Bedrockgames
Legend
Lol. I think that one was much more reliant on Shatner's performance than the guy in the suit
D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting
- Thread starter humble minion
- Start date
Istbor
Dances with Gnolls
What is a classic kind of location?
Bedrockgames
Legend
Nothing is all X, but Ravenloft was certainly more patient horror. It is spelled out explicitly in both the black box and the red (and DoD gets into that too). Doesn't mean they don't have moments of gore, or occasionally borrow from other things (some of the later Hammer movies they borrowed from for example were more exploitation movie than classic horror). I don't think I am exactly reaching here saying Ravenloft was about gothic and classic horror. If you want it to move into a broader range of horror, you can definitely argue for that. But it wasn't an all encompassing horror setting. You can always find exceptions. But the rule is pretty clear looking at that TSR line
Bedrockgames
Legend
What I mean is an old, creaky mansion/hotel (I just watched it again about 7 months ago, I was very stuck by the classic vibe----which I didn't really remember it having to be honest: I always thought of it as schlocky slasher but it didn't feel like that so much watching it again)
Bedrockgames
Legend
Ravenloft can definitely do some body horror. There is an adventure seed in the black box based on Alien (thought they make it more gothic). Like I said you can blend genres. The issue is you need a core of gothic and classic for it be coherent. If you just start blending all genres you loose that core that is rooted in the gothic tradition (and that matters because then it just becomes a generic horror setting).
Also you could do a pure body horror setting if you wanted. I love body horror (it is probably my favorite horror subgenre). But body horror isn't easy and you will lose some of its potency if you water it down and blend in, say, dark fantasy and all the rest.
My point is what set Ravenloft apart was having a focus. When it comes to horror RPGs I really think focus is much better than generic horror. A focused body horror game? great. A focused slasher game? Great. A focused gothic horror game? Great. But if you start blending all genres in equally? To me that is too wishy washy. When I sit down to watch a horror movie, I want a horror movie that has a clear vision, not one that is a muddle of 18 genres. Same with an RPG
Bedrockgames
Legend
No, not at all. I think it is mostly older horror films, older horror stories and older horror movies (and also newer films that are rooted in older sensibilities, or in line with stuff like the classic monsters: so a new werewolf movie might have a classic horror feel because it is one of the big classic monsters). I do think thought that Nesmith and Heyday definitely had slashers in mind when they were contrasting Ravenloft with modern horror (for those who weren't around at the time it is hard to convey just how omnipresent the slasher genre was: a lot of the slashers that came out have been completely forgotten about since but there were a ton of them). Definitely they were pretty clear that they were going for a classic, gothic, horror and not a modern, more gorey horror. And to be clear again, I have no problem with gore, J-Horror, C-Horror, body horror, psychological horror, slashers, etc. I like all kinds of horror (with the possible exception of some of the recent arthouse horror that has been emerging). But I think it would be disingenuous to say Ravenloft was meant to embody all those subgenres. It is pretty clear that isn't what they were going for (and I think having the focus, when they kept it, is one of the things that made it work as a setting). It isn't a sin for a setting to not be every kind of horror under the sun.
Remathilis
Legend
There disagreeing and there is disagreeing. Its okay to prefer the OT to the PT, but its also fair to say a lot of Millennial fans have strong positive feelings towards the PT like how we do towards the OT. Its also possible to say the prequels, for all their faults, are better than the Disney Sequel trilogy. We can argue the finer details on ranking and such all day. It gets trickier however, if we were to discuss something like Grogu's midiclorian count and someone responds that "they don't like midiclorians because they are from the Phantom Menace and that's not a real Star Wars movie".
Bedrockgames
Legend
No, I don't. But I am going by memory. I recall as the line went on, they clearly started imitating vampire because vampire was HUGELY successful and was threatening the dominance that D&D once held. I didn't recall when the Vampyre came out or how gothy it was but was just basing my response off your post and my memory.
Again, we simply disagree. Which is fine. You don't have to agree with me. But this notion that including more genres somehow automatically makes something better I would reject. Especially with a line that was defined by the subgenre it belonged to, and by its staunch advocacy of that style of horror against more modern styles.
And I am not saying it didn't draw from other things. A lot of people contributed to that line and brought in influences. But it is really obvious if you look at Ravenloft in the 90s, it was rooted in classic horror (and it is explicit in the black boxed set). I don't think that is even controversial. There is a big difference between having a foundation based on a subgenre, and weaving in other subgrenres here and there, and just having a total free for all.
