D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Remathilis]

You can paint it however you want to. It can be these are good people, driven by fear and ignorance, or it can be something more sinister. And you don't have to have everyone starting a mob with torches. Ravenloft always struck me as a place where the folk are fearful, distrustful of outsiders, and affraid of the supernatural. That doesn't mean they are all going to throw an elf on the pyre. It does leave lots of room though for human evil in your adventures.

When I run Ravenloft again, I plan on making the distrustful aspect cultural rather than racial.

That group of travelers? They don't dress like Barovians. They speak foreign tongues or strange accent. They spend strange coins from distant realms we're not sure is real, and they are ignorant of the customs and rituals needed to protect themselves from the creatures of the dark. Best we avoid them and have them be on their way, lest they bring misfortune on us!

You can do all that to a human fighter. No need to bring in race to it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

When I run Ravenloft again, I plan on making the distrustful aspect cultural rather than racial.

That group of travelers? They don't dress like Barovians. They speak foreign tongues or strange accent. They spend strange coins from distant realms we're not sure is real, and they are ignorant of the customs and rituals needed to protect themselves from the creatures of the dark. Best we avoid them and have them be on their way, lest they bring misfortune on us!

You can do all that to a human fighter. No need to bring in race to it.

You can do that, and natives of Ravenloft probably would behave that way, but what you are describing is much more like real world racism and xenophobia than a distrust of elves for being magic and not human. Surely the parallel to say an immigrant experience nativist xenophobia is obvious? (Again content doesn’t equal message, having real world evils in a horrid setting makes sense, but I don’t see how you can object to the elf issue yet find this unobjectionable)

 

[Remathilis]

You can do that, and natives of Ravenloft probably would behave that way, but what you are describing is much more like real world racism and xenophobia than a distrust of elves for being magic and not human. Surely the parallel to say an immigrant experience nativist xenophobia is obvious? (Again content doesn’t equal message, having real world evils in a horrid setting makes sense, but I don’t see how you can object to the elf issue yet find this unobjectionable)

The difference though is theoretically a non-native Barovian could settle down, learn the language and customs, and integrate into Barovia society. The elf remains an elf and cannot change the circumstances of his birth without powerful magics. That's a huge difference in meaning even if method looks the same. Admittedly, it's still discrimination, but if you want to keep that isolated nature to Ravenloft, making it about outsiders disturbing local customs is less troublesome than hate and fear based on the appearance of a person due to their birth.

 

[Voadam]

The fact that they made the inquisition match up to the Celtic pantheon was always a weird mix in Ravenloft. Celts are usually associated more with druids and Ravenloft had both the Morninglord and Ezra as more Christianish stand in churches. It dates back to 2e mixing in more Legends and Lore and turning Celtic mythology into a standard medievalish fantasy D&D church.

2e Domains of Dread also associated the Celtic pantheon with default Ravenloft elves in general (Sithicus elves being their own different thing). I guess mostly from Darkon?

Its also ironic to have this be the anti-fey domain as fey lore is typically associated a lot with Celtic folklore so to have the Ravenloft Celtic realm be the place you don't leave out milk for the fey is a twist.

 

[Remathilis]

The fact that they made the inquisition match up to the Celtic pantheon was always a weird mix in Ravenloft. Celts are usually associated more with druids and Ravenloft had both the Morninglord and Ezra as more Christianish stand in churches. It dates back to 2e mixing in more Legends and Lore and turning Celtic mythology into a standard medievalish fantasy D&D church.

2e Domains of Dread also associated the Celtic pantheon with default Ravenloft elves in general (Sithicus elves being their own different thing). I guess mostly from Darkon?

Its also ironic to have this be the anti-fey domain as fey lore is typically associated a lot with Celtic folklore so to have the Ravenloft Celtic realm be the place you don't leave out milk for the fey is a twist.

I think the problem is that the domain originally was very Celtic/Scots/Macbeth inspired but they later added the Salem witch trials on top without adding a puritan church to guide it. Which if also why the hags have so little to do with the main plot.

 

[humble minion]

Belenus tended to be the go-to when the writers wanted a 'good' church to spawn a bad guy, for some reason. Wasn't Elena Faith-Hold also a follower of Belenus? There was the LE extremist sect of Ezra from Darkon, but as far as i know there was never really much done with that.

Also, it's bloody silly that landlocked Tepest and Forlorn have a sea god in their pantheon.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think the problem is that the domain originally was very Celtic/Scots/Macbeth inspired but they later added the Salem witch trials on top without adding a puritan church to guide it. Which if also why the hags have so little to do with the main plot.

A little fuzzy on the details of this one, been ten years since I ran the Tepest module, but is it definitely inspired by Salem and not by the European witch craze (the latter was much more extensive and killed way more people, and was the subject of horror movies)

 

[humble minion]

The Tepest module is certainly Salem-inspired, but I'm not so sure about the domain itself. The three hags are obviously Macbethy, as is the pantheon. Was the inquisition etc significant in Tepest before the modules were published? I don't have any of the material prior to that.

 

[Remathilis]

The Tepest module is certainly Salem-inspired, but I'm not so sure about the domain itself. The three hags are obviously Macbethy, as is the pantheon. Was the inquisition etc significant in Tepest before the modules were published? I don't have any of the material prior to that.

I thought the inquisition was primarily a response to the Grand Conjunction and the Shadow Rift. Like everyone, I'm fuzzy on how much it was a factor prior to the GC, but it was The Driving Force after it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

and no one is saying you do.

No you don't. But the Black Box did it anyway.

And once you strip away the sexism, racism, classism and homophobia (not to mention repetition) from the Black Box, you need to find something else to replace it with.

Are you seriously suggesting in your other post that I was intending for any anti-Mormonism to be the message if you take inspiration from the study in scarlet. It is a product of another time.

No, I'm suggesting that in the oh so many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes there has been over the years, they have all managed to snip out Doyle's religious prejudice, to the extent that no one who hasn't read the original novel even knows it was there.