Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9501131" data-attributes="member: 7635">I must admit for me, it's a stale trope that hurts a long term Ravenloft game. The players quickly figure out the people of the land hate them, so they are less inclined to help them. You might get a few bleeding heart X-Men types, but most players get tired of not being able to enter town for supplies or creature comforts like food and a warm bed and they decide that the peasants aren't worth helping, let them suffer with their dark lord, I'm looking for a way home. And once you've trained your players to ignore NPCs, you've lost a huge swath of adventure hooks.Moreover, I have grown distasteful of every village and town being a Sundown town and leaning on the racist and xenophobic tropes that brings. I will occasionally use a community with that sort of viewpoint as an adventure seed, but the vast majority of people in Ravenloft aren't inherently afraid of elves or goliaths (or they don't immediately retreat to hate and violence, an elves gold spends like anyone else's, and sometimes you gotta go along to get along.)Further, it matters what domain you're in. Barovia might be insular and superstitious, but I would assume the more cosmopolitan Dementlieu is less so. Darkon certainly isn't, and a domain like Valachan has more important things to worry about than the elves' skin color. If you aren't a panther or a vampire, you're ok in their eyes. But mostly, I moved away from Ravenloft being hardcore xenophobic because that ruins the fun of the setting. It's what I meant about "meat grinder" mode: running Ravenloft where there is no respite, no victory larger than your immediate survival, nothing worth fighting for other than your own skin. For an evening of terror (pop in, pop out) that's fine, but for a long game that's exhausting. So I run my Ravenloft dark, but a little less grim. It helps keep my players engaged and wanting to explore the dark places when there are still points of light worth fighting for.</blockquote>

Verification