Ultimate Ravenloft: Design Goals

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Ultimate Ravenloft: Design Goals

Post by WolfKook »

We've already discussed about the viability of an Ultimate Ravenloft project, and several people have shown their interest in such a project. Before the discussion goes on to somewhere else, we should have to set the project goals, beside just making a creative exercise of "how would you do it".

The following are just proposed goals. Feel free to discuss them, to suggesst alterations (or removal), or to add new goals you think are missing from the list (Which is far from complete). At the end we should end up with a list of no more than 10 (No more than 5, ideally), which should compile them all:
  • Keep the setting original staples (I would need some help here, guys): Horror, a Gothic Feel, the Dark Powers, the Mists, the Darklords, the Domains, the Vistani, the Legends and Prophecies... Any other?
  • Include fan-created material (Domains, characters and other ideas) along with newer setting information (Church of Ezra, Carnival, the Dukkar, Fugued, Oubliettes, etc.) and everything we consider worthy of being included, integrating them to the mainstream.
  • Increase playability, making each domain "richer", giving them plenty of rumors and adventure hooks, making the setting encouraging and exciting for new players, allowing them to have some information and some (small) chance to win
  • Solve geographical and population problems, creating a real, believable world with population which are logically able to support the amount of predators in the world, to make cities like Port A'Lucine and Mordentshire more than big towns, and to allow distances between two distinct places in the map to give place to becoming lost, or not being able to reach in time.
  • Solve temporal problems and timeline inconsistencies: Create a unified timeline which allows for easy reference in the creation of the world's backstory, make the timeline longer, allowing beings like ancient dead to be really "ancient", etc.
  • Update the rules, keeping up with 4th Edition D&D
Now, what do you think?
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Post by ScS of the Fraternity »

These sound like some good goals, though I think perhaps we need to identify the area in which the last version of Ravenloft fell short.

Is it just a matter of size? Population?

Is it the inconsitancies that stem from the extraplanar origins of Ravenloft's domains?

Is the goal to ultimately create a planet, rather than a demiplane?
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Post by Georg Kristianokov »

What's a "fugued"?
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Post by Nathan of the FoS »

Maybe this would be a good time to bring up "Global Ravenloft" again?...two threads down on the "Community Projects" page here.
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Post by WolfKook »

Georg Kristianokov wrote:What's a "fugued"?
The fugued are creatures that have been taken by the mists and have become trapped in them, appearing anywhere in the domains of dread, as the DPs see fit. They appear in the "Van Richten's Guide to the Mists"
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Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

Nathan of the FoS wrote:Maybe this would be a good time to bring up "Global Ravenloft" again?...two threads down on the "Community Projects" page here.
Yeah, I think a planet would be too large a revision for Ultimate RL; we should save that for Global RL in Nathan's thread.
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Post by kourkenko »

i think this project is very interresting. The little thing that i don't approve with the VRgTTMist is the oubliette. Normaly all places have a darklords... If this project go on (a thing that i wish) we must explain why this rules is not applyed anymore. Which change(s) could have done this ?

For this project, i think the first thing is to choose what kind of fan created domains you want to insert and to plan to creation of a map(s) (yes, it's certainely a primeral thing for this kind of project: to fix the limits !) or to change only the core (with the two seas) for the beginning and after, at the time this first project is over, plan a sequel.

we can't change all the setting is the same time. We must choose a part and go on !
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Post by DasSoviet »

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:Yeah, I think a planet would be too large a revision for Ultimate RL; we should save that for Global RL in Nathan's thread.
Agreed. We can revamp the Demiplane of Dread without turning it into the World of Dread. Draw on Planescape for a bit of the physical reference instead of using the real world. After all, Ravenloft should as much in common with Ysgard or Arcadia as it does with Oerth, Toril, or Eberron. (besides, if we take some of the comments in the final issue of Dragon at face value, the Dark Powers are somehow related to the Lady of Pain and the Serpent ... which, if the Serpent is evil, and the Lady is neutral, would make the Dark Powers That Be the good guys :wink: )
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Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

kourkenko wrote:i think this project is very interresting. The little thing that i don't approve with the VRgTTMist is the oubliette. Normaly all places have a darklords... If this project go on (a thing that i wish) we must explain why this rules is not applyed anymore. Which change(s) could have done this ?
I don't think we can/should get that specific. Simple guidelines are one thing, but laying out the plans of the DP's is entirely different.

