If Vlad Drakov is incompetent, then he is not cursed.

[tomokaicho]

My comments from other threads first.

This is the way I see it. Drakov's curse is multifaceted. He can't win a long term war (any victories he has are ultimately phyrric). He also cannot get proper respect from those he wants it from (Strahd, Azalin, and the other 'strong' rulers) , or he gets obsequious praise from women and fops (the Boritsis, D'Honiaire), which humiliates him in its disingenuousness.


So what does Drakov do? His country gets criticized, so he tries to deal with the problem as he sees it. No opera like in Port-a-Lucine and mocked for the lack of high culture? Drakov has his subordinates make grand opera in Silbervas, but he gets no credit for it. Forward thinkers at the University of Il-Aluk have a Department of Arcane Studies? Vlad has the Falkovnian Ministry of Arcane founded at great expense, which technically makes him one of the most open minded and progressive rulers (technically only because some sinister stuff is happening at the ministry). Vlad still doesn't get respect. Poor roads? Vlad builds the best, widest road system in the domains, and is accused of building the roads for rapid troop movements.

Not only is Drakov unable to win permanent victories, his various actions are doomed to be seen in the worst possible light. If there are various ways to interpret Dravok's words and actions, the worst interpretation is always taken (only outside of Falkovnia). This is why Drakov has the reputation of a buffoon, a thug, an incompetent, and an efficient killer all at the same time.

Lastly, as far as I know Falkovnia does not have an official state church. This seems one of the bases that Drakov would be unlikely to overlook, especially since he came from Thenol in Krynn, which was more or less a theocracy under the clerics of Hith (Hiddukel). Drakov surely has a state church.

I am not down with the canon, incompetent buffoon that is Vlad Drakov. Drakov has skin in the game. As a mercenary commander on Krynn, failure means death. That means that the incompetent are filtered out. Drakov isn't a no skin in the game armchair strategist like Bill Kristol who has been wrong about everything for the last two decades and never faced any negative consequences. See Nicholas Taleb's 'Skin in the Game'.

If Vlad is a big loser, then his curse isn't really a curse. There wouldn't even need to be a curse of always losing wars if he was going to lose them anyway. It would be redundant.

I buy very little of Drakov's shortcomings. Supposedly he is so set in his ways that he refuses to adopt new technologies and deploy new tactics. He keep doing this despite continual failure. Is Vlad Drakov simply autistic and not evil? If this is his problem, it would seem so.

His curse is to lose his wars. If he's responsible for losing the wars anyway then it is hardly a curse, is it? It lacks pathos. Turn this on its head. Instead of being an incompetent buffoon, Vlad Drakov is actually a brilliant tactician that does everything right. Despite mastery in directing the field of battle he always loses the wars at the end, and the best that Drakov manage is a stalemate.

Vlad Drakov's 'curse' is the lamest in the entire Ravenloft setting. If he is such an incompetent buffoon, there is no need to curse him with his own state and have him fight battles that he loses due to his own shortcomings. A real curse for Vlad would be losing despite doing everything right - or everything right with the information available to him.

Instead of Vlad being an incompetent, Vlad should be very competent but loses the wars anyway. That's what a real curse looks like.

[Epically]

I've never considered him incompetent, nor have I ever played him as such. In one campaign he actually successfully invaded Dementlieu for a short period. I had that as part of his curse. Every so often he's allowed victory. That way defeat is much, much more bitter.

In another campaign I actually had him killed by Gondegal. During another successful invasion into Dementlieu, the players convinced him to withdraw his army after convincing the four towers treaty to allow Chateaufaux to become apart of Falkovnia, to then direct his army to face the werewolf problem in Kartakass. However, the treaty betrayed the party, and ambushed the army enroute. The combined resistance then stormed Lekar and Gondegal killed Drakov, and Ludzig became the new Darklord.

Drakov has always been one of my favourite Darklords. I'd never play him as incompetent.

