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Discussing all things Ravenloft
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Post by Scot Storm »

No we are the Northwest part of Pennsylvania at the tip of Lake Erie.
I remember that show too. We are a tourism town but harldy gothic horror. The coolest thing bout horror that came to Erie was Saw II.
but I always had an interest in horror when I was little I had nightmares and when I watched horror films I would pretend I was Van Helsing or Van Richten and know the weakness for all the monsters. Still having nightmares I had to go in my dreams and change the gruesome outcome to one that would defeat the monster. :shock:
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Post by Jonathan Winters »

Well have fun in 2e land, Eldritch.

I think we should just agree to disagree...

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Post by midnightcat »

eldritch wrote:
Sounds like her and I are of like minds. Do you have to buy the regular DM's guide and player's handbook to play or are the Ravenloft titles of the same name sufficient? What 3 books do you have?[/quote]

Yes, you do need the regular Player handbook and dm book. Don't worry with the Ravenloft Player book,if you have the campagin setting book. They are the same. The Ravenloft Player's handbook, and Ravenloft Campagin book in 3rd is like the Black box , Red Box set or Domains of Dread in 2nd.

The Ravenloft Dm book is great. it helps more with mood, and such. I repeat you do need the 3 basic books, and then just get all 3rd edition Ravenloft books.
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Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

whereas Heroes of Light and Champions of Darkness (The two I read this week) had very little of that type of information that I crave, mostly just game mechanics for a system I will probably never use (I mostly collect now instead of play ans my gaming group has spread apart)
Well there's your problem right there. Those two products are generally considered to be at least sub-par, if not outright terrible, even by us 3.x upstarts. :) They are definately the worst of the line. You want to get LotB, Dark Tales, the Gaz's and the VRG's as your first priorities. Great products, with lots of info that can be used in any edition.

BTW, if you want adventures, Dark Tales is what you're looking for. It's not quite full modules, but it's close.

And to answer your other questions: 3.x is what we say to encompass both 3.0 and 3.5. Since they are so similar, most things apply to both. The books say on the back which ruleset they were made with (3.0 or 3.5) becaue WotC requitres them to, but 80-90% of the time it doesn't matter. I haven't heard any rumblings about a new ruleset lately. Last I heard, if it happens, it's at least 5 years from now. The Castle Ravenloft on amazon is 3.5 as far as we know. Probably an update of the old I6/House of Strahd, plus some extra stuff we don't know about yet.

A "vampiric bugbear/with theiving ability and elvish ancestry" is indeed possible, and hey, if someone comes up with a good story for it, let them use it, IMHO. :) But that's what comes with flexibility. It's up to the DM to limit that sort of thing. It's a small price to pay for the options it provides. In another DM's non-RL campaign, I play a goblin wererat fighter/theif (with a swashbuckling duelist feel). It's a wonderful role-playing experience that I could never have in 2e. The same goes for one of the characters in my RL campaign. She's a True Innocent/Cloistered Cleric with a fey bloodline. (she's kind of a Chosen One/Golden Child/messiah-like figure, raised by monks in a sheltered retreat.) I don't know how I'd begin to model her in 2e. She'd probably be a specialty priest or paladin and deliberately not use most of her abilities because they're out of character. But it wouldn't be quite the same.
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Post by midnightcat »

Hey Eldritch, since you want to Stay with 2nd edition, then the books I recommend are all 5 Gazetteers. You don't need to know any of the 3.0 or 3.5 rules, and they are mainly fluff text. Just ignore the back with the npcs. This Should allow you to get the update on Ravenloft.

As for my one player, I will say thier are two reasons she a little sour on 3rd, she doens't want to spend any money. She is the type tyht has to have every book, sio she up to date with the DM/ This does not mean she is a power player, she is a great ROLE player, and make characters with alot weaknesses. She just like to own the books m even if she doens't read them. The second reason, she Played in a 3rd edition game, where a Dm didn't know the rules ( it wasn't me, and I was invited to the game), and she wasn't alloed to make her own character, just grab a pre made character. Also no one explained the rules to her. She has said in the future she might try 3rd.

