NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8217132" data-attributes="member: 5948">Knowing the settlement population numbers does, however, put an upper limit on the complexity of society, industry, government etc that exists in the domain.  Specialised trades, metallurgy and manufacturing, printing, higher education, and so on (all of which exist in Ravenloft) require a degree of concentration in population, industrial, and worker base.  A decadent city-based aristocracy like Richulemot requires servants and cooks and carriage-drivers and so on, jewelers and gamekeepers and rival fashionable modistes, and fashionable cafes to be seen at etc and these people have families and need places to swill cheap rotgut gin when they're off work etc etc and the numbers add up fast.  None of which matters if you and your group don't care about these things, of course.  It's really a matter of taste.  You can run a thoroughly good Ravenloft game without thinking about these things in the slightest.  But my personal preference is for a campaign that feels like in takes place in a functional lived-in world, and questions like 'who is Van Richten's publisher and what happens if a vampire takes it over and tampers with his Guides to spread disinformation or give away a rival's secrets, and where do they get their paper, and do they use moveable type?' would bug me if i was trying to run or play the sort of investigative Ravenloft game that the Van Richten's Guides promote.It's quite possible that my formative influences of Ravenloft have affected my point of view here - the earliest books i own are the Domains of Dread setting book and the Van Richten's Guides for 2e.  The whole Core model was thoroughly embedded by then, though the line didn't pay all that much detailed attention to matters geopolitical (for want of a better word) until the S&S stuff started coming out.  And I love the Gazetteers (which is why I'm focusing on them to start this thread!) because all the little details, of food and music and local customs and clothing - make the place feel like a real place and help a good DM establish the sort of atmosphere that is essential for RL.</blockquote>

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