Bedrockgames
Legend
But people are entitled to their opinions. I don't know. This feels to me like people have been tricked by large corporations like Disney into equating dislike of a movie, or rejection of something they've decided is canon, with attacking other fans. We can disagree. We can even disagree on what 'real star wars' is. That doesn't mean we are rejecting or hating on one another. That is just corporate spin in my view
Remathilis
Legend
The beauty of Ravenloft is that every domain COULD be its own genre of horror. I personally enjoy the gothic, but I can't fault them from wanting ghost stories, folklore, or other elements of horror. You don't like the zombie apocalypse domain? Don't use it. If there is ANY benefit to the "every domain an island" setup, its that the domains you use and ones I use can be different and we don't have to worry about the ones we don't like.
Bedrockgames
Legend
That is a fair point. The structure of Ravenloft definitely allows for that. I still feel it is more cohesive when they are at least connected. You can have gothic and classic zombies. I never found that terribly disjointed. There was a hammer movie called plague of the zombies, which I think they were drawing heavily from when they did Souragne for example. And here and there, some 'spikes' in genre were cool (I always thought Bluetspur was kind of neat and different). But overall the demiplane had a gothic and classic cohesiveness to it (even if individual domains were cobbled together from different sources of inspiration from within that, and even if the odd domain stretched into other genres). Again, if you go full generic horror, to me that just isn't Ravenloft anymore. Maybe it is really good. Maybe it is a great concept. But it kind of becomes the TORG setting (except with a focus on horror genres). And I love TORG, but Ravenloft was never that meta in terms of the genres.
Bedrockgames
Legend
I wasn't ever saying it was only gothic. Bluetspur is not particularly gothic. I was saying it was mostly gothic, that is had a gothic foundation. You could always take from something outside that genre, but it got filtered back into Ravenloft through a gothic lens.
Bedrockgames
Legend
That is fair, but it is also fair not to buy something if I don't like the overall idea or concept of it. Even with classic Ravenloft, I would add or remove domains to suit my tastes, but 95% of the material still worked for me. Just based on what I am hearing, it is less exciting to me than the d20 Ravenloft was
Faolyn
(she/her)
OMG, yes you were, and that everything else was "diluting it."
"Gothic horror" just means darkly emotional tied to the supernatural and a sense of the past, you know, so quite frankly anything, including blood-soaked slasher movies, can be made into gothic horror.
Faolyn
(she/her)
You haven't been saying "I don't think adding new stuff makes it better." You have been saying "Adding knew stuff makes it worse."
Faolyn
(she/her)
But he's on the wing of the plane, which clearly means he's evil.
Bedrockgames
Legend
Yes, when you start overpowering the gothic roots of it. For me there were two points of departure that bothered me as a fan. The first was the shift towards more fantasy horror in DoD. Some people loved this, because they felt it brought Ravenloft back to a more 'naturally D&D' level of play. I wasn't a fan of this. I thought the thing that made Ravenloft fun and different was it wasn't like bog standard D&D. I am not saying that makes DoD bad, but it was a creative decision I felt undermined the strength of the line. The second was the white wolf era of Ravenloft (particularly the Gazetteers). That just felt like a very watered down version of Ravenloft because the white wolf influence was powerful: to me it felt like the Masquerade sensibilities were becoming more prevalent. I think this new iteration, which seems more firmly in a style of generic horror, or "All Horror" just too wide for my tastes when it comes to Ravenloft. You can point to them bringing in other influences back in the day (and certainly I am not going to defend all of those choices) but the vibe was still very much classic
Bedrockgames
Legend
It depends on what that new stuff is. If the new material steers it away from the gothic style and the classic horror, then it makes it less Ravenloft to me (which doesn't automatically make it worse, but it makes it a different thing). The reason I am interested when someone says "ravenloft" is because its classic horror for D&D. There are ways that could be done that would be new but still in keeping with the foundations.
Bedrockgames
Legend
You can say Gothic is everything. But if you do that, you are going to end up with a TORG-like setting where each domain is just a literal subgenre of horror (in case people haven't played it TORG carved areas of earth into different regions all based on a particular genre---not just horror). Again I love TORG, I could even see there being value in a setting for D&D that is all horror subgenres, but that isn't Ravenloft. I agree you could bring something from slasher into Ravenloft as a gothic (like I don't know some kind of golem hounding a party: as long as it was done in the style fitting to the setting: in fact I believe guide to the created made good case for this comparison). But that is a whole different thing from making the setting about every subgenre of horror
Faolyn
(she/her)
That's already what Ravenloft does. Barovia and Verbrek are the horror of being hunted and turned into something other. Tepest is the horror of being tempted by the other. Lamordia is the horror of being reduced to nothing more than a lab rat. Kartakass, Darkon, and Dementlieu are the horror of paranoia. Sithicus is the horror of decay and loss. Richmulot is the horror of contamination. Hazlan and Falkovnia are the horror of human cruelty and unfairness.
The fact that TSR decided to put this into a gothic-fantasy setting is irrelevant to the type of horror each domain embodies.
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