Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 4665848" data-attributes="member: 1003">Nothing "upsetting", but certainly not to my taste. Namely I object to the consequences of a Darklord's death being pure DM fiat. Is the Domain absorbed, disappeared, new Darklord appears? Whatever man, could be anything. Maybe you get spun off into the Abyss, huh? It really drains the point of adventuring when it's up to the DM to make sure everything turns out better (rather than worse). Isn't that the Hero's job?And that fact has consequences. If the PCs want to guarantee a "Strahdless Barovia" they can't kill him, because "What do you mean we're now part of Invidia?"; out of the pot, into the fire, you know? Maybe just boarding up all the doors and windows of Castle Ravenloft with garlic and crosses is the best way forward; keep him alive, but contained.I don't like how that constricts PCs options. Trapping Strahd in some eternal prison should be just one of the many but equally beneficial means of relieving Barovia of his control. Stakes through the heart being another.Also:It's not. Just a difference of subjective preference, I guess. But I do have reasons for that. Getting my players to learn and accept a campaign world and all its myriad detail is hard. All those details like days in the week, general geography, etc. don't come quickly or easily to the ones that don't read the novels and campaign setting. I consider it a major achievement once they start really "being in the world", seeing it as a native of that world would. If I made them start over on that stuff every time they walked into a new Domain they'd glare at me and say "What are you doing, man? What's the point of all this?". It'd really mess with my game.I can do either of those in any campaign setting. I've replaced, rewritten and inserted whole kingdoms and races into Greyhawk without needing the demiplane excuse. But I did that before play, while the whole Demiplane thing creates problems during play.Don't you see that the Mists are the reason you need to do stuff like this? In any other setting you'd just find a convenient portal, hitch a ride from a passing Djinn on a carpet, make an overland travel check and say "Two weeks later ....", etc.  The Mists just restrict your options; it doesn't increase them. And for no real gain that I see.But I don't run those and it messes up my ongoing, natives-only RL campaign. Hardly a good trade for me.I guess since I've never felt the least need to "stick to canon" in any setting I just don't see the benefit here. If I want to play a 2E Greyhawk/Arcana Unearthed/Core 4E mash-up I just do it.Which may make you wonder why I'm bothered by how Ravenloft is authored, since I so frequently change things anyway. Mainly it's because I'm lazy and I'd prefer if the designers just wrote it "the right way" the first time so I don't have to. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'd much rather prefer that it was just an explicit rule in D&D that any player who uses the word "canon" at the D&D table (other than in the artillery sense) earns an instant -100 XP demerit. There are plenty of good ways of deciding what what is or is not in a campaign world, but arguments from authorial authority as final arbiter is not one of them. Talk about a ball and chain, you know?</blockquote>

Verification