Top 5 what the @#!* moments in Ravenloft

[Nemesio]

You guys are cracking me up.

I owned just about every Ravenloft product at one time so I know I have something to add to this. I'm also ashamed to say I didn't quite mind Sheriff Von Zarovich. The illustration wasn't half bad anyway.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I admit that my familiarity with 4e is very low, but the introduction of things like healing surges and-- at least in one game I've seen played-- the relatively easy ability to figure out the strengths/weaknesses of a monster by skill rolls (it may just be that DM) seem pretty counter to what makes Ravenloft effective: NOT bouncing back so easily, and needing to wrack your brains as well as use your weapons!

No offense, Brandi, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the thread. These are issues you have with 4e for Ravenloft, not "what the @#!*" moments in Ravenloft. Your words are on the mild side, so I'm not going to call it edition-bashing or give any official censure. Just a minor warning to either tread lightly on this particular topic, or drop it.

[Eric the Light Bringer]

Why are people still so bitter about Soth getting pulled out of Ravenloft? It's MW and TH's creation.

It was was well resolved, indeed. I like the sequel to KotBR as well as Inza.

My bone is on the bickering the authors made before it was settled. It was twilightingtish, and when they got him back, they killed him. Boo hoo.

Joël

I was never bitter about Soth leaving Ravenloft, James Lowder gave us a great novel with an in-game explanation, plus it just made sense that the dark powers lost their grip because of Soth's ennui. The Soth Ravenloft stuff has always been really good, and his domain remained interesting and relevant after his departure all with good in-game explanations. My contention mirrors Joel's that the authors childishly went against what the company had done with their character (but TSR's property) in their absence and then basically killed him for spite. The controversy was completely unnecessary because an in game explanation for Soth coming to and leaving Ravenloft and back again to Dragonlance was easy with no harm done so to speak. they should have just left it alone and moved on with the character from there instead of acting like petulant children. They marred an otherwise fantastic character arc for selfish real world reasons that had nothing to do with the good quality game products its seems.

What amuses me in the Soth Debate/Debacle is that Soth always seemed to me the "Boba Fett" of the Dragon Lance Saga.

He had barely any lines, a small role in the story (yeah, his backstory involving the Cataclysm was important but his role in the Chronicles and Legends was more to build up Kitiara 's story arc ), had a cool look (I wonder if his art work would have been considered lame would he have had the fame he did) and was almost munchkin in power (in relation to the other Dragonlance players). In other words since he became a fan-boy favorite his importance to the Saga became over-inflated.

It wasn't until Soth was brought into Ravenloft (with his own novel) that he actually started to walk-the-walk but I suspect (and this is only my opinion) back room politics probably impeded any real development of the character until it was decided to release Soth

If I were to ret-con Sithicus and Soth I would rearrange the Core in such a way that Sithicus was along the northern border of Darkon so the big, twisted magical elven forest would be along the big fantasy world domain...plus a Soth/Azalin conflict would have been pretty tasty...further shuffling th domains to some how have Falkovnia share a border with Sithicus would have given Soth more than enough stimulation too keep him out of his darklord blues.

I never thought "Soth's ennui" made sense nor would the Powers just let him go, especially the Powers part. They would have (imo) just cranked up the pain and torment until he snapped out of it (his whole escape and redemption could have been one cruel Power's hoax) or was broke/destroyed and someone else took over....after all if the other darklords understood what happened to Soth they all could just do a Gandhi-ish sit-down non-coorporation movement like Soth did and get their own release...what? Strahd and Azalin would never do that? Well, neithor would have the real Soth lol

[Ryan Naylor]

Why are people still so bitter about Soth getting pulled out of Ravenloft? It's MW and TH's creation, and they could do pretty much anything they want with him from a writer's perspective, legalese notwithstanding.

This is just incorrect. They had no claim to the character; TSR could do whatever it wanted with him. That is the essential aspect of doing work for hire in a shared world. And as some others have said, it's not what they did, it's how they did it. So "legalese nothwithstanding" is not really a valid response.

[Zilfer]

Come on..... soth.... sloth? He's just a single L away from doing that! xD IIRC he's the one that just sat there and did nothing until they released him? Which actually sounds a bit genius to me. xD Though who knows how long you'd have to wait? You may be doomed until eternity! Or the Dark Powers could just "fake" letting you back to your world.... <.< that'd be interesting. But still be a darklord.

[Hazgarn]

A good example, to me, is von Kharkov. He was an outlander. Also a panther. Then he became human. As part of an elaborate plot for revenge by another guy. Then he became a vampire! And also a Kargat slave. And he can cause lycanthropy.

Is it wrong that I love von Kharkov for just this reason? It's like "Okay, we need a dark lord, but we've got plenty of vampires, lycanthropes, creatively serial monogamists, and betrayed victims of dark magic, so what..." "Screw it, let's just make him all the things."

[Cam]

Haha -- nope, it's not wrong. More power to you if you can work all that stuff into the backstory that PCs uncover (or if you can work just enough of it in to make the PCs understand his basic nature). Or if you just like him in a the-DM-gets-a-chuckle-out-of-this-background-even-though-it-is-destined-to-remain-DM-only-information sort of manner, that's obviously fine too. DMs, and fans of the setting who are interested in Ravenloft even though they're not running campaigns all the time, need their own private chuckles.

[The Lesser Evil]

Von Kharkov seems to remind me of the Spiderman of darklords- everything bad that can happen to him, will. He just can't seem to get a break.

