence from WotC to WW, but it was said by the developers that WW had to redo his 3.0 books to 3.5 edition because of this licence’s terms.
But it was very badly done. The people who “updated” it made a very strange job out of it: the monster book stats were not really converted to 3.5, and the players book contained new rules that make absolutely no sense. Funnily, these rules were said to be optional afterward, when the fans yelled.
We still recommend the 3.5 Ravenloft players book, as it is the only thing out there for newbies, but we also strongly urge to read the reviews on our fan site to get rid of those nonsense new rules.
I did like the domain descriptions in the Core, never bought the Gaz's or the book of evil, I was considering the bloodline's one, but by then the revised Core had driven me away. I liked the general feel of Van Richten's Arsenal and Heroes of Light, but both proved pretty useless over all because of the random nature of their stats.
Agreed for HoLight. I don’t know what is the “book of evil” you mention. If you are talking about Champions of Dorkness, stay away from it!
So the way I see it your main grip is about WW’s work with the line (promotion and editing), not the author’s work (or perhaps some of the PRC). If you liked the feel of VRA, you should pick any Ravenloft Gazetteer, you’ll be amazed at the quality of these books.
Joël