[Mistmaster]

In my canpaigns Drakov is all but incompetent. His curse is not losing. His actual curse stems from his unwillingness to share power and glory. He is the one Darklord able to cross borders but every time he departs for his campaigns a crisis will start, forcing him to abandon the campaign resulting in partial and temporaneous victories. For example the first Dead Man Campaign was an epic victory which almost doubled Falkovnia's size.But a crisis on the siuthern border forced him to leave without being able to fortify his conquests and an year later Darkon attaked reconquering all land lost and forcing him to leave another victorious campaign to defend his borders. The peoples he leaves in charge are either loyal but ijeffective sychophants or able yet unlucky or unloyal. He had one loyal and effective collaborator, Gondegal, his best friend an co-ruler,but he betrayed him and since then he struggles to be both he conquering Fuhrer and the micromanaging Kaiser. Both the military and the administration suffers from lack of autonomy thanks to Drakov paranoia and ego.He is very competent but can't be in two places at the same time and so he is perpetully doomed to never achieve complete satisfation.

[Five]

Vlad Drakov wasn't written to be incompetent. The complete opposite in fact. He became incompetent due to a blend of his ego and out of character development.

Vlad's curse, as written in 2E Ravenloft (Black Box, Red Box), is "Before Ravenloft took him in, Drakov was just a henchman, hired by rulers who looked down upon 'his kind'. Their insults burned him. He, too, aspired to rule. Ravenloft gave him what he sought, but not what he truly desired - the respect of other rulers and the strength to instill fear and awe in other lords. His former masters are no longer present to appreciate his position. The lich Azalin is so powerful that he looks down on Drakov just as Drakov's former employers did. None of the other lords give him much thought."

Domains of Dread adds "The other nearby rulers were women and fops, not the powerful men of war Drakov wanted to be acknowledged by."

3E's Secrets of the Dread Realms picks up on this. In talking about his former employers: "They found his talents and willingness to commit atrocities on the battlefield in the name of victory to be quite useful, but they found the man himself to be unsettling at best and barbaric at worst. Even as they paid him to fight for them, the rulers publicly decried his brutality, keeping him at arm's length lest they be too closely associated with him. Drakov found this treatment demeaning and longed to have a land of his own to rule, to be respected as a man as well as a warrior."

Gazetteer II alters this slightly by horsehitching it back to 2E: "Drakov soon tired of this treatment, longing instead for a kingdom of his own to rule, where he could receive the respect and fear he felt he deserved. These dark desires were not unheard."

Nowhere is it written that he can't win a war. That is implied when reading Ravenloft's timeline. And it is my guess that this is the "easy out". By having Drakov's attempts at conquest fail so many times it is the simplest way to ensure that the other lords fill their part of his curse by denying him the respect, fear, and manliness that he so desires. Or that they, in his mind, become the ghostly echoes of his former employers and their hypocritical mockery.

Yet, that is but one way to deny Drakov the respect, fear, and manliness that he so desires. There are others...

[DocBeard]

An Illustrated History of the Core proposed a very interesting take on Drakov, noting that he has had successful military ventures; he successfully waged war to force a beneficial treaty with Lamordia, the might of his armies have reshaped the Core with only Darkon able to thumb its nose at Drakov and even that is as much Azalin's torment as it is Drakov's; Azalin's skill as a ruler or even a magician had nothing to do with his victories, the dead mans campaigns were won by Azalin spamming his border closing powers. Frankly Drakov and Azalin have a lot in common; they're both relics clinging desperately to past glories and have their core competencies restricted brutally by their curses. Drakov's just a fighter; his most humiliating losses came from not understanding the nature of his neighbors, the magic they use to defend themselves. And every time Drakov loses, he learns from it; out of all the Darklords, he's closest to finding a way around his curse, since he's being staged to trigger a real, proper land war with kings and armies like he's been dreaming of since his imprisonment.