Eldritch, it soulds like you are dead set against 3rd editon, and you have your mind set up before hand. Why asks people's opion if you are not open to them? :?:
Last edited by midnightcat on Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by eldritch »

actually the point is moot as I mainly collect Ravenloft now (to read and complete my collection) and haven't actually played in a while. I never was looking for a swaying arguement as to why learn 3.X
I was just merely curious what people who played both preferred (and of course to gripe alittle on my dislike of the transition). I am open to people's opinions and was intrigued by several responses of how and why 3.x is (insert opinion here) but ultimately as I said I prefer the old system (especially since the bulk of Ravenloft material came out as such) and really am only interested in updates to the ravenloft "story" as a whole and not in the current game mechanics. Call it scholarly interest in a related field so to speak...am I going to learn the new methods and start experiments to prove the new theories or am I more likely to just ask colleagues in the particular field what they thought?
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Post by eldritch »

Lets back the carriage up and see what we have trampled shall we? On further purusal of the old posts in this realm it seems that this is indeed a reocurring topic and most of the 3E books in the Ravenloft line have been blasted in the posts. see http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... php?t=1471
for example. Including not too flattering comments by the head honchos around here (FOS) and old Kargatane members......it went so far as to resort to lashing and subsequent removal of posts (damn I really wanted to read what Steve Miller said)
Mangrum even said in so many words that the great falling out that led to the demise of the SOTK was in part due to "developers with a laisse-faire style and serious lack of a grasp of a 3e system."

wow strong words indeed.

which leads me naturally to ask in this thread have the advocates of the 3e system been championing the new system or the ravenloft product line that has come out under it? (or both)

I have read nothing but disgust with the Champions of Darkness volume and Heroes of light isn't fairing much better. Secrets of the dread realms is awful according to a poster?
Also the new Masque of the Red Death is rife with editorial errors and the Denizens of Dread is Denizens of Darkness tweeked just a little?
RL Players handbook is just a rehash of the Ravenloft Domain setting for the 3.5 rules?
why call them Dms guide and players handbook at all if you still need the 3e non setting versions to play?????!!!!!!

I am becoming seriously alarmed that I have bought most all of the 20 books and am starting to see why the Ravenloft Product line withered and died.

So now my main question is which books are worth having in the first place?

So far everyone has High praise for the Gazetteers and Bloodlines books and there are positive comments on dark Tales and disturbing legends. It seems to me that these are the ones with the most story fluff and the least on game mechanics. izzat so? then how come everyone is so cheerio about 3e when the products on the line that deal with more game mechanics and less story fluff are seen as poor? I seriously need to go back and read the reviews posted on this site (I confess that I skipped them after the 3rd I read or so also had a convenient 4 out of 5 rating.)

please list the RL books you think are valuable and which I shouldn't have bothered with and why? if you will indulge me and clarify your position on wether the new 3.x system is better A. because the game mechanics in your opinion are better B. because the printed RL stuff under the new system in your opinion is fantastic C. a smattering of both D. you still prefer the 2e material. thank you.
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Post by Kel-nage »

I really liked the DMs guide, for what it's worth. And of course, the Gazs are brilliant. I also liked Van Richten's Arsenal (which is primarily rules based, if you're interested). I'd go so far to say I'm a fan of all the Van Richten guides for 3rd edition. In fact, from what I've seen of the 2nd edition VRGs, they're positively better! SotDR is a waste of money, however little you can get it for.

There is nothing wrong (IMO) with the 3rd edition system. I think what people have attacked are the bad examples of fluff coming from 3rd edition, which have appeared (HoL and CoD being the two usual suspects). There have been some examples of bad rules in these too, however, that's not the fault of 3rd edition itself.

