RLR: Demiplane or World

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Should RLR be a "real" world, or a demiplane?

A "real" world
13
36%
The demiplane it has always been
17
47%
Leave the decision to the individual DM
6
17%
 
Total votes: 36

NykylaiHellray
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Post by NykylaiHellray »

If we cant find a earth necromental. Then I am thinking of a mask made of sand, that forces people to wear it and trys to steal there form (searching for ways to fill its void), but it always fails and the person turns to sand and gets absorbed into the mask.

They say the masks face somtimes flucuates with the faces of the souls he has taken.

Another thing I have been thinking of is transportation (if my train station idea doesnt get through), one idea is a canal network. It does not have to be huge, but for the mainland it could be a very reliable form of transport.
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Post by Igor the Henchman »

Nathan of the FoS wrote:I have to say, I am not in favor of Ravenloft being a "dead" world. It feels too over-the-top--more like a layer of the Abyss.

I do like the idea of Ravenloft being an unformed world. The Mists tend to coalesce around the strongest emotion/personality/idea; in places with a darklord, the Mists build a domain around him/her/it. In places without one, they're...waiting.
One of the issues that the "Make it a Real World" movement was supposed to address is the discomfort of some DMs (including myself, I admit) with the concept of "false history". Say I want the PCs to come across the diary of Darkalus Rex (the guy who supposedly ruled Darkon before Azalin) containing the location of an artifact supposed to have turned an entire village into marikith. By canon, that tragic story never actually happened: though the village ruins can be found and the artifact uncovered, it's all really just a fabrication of the Dark Powers.

The "Reanimated world" concept proposes an intentionally different model. Domains and people are not popped into existence - rather, the world has suffered a malign paradigm shift, where the darklord's personality has gradually permeated an entire region.

To highlight the distinction with a concrete example, consider the domain of Annaes (from the ongoing domain contest): a decadent city rumoured to have once been the seat of a powerful star-faring civilization. In the "demiplane of dread" model, the city along with its inhabitants and strange artifacts was either pulled into Ravenloft from another world, or created from whole cloth to accommodate its darklord's evil. In the proposed "reanimated world" model, the mythical star-faring civilisation has actually existed over the course of Ravenloft's pre-reanimation history. Its old history is still hinted at in musty tomes and very old maps preserved by universities of Darkon and Dementlieu. Some of Annaes's artifacts might still survive in possession of old families or demented arcanists, including, perhaps, horrible vestiges of alien races from beyond the stars - some of which might now be planning a return visit.

In short, the "reanimated world" attempts to increase setting consistency and multiply adventure hooks by allowing DMs to delve as deeply into the world's past as their campaigns require. I think this is a benefit, and something the canon version of the setting has been lacking.
Last edited by Igor the Henchman on Tue May 05, 2009 10:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Rotipher of the FoS »

Igor the Henchman wrote:One of the issues that the "Make it a Real World" movement was supposed to address is the discomfort of some DMs (including myself, I admit) with the concept of "false history". Say I want the PCs to come across the diary of Darkalus Rex (the guy who supposedly ruled Darkon before Azalin) containing the location of an artifact supposed to have turned an entire village into marikith. By canon, that tragic story never actually happened: though the village ruins can be found and the artifact uncovered, it's all really just a fabrication of the Dark Powers.
FWIW, discomfort with such ideas could also be resolved by dropping an occasional hint that "false" histories are actually imported histories. It's not just PCs and darklords who get swept up by the Mists from other realms. If you want this artifact to have a genuine history like you're describing, you can always say that it transformed people on some other world, then was dragged into Ravenloft by the Mists, along with the ruins of the unfortunate village. That way, only the diary itself is a fabrication of the Dark Powers, not the tragic events it describes.

Granted, it's more of an OOC reconciliation -- one that soothes the DM's own unease -- than an in-character one. Still, if you feel it's necessary to resolve such quandries for the PCs also, you could always have them meet an outlander NPC who came from the same world as the artifact and knows the same horrible story.

