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Reading Ravenloft the setting
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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8229512" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>I get that they view themselves as a kind of marvel now. My view, and I know this probably is an outlier view, is leaning too much into that, damages the things that make a property interesting (again, back to my older posts on pablum and filing off the sharp edges). That said, I don't think I've ever seen Ravenloft as a Hard R. I think more soft R or PG-13 (though I am guessing my PG-13 is not in line with the PG-13 many in this thread would have). Vampire was more R rated than Ravenloft (and more about social and political issues). Ravenloft was always more Rosemary's Baby or Horror of Dracula than Friday the 13th. And the black boxed emphasized hinting and subtlety. As the line developed the holocaust references got more explicit I think. I think in Ravenloft you can and should have those things if you are going to be true to the setting, but not in a way that is intended to shock. The intent should be to produce dread and building horror. For example the sisters cannibalism was mentioned. You wouldn't do that in Ravenloft by having players stumble on a kitchen filled with butchered human parts. A much more effective approach is if the players eat food prepared by the hags (perhaps they have shapeshifter to present themselves as inn keepers or something), they slowly get hints and signs that what they eaten may have been human (and perhaps they never get confirmation). That is how these more visceral types of horror would play out in classic Ravenloft I think. But you still need those unnerving things there for that kind of horror to work. </p><p></p><p>With Falkovnia, I think as the line went on that got more explicit, and the line itself, like all of TSR in the late 90s, was playing catch up to Vampire, and I remember feeling a shift in tone, that to me seemed a bit fo a deviation from the philosophy laid out in the black box. Lots of people disagree and prefer later TSR ravenloft, but that is my feeling. By the time you have d20 Ravenloft, that just felt like White Wolf to me. So I am still calling for subtlety here. Just don't think you need to take off hints of these kinds of things completely. They still resonate. And horror isn't meant to make us feel comfortable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 8229512, member: 85555"] I get that they view themselves as a kind of marvel now. My view, and I know this probably is an outlier view, is leaning too much into that, damages the things that make a property interesting (again, back to my older posts on pablum and filing off the sharp edges). That said, I don't think I've ever seen Ravenloft as a Hard R. I think more soft R or PG-13 (though I am guessing my PG-13 is not in line with the PG-13 many in this thread would have). Vampire was more R rated than Ravenloft (and more about social and political issues). Ravenloft was always more Rosemary's Baby or Horror of Dracula than Friday the 13th. And the black boxed emphasized hinting and subtlety. As the line developed the holocaust references got more explicit I think. I think in Ravenloft you can and should have those things if you are going to be true to the setting, but not in a way that is intended to shock. The intent should be to produce dread and building horror. For example the sisters cannibalism was mentioned. You wouldn't do that in Ravenloft by having players stumble on a kitchen filled with butchered human parts. A much more effective approach is if the players eat food prepared by the hags (perhaps they have shapeshifter to present themselves as inn keepers or something), they slowly get hints and signs that what they eaten may have been human (and perhaps they never get confirmation). That is how these more visceral types of horror would play out in classic Ravenloft I think. But you still need those unnerving things there for that kind of horror to work. With Falkovnia, I think as the line went on that got more explicit, and the line itself, like all of TSR in the late 90s, was playing catch up to Vampire, and I remember feeling a shift in tone, that to me seemed a bit fo a deviation from the philosophy laid out in the black box. Lots of people disagree and prefer later TSR ravenloft, but that is my feeling. By the time you have d20 Ravenloft, that just felt like White Wolf to me. So I am still calling for subtlety here. Just don't think you need to take off hints of these kinds of things completely. They still resonate. And horror isn't meant to make us feel comfortable. [/QUOTE]
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