[Brandi]

Sorry, gonzoron; I've been away from this site a long time and I had no idea how it stood on different D&D editions (hopefully it never got as bad here as it did on RPGnet).

(FWIW, there were bits of 3e I couldn't reconcile with Ravenloft even as I thought the new line of publications was generally high quality!)

More properly on topic: I found the Automatic Man from CotN: The Created a bit of an oddball. It reads for all the world like the writer of that adventure had watched a lot of the vintage cartoons with automatic houses running amok and decided to play it dangerously straight. (CotN doesn't give specific credits for each entry: who designed the Automatic Man? Does anyone know?)

[Hazgarn]

Haha -- nope, it's not wrong. More power to you if you can work all that stuff into the backstory that PCs uncover (or if you can work just enough of it in to make the PCs understand his basic nature). Or if you just like him in a the-DM-gets-a-chuckle-out-of-this-background-even-though-it-is-destined-to-remain-DM-only-information sort of manner, that's obviously fine too. DMs, and fans of the setting who are interested in Ravenloft even though they're not running campaigns all the time, need their own private chuckles.

Von Kharkov seems to remind me of the Spiderman of darklords- everything bad that can happen to him, will. He just can't seem to get a break.

I don't know that I would ever use him, mostly because his domain doesn't really excite me. But I think that if I ever did I would let him be the one that got away, allowing the players to either defeat him or find a way to release him from his darklordship by returning him to his original form somehow.

I mean, you've got to figure even he's had days where he thinks he might have been better off if he had stayed a panther...

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Some of my biggest "what the @#!*" moments come from one of my favorite products: Feast of Goblyns. I do love it so, but there are so many oddities....

Once you get to Radaga's caverns, it becomes almost nothing but such moments. Where did all these giant bones come from? What are these 7 kinds of wacky and dangerous mist?

Radaga may be one of the least sane people in Ravenloft, and that's saying something. She built a giant ziggurat with a rotating raven statue on top and commanded skeletons to point the raven at anyone moving through the valley.... just to freak them out? It's not like she can see through the raven's eyes or anything. It's not an alarm. It's not a trap. It's not a defense system of any kind. You can just walk around it if you like. And she keeps a bunch of treasure inside. Yeah, put your treasure in the most conspicuous thing in a 5 mile radius. Good idea!

She hangs out "trapped" in a giant bone throne, behind a curtain, inside the skull of a colossal skeleton with stairs built into its spine, standing in a bottomless pit of mist. Just waiting for PCs to come by. Nothing better to do, I suppose. Probably the safest thing to do when your home is full of instant death traps.

Then there's the final guardian of the Crown of Souls. Half a skeleton fused to a metal disk suspended over a pit by chains. You can't fly over to it or he'll drop the crown into the pit. you have to crawl on the chains and then he'll just hand it over. But then you have to kill him! or he'll release the chains and drop the whole thing into the pit. Who comes up with this stuff? How about a locked safe instead? Or a display case guarded by a golem? Extra-dimensional pocket? Nah, I'm gonna build me a pit and a platform, you see....

On a lighter, but creepier note: Harkon Lukas hangs out in his own bar disguised as his own daughter to find out what she's up to. Because magical spying or a simple peephole isn't as fun, I suppose. <shudder>

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I had a what-the-@#!* reaction myself when "Feast of Goblyns" came out. Not so much because it wasn't at all logical -- at the time, D&D modules in general were pretty illogical -- but because it actually gave the most thorough description yet published of a Ravenloft domain's terrain, population, culture, and "flavor" ... only to have that ever-so-detailed domain (Dagland) vanish in a puff of Mist at the end. So whose bright idea was it, exactly, to write a ton of information that could have made for multiple adventures' scenarios and lots of intriguing mysteries, but that PCs only get to explore for a matter of a few days in-game or a few hours of play?

[Nemesio]

Ha! good point.

[Jimsolo]

One of the things that has irked me in regards to questionable decisions in the game of Ravenloft is choosing the location of Lamordia in the Core, or more specifically placing it beside Darkon

I actually really dig this decision. I run a campaign that started in Lamordia, and I think that the proximity of Darkon really showcases the willful ignorance of magic and the supernatural on the part of the Lamordians. If the only other domains around them were high-culture rating, low-magic domains, then their belief could be seen as reasonable. As it is, their almost delusional level of denial is something that brings home the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with these people. It has proven useful to me both in establishing to the party of Outlander PCs that not only is this new place strange and potentially hostile, but that this bizarreness permeates every facet of this world, even the base psychology of the residents. It also provides no end of frustration for the spell-casters in the group, who can perform magic and still not be believed.

Of course, that's just my own opinion. I've come to the conclusion that horror is more subjective than some other game-orienting elements, and consequently there is a huge gap in opinions on some of the people and places in Ravenloft. I have seen people on these boards giving positive remarks regarding the domains and Darklords I find to be absolutely silly, and read comments of a negative nature about the concepts I enjoy.

I think the best approach for Ravenloft is to find the parts of it that work for you and your players and tactically ignore the parts that don't, rather than take the world as a whole. In order to appeal to a broader audience, I think it's a necessity that there be material that not everyone is going to enjoy. Again, of course, this is just my opinion.

[HuManBing]

Why are people still so bitter about Soth getting pulled out of Ravenloft? It's MW and TH's creation, and they could do pretty much anything they want with him from a writer's perspective, legalese notwithstanding.

Entire college courses in English Literature have focused on what "intellectual ownership rights" an author has to their creation. It's a complex question and it's not at all clear-cut.

This is even before you get into the copyright legalities behind it.