Something that's been bugging me recently is that seems to be a fundamental contradiction between what I interpret Ravenloft is supposed to be and what Ravenloft actually is.
I mean, from my own interpretations and from what I've read on this forum, Ravenloft is supposed to be about the evil and monstrous things that Humans are capable of and how evil corrupts not only the soul but the body as well.
In practice, Ravenloft is more like a horror theme park crawling with vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and ghosts. The narrative of Human evil seems almost neglected sometimes, with domains like Bluetspur and the Shadow Rift as niche attractions in the theme park.
It just seems that the tropes of D&D suffocate the themes of the setting.
Well, a vampire in the mix became a vampire over his lethal jealousy of his brother's youth and his lust for a young girl, damning him and countless generations of his people. Other darklords are humans (Ivan, Ivana, Hazlik, Drakov, etc).
So, while Ravenloft indeed has a large number of monsters, the human aspect isn't neglected in my opinion. Many of the monsters started as humans.
There's also something in Ravenloft that could help you a lot if you want an even more human-evil-centric theme:
Clusters.
Make a cluster with 500K people that has 3-4 human-evil centric domains and your problems are sovled. Put together a Falkovnia-like place, a Borca-like place, a Lamordia-like place, a Paridon-like place, reduce monsters to 1 monster/ 10000 people and you're set.
Your Falkovnia-like place doesn't have to have manticores in the woods or kobold insurgents. Your Lamordia like place doesn't have to have flesh golems around to show the dangers of technology. Your Paridon-like place doesn't have to have a doppelganger infestation (5-6 of them in a city of 25000 are enough) nor a sewer-system full of monsters.
If you decide to include more monsters in the campaign, mists can always snatch up some.
"You truly see what a person is made of, when you begin to slice into them" - Semirhage
"I am not mad, no matter what you're implying." - Litalia My DMGuild work!
I can see that for certain domains, but the odd thing I always went for was making humans (with demihumans lumped in there every now and then) capable of being more monstrous in nature. I had a small Barovian village that had a player and a non player who were Falkovnian expatriates. Word got around and the NPC was now sought out by a Falkovnian death squad (but the PC thought they were after him, good times). They marched in and began assaulting the folk and took a hostage (another player's girly friend) and I had them coming across as twisted and demonic in their armor and their large war horses pawing menacingly at the ground. The player thought there was something beyond their concept, but they were straight up (albeit higher level) soldiers who scared the crap out of the group. A challenge was made, the girl got released, and the next day the rest of the soldier's body parts dotted the countryside after Strahd got done with them.
"One does not stop playing when they get old, they grow old when they stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
"If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" Chuck Palahniuk
a) Ravenloft is D&D meets Horror tropes. (or D&D meets Frankenstein, as I like to call it) That's where it started. Some try to take the D&D out more than others. Some swing more towards D&D which just the trappings of Horror. But the basis is both. IMHO, if you want to take either out completely, you're better served by a different setting. ETA: *note* I'm using "D&D" here as shorthand for high fantasy tropes, not meaning the ruleset. multiple people have taken the D&D rules out of Ravenloft, and that's fine by me.
b) much like the different alien species on Star Trek, most of the "monsters" in Ravenloft are stand-ins for aspects of human nature. Vampires are usually code for lust, depravity, or blasphemy, werewolves for rage, ghosts for memory and sorrow, etc. and alhoon is right that the vast majority of them started as human, or at least can pass for human. Even the truly inhuman races and monsters follow this pattern. Dwarves are industry and greed, dragons intellect and greed, etc. So in many cases, you can replace a monster with a particularly ____ human instead if you like.
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
I'm not opposed to the idea of monster or demihumans in Ravenloft, it's just that sometimes it seems like there's a vampire or werewolf in every village.
I'm going to go with alhoon's suggestion and try to make a small cluster to fit my preconceptions. Maybe I'll even get to run a game in it one day
Buzzclaw wrote:I'm not opposed to the idea of monster or demihumans in Ravenloft, it's just that sometimes it seems like there's a vampire or werewolf in every village.
I'm going to go with alhoon's suggestion and try to make a small cluster to fit my preconceptions. Maybe I'll even get to run a game in it one day
Thanks for all the replies
Or just have your PCs spend some time in Falkovnia, Falkovnia is the premier domain for the humans do to each other, without needing some kind of extended allegory of "the vampire is unbridled passion and possibly also the danger of immigrants or aristocracy awkwardly clinging to power long after it should have died off".
On the other hand the obvious Nazi allegory might be a bit much for some players to take so your millage may very, but if you want to let the PCs see that "monsters" are not necessary to make life horrible, you know where in the Core to send them!
