D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Bedrockgames]

When it comes to city vs rural population, the Gazetteers do actually list domain-wide population numbers, which are very low in line with the listed settlement populations. We're talking about 25-27000 total population for each of Barovia and Hazlan. So it's not like there's a large rural population base propping up the demographics. My strong suspicion is that the low numbers were pulled out of the air in some of the earliest modules when it was assumed that this sort of thing wouldn't matter very much, and subsequent writers plumped for sticking with established canon rather than performing a retcon which could annoy people.

I don't regard the Gazeteers as good, or canon, so you won't see me defending their population numbers. But all that stuff came well after the black box, which offered very minimal information. Still I think Ravenloft is the kind of place where trying to give it more real world demographics is going to take away from the atmosphere created in those original entries. Could Lamordia have bigger settlements ? Sure. But I picture a much more harsh, isolated, and lonely place with those small numbers (and there are real world places with small towns like that, even in the modern day---so just in terms of formulating a mental comparison in my head, I can just imagine a small communty in a place like Maine for example and grok it). I get that such communities don't exist in vacuums, and part of the demographic issue in Ravenloft is these numbers and the tech are not necessarily connected to anything external (i.e. there is no Portland Maine helping to sustain those smaller communities). But I think for the purposes of running a game set in a vaguely surreal horror environment, I am more in favor of not getting into the real world demographic issue. Like I said, Ravenloft is a world that feels pulled out of a classic horror movie set

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have to say I found Goblyns as a concept and mechanically, some of the best, most ferocious things you could throw at players. They were one of my favorites.

People can use the laugh emoji at this if they want, but look at those original Goblyn entries, especially the ones in Feast of Goblyns, and try running them in the 2E system. They were pretty horrifying opponents. These guys specialized in 'feasting' on your face, and caused enough disfigurement to permanently drain CHR

 

[humble minion]

Yes, but Kartakass is a much more lively and celebratory domain. It is a place of bards and werewolves. If I recall you literally need to be a good singer to be mayor. Having Renaissance level tech doesn't automatically mean you need to have higher population sizes. The domains are very individual. Also, I question the medieval designation for Kartakass. If you look at Kartakass as presented in Feast of Goblyns there is a blunderbuss in there and there is also a doctor who is a kind of mad scientist vampire who feeds on cerebral fluid. I feel that the overall vibe of the domain felt a little bit past medieval for me (but that is just my opinion).

Well, the vampire actually originated in a different domain (Gundarak) and possibly even predates that domain's arrival in the mist. And the blunderbuss doesn't bother me that much, as you say, there's a lot of bards and traders in Kartakass, who are prone to wander. It's quite possible it was brought in from somewhere else. The real question is where that somewhere else was, since there hardly seems to be a single settlement in the entire Core with a population large enough to support a significant gunsmith. Plus firearms are kind of a big deal, and while my memory is fuzzy, I don't really recall any discussion of where in the Core they are most likely to come from, or who invented them. But that's in-world Ravenloft history for ya...

I do like Kartakass as slightly beyond medieval in tech though. More rapiers and doublets, less broadswords and full plate. But more of that in the next writeup.

 

[Alzrius]

I do like Kartakass as slightly beyond medieval in tech though. More rapiers and doublets, less broadswords and full plate. But more of that in the next writeup.

The discussion of the varying tech levels between domains reminds me of this scene from Netflix's Castlevania (slightly NSFW for language). Change "Chinese" to "Lamordian" and you're good to go:

 

[Faolyn]

Yes, but Kartakass is a much more lively and celebratory domain. It is a place of bards and werewolves. If I recall you literally need to be a good singer to be mayor. Having Renaissance level tech doesn't automatically mean you need to have higher population sizes. The domains are very individual. Also, I question the medieval designation for Kartakass. If you look at Kartakass as presented in Feast of Goblyns there is a blunderbuss in there and there is also a doctor who is a kind of mad scientist vampire who feeds on cerebral fluid. I feel that the overall vibe of the domain felt a little bit past medieval for me (but that is just my opinion).

Yeah, Feast of Goblyns came out waaay before they really started to figure out what each domain really was. Which is fine.