FWIW, I had hinted at a similar poaching of other worlds' histories in the Graben Island section of the NS Gaz, although only Mystara fans will have caught all the references. There never was a "Graben Island" on Mystara, Meredoth's homeworld, but the pieces of history the Grabenites recall were culled from a whole series of historical conflicts that afflicted Scandanavian-style human populations on that world. The implication, for people familiar with Mystara, is that the Dark Powers didn't create the Grabenites from scratch, but Mist-napped them from numerous lands and eras of Mystaran history, altering their memories just enough to account for their relocation to the Island.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
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Igor the Henchman
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Post by Igor the Henchman »

Very true points, Roti. I didn't bring up the issue to criticize canon - canon Ravenloft has its own rules and conventions, which is fine. These are not problems I've ever allowed to affect my games, either - my homebrew Ravenloft is a material world that's being slowly pulled into the Shadowfell. I'm only discussing these issues insofar as they pertain to the Ravenloft Reanimated project, which seems to me to be a perfect opportunity to give the familiar setting an envigorating new spin.
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Post by Lucien Doomdark »

NykylaiHellray wrote: Another thing I have been thinking of is transportation (if my train station idea doesnt get through), one idea is a canal network. It does not have to be huge, but for the mainland it could be a very reliable form of transport.
Before the development of a rail network, there were a few solid roads which were maintained by private owners. However, those people who were up and relocating completely often had their goods and furnishings trekked out by sloop along the coast and then transported overland again to their destination. This was quite common along the South Coast of Britain until the advent of inland mass-transportation with the railways. It also led to its own problems with wreckers and smugglers on the coast taking advantage of these craft.

The difficulty is that Ravenloft itself is mostly a pre-industrial world with notable exceptions: Paridon and the Four Towers Treaty lands. Historically speaking, it is commercial need that creates the transport links necessary. For example, the canal system in this country was created for two purposes: transportation of raw materials and in the case of Kent, where I grew up, military defence against Napoleon...

This brings me to a personal and professional gripe with Ravenloft in both its iterations: Cultural Level. Could we do away with this, if we decide that we want to recast Ravenloft as a real world? Moving away from P.C. whining, I was wondering what sort of overall feel was being accomplished in the game? The art and tone of the 3rd and 2nd Edition books is very different in terms of historical ambience: one being 15th & 16th Century, and the other more 17th Century respectively.
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Post by Igor the Henchman »

One thing to consider is that giving the PCs a highly-dependable mode of transportation can actually be bad for some adventure concepts. Sometimes you just need the heroes to get lost in a goblin-haunted forest, or having to hire a Vistani guide, or be forced to seek refuge in that ominous-looking house on the hill as they travel from domain A to B.
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Post by Igor the Henchman »

Lucien Doomdark wrote:
This brings me to a personal and professional gripe with Ravenloft in both its iterations: Cultural Level. Could we do away with this, if we decide that we want to recast Ravenloft as a real world? Moving away from P.C. whining, I was wondering what sort of overall feel was being accomplished in the game? The art and tone of the 3rd and 2nd Edition books is very different in terms of historical ambience: one being 15th & 16th Century, and the other more 17th Century respectively.
From what I can tell, Cultural Level is just another DM-friendly cue as to the atmosphere that a particular domain is supposed to convey. It allows a campaign to feature both an axe-wielding dwarven fighter and a mad scientist screaming "it's ALIVE!". Besides that, its also a fun character-building tool for players - will your next human PC be a superstitious tepestani barbarian or a musket-wielding dementlieuse noble (to borrow two PC concepts from my own games)?

I don't have an opinion on whether multiple culture levels is better than one, but if we do perform a cultural smoothing of some sort, where do we peg the standard? Some people really like the advanced feel of Lamordia and Dementlieu - the pocket watches, the cool-sounding names, museum robberies, opera ghosts, scientific experiments gone wrong, cool artifacts like the Apparatus or the Timepiece of Klorr. Other people like medieval domains with mysterious woods, xenophobic villagers, rampant superstition, fey-hallows, wizard coveys, arthurian black knights and villains who prey on ignorance and superstition. And quite many other people like to alternate between both genres.
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Post by Lucien Doomdark »

Didn't want to cause a problem and I recognise its value as a short-hand for the DM, but as an anthropologist/archaeologist (there's a distinction in the UK): it makes me squirm inside.

