D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[LuisCarlos17f]

Tristan is maybe the dark lord closest to find the redemtion. What could happen? A possibility is a refall, or an enemy trying to Tristan be freed and finding redemtion curses himself and becomes not only the new dark lord of Nova Vaasa but also the "host" of Malken. Or Tristan could be fasely accused by a political rival, and sentenced to death after horrible tortures, but after his martyrdom he come backs from the grave as a revenant/reborn. Now he is only an unknown homeless, but free, and he can choises between the reveangce or to help others to find their own road to the redemption. The next step would be a revolution in Nova Vaasa, against the Church of the Lawgiver, being this replaced by the Egregorian brotherhood. And a noble lay proclaiming the avatar/incarnation of the Lawgiver doesn't help very much.

 

[Remathilis]

I suspect Nova Vaasa will appear in 5e in some form, it's been around for a looong time in Ravenloft after all, and it seems that the 5e developers prefer to reinvent domains rather than discarding them completely. Though i suspect it'll shrink a lot to focus more tightly on Tristan and Malken. Personally, if I was All-Powerful Ravenloft Grand High Poobah in charge of doing it all again from a blank slate, I'd excise Hiregaard/Malken from the domain completely. They'd get shuffled off and dressed in cravats and monocles to be darklord of Paridon (Sodo is an over-complicated and uninteresting darklord anyway, and Tristan/Malken's misogynistic rage-killings are a much truer Jack the Ripper expy than Sodo's ritual to feed his knife) along with all the urban squalour side of Nova Vaasa. Thematically and in terms of his Jekyll/Hyde gothic literature origins, Malken fits far better in an urban gaslight domain, and we no longer have to shoehorn jam-packed slum-ridden cities into a domain like Nova Vaasa which has empty space everywhere. Meanwhile, the remainder of the domain, the more wild grassland bits, becomes a new domain, probably a reminiscent of the old West, a lawless semi-desert frontier survival domain, with the darklord perhaps the slimy provision merchant who sells misleading maps and tainted provisions and shoddy equipment to hopeful families before they wander off into the wilds to see their dreams turn to dust and their livestock and children starve. Othmar and his political ambitions can go away, nobody cares about him anyway.

Agreed on both counts. The Jeckyl and Hyde domain lord needs a squalid decaying city for various madmen and devils to roam, while the vast grasslands would be EXCELLENT for a Deadlands-type domain.

Nova Vaasa, a domain so boring that TSR couldn't even be bothered to keep its own continuity straight. (Fun fact: Tristan has not one but TWO completely removed-from-cannon origin stories!)

 

[Faolyn]

Inza the darklord is one I think I'd need to read Spectre to get to know. She's the daughter of Magda from the first Ravenloft Soth novel (all we know about her father is that he was murdered way back when Duke Gundar was a thing, before I found the one line about that I was wondering if they were setting Inza up to be another child of the Gentleman Caller), and she's evil because she's evil and she likes doing evil all day, with a bit of a break for some evil before afternoon evil tea.

The thing that annoys/amuses me the most about Inza is that she whips off her clothing to reveal her "fighting leathers" underneath (if I'm remembering the phrase correctly). It made her sound like some sort of anime villain, and I always picture her doing that hand-in-front-of-her-mouth "o-ho-ho-ho!" laugh.

 

[Faolyn]

I never could wrap my head around Sithicus continued existence without Soth. Its the poster-child of a campaign specific domain tied tightly to the darklord, and removing him negates the point. If there had been a WotC-based update rather than WW's slavish insistence to keep things as they were, I wager Sithicus would have dissolved into the Mists and a new domain take its place in the Core. Without Soth, I don't see a need for this domain.

In terms of aesthetics, it's a really cool place. The dark, decaying forest, filled with fey-elves and spiders, where time stands still. I had an adventure there where I took the timeless nature of the elves to an extreme. There were elves who had spent literally decades working on a single item, like a mural or tapestry, to the point that the place where they started was starting to rot away from age--and the craftself wasn't capable of caring about that.

But as Sithicus, yes, it needs Soth, definitely. Azrael is... OK, I guess, but Inza is boring.

 

[Faolyn]

If not for the Shadowborn Cluster, I'd say that'd be a good repurposing.

Sithicus, with or without Soth, would actually work well as part of that Cluster.

 

[Faolyn]

and arcane spellcasters can't even select option A from that list.

While Wizards are a definite no-no, a careful Bard, Sorcerer, or Warlock can go far--and I imagine that in a place like Nova Vaasa, there might be a fair number of fiendlocks, if only because the people who think the Lawgiver is against them might turn to the adversary.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nova Vaasa seems to call out for a Matthew Hopkins/Thomas de Torquamarda figure as the darklord.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Was there ever a "Wicker Man" domain, where all the locals are happy, welcoming and friendly, right up until they stuff you inside some quaint rustic artwork and set you on fire?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Nova Vaasa is a domain that was never one of my favorites (it occupied an important place geographically, but the domain never really spoke to me like many of the others). I think it also made less sense once it wasn't bordering the nightmare lands (I liked the idea of those plains leading to the NL). The adventure, the Awakening actually opened up the domain a bit more for me. I remember enjoying that one. Prior to that though, the domain had always puzzled me. The novel treatment didn't quite land for me

 

[Bedrockgames]

In terms of aesthetics, it's a really cool place. The dark, decaying forest, filled with fey-elves and spiders, where time stands still. I had an adventure there where I took the timeless nature of the elves to an extreme. There were elves who had spent literally decades working on a single item, like a mural or tapestry, to the point that the place where they started was starting to rot away from age--and the craftself wasn't capable of caring about that.

But as Sithicus, yes, it needs Soth, definitely. Azrael is... OK, I guess, but Inza is boring.

I really liked Sithicus. It was a great backdrop for adventure. The lord is one of the great villains of the D&D game lines, but he is easy to keep as a background figure (the changeover to Azael never really worked for me: great side character, terrible dark lord....he was written as a foil for Soth and worked well as that). I used Sithicus a ton. One of my favorite areas to center my campaigns was the Valachan, Sithicus and Kartakass band. All three were quite easy to make creepy and I tended to get a lot of adventure ideas. Plenty of good adventure to be had a little north as well.

I think a lot of it though really sank or swim on how the domains spoke to you (at least leading up to the DoD book). Since elaboration was really what made the domains functional in a gaming sense. I found it easy to elaborate on a lot of those western and south western domains in my head (especially taking inspiration from the Van Richten Guidebooks).

Also one thing I remember doing with Sithicus that worked was having Soth-Like figures prevalent in old lost tombs. I kind of took Soth as a template and assumed others like him might be buried in the domain. One villain I had success with was a character who was an undead warrior who wore a bronze burial mask and couldn't talk, but had been dug up and sent after the party by a powerful wizard. Him chasing the party all through Sithicus worked really well as they tried to contend with other goals in the adventure. And I think because the players knew it was Soth's domain, a character like that was easy to buy into.