D&D 5E Ravenloft= Meh

[Jabborwacky]

Ravenloft is the campy b-movie horror set of D&D. It uses classic horror tropes because they are immediately relatable and recognizable. It's near impossible to find someone who has never experienced at least one derivative of Bram Stoker's Dracula, so that greatly simplifies the setup. I'd also say it isn't really meant to be a setting in the same sense as Forgotten Realms, and the only thing it has in common with Dragonlance is that it was built for one-shots.

They're not really approaching Ravenloft the same way as before, anyway. Death House is kind of comical to be honest.

Edit: Actually, it was always kind of comical, now that i think about it. You really don't get the same thing out of World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu as you do D&D Ravenloft, so I hardly think its a "meh" setting.

 

[jgsugden]

Ravenloft puts Advanced back into Dungeons and Dragons.

The setting requires a certain feel and that feel is not easy to capture. A DM has to work hard to set it up, maintain it and utilize it - without railroading players and characters. A certain element of the setting is a feeling of fear and hopelessness, and it is very hard to create those without making the game single tracked.

This is the reason why I am disappointed they released it now. It is a setting that should not be released until players have had several years to get into a system and try things out. It should be the 4th or 5th setting explored: Not second.

 

[pming]

Hiya!
[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6777078]RotGrub[/MENTION], I understand what you are saying. I run a Call of Cthulhu adventure at least once a year (I try, anyway) for my group. They love it to death. So much so that I usually get other players siblings or significant others asking to join. I get how a horror genre RPG needs some initial "buy in" in order to really get the most out of it. However...

I don't think that initial "buy in" is really possible for people who know how D&D works 'behind the scenes'. I mean, just think of a 'horror' movie...say, Dawn of the Dead. Now, what if all the initial characters were the characters from Expendables...but with the added bonus of being experienced RPG'ers. ... ... ... ... It would be a completely different movie and there would be almost no tension because nobody would be doing really stupid things...like wander off on their own in a zombie apocalypse because they "heard a noise coming from down the dark hallway lined with mannequins". As I said...everyone needs to "buy in" to the Stupidity Fund.

How would a RL adventure run if the PC's:

• never, ever divide up into anything less than 3 in a group
• completely ignore anything that they aren't expecting (such as DM: "you hear a woman crying from somewhere in the fog-shrouded wood...sounds like she's lost or hurt"... Players: "sucks to be her..." ).
• stocks up on things they need to fight supernatural creatures (wooden stakes, holy water, wolvesbane, iron/silver weapons, salt, etc).
• are willing to sacrifice their PC to ensure victory for everyone else* ...
• ...or...are willing to sacrifice the entire town if they feel they can't reasonably win

* in one RL game I played in (actual RL module), another players 8th level barbarian with ridiculous HP's (18 Con and good rolls) "misted" Strahd all by himself because Strahd made the mistake of trying to engage him in hand-to-hand combat at the edge of a pit of acid; barbarian grappled him, jumped into acid; levels dropped, HP's dropped every round, and Strahd ran out of HP's first...POOF!...into a fog cloud he went. Barbarian was smiling to himself as his body finally dissolved in the acid pit. With that kind of player determination and sacrifice..."horror" is reversed. Poor Strahd was terrified of us after that, pretty much hiding and running away as we ransacked his castle.

I guess what it boils down to, IME, is that when players feel backed into a corner and with 'no hope of survival' (pretty much a staple for any horror game), they become both unbelievably creative...and equally cold-hearted. I mean, think of a MMO. You are a 40th level whatever, and find you and your party about to get wiped by a 47th level BBEG. Someone yells "RUN!", and everyone disperses. Bad guy wins, but players don't care. They don't care that, story wise, said bad guy is going to kill every NPC in town and bring a new age of darkness to the land. Why? "It's just a game, we'll just ignore him or try again in a few levels".

As I said...there needs to be explicit "buy in" from the players to do stupid things and pretend to be "normal folk". The end of Season 2 of Z Nation has flashbacks to the first day of zombies for some of the characters. One woman is a Militia chick. She hears an ambulance crash. Goes outside, sees guy strapped inside. Guy inside starts spitting black-blood-goo and struggling to get at her. She's confused. Goes inside. Zombies start to pour into the room she is in. She shoots one. Then two. Finishes the third. And then states... "Zombies". Another character is an old guy who is a drug-abuse counselor. Hears a commotion in his room after leaving a patient in there. Opens door, sees some guy on top of his male patient on the couch. Says "Oh! Sorry!", closes door. Pauses. Thinks "I didn't know Gary was gay? No...two guys wrestling on a couch? No... Oh great...Zombies!". Those are RPG'er reactions. Those are reactions players would have. And that is why, IMHO, D&D is a poor fit for a "horror setting campaign". One off? Sure...everyone can buy-into the genre. Long term campaign with PC's the players want to actually play (re: keep alive) for months on end? Not very likely at all, as in "snowballs chance" likely. All IME, of course.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Mouseferatu]

So...

1) Why would they be the same characters from Expendables? You don't bring high-level characters to Ravenloft; you bring low-level ones or play natives.

2) If you have players who would rather let the whole town die because they're "just NPCs," players who won't buy into the world as a world--even when they're losing--I'd humbly suggest you have a bigger problem than your choice of setting.

It can be done because I've seen it done, and have done it myself, on both the DM and PC sides of the screen.

