D&D General The thread where I review a ton of Ravenloft modules

[TiQuinn]

So here's what I did to "fix" that. This is all my own games headcanon borrow what you like:

There is a podcast called The Magnus Archives. In it, there are entities that exist as the source of Fears. They are alien, aloof, and seen only interested in perpetuating their chosen fear. My Dark Powers work on the same premise. Scholars provide names to these powers like the Dark, the Stranger or the End to signify the fear they associate with, but those are descriptions for a mortal mind, not names. They are unknowable and unreachable.

Except for their heralds. These act as go-betweens to the Power and the mortal world. Some are Dark Lords, some are not. Some are vestiges trapped in amber sarcophagi. All are irredeemably evil. Even though they don't completely understand their Masters, they are at least able to carry out their wishes. The vestiges in the Amber temple are one group of heralds that are trapped. Strahd 's Death was a herald. Azalin became a herald in the Requiem before clawing his way back. Potentially, entities like the Caller are as well.

Who are not are the majority of the Dark Lords. Strahd does not serve any Dark Power, but instead his fear (and the fear he subsequently inflicts on Barorvia) "feeds" them and furthers their mysterious goals. Which is why so few escape Ravenloft: you have to prove you no longer fear it. Soth feared nothing the Dark Powers could do to him and they realized he was starving them, so he was released. Vecna overcame his fear by strengthening his divinity (and was only weakly chained there to begin with, the Powers bit off more than they could chew with a demigod).

Why the Dark Powers do this is questionable and there are many theories, and almost none of them are accurate. But perhaps one of them is, and that might be truly frightening.

The theorized Dark Powers:

The Buried - enclosed spaces, caves, crypts, being unable to breathe.
The Vast - wide open spaces, nothingness, falling
The End - Death and the Dead
The Dark - darkness and being unable to see
The Corruption - disease, rot, unclean things
The Lonely - being alone or isolated
The Slaughter - war, violence
The Hunt - hunters and prey
The Desolation - destruction, pain, fire
The Web - manipulation, conspiracies, mind control
The Stranger - uncanniness, deja vu, doppelgangers,
The Flesh - body horror and meat
The Eye - being seen, exposed, or secrets revealed, and the desire to know things
The Spiral - madness, lying, being unable to trust your senses
The Extinction - the end of everything. Destruction on a massive scale, Conjunctions.

Man. I LOVE that podcast, am listening to the new one, backed the TTRPG kickstarter and had this same thought of merging the two! I know for a fact if I run another RL campaign, it would be borrowing heavily from The Magnus Archives.

 

[humble minion]

I THINK every TSR setting in print at that time got a bespoke domain at that time. Speaks to the influence of Sithicus I guess.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the exact timing, but I think Al-Qadim is the only one that missed out. (Pharazia is vaguely Arabic-coded in a somewhat cringeworthy ‘it’s middle eastern, let’s make our Darklord a Mohammed analog, nothing problematic there!’ kinda way, but isn’t Al-Qadim even remotely)

Which is a shame, because it would have been a much, much better fit for gothic horror than, say, Dark Sun.

Spelljammer was of course long defunct by that point, although Bluetspur is pretty SJ-ish is you squint.

 

[Stormonu]

Spelljammer was of course long defunct by that point, although Bluetspur is pretty SJ-ish is you squint.

You'd be blind before you saw that sort of connection. The only thing the two share is they have mind flayers.

It's more of a case that Bluetspur was a failed stab at Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness/The Innsmouth Horror without infringing copyright. Only to be replaced with the even worse failure of the Shadow Rift.

 

[Remathilis]

I’m a bit fuzzy on the exact timing, but I think Al-Qadim is the only one that missed out. (Pharazia is vaguely Arabic-coded in a somewhat cringeworthy ‘it’s middle eastern, let’s make our Darklord a Mohammed analog, nothing problematic there!’ kinda way, but isn’t Al-Qadim even remotely)

Which is a shame, because it would have been a much, much better fit for gothic horror than, say, Dark Sun.

Spelljammer was of course long defunct by that point, although Bluetspur is pretty SJ-ish is you squint.

Al-Qadim and Maztica both missed, though Kara Tur got iCath and Rokushima Taiyoo.

Spelljammer and Planescape are also missed, but I guess it's hard to make a domain about space (horror in space is easy, space in horror is not) and it's really hard to think of any domain that is worse than the lower planes.

Still Greyhawk got Torvag, Cativus, Valachan and Darkon. Dragonlance had Sithicus and Falkovia, Realms had Nova Vaasa, Kartakass Hazlan, Valachan and probably more I'm forgetting. Mystara got the Nocturnal Sea, Birthright got Vorostokov, Dark Sun had Kalidnay, and eventually Eberron got The Cyre 1313. (And unofficially, Dread Metrol).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Bluetspur feels like the X-Files domain these days, although I think Lovecraft was the original inspiration. You can certainly do sci fi horror there. Horror in Space tends to boil down to Alien rip off, which I have seen (and done) so many times..,

As for domains based on other D&D settings, The Carnival (VGR) is the Feywild domain.

 

[Alzrius]

Still Greyhawk got Torvag, Cativus, Valachan and Darkon.

I think you mean Vechor rather than Valachan (since the latter's darklord was from the Forgotten Realms). Greyhawk was also the world of origin for the darklord of Souragne as of Dragon #349.

Dragonlance had Sithicus and Falkovia

And The Eyrie.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You'd be blind before you saw that sort of connection. The only thing the two share is they have mind flayers.

It's more of a case that Bluetspur was a failed stab at Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness/The Innsmouth Horror without infringing copyright. Only to be replaced with the even worse failure of the Shadow Rift.

I did not like how the Shadow Rift impacted travel across the core

 

[Remathilis]

I think you mean Vechor rather than Valachan (since the latter's darklord was from the Forgotten Realms). Greyhawk was also the world of origin for the darklord of Souragne as of Dragon #349.

And The Eyrie.

Correct. I mixed up my Vs. Didn't know about Souragne though

 

[TiQuinn]

The thing with where the domains originally came from is that it really doesn’t matter. With the exceptions of maybe Kalidnay or Cyre, does it really matter if Darkon came from Greyhawk or Kartkass from Forgotten Realms? Some, like Souragne are just pure BS. They based that on an Antebellum Louisiana/Caribbean setting as far removed from any other actual setting. Most of these are based on real world locations ripped from stories by Shelley, Stoker, Poe…so why the silliness of “Oh yeah, Falkovnia is from Krynn?”

 

[Remathilis]

The thing with where the domains originally came from is that it really doesn’t matter. With the exceptions of maybe Kalidnay or Cyre, does it really matter if Darkon came from Greyhawk or Kartkass from Forgotten Realms? Some, like Souragne are just pure BS. They based that on an Antebellum Louisiana/Caribbean setting as far removed from any other actual setting. Most of these are based on real world locations ripped from stories by Shelley, Stoker, Poe…so why the silliness of “Oh yeah, Falkovnia is from Krynn?”

I pretty much agree. Most of the tie-ins were superficial at best, jarring at worst. I am also not a fan of the "villain from another setting gets trapped" thing: it creates a weird idea that certain villains are trapped (Vecna, Kas, Soth) but not others (Accerack, Szazz, or Iuz not evil enough?) I think Kas is the last of the celebrity Dark Lords, and apparently he has supervised day release privileges these days...