The reason I said higher population sizes is because (a) there's not enough people to actually feed everyone in the domain, via farming (if the cities are as big as they are, they need a lot more rural support), and (b) there's not enough people to actually feed all the monsters that are constantly eating everyone. Especially if you use the ridiculously high food requirements presented in some of the books, like werewolves needing many tens of pounds of meat each day.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You're entirely right about population being tailored to the tone rather than vice versa - but I'd argue that the numbers are tailored to the tone of Barovia, which leaves the rest of the setting in a bit of an awkward state. The more urban domains, especially. These need a larger population to be functional. You need your city packed full of small shopkeepers, your aristocracy, your landed gentry and city watch and gamekeepers and skilled artisans and traders and so on before you can have the consulting detective agencies and secretive gentlemen's clubs and teeming squalid gin holes etc where the stories are set. The sort of late-renaissance pre-Victorian culture that you see in the western Core domains, and that supports gaslamp-type stories, really needs a large population to be plausible. If your PCs are tracking an obsessive golem-maker, then they should have the option of, for instance, finding the glassblower who made his specialised retorts etc, or investigating the shipping company that he uses to import rare chemical reagents. You can't do that in any interesting way in a city or domain that's so small in population that there's probably only one glassblower and one shipping company that comprises one family that owns one ship. Complex tech bases and complex civilisations (and the stories that get told in them) need larger populations.

Again, this is entirely preference. But for me this was never a problem. I found the domains all generally kind of had a haunted and bleak feel as a result. Even a domain like Falkovnia, the smaller population sizes made the evil of Drakov's rule feel more immediate to me. Also I would just point to the surreal nature of the demi plane. These are places borough in, made or replicated by the mists. They may originally been part of some bigger picture, so I think that largely explains concerns about why you have consulting detectives and gentleman's clubs amid small coastal communities. But also I think a lot of those things themselves were later elaborations in the setting. You had Van Richten and George Weathermay and stuff like that, and the design definitely looks later than Renaissance to me. But even in the real world, you have small population places, which are often where we like to set our horror stories. Also, also, you can have a glassblower in a small city of 6,000 people (i've been to .

I will say this, this wasn't designed originally as a setting for people use town generators where you need X number of this in order to have X number of Y. It just doesn't follow that kind of logic or rules, and the absence of that stuff simply never troubled me (and I say this as someone whose major was history, where real world historical demographics were something I knew plenty about). But for a horror setting meant to emulate hammer and universal, I really am not worried about whether there are enough wheat fields to justify the population sizes or if the population size justifies having more than 1 glassblower to justify the golem design in an adventure. That just isn't the part of my brain I carry into Ravenloft.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, Feast of Goblyns came out waaay before they really started to figure out what each domain really was. Which is fine.

To me Feast of Goblyns is the definitive overview of Kartakass.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The reason I said higher population sizes is because (a) there's not enough people to actually feed everyone in the domain, via farming (if the cities are as big as they are, they need a lot more rural support), and (b) there's not enough people to actually feed all the monsters that are constantly eating everyone. Especially if you use the ridiculously high food requirements presented in some of the books, like werewolves needing many tens of pounds of meat each day.

And I think this kind of thinking is great for a setting like Harn (which I like too). But for Ravenloft I just don't see the need for dissecting this kind of stuff. Maybe that is just a product of cutting my teeth on older products, and not coming of age in 3E or later books (perhaps where that was more greatly emphasized). But for a setting as disconnected from the real world as Ravenloft, I think it is fine.

But like I said, you can easily assume rural support. If you look at the maps, I think the cities illustrations strongly suggest the presence of surrounding rural support. It does depend on the domain though

 

[tetrasodium]

And I think this kind of thinking is great for a setting like Harn (which I like too). But for Ravenloft I just don't see the need for dissecting this kind of stuff. Maybe that is just a product of cutting my teeth on older products, and not coming of age in 3E or later books (perhaps where that was more greatly emphasized). But for a setting as disconnected from the real world as Ravenloft, I think it is fine.

But like I said, you can easily assume rural support. If you look at the maps, I think the cities illustrations strongly suggest the presence of surrounding rural support. It does depend on the domain though

why do you keep talking about city pop when others are talking about how the domain pop, which would include rural pop, is the place that's lacking

 

[Bedrockgames]

why do you keep talking about city pop when others are talking about how the domain pop, which would include rural pop, is the place that's lacking

The realm of terror boxed set doesn’t include domain population numbers. So domain population sizes a speculative. I can’t recall if the gazetteers do or not, but I have very little like for the S&S Ravenloft material in general. To me that stuff is setting content produced by later teams who moved away from the original feel and purpose of Ravenloft (to me the S&S stuff feels very white wolf). But the populations as they were originally discussed in the domains were linked to cities and settlements (possible I am overlooking some mention of population that I have forgotten about). But I think this is important because a lot of people are defaulting to the gazetteers which aren’t part of the original line. And while many of us made the switch and bought them at the time because we were happy someone was making Ravenloft stuff, I think a lot of people didn’t feel the new content matched the setting very well