 

[hawkeyefan]

[MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION] I hear some of what you are saying. I don't feel that it needs to be horror in the sense of horror movies, where the protagonists do stupid things in order to be at risk. I think more along the lines of the classic novels that inspired the Ravenloft setting. I don't need them to be foolish or to be regular people, or to split the party or anything like that.

Nor do I think that horror means that hope is eliminated altogether. That's more "cosmic horror" and better suited to Call of Cthulhu and games like that. No, the PCs should think that there is hope. It should just be sufficiently slim.

The example you gave seems more like a DM who maybe didn't handle things properly. I don't think Strahd should hang out to go toe to toe with a barbarian nor do I think he should wait until all his HP are depleted to use most form. I mean, acid or no, as soon as he was grappled, he should have misted to escape. And then maybe blasted the barbarian with an enervated lightning bolt while he climbed out of the acid, for good measure.

I have every expectation that the heroes will arm themselves accordingly, and behave as the seasoned heroes they are supposed to be. But I don't think that creating a scary scene/adventure/campaign requires any more player buy in than creating an action adventure or a comedic one.

 

[Zaran]

Why would we use Barovia after Strahd is dealt with? This is not a campaign setting any more than HotDQ was. This is an adventure that takes you from 1-10. What you do after you've dealt with Strahd is up to the party and DM. You can start a new adventure in another campaign setting or have the DM think of ways to expand Ravenloft past level 10.

Personally I don't want Ravenloft level 11-15 or 11-20 any more than I wanted a Ghost Busters II. When the story is over it's time to stop writing. At level 10 the BBG being a vampire is a good fit for an epic enemy.

That's not really my point. I want content that I can use beyond a single campaign. Having an adventure set in a different setting than the forgotten realms doesn't mean much if it's only contained in the adventure.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I have limited experience with RL. We played one module in 2nd Ed. and I read many of the 4E Domain of Dread articles (which were comprised of a dreadlord, their domain, and a few session long mini-adventure).

What I appreciated the most about RL from those Domain of Dread articles is that they weren't straightforward slay the villain stories. Players had to learn the dreadlord's history and why they became cursed. Based on that the heroes had to deduce how they could defeat the villain and/or escape their domain. Sometimes the heroes had to orchestrate events so the dreadlord could (briefly) redeem themselves for their terrible crime. Sometimes they had to make the dreadlord revisit or face their terrible crime. Player level and combat prowess didn't mean an automatic victory because most dreadlords would resurrect if you killed them and the only way to escape their domain was by discovering and engaging with the backstory. It required players to take a different tactic than to simply kill the villain, which is something unique about RL compared to other D&D settings that I find very appealing.

 

[iserith]

I have limited experience with RL. We played one module in 2nd Ed. and I read many of the 4E Domain of Dread articles (which were comprised of a dreadlord, their domain, and a few session long mini-adventure).

What I appreciated the most about RL from those Domain of Dread articles is that they weren't straightforward slay the villain stories. Players had to learn the dreadlord's history and why they became cursed. Based on that the heroes had to deduce how they could defeat the villain and/or escape their domain. Sometimes the heroes had to orchestrate events so the dreadlord could (briefly) redeem themselves for their terrible crime. Sometimes they had to make the dreadlord revisit or face their terrible crime. Player level and combat prowess didn't mean an automatic victory because most dreadlords would resurrect if you killed them and the only way to escape their domain was by discovering and engaging with the backstory. It required players to take a different tactic than to simply kill the villain, which is something unique about RL compared to other D&D settings that I find very appealing.

I must have missed those articles in D&D 4e. They sound great. I'm big on having the exploration and social interaction pillars being advantageous to overcoming other kinds of challenges and this sounds like a good usage of that technique.

 

[RotGrub]

@pming

Ravenloft is horror played in D&D mode. It's not to be played like an MMO or a movie and there is no expectation that characters will always be backed into a corner.

It sounds like your version of horror isn't what Ravenloft is about anyway. I don't ever remember reading a Ravenloft module that was scripted like a cheap horror movie or required the PCs to behave in a stupid manner. There are horror, madness, and fear mechanics that impose a number of conditions on your character, but they do so with the expectation that you'll have fun role playing them.

If you have players that don't want to role play that's another issue. Sure, players might not care, but a LG Paladin who constantly ignores the plight of innocents would have problems in any campaign. In Ravenloft, characters who act in the way you're suggesting will certainly be punished by the Dark Powers. In fact, I'm quite certain that allowing a town to be destroyed is a powers check. That's one quick way to become cursed or even turned into an NPC.

Sure PCs will stock up on various items to aid them, just as the various Van-Richten's guides suggests, but knowing what items will work is another matter. One reason is that Ravenloft Lords and Villans are typically rather unique. In addition, many of the monsters in the 2e Ravenloft monster compendium support the process of discovery. For example, you wouldn't ever fight an Elven Vampire with sunlight or use a wooden stake.

 

[RotGrub]

After playing and running several Ravenloft modules, I've come to realize that the setting isn't about hopelessness as some are suggesting.

The setting's modules are typically about mystery, suspense, a sense of imprisonment, redemption, and poetic justice. In fact, the party is usually the very embodiment of hope. Entire domains can collapse as the result of character actions.

IMO, the moment you start to make the players feel as if they can't make a difference is the moment Ravenloft isn't being played correctly. That might work for other horror games, but it's not what Ravenloft is about.