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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9501872">No, he means more heavy on the sex and sensuality, leaning more into the players being evil monsters. There were moments in the 90s line you could see sparks of that (for example some optional rules for the PCs as monsters were put out in one of the boxed set adventures). This wasn't how I ran Ravenlft in the 90s. Some characters might get into tragedy. In terms of NPCs, any tragedy in the backstory I think was pretty in keeping with the gothic genre. I do think it also hit the zeitgeist of that in the 90s. But I wouldn't call it grim dark. Ravenloft could be corny, it was never mature like Vampire, and it wasn't about blood and guts. It was about subtle horror, atmosphere, gothic tropes, etc. To do that you needn't an occasional rough edge, like a hammer movie has, but you don't need to go full tilt into grim dark like Warhammer. I grew up in the 80s too (though I graduated high school in the early 90s, so we may be slightly different time periods in our upbringing if you were older than me). And I was a horror movie buff. I think the original adventure is incredible. And I think the boxed set does an amazing job of taking the premise of that adventure seriously and trying to expand its core ideas into a setting. Not saying you or others need agree, but I think Ravenloft was still a tough adventure where player characters could die. Ravenloft the setting though was during an era when a lot of GMs were giving PCs plot immunity and you can see traces of that in the books. One of my criticisms of 2E Ravenloft is it sometimes doesn't lean as heavily  into let the dice fall where they may, and seems to support this notion. Of course it is schizophrenic about it, by aslso throwing things at the party like those crazy lightning bolts in Bluetspur. But I wouldn't say it is a setting where the players aren't expected to win (at least not more so than the original module). But it was horror, so the party was vulnerable, threats were harder to sometimes than anticipated (and Strahd is the OG of this: everything in Ravenloft emanates from how Strahd was handled in the first module). Atmosphere is important. A sense of danger is important (how heavily the GM leaned into that danger varied a lot but I would say personally I think the setting is more scary when death is on the table).</blockquote>

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