Bedrockgames
Legend
Lol. I think that one was much more reliant on Shatner's performance than the guy in the suitAh yes, the Twilight Zone Gremlin. Honestly, he looks pretty huggable to me.
Lol. I think that one was much more reliant on Shatner's performance than the guy in the suitAh yes, the Twilight Zone Gremlin. Honestly, he looks pretty huggable to me.
What is a classic kind of location?My point was just that puppet master has a kind of classic vibe to it. It doesn't feel like Friday the 13th to me. It definitely has cheesy 80s stuff and more gore than you would have in Ravenloft. But it is pretty atmospheric, has a solid backstory and a real classic kind of location and plot.
I'm also not buying that all of Ravenloft has been the slow patient horror, and can think of a few campaigns I was in where there was a pretty high body count, or some heavy body horror.
Can't we just all have Ravenloft, and let it be the place for horror in D&D? I feel like we are going to start doing horror film/story gymnastics trying to make things fit into one or possibly two subgenres.
What is a classic kind of location?
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).I'm also not buying that all of Ravenloft has been the slow patient horror, and can think of a few campaigns I was in where there was a pretty high body count, or some heavy body horror.
It sounds to me that you define "classic horror" as "anything non-slasher, unless it doesn't 'feel right' to me, in which case it's not classic."
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".I think it is more like saying the original star wars trilogy was better than the prequels (which is a sound point of view: people like the prequels but in terms of film quality, the original trilogy I would say is leagues better: classics for a reason). We don't have to agree on art and games. I wasn't trying to be polemical (if it sounded polemical it is because I was responding to a poster who was taking an extremely hostile tone to my posts)
It looks like you simply dismiss whatever it is you don't like as being "influenced" by something not properly gothic, instead of actually admitting that Ravenloft has never been limited to only gothic horror, but instead has always drawn from a variety of sources.
We get it. You prefer only gothic in your gothic horror. But mixing in other types of horror doesn't ruin or dilute Ravenloft one bit; it just makes it more varied and interesting.
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".
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.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
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.
It looks like you simply dismiss whatever it is you don't like as being "influenced" by something not properly gothic, instead of actually admitting that Ravenloft has never been limited to only gothic horror, but instead has always drawn from a variety of sources.
You don't like the zombie apocalypse domain? Don't use it.
OMG, yes you were, and that everything else was "diluting it."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.
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."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.
But he's on the wing of the plane, which clearly means he's evil.Ah yes, the Twilight Zone Gremlin. Honestly, he looks pretty huggable to me.
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 classicOMG, yes you were, and that everything else was "diluting it."
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."
"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.
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.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).