Tell me about Ravenloft

[Zephrin the Lost]

One of my players recently added his RPG collection to the shelves in our gaming space, two Ravenloft Campaign setting hardcovers among them, Domains of Dread and the Swords and Sorcery 3rd edition take on the subject.

I've never played or even looked into the setting, but I've started flipping through those books and tracked down copes of the 3.5 Expedition book and the original module. It's fascinating stuff, but I noticed right away that the two adventures I have do not get into the whole idea of domains and dark lords that the setting books deal with in detail.

So how did campaigns set in the domains dimension actually play out? Did players create PC's native to the domains or visitors? And if natives, how much did they know about the place they lived in? It seems like the level of futility built into the setting would make it hard to gain traction. It looks like no one could ever challenge a dark lord, and doing so would not mean gaining to power or peace.

So how did it play out? what were the goals and quests of your Ravenloft campaigns?

Thank you!

--Z

 

[Morrus]

A lot of the time, you'd start your campaign being "taken" there by the mists, which is a one-way journey. Allows characters to be new to the domains and the players to learn as they go.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Ravenloft was one of my favorite settings back in 2E (and still is remembered fondly).

I've taken many adventurers there to visit and experience the dark horrors. One of my most memorable games DM'ing was when my best friend's main PC was actually from Ravenloft. He went through, encountering normal undead, vampires, werewolves, etc and then went on to visit other planes to eventually become a demi-god.

Another game I took my players through there and one of them contracted lycanthropy. He went to sleep one night, the full moon came out, and the next morning his clothes were torn. He looked around and noticed body parts of a young woman all over the place and couldn't remember anything, nor how he got there.

The same player that had the demi-god character started a new game later on and I actually used the demi-god as an NPC (he was a NE trickster type). He caused the PC to fall asleep and for 8 levels the character was "in Ravenloft" and he left by waking up. I wasn't a jerk though, I allowed him to keep all his gear and levels, they appeared next to his waking form, a gift from the demi-god.

I also enjoyed the "madness checks" when someone witnessed something horrifying and could go crazy from the ordeal. Gypsy curses are interesting as well. There is a ton of stuff to do in the plane of Ravenloft and many types of adventures you can run, just keep it dark, dangerous, and foreboding it keeps the players on the edge of their seats!

Edit: You got me thinking about how I could easily introduce characters to Ravenloft and I noticed another thread and this is my post about a seemingly innocent door and the question about "what's the worst that can happen?"

 

[timASW]

I loved ravenloft. its probably my favorite published setting of all time.

The trick to remember about ravenloft is that its supposed to be classic gothic horror. Most bad guys are human, monsters and even most of the demi-human races are rare in most domains.

Most of the time if you hear about a "monster" of some sort it turns out not to be one, and if it is one theres a lot of research and hunting of the beast rather then just the standard "we walk out into the woods and wait for it to attack us".

Thats why most of the critters you associate with ravenloft: werewolves, vampires, etc. Are all found as humans most of the time in human cities.

Most of the evil in ravenloft is about human evil. Thats how the darklords came about.

They actually explain in the guide that gothic horror is about the creatures you encounter outside being a dark mirror of some horrific aspect of human nature and the "heroes" are supposed to be able to see at least a little bit of a darker path they could have taken (and still could) in each of these situations.

Ultimately its really a setting that shines in low magic, heroic tier levels. Outside of that its possible to run but you should be getting more into unraveling the mysteries of the actual fabric of the demiplane.

Maybe most importantly none of the natives know that they are living in an evil demi-plane. To them its just the world and its always been that way, and they have gotten very, very good at NOT seeing the monsters in the corner and ignoring the creeping horrors of the world around them.

If you play that up right it can actually really add to the creeping horror and weirdness of the world.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

Maybe most importantly none of the natives know that they are living in an evil demi-plane. To them its just the world and its always been that way, and they have gotten very, very good at NOT seeing the monsters in the corner and ignoring the creeping horrors of the world around them.

If you play that up right it can actually really add to the creeping horror and weirdness of the world.

Ok that helps quite a bit with getting my head around it. I was thinking that a ravenloft campaign would kind of feel like Gothic D&D cartoon/evil Gilligan's island in that the protagonists are always fixated on escaping. But then, if they don't know they are 'trapped', or are no more trapped than say heroes in an Eberron campaign, it won't be a central issue.

--Z

 

[timASW]

Ok that helps quite a bit with getting my head around it. I was thinking that a ravenloft campaign would kind of feel like Gothic D&D cartoon/evil Gilligan's island in that the protagonists are always fixated on escaping. But then, if they don't know they are 'trapped', or are no more trapped than say heroes in an Eberron campaign, it won't be a central issue.

--Z

Exactly in the most recent edition that came out for 3ed there was a timeline of the core realms and for some of these realms it goes back almost 2,000 years. Human society being what it is most of these domains and their people have no idea that their lands were ever part of some other world.

And the realms do a lot to block planar travel and teleportation types of magic so if you were to tell your average wizard in Ravenloft about the multiverse and traveling to other dimensions he would have you locked up in the nuthouse, much less what an average citizen would think of you...