The point is, the Ravenloft setting has had it's ups and downs in 3rd edition. Not that that has been the fault of the ruleset. The actual 3rd edition rules are exactly that, just rules. They can't properly affect Ravenloft. Regardless, there is quality to be found in 3rd edition, that in some places surpasses some 2nd edition material. But don't let us stop you from using 2nd edition if you want to.
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Post by Jasper »

eldritch wrote: I have read nothing but disgust with the Champions of Darkness volume and Heroes of light isn't fairing much better. Secrets of the dread realms is awful according to a poster?
Also the new Masque of the Red Death is rife with editorial errors and the Denizens of Dread is Denizens of Darkness tweeked just a little?
RL Players handbook is just a rehash of the Ravenloft Domain setting for the 3.5 rules?
why call them Dms guide and players handbook at all if you still need the 3e non setting versions to play?????!!!!!!
First off I would say 97.9% of the posters here would agree with you that Champions and Heros were two of the worst books ever to get the Ravenloft stamp. The reson for this is they were given over to mosty newbies in the game development field who truely didn't know a thing out the feel of ravenloft and used the books to toss in thier own pet project NPCs and ideas from thier own campaigns. This was quickly remided and the majority of the authors on the books never worked on Ravenloft again (with the noted exception of James Lowder who does do good work)

Masque wasn't so much the fault of the authors as it was the victim of deadlines. While the authors tried to update and make the Masque setting ready for 3rd edition the vast amount they had to convert left them in the lurch and forced them to do a litteral cut and paste job on several parts of the book.

The Ravenloft players hand book should be more accurately be called "The Ravenloft primer for new players." Its the type of book you give to a player who has never played or even heard about Ravenloft. Where as the straight players hand book gives you just the flat rules the Ravenloft players handbook gives you tips and trick to paly the entire gambit of gothic characters from the Nobleman haunted by his late wifes ghost to the once sadistic highway man who now trying to make amends do to having a vistani see his horrable death.

The Dms guide is the same way. The entire book is set up to teach a new Dm how to run a gothic horror campaign and to get the fell of Ravenloft.

The main thing for both of these books however is that they are for those new to the setting. Yes, a verteran Ravenloft player can get better by reading these books but the vast majority is stuff he allready knows.

I am becoming seriously alarmed that I have bought most all of the 20 books and am starting to see why the Ravenloft Product line withered and died.
I have no idea where your getting theses ideas from. Up to the point where the rights reverted back to WOTC the White Wolf Ravenloft line was doing fine, selling batter then it did in 2nd edition. The only reason it reverted is it wasn't living up to White wolfs proffit forcasts. They wanyed every book to sell at Eberon rates- 50,000+ copies each. Ravenloft never sold that good, ever. Even back in 2nd edition a run of 10,000 was concidered a best seller.

So now my main question is which books are worth having in the first place?

So far everyone has High praise for the Gazetteers and Bloodlines books and there are positive comments on dark Tales and disturbing legends. It seems to me that these are the ones with the most story fluff and the least on game mechanics. izzat so? then how come everyone is so cheerio about 3e when the products on the line that deal with more game mechanics and less story fluff are seen as poor? I seriously need to go back and read the reviews posted on this site (I confess that I skipped them after the 3rd I read or so also had a convenient 4 out of 5 rating.)

please list the RL books you think are valuable and which I shouldn't have bothered with and why? if you will indulge me and clarify your position on wether the new 3.x system is better A. because the game mechanics in your opinion are better B. because the printed RL stuff under the new system in your opinion is fantastic C. a smattering of both D. you still prefer the 2e material. thank you.

Right off the bat-

1. The Five gazzeters. Best ravenloft products ever. You get a indepth fell of what its like it actluy live in each domain covered and they truely bring the setting to life.

2. The three Van richtens guides. While there is about 30% rule mechanics in them the other 70% is pure old school Van Richten. The motives and eccology of the three types covered (Walking dead, Shadow fey and mist creatures) is invauable for anyone who plays them, no matter what rule set you use.

3. The Ravenloft 3rd edition campaign book. Mostly for the introduction of the Caliban race and for a player friendly overview of the major domains.

For for my possiton on the new system is 30% A and 70% B. The new rules allow for extremely unique characters but the main draw of the new ravenloft books is the vastly improved writing by people who know and love the setting (Champions and heroes exculded).
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Post by Brandi »

Jasper wrote: 3. The Ravenloft 3rd edition campaign book. Mostly for the introduction of the Caliban race and for a player friendly overview of the major domains.
Mind you, the 3.5 version (Ravenloft Player's Handbook; 3.0 is the Ravenloft Campaign Setting) has some added-in rules that felt like real Murphy's Rules to a lot of folks.