The talon bracelets alone are a sign that Drakov can bend his principles and adapt to the nature of Ravenloft. He just doesn't understand it like the 500 year old wizards do. Drakov's primary weapon in this are his people, who are not cursed like him and vulnerable to his warrior's prejudices.

Drakov's curse, which I personally find fascinating, is that he will never find the victory he wants on the field, and like Five says, will never get the RESPECT he's starving for. A man of war, he wants a war, with men and horses and blood and glory, and none of his neighbors are suited to that kind of combat. His neighbor closest to him in temperament is Reineir, who is a woman and a monster and thus not worth his time. He's almost created an enemy worthy of his skills in the four towers pact, which again is way more progress against a curse than any of the meta-aware wizards have managed. But Drakov is a man of steel fighting smoke, and that is his inherent frustration. What's fascinating about him is despite the impossibility of his position, every once in a while he gets a clean hit in.

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

I don't think Drakov is incompetent, I think his curse is more insidious than people realise.

For example, if he plans a campaign, the things he can not control conspire against him;

*Weather turns the battlefield to a marsh, meaning the attack he planned which relied on cavalry is doomed to fail.

*Plan to raid a settlement in Richmulot? Turns out Jacqueline has made a surprise visit no one was aware about.

*Detailed plan to attack Lamordia? Adam has closed the borders for an unrelated reason.

Drakov is a military genius, but his genius is stifled because of the curse. But when if the domain itself is attacked, you'd see his tactical genius on display.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

"They found his talents and willingness to commit atrocities on the battlefield in the name of victory to be quite useful, but they found the man himself to be unsettling at best and barbaric at worst. Even as they paid him to fight for them, the rulers publicly decried his brutality, keeping him at arm's length lest they be too closely associated with him. Drakov found this treatment demeaning and longed to have a land of his own to rule, to be respected as a man as well as a warrior."

This reminds me King Tafur and his army of ragged cannibals in the First Crusade in Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafurs

[Mephisto of the FoS]

. And every time Drakov loses, he learns from it; out of all the Darklords, he's closest to finding a way around his curse, since he's being staged to trigger a real, proper land war with kings and armies like he's been dreaming of since his imprisonment.

I believe that since Vlad Drakov is psychopath he is incapable of learning from his mistakes

https://news.yale.edu/2016/11/28/psycho ... learn-them

"Daddy?"

"Yes, son?"

"What does regret mean?"

"Well, son, a funny thing about regret is that better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure to tell her ..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-fE5NbilMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFjKPLc5qD0

[DocBeard]

Well what kind of 'learn' are we talking about? If you mean taking an individual failure and adjusting his tactics in response to it, Drakov does that in every version of canon. He wouldn't be an effective commander without the ability to assess a situation and take something back from a setback, and he is absolutely willing to bend his personal code to achieve this; remember that the Talon Bracers weren't gifts from the Dark Powers, Drakov had his wizard guys research spells to make sure Dementielu didn't happen again. Even if he 'never learns' about how impossible his dreams of military conquest are, he certainly can learn from an immediate failure.

If you mean coming to a greater understanding of his condition...if it wasn't possible, I don't think the Dark Powers would've bothered with him. They, with some exceptions, want Darklords who are capable of change and self reflection but ultimately succumb to their characters flaws; it's why they keep giving Darklords one last chance before creating domains. Now do I think it's going to happen? Probably not. Drakov is a personality that takes refuge in atrocity. You could certainly do a story about a Drakov who finally has a moment of realization; I'd work Gabrielle and Maloccio into it, personally, but it'd take a lot of doing to make it come across as at all sincere.

So no I really wouldn't characterize Drakov as a psychotic in the traditional sense. He's an awful man, but it seems, to me, to be a learned behavior from a lifetime at war and the brutal methods people in power use to stay in power.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

So no I really wouldn't characterize Drakov as a psychotic in the traditional sense. He's an awful man, but it seems, to me, to be a learned behavior from a lifetime at war and the brutal methods people in power use to stay in power.

