D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Bedrockgames]

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.

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]

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.

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]

You don't like the zombie apocalypse domain? Don't use it.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

Ah yes, the Twilight Zone Gremlin. Honestly, he looks pretty huggable to me.

But he's on the wing of the plane, which clearly means he's evil.

 

[Bedrockgames]

OMG, yes you were, and that everything else was "diluting it."

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]

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."

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]

"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.

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]

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).

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.