D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Bedrockgames]

The average party of adventurers does far more slashing than any number of Jasons, Freddys and Michaels.

If you ignore the fact that adventurers are killing vampires and werewolves, and Freddy and Jason are killing innocent teenagers. Either way, that wasn't his point at all, he was comparing Verbrek as a domain to slasher movies, not the actions of player characters.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Dear lord. This is exactly the kind of uncharitable interpretation I am talking about. Someone being able to enjoy old films, old books, and a Ravenloft boxed set in 1990 doesn't mean they live in some mental or cultural backwater. Chances are you and I don't disagree on much politically I am guessing. But I think you are seizing an opportunity where someone disagrees with you slightly about media to pontificate and vent

OLD films are one thing. But Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft IS NOT OLD. It is being written and published in 2021, so it will be judged by the standards of 2021.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Ravenloft has got its own serial-killer, the Midnight Slasher,

and the classic gothic horror is not the sole source of inspiration. A good example is the plant dopplegänger, based in the sci-fi horror movie "the invasion of the body-snatchers".

From 1990 a lots there have been many horror productions, good and evil, and even from a horrible serie-B title you could find ideas for your game. Even the werehare, the werebadger, the wereram, werebison, wereweasel and weresloth (from Dragon Magazone #40)could be useful. Stephen King could write a horror story about a laudry-machine, as example of ordinary objects becoming fearful menaces. Why not to recycle "bad ideas" to create anything that could be amazing? For example the weresloth used as a twisted and wicked version of the sleeping beauty. The weresloth is almost always sleeping (and in the nightmare realms a dangerous predator), used as a sentinel of a precious threasure (why not better an undead? because the tomb raiders has got ready with special ways against these, or the potential invader usually is a werebeast who eats undeads). Becoming a weresloth can be a humiliating curse but it is worse when you notice somebody wants to hunt because your claws hurt undead and werebeasts as the silver bullets, The regeneration of a were-prey are practically a penalty when your fate is being amputated time after time as source of food, and weapons crafted by your bones, or being eaten alive forever as the mythological giant Tytus. The manganime "the island of the giant insects" is a example of how "ordinary monsters" as the classic giant vermins can be more terrifying you could suposse at first.

And other thread is what if players want to play monsters as undead and theriantropes, when this was allowed in 3.5.

* Technically the gnolls are like complete tribes of slashers, and the jerren (evil halflings) is too capable of certain actions to cause fear and horror even other evil humanoids.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you ignore the fact that adventurers are killing vampires and werewolves, and Freddy and Jason are killing innocent teenagers.

So are the PCs. The average orc warrior is under 20 years old.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So are the PCs. The average orc warrior is under 20 years old.

Ravenloft doesn't really have many orcs. It isn't that kind of setting. Even then, there is a debate to be had over whether an orc is a monster, a morally independent creature etc (which is going to vary by setting). Some campaigns revolve around hacking up those kinds of monsters, some don't. Ravenloft is definitely not intended to be about that (even with monsters and ghosts you are often trying to redeem or bring them to peace: if you go around acting like Jason, even to bad people, in Ravenloft you will eventually fail a powers check)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ravenloft has got its own serial-killer, the Midnight Slasher,

Sure but that is more Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes stuff than Jason

 

[Bedrockgames]

OLD films are one thing. But Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft IS NOT OLD. It is being written and published in 2021, so it will be judged by the standards of 2021.

Of course it will. But the question is how good has our judgment become? I think our judgment of such things is reaching hysterical levels and not really taking the time to understand what writers and designers are trying to do (like I said it is uncharitable, usually moralizing, and more often than not about using judgment to make it all about the person leveling the criticism)

 

[Istbor]

I don't buy this. But even if we accept it as true: why put out a gothic horror setting like Ravenloft again at all then?

Because that is one of their product lines? Because vampires somehow have never really gone out of style? (The same being said for zombie hordes.) Because they still want some more grim dark, terror filled worlds for players to experience? I doubt the reason is because we MUST have gothic horror.

It could be something as simple as just wanting to present something that isn't the Forgotten Realms, and the want/need to update it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Because that is one of their product lines? Because vampires somehow have never really gone out of style? (The same being said for zombie hordes.) Because they still want some more grim dark, terror filled worlds for players to experience? I doubt the reason is because we MUST have gothic horror.

It could be something as simple as just wanting to present something that isn't the Forgotten Realms, and the want/need to update it.

But the line was specifically gothic and classic horror (and not especially grim dark). They can do what they want. I am just saying why take a gothic line and re-vise it, if you don’t really want gothic horror ? My real point is: doesn’t it make sense for Ravenloft be rooted in the gothic and classic horror tradition?

 

[Faolyn]

Or, Ravenloft can be used to have lots of different types of horror! It may have started out as mostly just gothic horror, but it has grown to envelop other types as well. And that's OK! There's enough different types of horror for everyone!

 

[Istbor]

Again, I am not saying views and morality don't change. They were very different in 1990 versus the 19th century as well. You can still enjoy older material. Dear lord, how do you even deal with things like primary sources in history if a book like Dracula is a problem for you? We read lots of classics and old books we disagreed with in 1990, but we were able to contextualize them, extract meaning from them and use them to help us understand the evolution of art and expression over time. Definitely there were bad ideas in the past. History is filled with bad ideas, bad events, etc. One way to make sure those don't happen again, is to have a full awareness of the mentalities that were present during those times (for example you really can't understand something like the holocaust if you don't read material from the periods leading up to it that contained anti-semitic assumptions and racialist scientific theories). We are getting into real world politics here though, so I don't want to get into it more than that. But I think that is an important point to make because people seem to think folks like me, who came of age in the 90s, are saying you should read and enjoy old tropes because they are evil and we want you to be evil too. The point is you will have a real broken understanding of history if you aren't even able to contend with books from the past that contained ideas you don't agree with or are not considered acceptable any more. At the same time, you can enjoy a 19th century vampire without embracing the 19th century mindset of its writer. And you will also discover, humans are more complicated than just being products of their time. You will encounter things distasteful to modern readers but you will also encounter surprising ideas. There is still plenty of reason for example to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or watch some of those old Universal movies based on her book like Bride of Frankenstein.

