D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[tetrasodium]

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

You don't have to like it or not. multiple products like 3e rcs, apparently gazetteers, & posibly others have included domain population sizes and everyone else is discussing those. It's nor "speculative" for everyone else to discuss numbers physically published in books. You don't need to like it to accept that other people are talking about those numbers printed later & why those numbers are lacking

 

[Bedrockgames]

You don't have to like it or not. multiple products like 3e rcs, apparently gazetteers, & posibly others have included domain population sizes and everyone else is discussing those. It's nor "speculative" for everyone else to discuss numbers physically published in books. You don't need to like it to accept that other people are talking about those numbers printed later & why those numbers are lacking

I think it is very debatable whether these later, non-TSR and non-WOTC books, have the same level of validity in terms of talking about canon, as the TSR era books. That is like accusing the original star wars films of problems because of something that was introduced int he expanded universe material. But the point is I was defending the population sizes as presented in the original line. You can't use population sizes created by another company, for a later edition of the game, to critique the population numbers from the original books. That just doesn't make sense to me. Like I said, if people want to critique the numbers given in the 3E ravenloft books, I think that is fair. I won't defend the decisions made in the Gazetteers as I am not a fan of them. But those numbers are not definitive, and they don't go in reverse: you can't use those numbers to attack material from the 2E line (obviously if I am missing some mention of

 

[Faolyn]

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

While I understand where you're coming from, I prefer the way Ravenloft was treated in 3e--despite having gotten the Black Box and other 2e books when they first came out. The 3e books made the setting feel like a world, and I prefer that to the Weekend in Hell vibe of the 2e books (even if the Domains were ust as small in 3x as they were in 2e). Plus, as I said, there are so many monsters in RL. I can't imagine a pack of man-eating werewolves surviving in some of the Domains due to the low population, let alone a pack of werewolves and a couple of undead and carnivorous plants and vicious, possibly supernatural animals and violent humans.

I mean, this is clearly an "each to their own" kind of deal, and I can easily see the Dark Powers or Mists snatching or creating new people when the population gets too low. I just prefer a higher pop to begin with.

 

[Faolyn]

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,

They do, in the sense of giving the population of the domain, and then of each city in it. Therefore, whatever left is by default rural.

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).

I honestly don't see how. I don't see any similarities in writing style between the S&S stuff and what I've read of White Wolf.

 

[Bedrockgames]

They do, in the sense of giving the population of the domain, and then of each city in it. Therefore, whatever left is by default rural.

they don’t list a population number for the domain: they only list population for the settlements. That means we don’t really know what the rural numbers are unless an entry specifically comments

 

[Bedrockgames]

I honestly don't see how. I don't see any similarities in writing style between the S&S stuff and what I've read of White Wolf.

the S&S material was much more gothy in my opinion. That was my reaction when I read them at least. I had run 2E Ravenloft from around the time Feast of Goblyns came out, and I picked up each new book all the way through 3E Ravenloft. Just the overall aesthetic of it, the vibe, and the way it elaborated on content, to me felt more white wolf-liked (possibly that reading was influenced by my understanding that S&S belonged to white wolf. But to me there was that quality to it. But I wasn't the biggest white wolf fan, so maybe it isn't an accurate reading. Either way it felt miles away from the black box and the van richten books.

 

[Bedrockgames]

While I understand where you're coming from, I prefer the way Ravenloft was treated in 3e--despite having gotten the Black Box and other 2e books when they first came out. The 3e books made the setting feel like a world, and I prefer that to the Weekend in Hell vibe of the 2e books (even if the Domains were ust as small in 3x as they were in 2e). Plus, as I said, there are so many monsters in RL. I can't imagine a pack of man-eating werewolves surviving in some of the Domains due to the low population, let alone a pack of werewolves and a couple of undead and carnivorous plants and vicious, possibly supernatural animals and violent humans.

Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking your opinion. I just feel like people are acting like S&S Ravenloft is definitive and I think that is a highly debatable notion (for many, the 2E line is definitive). But I understand your preference, you want a more real world vibe to it. And that is fair to want. It just isn't what I am looking for. I wanted something that was a little more surreal and more like we got in the black boxed set. All I can say is Ravenloft instantly made sense to me when I read that material. And all the stuff with population, either wasn't a problem for me, or was something where I just intuitively felt we were meant to understand there were more people living in the countryside or more communities and these were just the most notable

Like I might say the following: "Massachusetts is a spanning from the highlands of the Berkshire mountains to the jagged coasts of the atlantic. It has four notable cities: Boston, population 667,000; Worcester population 184,000; Springfield, population 154, 000; and Lowell, Population 110,000. The area boasts several successful sports team and is teaming with Dunkin Donuts franchises." That description would obviously not be meant to preclude the remainder of the 6.8 million inhabitants of Massachusetts or the other cities and towns.

I wouldn't imagine ravenloft being as densely populated, as its meant to be pre-modern (possibly early modern in some places). But I think that kind of logic was assumed when they made the maps and wrote the entries. And one good thing about this approach is every GM is able to look at Ravenloft and fill in those blank spaces (both literal and figurative) with their own ideas. So if you look at a domain and have this question about are there enough people for the werewolves to feed on (which I will be honest is not a question that ever really leapt to my mind, since I just embraced the surreal nature of the demiplane) you can easily imagine agrarian population surrounding the settlements, and people in the countryside, as well as other cities, to get you to that x10 number. Even I, who really am not concerned about whether there is enough wheat to justify the city population sizes, and whether the city populations justify the werewolves, would have pegged the population as being much higher than the numbers indicated by most notable settlements (except perhaps in cases like Lamordia, where they really emphasize how inhospitable and uninhabited the place is).

 

[Remathilis]

Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking your opinion. I just feel like people are acting like S&S Ravenloft is definitive and I think that is a highly debatable notion (for many, the 2E line is definitive).

Ravenloft hit it's peak at 1997's Domains of Dread. After that, the metaplot began to tear setting apart. If they had only fixed some of the weird inconsistencies between domains and decided to expand on certain areas rather than reprinting 1/5th of the PHB, it would be the definitive Ravenloft book.

 

[Faolyn]

they don’t list a population number for the domain: they only list population for the settlements. That means we don’t really know what the rural numbers are unless an entry specifically comments

Yeah, the Gazetters do. Example:

Each domain in the Gazetteer has one of these In A Glance boxes.

the S&S material was much more gothy in my opinion.

I assume you mean in the more modern aspect of the word. Fair enough. I don't really agree; I thought it felt a bit more thorough. Maybe slightly less flavorful, but more informative. But each to their own.

(I will say, however, I can't stand the Foxgrove-Weathermay twins. When I read their stuff, I keep expecting them to tell me to like and subscribe.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, the Gazetters do. Example:

View attachment 133781
Each domain in the Gazetteer has one of these In A Glance boxes.

I wasn't talking about the Gazetteers. I was talking about the entries in the original boxed set and the rest of the 2E line.