A previous canon writeup offered several conflicting hypotheses about the DP's: they are many/one, they are good/neutral/evil, etc. There were supporting arguments for all of them, but none of them was clearly correct. I propose we set things up to support multiple explanations this way. In the case of oubliettes, there could be several different explanations as to why the DP's would allow that to happen, and we would never completely eliminate them down to one.
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Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

We had a discussion once before about Oubliettes here, and I was recently looking back on it. My argument for them remains that yes, it breaks the "rules" of the Dark Powers, but those rules are arbitrary anyway. Since we know the purpose of the DPs is as a plot device, and if Oubliettes fit the horror motifs of Ravenloft, why not allow them? (And we have already allowed for such rule-breakers as Borca and the Nightmare Lands, because they work better story-wise than slavishly following the rules). I will also point out again that the possibility of a darklord-free zone is put forth in the Black Box itself, as a possible explanation of the Nightmare Lands. And Rotipher brought up the excellent point in that thread that the Mists themselves have always been a large darklord-free zone.
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Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

gonzoron wrote:My argument for them remains that yes, it breaks the "rules" of the Dark Powers, but those rules are arbitrary anyway. Since we know the purpose of the DPs is as a plot device, and if Oubliettes fit the horror motifs of Ravenloft, why not allow them?
I agree 100%. Gothic horror should be the prime directive, not any rules about the DP's.
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Post by kourkenko »

hum... your point of vue mark a point ^^

ok
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Post by impworks »

Keep the setting original staples (I would need some help here, guys): Horror, a Gothic Feel, the Dark Powers, the Mists, the Darklords, the Domains, the Vistani, the Legends and Prophecies... Any other?
I'd be tempted to add Madness, a degree of grittiness and frightening monsters.
Solve geographical and population problems
I'd include climate, ecological and economic issues at a broad brush level too.

Ravenloft's climate should make sense.

One of the reasons I like Ravenloft is its Ecologies make reasonable sense. Domains are not just predator filled but also include herbivores and plants.

Regions should be economically viable or if they aren't the issues that creates should be identified. For example Darkon and Falkovnia are net exporters of grain and other staples so it would be a good idea to understand what high value items they import from other domains to balance trade or if other domains have a growing debt to their suppliers that will lead to tension.

This also allows some of the non core domains to be tied in as domains trade with them for lightweight, high value goods (possibly through established, hazardous mistways) or bulky good by ship. If those domains are reachable by sea it makes the two seas more interesting as there is now a reason to sail them beyond fishing.
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Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

Random thoughts:

Seems to me that many mistakes in RL come from authors wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. They want things that are good individually, but contradict when put together.

Take population and geography, for example. They wanted an oppressive, smothering feeling, so they set the domain sizes and populations very small. Then someone wants Port-a-Lucine to have an opera house, so they can do a Phantom shtick. Both of these are individually good ideas, but they clash terribly; a city of that size and population simply cannot support an opera house.

Likewise, the body count of the Requiem was supposed to be huge, so Il Aluk's (formerly living) population was very large and strongly emphasized as such. Problem is, there isn't enough arable land in the entire core to feed a city that size!

That being said, I think it's important to come up with alternative ways to create an oppressive feel besides sparse population and narrow geography. Take Darkon, for example. While the authors may have made it small to create the feeling that you can't run from Azalin, I think it's far more effective to make it huge...and still have the Kargat keep up with them. Let PC's run all the way to Hazlan, take a mistway into Bleutspur, hop the Carnival to Sri Raji and get stuck in Saragoss. If Azalin wants to, he can still reach them there.
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Post by Strahdsbuddy »

Not to backtrack, but i always imagined the Vistani were the source for the foodstuffs and other necissary goods, even from "thin air" as it were. Mordent is mostly bogland and even a village like Mordentshire couldn't be supported by fishing alone. Shadowy figures from the Sea must have occasionally made it to port with cargoes fo foodstuffs and other things not found in Mordent (like ores and metal) or in any other domain. THe ecology really falls apart if you look at it closely enough, but i would imagine the Vistani, or perhaps some other shadowy group created by the DP would keep the machine running so that their darklord traps worked.

Alternatively, if the early population of Darkon, for example, was all made up by the DP anyhow, maybe they didn't need as much food. That is a discussion for aother thread, perhaps.
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