Victor wasn't the Darklord in 2E. It was the flesh golem "Adam" who was the Darklord, who was a considerable opponent back then.
Every Darklord in the 2E book is given something interesting. Like Markov, a 0-level human, has more HP than a standard commoner, can shapechange, and heals when he does so.
Things like this make each of the villains seem unique compared to standard Monster Manual counterparts. When I read, "just use the spy entry in the MM" that instantly makes me think that the villain is no more creative than any other encounter with a bandit or nameless NPC.
They didn't include even a single example Darklord statblock for demonstrative purposes on how we should build our own. (Plenty of charts for creative writing prompts for our original Darklord backstories, however.)
Aaand way to ignore everything else I wrote. Or even the actual VGR, because the book doesn't say "use the spy entry." It says "has stats similar to the spy entry." As in, use this as the base power level, make her how you want. She doesn't have 15 HD and a greatsword. Also, Adam was barely a Darklord. He didn't even do anything evil beyond scare someone unintentionally, and he only wanted to be left alone. Even the Black Box says that the Dark Powers were more interested in Victor.
Also, Adam's stats were pretty dull in 2e as well. No special attacks, only special defense was that you needed a +1 weapon to hit him. He was just a combat monster. Even the basic 5e flesh golem is more interesting than he was.
So you want Viktra's? OK, cool. What is she? Are you going to make her a full-fledged artificer? Or will she not have any class abilities and just have special abilities you think are cool? I'm pretty sure that most people will have different ideas of what they want out of her.
And do we really need a sample Darklord statblock? Waaaay back when I bought the Black Box, probably in '92 or so, young me thought that Ivan Dilysnia was terrible for a villain because he was a 0th-level human. Even a 1st- or 2nd-level character could take him out in a heartbeat! While I realized that he'd have minions, he was still so physically weak that when anyone made it past his minions, or got him through assassination, he would still be super easy to kill.
I eventually realized three things: One, the Darklords are not for regular combat. They're set pieces; they're the reason the domain is the way that it is. Two, that they should be exactly as powerful as I need them to be to make them interesting, on the off-chance that I'm actually going to use them in a game (which I never have, so far, because there's far more interesting things to do in each domain). And Three, that what the Darklords are, in terms of their statblock, isn't as interesting as who they are and why they became Darklords (and to be honest, a lot of them had really boring reasons for becoming Darklords).
Gundar was an older vampire and a bit more powerful, but not as smart and effective and not a spellcaster. Strahd had to work on dealing with his more powerful neighbor. "Duke Gundar, a vampire lord, rules Gundarak. He is older than Strahd but weaker in spirit."
I think you are thinking of Lyssa Von Zarovich, a descendant of the brother Strahd murdered who eventually became a vampire herself a century ago. In Thoughts of Darkness it is revealed she cheesed the interaction of rules on vampire aging categories and ghost aging attacks.
"Ironically, Lyssa shares some of Strahd's own fate: In order to better oppose him, she struck her own dark pact and murdered her fiance to honor it. In addition, Lyssa tormented her former lover's ghost by seducing his incorporeal spirit and laughing sadistically when he bemoaned his inability to kiss or hold her. In frustration, he attacked her repeatedly with his aging touch, thus aging her over 200 years in the course of a night, before she wholly obliterated him from existence. As a result, Lyssa has achieved Very Old status (300-399) in terms of her vampiric powers, even though she has been a vampire for only a century. Her gaming statistics reflect this artificial enhancement."
Aaand way to ignore everything else I wrote. Or even the actual VGR, because the book doesn't say "use the spy entry." It says "has stats similar to the spy entry." As in, use this as the base power level, make her how you want. She doesn't have 15 HD and a greatsword. Also, Adam was barely a Darklord. He didn't even do anything evil beyond scare someone unintentionally, and he only wanted to be left alone. Even the Black Box says that the Dark Powers were more interested in Victor.
Also, Adam's stats were pretty dull in 2e as well. No special attacks, only special defense was that you needed a +1 weapon to hit him. He was just a combat monster. Even the basic 5e flesh golem is more interesting than he was.
I'd have to review the Lamordia section again to comment on his specific status, but I tend to agree that Mordenheim was practically co-domain lord and the more interesting of the two characters for gaming purposes. With classic Ravenloft, the stat blocks, provided they aren't insanely broken or something, are not as important as the role they play. I never really saw the concept as being designed for the players to face off against them. For me that was just an occasional thing. In fact the times I used Mordenheim, it was always pure RP for the most part. Though I did have a party end up attacking him at some point (but his combat stats were not hugely important as he wasn't meant as a powerful physical threat or anything)
Aaand way to ignore everything else I wrote. Or even the actual VGR, because the book doesn't say "use the spy entry." It says "has stats similar to the spy entry." As in, use this as the base power level, make her how you want. She doesn't have 15 HD and a greatsword. Also, Adam was barely a Darklord. He didn't even do anything evil beyond scare someone unintentionally, and he only wanted to be left alone. Even the Black Box says that the Dark Powers were more interested in Victor.