Buzzclaw wrote:I'm not opposed to the idea of monster or demihumans in Ravenloft, it's just that sometimes it seems like there's a vampire or werewolf in every village.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there for your players, there are only as many monsters as you use. It's the job of the authors (both the published canon ones and fans who share their work online) to make adventures, or at least adventure seeds for DM's to use. So naturally, they will make a lot of them. So if you consider all adventures and adventures seeds to be "true," then yes, there will be a ton of vampires, ghosts, etc. roaming about. Too many to be sustainable. But since every DM picks and chooses which adventures to run, there will never be a real campaign that includes all of them, so they will never all exist in the same instance of Ravenloft. Think of it as a menu, not a phone book.
VIEW CONTENT:
Oh goodness.... does anyone know what a phone book even is anymore? I'm old...
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
Buzzclaw wrote:I'm not opposed to the idea of monster or demihumans in Ravenloft, it's just that sometimes it seems like there's a vampire or werewolf in every village.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there for your players, there are only as many monsters as you use. It's the job of the authors (both the published canon ones and fans who share their work online) to make adventures, or at least adventure seeds for DM's to use. So naturally, they will make a lot of them. So if you consider all adventures and adventures seeds to be "true," then yes, there will be a ton of vampires, ghosts, etc. roaming about. Too many to be sustainable. But since every DM picks and chooses which adventures to run, there will never be a real campaign that includes all of them, so they will never all exist in the same instance of Ravenloft. Think of it as a menu, not a phone book.
VIEW CONTENT:
Oh goodness.... does anyone know what a phone book even is anymore? I'm old...
I know. I have 7 of them under my living room end table. I assume they are some kind of toilet paper reserve?
"One does not stop playing when they get old, they grow old when they stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
"If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" Chuck Palahniuk
Buzzclaw wrote:I'm not opposed to the idea of monster or demihumans in Ravenloft, it's just that sometimes it seems like there's a vampire or werewolf in every village.
I'm going to go with alhoon's suggestion and try to make a small cluster to fit my preconceptions. Maybe I'll even get to run a game in it one day
Thanks for all the replies
Or just have your PCs spend some time in Falkovnia, Falkovnia is the premier domain for the humans do to each other, without needing some kind of extended allegory of "the vampire is unbridled passion and possibly also the danger of immigrants or aristocracy awkwardly clinging to power long after it should have died off".
On the other hand the obvious Nazi allegory might be a bit much for some players to take so your millage may very, but if you want to let the PCs see that "monsters" are not necessary to make life horrible, you know where in the Core to send them!
My players were fleeing the scary antimagic nature of Lamordia in favor of Falkovnia. That is a lesson they soon won't forget. I had them cross from Lekar to Borca (former Dominia) and they could not get out fast enough. I told them to be glad that it was winter. The patrols are way more frequent in the warmer months.
"One does not stop playing when they get old, they grow old when they stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
"If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" Chuck Palahniuk
The Falkovnian wilderness has more than Talons. There are also Manticores and other D&D monsters. I suggest to our friend Buzzsaw to ignore those monsters though and keep it to the Talons if he wants to move away from the "kill da beast! Steal da L00t! Levalzzz!".
"You truly see what a person is made of, when you begin to slice into them" - Semirhage
"I am not mad, no matter what you're implying." - Litalia My DMGuild work!
Ravenloft is just a setting. While it was certainly designed within the D&D ruleset (1e, 2e, 3x, and more coming soon), a setting can exist within the confines of many rule systems, including ones that have absolutely nothing to do with D&D or D&Desque systems. Many here and elsewhere play Ravenloft with GURPS, Iron Heroes, Savage Worlds, Rolemaster, Runequest, Deadlands and many, many others.
That said, there isn't a "one true way" to run D&D. Nothing states you cannot downplay the high fantasy aspects of the game. While its true that gothic horror appeals less to high adventure, and does require a certain amount of investment by both players and GM to best achieve, D&D isn't just action and combat. I've run many investigative type games, where combat is mostly downplayed using D&D rules of one edition or the other. Making a scary story is what the GM brings to the table. The rules set doesn't make the story, only operating the mechanics.
I designed the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), because I wanted an oriental gothic horror game that used my currently favorite rules system, Pathfinder. One could argue that Pathfinder is even more over-the-top high fantasy than D&D itself, but those are just the rules. The story that makes Kaidan creepy is in the setting presentation, the added subsystems and the GM's storytelling ability - the rules itself does nothing to inflate or deflate the horror aspect, it only operates how combat and skills work mechanically and little else.