"learned behavior from a lifetime at war and the brutal methods people in power use to stay in power." is in a way the definition of a sociopath/psychopath/ASPD
Psychotic and Psychopath are totally different things.
If someone is psychotic (or has what doctors call psychosis), their mind is losing its grip on reality.
A psychopath is someone who isn't able to feel for others and may act in reckless and antisocial ways.

Psychosis is often a symptom of another condition, while psychopathy is a personality trait.

[Baron Von Stanton]

As pointed out, Drakov's curse is not to be incompetent, Drakov's curse is to never achieve his heart of heart's desire, to be respected as a mighty war hero, and more importantly, be treated as an equal by the nobility who hired him, yet always looked down at him.
His curse makes him appear incompetent if only because military superiority and tactical planning only go so far when facing infectious, eternal zombie hordes and lands where EVERYTHING becomes deadly poison at the enemy's whim.
That, and then there's also how Drakov nurses his wounded pride by concocting new laws with which to torment the populace of Falkovnia for his own personal amusement.

[brilliantlight]

The way I see him is this, he is competent but his curse means he will have zero long term victories. He may prevail for a week or a month at most but then suffers from some catastrophic failure , everything tumbles back again and he has nothing to show for it but retained borders and mounds of corpses. He is seen by others as a swaggering buffoon not so much for his lack of competence but because his curse does not allow his real military talent be of any use, so only the results show. If it were a matter of raw military talent he would be winning but his curse disallows that.

[brilliantlight]

As pointed out, Drakov's curse is not to be incompetent, Drakov's curse is to never achieve his heart of heart's desire, to be respected as a mighty war hero, and more importantly, be treated as an equal by the nobility who hired him, yet always looked down at him.
His curse makes him appear incompetent if only because military superiority and tactical planning only go so far when facing infectious, eternal zombie hordes and lands where EVERYTHING becomes deadly poison at the enemy's whim.
That, and then there's also how Drakov nurses his wounded pride by concocting new laws with which to torment the populace of Falkovnia for his own personal amusement.

Exactly, he isn't incompetent just cursed to appear incompetent. It's the appearance that matters.

[Five]

Drakov's curse could still allow him military victories in that he can annex any of his neighbours (and should at least once, imo, to keep Ravenloft fresh), but as a respected ruler he comes up short and something drastic happens (the result of the DPs and their whisperings to those under his bootheel) that he loses any ground gained. The other dark lords/rulers may still fear him (or an aspect of him), but the curse will prevent the whole of what he truly desires. He'll not ever be a respected ruler. He'll always be that barbarian at the gates.

Ironic enough but if you like to throw in cursebreakers, then if Vlad can accept his "grunt" status and toss aside the scepter, even if to an heir, then he'll be one step closer to breaking free of his chains to Ravenloft. And he could in theory either fade back to Dragonlance, or, more likely, become a rampaging scourge of Ravenloft, a pocket travelling dark lord with a bloodthirsty horde of hardcore loyalists (Talons) that just love to ring Hell's Bells. His domain is wherever he and his army make camp, including areas ravaged and torn from the other dark lords. A new and now fully understood closing of the borders beefs up his defence of this encampment. When they move out in search of the next bloody conquest the land is "given" back. Not even Castle Ravenloft is immune to such an assault...

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Also don't forget that there is probably a power struggle between his subordinates in the military and key posts of the government. If we add to that the false information he is given about the successes of his campaigns, out of fear of punishment for being given bad news. This is something that has happened in real world history as Toyotomi Hideyoshi's false information on his Korean campaign or Hitler's false info on the Eastern Front and other campaigns fed to him by Goring and his generals as to not make him angry, (and have another "I will destroy the whole world" fit of rage). Drakov is probably surrounded by "Yes men" who make his dream of conquest difficult even if he has the competence of being a good strategist. Well on the other hand this is a kind of incompetence to lead as his leadership is based on fear.