Also, Adam's stats were pretty dull in 2e as well. No special attacks, only special defense was that you needed a +1 weapon to hit him. He was just a combat monster. Even the basic 5e flesh golem is more interesting than he was.
I would challenge this. I am not critiquing the new entries (haven't read them but I am sure they tried to make them interesting). But the Adam entry was pretty impressive, especially for that time. So I am not knocking the new entries but defending this classic one.
Just to go over some crucial differences between him and a normal Flesh Golem. Adam had an Intelligence of 16, versus a Flesh Golem's 2-4. He had a better THAC0 (9 versus 11). Impressively they really emphasized that he wasn't Borris Karloff's monster, he was visibly inspired by the original novel. That is why he was so intelligent, but also why he is described as nimble, having a 12 movement rather than a Flesh Golem's 8, and 80% hide in shadows and move silently. Like you point out he couldn't be hit by a weapon unless it was +1, and he had 25% magic resistance (and he regenerates when you cast non-damaging spells on him as he absorbs them). Finally he can use a weapon, which a normal flesh golem can't and this gives him a +8 to damage. That isn't even getting into the personality description. But this quick section from the combat portion of his entry I think gives an idea of the kind of thought that was put into it:
One thing people might not appreciate is how powerful the Boris Karloff monster image was at this time. Pretty much most people assumed Frankenstein's monster was stupid, slow, lumbering, etc. I hadn't read the book until I saw the Lamordia entry. And the Black box quoted this section of Frankenstein which was like a revelation to me, and is the thing that motivated me to go buy the book and read it right away:
That passage really impressed me as I had always pictured the monster as unintelligent with bolts in his neck. And Flesh Golems were basically the Boris Karloff monster. The Black Box did a great job of committing to making Adam more like the original monster and making that difference in the source material clear to GMs. So a party encountering Adam for the first time in the early 90s, whose only point of reference was the bolted necked flesh golem from the MM, would be genuinely taken by surprise. He is intelligent, uses good tactics, agile, stealthy and a very formidable opponent.
A number of the Dark Lords had things that made them harder to kill. Those varied though from Domain to Domain (which I think just reflected different levels of challenge they could present: permanently killing Harkon Lukas is pretty damn difficult for example).
I will say that the Guide to the Created, which remains my favorite Van Richten guide, ended up really expanding what was possible with Flesh Golems and Golems in general in Ravenloft. And it cleverly threaded the slasher film genre through them but in a way that didn't upset the gothic mood of Ravenloft. The Black Box was pretty much anti-slasher, and this was a pretty interest move by Teeuwynn Woodruff the writer, and very well done. I was someone who very much agreed with the black box approach but she made a convincing argument for this angle which convinced me and proved to be so wonderful in actual play. So I think it is fair to say had Adam been designed a few years later, after the Guide to the Created had some out, there may have been more nuances in his stat block. But overall I think his entry and Mordenheim's were two of the most effective (and I liked that they did not shy away from the source material, even saying that Victor Mordenheim was Ravenloft's Frankenstein directly in the text).
I'm guessing that VRGtR didn't do too well either, just based on my seeing it put on a fire sale for 70% off 18 months after its release and seeing stacks and stacks of it unsold on game store shelves. And Ravenloft was one of their bestselling product lines during that era. And Curse of Strahd is one of the highest regarded 5e adventures.
What might have been a better product? Maybe something like a Tales of the Yawning Portal or Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventure compilation updating those Ravenloft adventures to 5e - for the fans of Curse of Strahd who want more horror-themed games?.
yeah I think an adventure compilation with the House on Gryphon Hill and the Grim Harvest trilogy would have been a better introduction, the add a supplement after that (like Requiem but not that)
But overall I think his entry and Mordenheim's were two of the most effective (and I liked that they did not shy away from the source material, even saying that Victor Mordenheim was Ravenloft's Frankenstein directly in the text).
Don't forget the extra tidbit, introduced in Forbidden Lore (affiliate link), that Adam is himself capable of crafting flesh golems. But unlike Dr. Mordenheim, these are basic run-of-the-mill flesh golems, with no emotions and little sense of self, which invariably drives Adam to rage and either cast them out or destroy them. An excellent tidbit which makes Adam into (even more of) a dark mirror of his creator.
yeah I think an adventure compilation with the House on Gryphon Hill and the Grim Harvest trilogy would have been a better introduction, the add a supplement after that (like Requiem but not that)
An adventure compilation of a lot of 2e module conversions could be great but I would not include the Grim Harvest.