It is, at the end of the day, nitpicking. Quite frankly, there are other ideas on the thread that are far more interesting...
  • An Undead World. (or is it unformed?)

    Our Mist-Corrupted Elementals (well, three out of four, with an empty space for an Earth-type)

    The increased nastiness of the Mists themselves (agents or avatars of the change?)
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Post by NykylaiHellray »

Lucien Doomdark wrote:Didn't want to cause a problem and I recognise its value as a short-hand for the DM, but as an anthropologist/archaeologist (there's a distinction in the UK): it makes me squirm inside.

It is, at the end of the day, nitpicking. Quite frankly, there are other ideas on the thread that are far more interesting...
  • An Undead World. (or is it unformed?)

    Our Mist-Corrupted Elementals (well, three out of four, with an empty space for an Earth-type)

    The increased nastiness of the Mists themselves (agents or avatars of the change?)
How I see it, as the mists infest the world the existing elementals either die (hense the necromentals), or take the power of the mists to retain there form, and get perverted in the process.

As for the level of the world. I personally think that sinse events are happening post AOUD, then we could advance the world slightly. Also make sure we put more compatible level of technlogy domains near each other.
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Post by Twin Agate Dragons »

If Ravenloft Reanimated got the World approach I'm curious as to how the 'Weekend Excursion' would fit into the cosmology.
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Post by Lanus »

Ok, seeing some interesting ideas for the reanimated world. How about that at some point in Ravenloft's history (our equivalent to the year 1000 AD) the apocalypse happened, but in a subtle way. The world ended, Ragnarok came about, the Rapture unfolded, but in a slow manner, and mostly invisible to most of the population.

I mean, we're basing this in a small area, around the Core, wich is equivalent to Europe in RLR. Low magic, most people were soil of the earth, the arcanist lived in their ivory towers and some heroes wandered the land, slaying the odd monster. One day everything started changing, the men of the gods felt their faith diminshed, more monsters suddenly appeared, arcanist died in misterious ways, twisted by their own magic, the land became corrupted and unfertile, towns began to dissapear, people started to live in fear and a strange mist rose from the earth.

The great empires of old crumbled, giving raise to small and isolationist nations, the people diminished, striken with famine and plague, the towns became more xenophobic, the old elven forest whitered, most of the old race living in small comunes; the dwarven holds became deeper and deeper, until most of them were lost forever in the bowels of the earth; the northern gods died in a futile battle, if their crying priest are to be believed, some men rose to power, beyond any mortal might, and claiming the land as their own flesh and blood, and the land obeyed them.

It all happened in a black year, 600 years ago, when dire and sad events tranpired on the lands, seas and old forest of the Core, not least, the tragedy that struck the Zarovich family in dark Barovia, after their Captain King managed to defend the Core itself from the endless Tergian Horde.

But in the darkness of the age, some light shines, men has made use of science, when magics failed him, instated the will of the people, when the will of a man proved unworthy. Are these deeds a sign that the future might be brigther, or just new ways to fight among each other?

(sorry if I mispelled anything. English is not my native tongue and I'm pretty sleepy)
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Post by nothri »

If I might offer this "third option"....why not make Ravenloft a plague?

Take Masque of the Red Death. A world essentially overrun by a dark, corrupting force of magic and evil that claims minions and darklords to promote its cause- that being the utter conquest of all is.

So perhaps "Ravenloft" could simply be the first of these corrupted worlds...perhaps a world so vile and dead that the realm has literally been "eaten" from the inside out- all that is left is mist and the ancient homeland of the man called Strahd. But the mist pours into other places, sucking at the hearts of bad men and shaping history for its own sinister purposes.
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