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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 8283351" data-attributes="member: 926">I very much like the book, with a few big caveats.  For one thing, I greatly dislike how the Domains are now floating islands in the Mists with no physical connections nor roads between them for common people to travel from Domain to Domain.  This eliminates far more story possibilities and play opportunities than it creates.  No native travel or trade, no inter-Domain political intrigue, no more plotting of one Darklord over another.  Each Domain is its own little world isolated from all the others, and it just makes the setting far more bland.I saw no mention of The Morninglord anywhere, which is rooted in another great dislike I have, that Strahd is now supposed to be the very first vampire in existence.  That is just stupid.  Jander Sunstar was several centuries older than Strahd, both as an Elf and as a Vampire, and Strahd even used him as a tutor in vampiric abilities.  But I suppose in order to retcon Strahd into being the First Vampire something that was never true before (when Strahd said that it was either an empty boast or it was related to his preeminence, not to his literal chronological existence.)  Jander's story therefore apparently had to be retconned from existence, which also meant retconning away The Morninglord, which was a fascinatingly skewed Ravenloft-filtered splinter of Lathander. Again, it is just taking away fascinating elements from the setting and making it more bland.I do like how they have dealt with Ezra.  Ezra was one of the best additions to the Ravenloft setting from the late-2E Domains of Dread setting book.I actually liked the Dhampyr and Hexspawn, not being actual races but rather things that characters can be altered into... although the Dhampyr does make far more sense as an actual race; Dhampyrs are actual real-world mythology, and it was something you were born as, not made into (as recently as the late 1800s there were still people in Eastern Europe claiming to be Dhampyrs and offering their services as Vampire Hunters.)  But I will never be able to wrap my head around Dragonborn, or especially Teiflings, walking around free in the Land of the Mists.  Ravenloft has always been 99% Human, frightened and xenophobic, and even Elves and Dwarves were considered frightening alien things; blatant Dragonpeople and Devilpeople showing up in a place like Barovia would be immediately hunted down with torches and pitchforks and burnt at the stake.  And before anyone says "the xenophobia was eliminated because xenophobia is bad and we are more enlightened about such things today" the xenophobia was always presented as being bad; this is a Horror setting (Vampires and Werewolves are also bad.)  Xenophobia is a product of fear, which is heightened in the Land of the Mists, and frightened, clannish, xenophobic people are a long-established element of many types of Horror.  When people are frightened they tend to clan up and stigmatize outsiders... it's unpleasant but it is a truth about humanity, and it would be especially prevalent among all the Ravenloft P-Zombies. Horror is about confronting awful things and the way fear affects people, and if try to whitewash out all the underlying social problems that arise as symptoms of the fear only to concentrate on the literal monsters then you eliminate most of the Horror, and instead you just end up with a fascile cartoon version of "Horror."</blockquote>

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