Death Unchained, the first of the trilogy started it off terribly in tone. It went from having the default Ravenloft base be lower magic with a focus on investigating and foiling villains and gothic monsters to a high magic standard D&D. It took the one non-supernatural domain where the fighter darklord relied upon his evil highly skilled fighter based military and facist government to show human evil and turned it into a universally alchemically boosted and corrupted military with a complete supernaturally coercive aspect to the evil minions.
The soldiers went from being an army of third level fighters working for an evil historical nonmagical Dracula the impaler type military leader, to being cursed with evil upon joining the army in a process that requires grinding up incredibly powerful magic items presumably on a mass scale as this is the biggest military armed force in Ravenloft.
"They are recruited through an unusual method; upon conscription into the army, each is forced to drink a foul brew, the recipe for which is known only to Vlad Drakov (it is rumored to contain the gritty powder of a ground-up talisman of ultimate evil and swamp water from the lair of a will o' wisp). The unwilling imbiber must make a successful saving throw vs. spell or be driven mad. This insanity manifests itself as a switch to an evil alignment and an intense pleasure that is gained by witnessing a slow and painful death. The drink also provides a limited magical resistance"
I know, it is only rumored to use ground up ultimate evil. Still.
Don't forget the extra tidbit, introduced in Forbidden Lore (affiliate link), that Adam is himself capable of crafting flesh golems. But unlike Dr. Mordenheim, these are basic run-of-the-mill flesh golems, with no emotions and little sense of self, which invariably drives Adam to rage and either cast them out or destroy them. An excellent tidbit which makes Adam into (even more of) a dark mirror of his creator.
Lol. In my campaigns these days, I don't add anything past Feast of Goblyns. But that one in particular I was always on the fence with. I think in terms of gameability it does add something (you can easily make adventures around that) but I like it better with Adam having to go through Mordenheim for that kind of thing (like in his backstory and in the original Frankenstein novel).
Forbidden Lore was a good boxed set though. I remember really liking the Tarokka Deck and the Dice.
Yeah Howls in the Night is my favourite and I’ve used it in non-Ravenloft games. Indeed Mordent with its ghost haunted moors is my favourite domain
In truth I suggested Grim Harvest because it’s a related series of adventures, not because they are the best.
Many in the Hexad adventures were better but unrelated adventures except for the prophecy as plot contrivance
There is very much nothing new there, so I can't really buy that as a "lack of care and attention". I've being going "What the actual..." to D&D and RPG products re: scales since I started in 1989. Even in products regarded as excellent, scales are often hilariously off in either direction.
As a "setting" book it's about on par with the others. lacks cohesion very rough around the edges. ERfLW being the only standout one that felt put together on all fronts.
As a source material for inspiration it's well worth having on hand if you like to run anything other than hack n slash megadungeons. Lots of good seeding material and the npc (monster) block are some of the best I've seen outside of homebrew.
I'm guessing that VRGtR didn't do too well either, just based on my seeing it put on a fire sale for 70% off 18 months after its release and seeing stacks and stacks of it unsold on game store shelves. And Ravenloft was one of their bestselling product lines during that era. And Curse of Strahd is one of the highest regarded 5e adventures.
I don't know how it compared at the time; however, it is #8* in the D&D category on Amazon and outselling every non-D&D book. So it seems to be selling ok.
*FYI, at #8 it is the highest selling D&D setting book on Amazon right now.
I don't know how it compared at the time; however, it is #8* in the D&D category on Amazon and outselling every non-D&D book. So it seems to be selling ok.
*FYI, at #8 it is the highest selling D&D setting book on Amazon right now.
Eh, you have facts and sales figures, but I have nostalgia and a desire for this to fail so that the old days are seen as better. Let's call it a draw.
I never liked the Black Box Ravenloft. In particular I thought the idea of a "core" with trade and diplomacy undermined the horror concept, the setting up as darklords as a hitlist of boss fights made it more of a video game rather than a horror setting. If something has a stat block it means it's exists to be fought and killed. And there was simply too many repetitious domains, with an emphasis on quantity over quality.
So, speaking as a grognard, I felt VGR was a vast improvement.
I don't know how it compared at the time; however, it is #8* in the D&D category on Amazon and outselling every non-D&D book. So it seems to be selling ok.
*FYI, at #8 it is the highest selling D&D setting book on Amazon right now.
It's also $15.99, so it's entirely likely a lot of people are finally pulling the trigger on buying it because it's so cheap. I know if I was going to run CoS, I'd spend the extra $15 on this just in case there's something I could use.
I’ve run the original I6 many times, as far back as at least 1989 and have also run I10, with one instance of running I6 & I10 concurrently.
