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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gonzoron" data-source="post: 4664121" data-attributes="member: 31753">Yes, that's true.  But there we have the true nature of the Red Death showing itself.  It's just as much a plot device as the Dark Powers are, meant only to provide an in-game justification for why the game world fits the genre.  (BTW, Author William W. Connors confirmed in an interview that their intent was the the Red Death was a rogue Dark Power expelled from Ravenloft.)  I just have trouble seeing how a world where the PCs are weaker and the BBEGs are stronger (not limited to a domain, for one thing) feels less hopeless than Ravenloft.  The Red Death is responsible for creating all the supernatural evil on Gothic Earth, but The Dark Powers are responsible for creating EVERYTHING in Ravenloft (aside from outlanders), both the good and the bad.  Van Richten and Tara Kolyana are as much their creation as Dominic D'Honaire and Jacqueline Montarri are.Good points, but DMs have mismanaged their power in every setting ever made.  That the Dark Powers give them an excuse is not the issue, a bad DM needs no excuse, and every setting has something powerful to blame for DM fiat.  The example you give is just as likely for Strahd von Greyhawkovich, the vampire necromancer BBEG as it is for Strahd von Zarovich, the darklord.   Darklordship really doesn't give them all that much more power than your average BBEG.  They can close the borders, and they get a few special abilities no worse than the average template.  The really lucky ones get a way to cheat death, but most of those have an escape clause that smart and strong enough PCs can exploit to finish them off.   And is anyone really surprised in any setting when the BBEG they thought was dead comes back for an encore?Fair enough as your own interpretion, though Insanity can sometimes seem like a cop-out motive.  Blaming mental illness for one's own choices is a dangerous step toward moral relativism that can conflict with the Gothic tradition.  (And like it or not, Evil is a tangible thing in the D&D game.)Yes, but can the same be said of Harkon Lukas, for example, who keeps an Inn full of secret passages for his and his wolfwere friends to dine on patrons?  Or Azalin, who chose undeath and filicide rather than let his son rule in a way he saw as too soft?  Not every RL villian is insane, IMHO.  To call them so makes them all "not guilty by reason of insanity."The thing is that Darklords, as a general rule, are characters with their own motivations and schemes.  Strahd has only a few rules for his people: theft from the state is treason, don't harm the vistani, and don't enter my castle.  Then there are the unwritten rules:  don't get in the way of my feeding, and don't even think about getting between me and the latest Tatyana reincarnation.  Though he could interfere in anything else, he has no reason or desire to.  And even when he puts his mind to something, he's clearly not onmipotent, or the Gundarakite rebellion would'be been squashed instantly.  Likewise with Azalin, if you're not directly impeding his current scheme or trying to disrupt his rule, he doesn't care.  Of the two, Azalin has more power over his domain, but doesn't even have the drive for revenge that Strahd does.  If you thwart a plan of Strahd, you'd best lay low in Barovia until he drops the border and get out post-haste.  But Az cares only for the present.  Just because you thwarted him once doesn't mean he can't make use of you next time.  These are but two examples, but with the exception of the one-note nothing-but-a-darklord domains (I'Cath, Aggarath, and the like), there's plenty of stuff going on in any given domain that doesn't involve the DL in the slightest.Yes, mostly.  (The Evil Eye module, The Van Richten's Guide series of sourcebooks, Champions of the Mists sourcebook/Shadowborn novel/Book of Shadows netbook*, Carnival of Fear novel/Carnival sourcebook, Feast of Goblyns module, Feast of Goblyns module/Red Box campaign setting, Tapestry of Dark Souls novel, Book of Secrets netbook*/Gazetteer III sourcebook, and Vampire of the Mists novel, respectively)  Though most of those were summarized in Domains of Dread, at least in the timeline chapter.  This is exactly the kind of stuff that adventurers do do.   Maybe the 2e campaign settings didn't make it clear enough, but it's definitely clear from the other books, and the 3e books especially.30 Ravenloft modules were published under 2e, and 7 collections of mini-adventures, with 70 mini-adventures between them, plus 5 adventure sketches in the 3e Dark Tales and Distrubing Legends, and 9 adventures in Dungeon Magazine.  Of those 114 adventures, only about 25 or so involve direct conflict with a darklord.  And as far as I remember, every one of them contains some sort of triumph at the end for the PCs.* Lest anyone wonder why I'm quoting netbooks as canon, it's because these particular articles were written by the eventual authors of the 3e canon books and enough elements of them were incorporated into canon that most fans consider them at least semi-canonical.</blockquote>

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