 

[Ulrick]

Ravenloft when through a few stages of development.

The first was Ravenloft, Module I6, and it just focused on players journeying to Castle Ravenloft to defeat Strahd.

When 2e came out, TSR developed Ravenloft as an outright campaign setting. Well, sort of, the average adventure involved player-characters getting grabbed by the Mists of Ravenloft. And then, usually, either the players were just stuck in Ravenloft which is supposed to be inescapable. Most DMs, however, that I know, including myself, usually gave the players a way out.

Domains of Dread came out in 1997, it made the setting more of a "home base" (as Steve Miller, one of the designers put it) for characters who were born in Ravenloft.

I used to own some of the 3e books, but they seemed to pale in comparison to the 2e material. Maybe it was all those stat-blocks.

Ravenloft is great for the tone and feel of Gothic Horror. I used to take those fear, horror, and madness checks and put them in my non-Ravenloft games (until I discovered the Insanity Check from Call of Cthulu).


To answer your final question:
In my long-running Greyhawk Campaign (which ended some years back), the PCs would occasionally end up in Ravenloft. Ravenloft itself, in that campaign, was the prison plane of Tharizdun. This helped explain why the plane itself was hard to escape from, why evil was both rewarded and punished, and why, if one takes the reasoning of the Power of Belief from Planescape, the demiplane keeps growing.

 

[GreyICE]

There's several styles of horror gaming. There's the HP Lovecraft "Eldricht horror," the cloverfield "Unstoppable monster horror." That's not Ravenloft.

Ravenloft (or it's more recent incarnation, Shadowfell, which is a ghost-heavy version of Ravenloft) is about human interaction and human horror. You can bring really nasty supernatural stuff into it, and it works well, but humans should underlay everything. A nasty tentacled monster with scales in the woods? It's someone from the village who stumbled across the wrong Dark Lord, or just spent too long in the mists, or something like that. And one of the PCs should grow an orange tentacle somewhere at some point, just like that monster had.

Ravenloft is about corruption. It's about decay. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Ravenloft is the abyss you stare into. If you want to flavor your villain, don't make him a cutthroat, nasty character. Tell the PCs about a hero, a Paladin who stood for justice and fought the monsters. Let the villagers tell you about how he defeated and slew a werewolf that was killing them, how he fought off a dozen skeletons single handedly, how he visited the orphans of the village (and Ravenloft has a lot of orphans) and would always bring them something nice from his travels, a little gift, hang out with them and make friends.

That character? That's your dark lord, that's your villain, that's the monster that's out to destroy the village and your PCs. How he got that way? Well, they'll find that out as things continue.

Demons and Devils can't access Ravenloft. The Abyss has no place there. The Abyss is the home of flashy, fiery, moustach twirling villains who want to burn everything to a cinder in dramatic glory. The Dark Powers that control Ravenloft want no such thing. Their motives are far less comprehensible and far more sadistic. And they can no-sir the Abyss itself, and every deity in the cosmology.

The theme of Ravenloft is despair. The death of hope. The last, flickering points of light, held in front of tortured people, to keep them moving. Each Dark Lord has a point of hope, held in front of him by the Dark Powers. Strahd von Zarovich is a monster, a true monster, even before he turned Vampire, but he also truly loved Tatyana with all of his heart. And each generation he meets a woman he believes is Tatyana, and each generation she rejects him and dies. And he lives in the hope that one day she will accept him, and join him, and he will be together with the one person he loves in all the world, the person he gave his soul for.

Ravenloft is not about death. Death is for the lucky. Nothing so simple as that challenges your protagonists.

 

[gamerprinter]

I certainly enjoyed and am still inspired by Ravenloft, so much so, that I have since the last 2 years been developing and releasing Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting (PFRPG), including an adventure trilogy, a free one-shot, and five supplements for Japanese horror - greatly influenced by both Oriental Adventures and Ravenloft.

We are currently nine days left on our Kaidan Kickstarter to create the campaign setting guides.

Ravenloft even includes I'Cath and Rokushima Taiyoo, both oriental inspired domains - our Kaidan setting is a good fit for use in those domains.

The same can be said of the Kaidanese as to native Ravenloftians, they don't realize they live in an especially dark realm, thinking it little different from the rest of the world, and a place they call home.

 

[Stormonu]

I run at least one Ravenloft adventure a year - usually involving Castle Ravenloft itself. I've always run as a place the characters get drawn to a short time, tangle with a dark lord - and if lucky, escape. It's a game world where the DM really gets to cut loose, partly because the BBEG is as detailed and has as much interest in the unfolding plot as any player character.


As an aside, I find the 3.5 Expedition to Ravenloft to be the weakest version of Castle Ravenloft. First, it's too HP Lovecraft and not enough Bram Stoker/Edgar Allen Poe/Mary Shelley. Second, it's too packed to the gills with encounters - there's something behind every door - which takes away from tension, whereas the older versions were more sparse, giving it a "haunted" feel where you were never quite sure when something would come after you. If you're going to use the 3.5 version, take out about half the encounters.