Ravenloft is being folded into the core setting for 4E (Domains of Dread)

[Jack Colby]

How can the long-time Ravenloft concept be folded into the core when the concept was that it is not part of the core?

Edit: I should add this is a rhetorical question. I really don't doubt it will be Ravenloft in name only, much like the Forgotten Realms, etc. 4E seems to be all about making worlds fit rules, not vice-versa.

 

[ki11erDM]

I only have one negative thing to say about this, why didn’t they tell me they were going to do this before I spent a month doing this very thing!!! /sigh

: )

 

[keterys]

I'm enthused, because I'm betting the way they do it will be something that's easy to poach and use as a DM.

Whereas the Ravenloft demiplane was... not at all useful for me. Not even a little.

I liked stuff like the Van Richten's guides and all, but I'm always more for things I can plunk into my own world. So far it looks easier to do that for FR, too.

 

[The Little Raven]

I knew it was coming in Dragon, but with this announcement, you all now officially know as much as I do

Damn it! I was hoping to open up the article and see the name Ari Marmell on it.

Hopefully, it comes out soon enough that it will aid me in my 4e version of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.

 

[FunkBGR]

I'm really hoping they use this as a vehicle to "gritty"-ize 4e stuff. I've already changed lycanthropy based on my Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts for my 4e game - so maybe they'll throw something out like that.

 

[Shroomy]

While the Points of Light might be a bit dimmer in Ravenloft, I can't see WoTC really straying to far from the heroic fantasy niche of core 4e, especially since I would surmise that they want to keep the material applicable to as many campaigns as possible.

 

[James McMurray]

I've always been a big fan of Ravenloft except for the extreme railroading inherent in the system. Hopefully they keep the feel and leave out the mists that you can't walk through until you've done X.

 

[Keenath]

I liked the Dark Powers, if you took out the stuff about them trapping you in a small, provincial plane ruled by vampires. I liked the idea of a campaign setting where the gods were weak and distant, and nebulous Dark Powers ruled.

Right, exactly. Like I say, I don't mind if it's just the nature of the world. It strikes me as lazy or silly to write something that's effectively saying, "This exists in the same universe with everything else, but all the rules are different because... um... The dark powers did it!"

 

[Mouseferatu]

Indeed, my own experience has always been that playing natives of Ravenloft--basically, taking "escape" out of the equation, since this is "just the way the world is"--makes for far more satisfying and effective RL campaigns than playing refugees from other worlds.

 

[Dausuul]

This. I don't know what the plans are for Ravenloft's domains in 4E--I knew it was coming in Dragon, but with this announcement, you all now officially know as much as I do--but it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the domains introduced simply as just that: domains. Small kingdoms/realms of horror that can go anywhere, and don't need to be tied together into their own demiplane unless the DM wants 'em to be.

Yeah, this sounds about right.

Like a lot of people on this thread, I never liked the "you're trapped here, in a place that is ruled by beings of utter evil, and there's nothing you can ever do to change any of that" aspect of Ravenloft. I don't like scenarios in which you know from the start that you're doomed and nothing you do will have any lasting impact.

I suspect, and hope, that WotC is going to dump that element of the setting, and turn Ravenloft into a bunch of sub-planes in the Shadowfell, much like astral dominions in the Astral Sea, or the Abyss in the Elemental Tempest. Grim, brooding, a place where dark powers rule, but not totally cut off from the rest of the multiverse.

Also, who else thinks they're going to be tied to the Raven Queen in some way?