I have all the 2E and most of the 3E Ravenloft products, and despite having read through them at one point or another, the only adventures I’ve attempted to run were Night of the Living Dead and Roots of Evil. After attempting to run Roots of Evil and the opening that kills the PCs went poorly in play, I became disillusioned with the official Ravenloft adventures and their propensity to kill/screw over the players at the start of the adventure. I read, but did not run other official Ravenloft adventures.
I was always bothered by the Victorian-age technology level of Ravenloft and the extreme human centric focus of the campaign, to the point it really seemed the authors wanted no magic or demihumans in the campaign at all - which was pretty apparent by the later release of The Mask of the Red Death campaign and books.
Likewise, I was never really enamored with the “core” lands configuration as I much preferred the “weekend in Hell” aspect of Ravenloft. Until the Domains of Dread supplement, the thought of running a full-blown campaign in Ravenloft from start to finish did not appeal to me.
When it came to Darklords, a lot of the way the stats were done did not appeal to me - for example, the 0th level Darklords or even the Reniers who were mere wererats of extremely low power. Back in the day, I had some issues creating adventures using these low-level/non-existant combat threats in a way they couldn’t be dealt with by means of direct combat and yet still be something PCs would fear - my players tended to solve things by violence, and setting up an encounter with these Darklords that wouldn’t end up with an anticlimactic death on the end of the first sword swing was something I struggled with for some time.
What probably made me most furious about older Ravenloft was the meta plot. The Grand Conjuction, the Grim Harvest - what these events did to change the campaign setting greatly upset me. I did not like having the rug yanked out from under me because I refused to play the modules and the constant map changes irked me.
I was very disappointed with Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in 3E, both due to the Delve format that put an encounter behind EVERY door and pushed the whole affair away from Gothic and towards Lovecraftian horror. It is my least favorite version of the Castle.
I see the VRGtR guide as both filled with good and bad. The advice for setting up the mood and play style I find to be helpful, and the discussion of the various forms of horror was enlightening to me. That section is the real value of the current book.
I’m not overly fond of the character options, but they aren’t repulsive. I could use them or lose them, and can easily ignore them if I choose. I am a bit unhappy in that they all seem to lean into “embrace the dark side” sort of options instead of having more “champions of light against the darkness” options.
The “sample” domains is probably the biggest area where the book falls down, though. Which is a shame, since this should be the heart of what the book is about.
Though, I actually liked some of the changes to the various domains, but really wish those changes - like Dementliu’s - were different domains instead of overwriting the old. The addition of train 1313 was really nice, and the change to Falkovia actually inspired me to run a Halloween game that I had a lot of fun with. Personally, I do like fracturing the core in a way that each domain is an island that can be connected (or thrown out) as the DM likes, and even more strongly enforces the “borders” and ability to isolate each domain of the old campaign set. Unlike the older version, the default is that borders being closed seems to be continuously “on” rather than “off” until the Darklords (or other forces) turn it on. To me, this further enhances the feeling of being “cut off” and isolated from easy escape, aid or otherwise evading events.
However, I was disappointed with some things, such as the visual changes to Anktepot, and the retelling of Lamordia simply fell flat for me. Once again, on other domains - such as Darkon - changing the realm up bothered me as I’d rather have not be forced to incorporate the metaplot from ages ago. I also wasn’t fond of the space given to the Carnival. While I know that existed back in 2E, it just felt like it was a big ad for Witchlight and could have been just a short paragraph better spent on detailing another domain instead.
Top it all off, several of the maps in VRGtR look horrible - Lamordia is the worst offender, but the lack of unifying appearance is jarring. To me, the Ravenloft maps should look more Victorian in style - clean, formal and uncluttered.
I’m fine without the stat blocks for the various Darklords, nor do I mind them referencing generic MM stat blocks. It keeps that information out of the hands of the players, and as a DM you can take and tweak the suggestions to better fit a given encounter with the PCs - we all know that Strahd isn’t a “typical” vampire and I doubt anyone would actually use the MM stat block of vampire for him unless they were in a pinch. And unless the PCs are going to directly confront and attempt to destroy the Darklord, do you really need their stat block? And in such a case there is going to be conflict, wouldn’t you have already prepared a custom stat block for such an encounter?
As for the adventure, I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Glancing over it looks like it could be fun, but I would have much rather had the space available to include more domains - especially new ones - or more monsters with which to terrorize my players.
Overall, I enjoy the book. I’ve already gotten use out of it and can certainly expect I’ll get much more use out of it in the future. I’m also lucky to have access to a lot of the old campaign materials, and it should be breeze to convert any of the old domains into 5E if I want to bring them in. I think WotC could have delved deeper into more domains, but in some ways I’m glad they didn’t as it probably would have just ruffled more feathers.
As an aside, I’m still up in the air whether to include the Nightmare Lands back into 5E; its Darklords were interesting visually, but the realm itself and their backgrounds were … cringe, to say the least.