I will second the Gazetteers and the Van Richten books, though. Good stuff.
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Post by Jonathan Winters »

I'm just not sure why this guy will believe the forum, but not the reviews...

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Post by Jester of the FoS »

As I always say, if you have a choice between the Ravenloft Player's Handbook and Ravenloft Third Edition, pick whichever is cheaper. They're 99% identical, ditto the Monster books and published due to licence restrictions.
And while the change in editions may require some of the older books (GazI, SotDR) to be editied/updated, it's really a minor tweak at best and only if you really want to throw Strahd at your players.
eldritch wrote:I think you managed to articulate my main gripe: there are no new Ravenloft adventures (and in our campaign we used the adventure products) I find them a very useful structure for my adventures and to me that was the point; to play ravenloft adventures not just define the world so creative Dm's can come up with their own off a one paragraph adventure hook. It is the fact that I would have to convert every one of those old adventures or just start new (as the new products suggest) and wing my own adventures. I'm just not that interested in doing that. it's not that I am not creative enough it is just that I bought all of those old 2e Adventures to play them!
Well, you've admitted you're not really playing now or often so it's not really a problem.
Still, this is NOT a gripe with the game system, 3.X, or anything else you've really complained about before. It's a gripe with the publisher who decided adventures don't sell.

Alright, everyone has already defended and stated how much they love 3.X, I'm not going to chime much in on that subject. Although I love mah BAB now instead of the massive headache that THAC0 always was for me.

Ahhh, the fun "Ravenloft in Trouble" thread, one of the two really bad low-point arguments where everyone acted like complete jerks and had it out (don't look for the other one, while it was cathartic at times it was deleted for the good of the community). However, despite the tension and rage, we were still making good arguments until the very end.
Don't read it and assume it is the common state of affairs, we were all still tense over the developers (f-ups for sure but who were unfairly treated as the worst thing to ever happen to Ravenloft) and the foreseen ending of the line (almost a full year and several products later; if you prophecies failure enough you'll eventually be right).

So, how did Ravenloft fair with 3.X? We can now safely give a retrospective of the entire line from beginning to end.
It rocked. Hands down, balls out, full throttle rocked.
2001-2005, four years and 18-21 products. Two reprints, one almost redundant product and three-four poor additions to the line leaving at least 14 absolutely kick-buttocks books that include some of the best work on the line ever. That's a 70% success ratio and pretty darn good.

The Gazetteers were an excellent high-point and truly inspired pieces of work. Whole domains fleshed out with masses of new information and some of the most troublesome and hard-to-play lands made functional and desirable. All that while adventure hooks were added, stories advanced, canon was fixed and things were generally improved. Each book was 150+ pages and 4/5ths of that was rule-untouched fluff.

The new VanRichten books from the Arsenal to the free Guides (including the one to the Mists available for free at the White Wolf site) were great with the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins readily developing into fun and interesting characters with their own plotlines and supporting cast. Monsters I always thought of as expendable cannon fodder like skeletons or mist horrors were suddenly made unique and interesting and the Shadow Fey became so very much more than the simple static monsters in the Shadow Rift mega-adventure.

We had surprising and enjoyable books that caught everyone off guard with their quality, such as Legacy of the Blood: The Great Families of the Core or Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends. I'd have never thought to propose either of those books and fans, constantly suggesting new books, never proposed those.

In a surprising twist, Ravenloft, once a crux in the D&D Prime Material Plane where every established land met, mixed and intertwined, actually benefited by standing alone. True, Hazlik couldn't be described as "A Red Wizard of Thay" and certain worlds, deities and the like couldn't be directly mentioned by name, but their identities were obvious. We all knew who the Cursed Knight/Black Rose so actually saying his name would have been a non-event.
Instead of being a land of outsides and visitors where the lords were walking references to other game products it became an independent and functional setting on its own. People were encouraged to play natives, lands were made more than simply settings of the lord to live.