I stopped at the dear lord part frankly.

I am not saying you (general you) cannot enjoy older material. I am stating that in the current climate, and with the age skew of players, compounded with wanting new (likely younger) players, they have to do something. They can't keep the same style from the 80s or 90s. That is 40-30 years ago.

 

[Istbor]

But the line was specifically gothic and classic horror (and not especially grim dark). They can do what they want. I am just saying why take a gothic line and re-vise it, if you don’t really want gothic horror ? My real point is: doesn’t it make sense for Ravenloft be rooted in the gothic and classic horror tradition.

It can be rooted in whatever you like. Why can't they revisit, revive, and rework it to in some cases still use gothic roots, but also branch out to other styles of horror? Ones that aren't a century old.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It can be rooted in whatever you like. Why can't they revisit, revive, and rework it to in some cases still use gothic roots, but also branch out to other styles of horror? Ones that aren't a century old.

They can do whatever they like. My point is at a certain stage you are no longer rooted in gothic and classic horror. I don't know where they are going with it, but I was responding to points in this thread about where they ought to be going and what they ought to be eliminating. My only point was: the heart of Ravenloft is this notion of going back to the source material, and of rejecting more modern forms of horror (doesn't mean modern horror is bad, I like modern horror), but the challenge it presented to the reader was try the classic stuff and adhere to that tone, see what the result is. It is an entirely different kind of atmosphere.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I stopped at the dear lord part frankly.

Then you missed the heart of what I was saying (and I only opened with that because the post I was responding to was frankly quite insulting to me)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Or, Ravenloft can be used to have lots of different types of horror! It may have started out as mostly just gothic horror, but it has grown to envelop other types as well. And that's OK! There's enough different types of horror for everyone!

But why even call it Ravenloft at that point? I am not saying you can't have a setting that is all kinds of horror. Like I said, I am a horror fan. I like a variety of horror sub-genres (including slashers). But you are talking about a line that was centered on this idea of classic horror and gothic horror. If you are going to take that line and say, nah, we are going to blend in all kinds of horror instead, that's fine but you aren't really in the spirit of the line anymore once you do that. You are just blending a bunch of horror sub-genres together. The whole point of something like Ravenloft was it had a style, it had a vision, it had a focus (just like Vampire had a vision and focus, and HARN had a vision and focus). But blending all of horror together in the hopes it will appeal to everyone loses that distinct character and tone. Again, they can do what they want. They own the property. But saying all horror for everyone makes zero sense here (and to be clear this isn't about excluding people: we are talking about what sub-genres of horror to include and exclude).

 

[darjr]

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am not saying you (general you) cannot enjoy older material. I am stating that in the current climate, and with the age skew of players, compounded with wanting new (likely younger) players, they have to do something. They can't keep the same style from the 80s or 90s. That is 40-30 years ago.

I think this is a giant miscalculation. My guess is they are underestimating the intelligence and discernment of younger gamers and only listening to the most vocal and intense critics. You can appeal to younger people, but still trust them to handle material like that. What I am talking about is not filing off the rough edges, allowing for tropes to be understood in their context (not just stopping at individual tropes, not just inverting tropes, not just catering to what you think the politics of your audience is). This is horror after all. You need villains that are truly repugnant in it (they shouldn't just be there to make the audience feel good about itself: which is the sense I am getting from much of this conversation)

 

[Bedrockgames]

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I like all those subgenres. But that sounds pretty terrible to me for Ravenloft. Ravenloft did gothic horror and classic horror well. It always seemed to struggle when it ventured outside those genres.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

Their not getting rid of gothic horror from the setting. I mean, the first book revisiting the setting is Curse of Strahd. We know we're getting a Dr. Franken.... errr, Mordenheim. Almost certainly there is going to be a werewolf/wolfman domain. However they are, it seems, broadening the scope of the setting beyond just classic and gothic horror.

I suspect there just isn't a huge interest in having multiple horror settings. Ravenloft, due to it's existing poularity and name recognition gets to be the setting that fills the horror niche.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Their not getting rid of gothic horror from the setting. I mean, the first book revisiting the setting is Curse of Strahd. We know we're getting a Dr. Franken.... errr, Mordenheim. Almost certainly there is going to be a werewolf/wolfman domain. However they are, it seems, broadening the scope of the setting beyond just classic and gothic horror.

I suspect there just isn't a huge interest in having multiple horror settings. Ravenloft, due to it's existing poularity and name recognition gets to be the setting that fills the horror niche.

Again, they can do what they want. But this really loses the magic of the setting for me. By no means can Ravenloft not have other things (Bluetspur definitely pushed the limits, as did many other domains and adventures). But if you don't have a core of gothic horror, you just have a mish-mash setting (and there are plenty of dark fantasy, horror blends out there already. The one thing Ravenloft potentially brings to the table is this strong sense of classic horror. Otherwise you really aren't doing Ravenloft, you are using the Ravenloft name and doing something else entirely.