The new rules definitely made the lords much more threatening and terrifying. As lycanthropes and vampires can now have class levels Strahd can be much more than just a generic vampire with some necro levels tacked on and the werewolf lords can be more than cookie-cutter beasts with an extra power or two (I adore these templates). Stahd is a fighter/necromancer (he was a warrior who drove off foreign invaders from Barovia before he fell) and more than a match for high level characters. Ivan and Ivana are now much more than just 0-level commoners able to be taken down by a lucky second level character (NPC classes? Brilliant!).

It's easy to complain (unbelievably easy, some people do nothing but) and just as easy to gripe about the line ending, but I got several new products out of Ravenloft before the end and got seriously involved in the fan community because of the new books. I didn't start posting at the MGT until the RL: CS was released and would never have written all I have for the line or become a member of the FoS without the 3.X books. Over the past three-four years my writing skills have dramatically improved and I'm a much more competent and confident crafter of words. Heck, even my grammar and punctuation skills have been kicked up a notch. Looking through the "Is Ravenloft in Trouble" thread, a mere year old, I wince at some of what I had written.
Ravenloft for Third Edition helped make me what I am today. I am happy to have been here for its too-brief existence.

Oh, and for more ranting on 3.X and the like check out:
http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... 30&start=0
Fun-fun arguments abound!
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Post by ScS of the Fraternity »

You know eldritch, you have brought up a point that certainly deserves mentioning:

Ravenloft 3x has been subjected to the harshest of scrutiny.
Every little error has been dragged forth into the light of public criticism. The line has had an average number of hits and misses, no more or less than other lines - yet each and every gaff has been documented and reported.
Right from the start RL 3x was being measured against the nostalgic memories of 2nd edition.
I wonder what people would have thought of 2nd edition had it recieved a similar level of attention.
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Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

Funny thing is, it did, but only at the time. When CoD came out, people forgot all about the errors of 2E. I've brought them up from time to time in my efforts to challenge confirmation bias, but it's been a while, so let's try this again:

I'll agree that the big flaws of 3E include HoL, CoD, and MotRD. Feel free to add to the list, eldrich, but I reserve the right to rebut.

Now, what are the comparable flaws of 2E? How about the entire Grim Harvest series? I'd be willing to argue that there's less usable material in those than in HoL and CoD combined. A Light in the Belfry was an absolute lead balloon for multiple reasons, not the least of which was adding yet another raft of inconsistencies with the two preexisting accounts of the Shadowborn family. And last time I checked, the Shadowborn novel itself had many more bad reviews than anything in 3E.

Before everyone gears up for their objections, let me remind you that I'm a pathological apologist; I love to find nuggets of redeemable material in things like these, and taken people soundly to task for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But the fact of the matter is that we all know which books require more "DM interpretation" than others, and they existed in both editions.

Now where was I? Let's see: Adam's Wrath screwed up the timeline of Adam yet again, railroaded the party from beginning to end, and got almost three times as many bad reviews as good; Feast of Goblyns, Ship of Horror, and most of the rest of the GC series were regarded as boils on the face of RL, with the exception of Night of the Walking Dead and possibly Touch of Death.

As someone charged with writing the follow-up to MotRD, I must say I found some if not most of the criticisms of 3E MotRD were well founded, but mostly people conveniently forget how many of these problems existed in the 2E version. The rules were clunky for no reason other than being different.

Speaking of clunky rules, TNL hits my high mark for the ratio of "good idea" to "poorly executed." I use TNL rules more often than many, but I've had to rewrite, omit, or change as many of them as need fixing in, say, HoL or CoD.

I could keep going, but I think my point is clear: what's good for the goose is good for the gander. You talk about the 3E RL being "a shadow of its former glory," but the success-to-failure ratio of 3E has already outperformed the 2E works by a factor of three, and I haven't even got very far.

You also fail to understand that the "glory" of RL is where it has always been: in the hands of the players. They're the ones who reinterpret and shoehorn and fiat the embarrassments until they fall in step, even to the point that everyone forgets how bad things ever were.
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Post by Dion of the Fraternity »

The fact that the fan-base is still big...well, that says it all. :)
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