How big is Forlorn

[nothri]

Since Castles Forlorn gives a proportion bigger than the size of the entire fricking Core, how big do you guys estimate the domain really is?

[Cromstar]

Based off the poster map in the Black Box it looks to be about the size of my thumb 1" x 0.5". The scale is 1" = 10 mi, so about 10mi x 5mi, or 50 square miles, give or take for its slant and non-straight borders.

If I messed this measuring up, its b/c I used a scan of my map instead of digging out the box, but I'm pretty sure I got it adjusted to scale right.

...wait, what does Castles Forlorn say it is?

[nothri]

Okay, so checking the book its... a little less absurd? Kinda? 9 miles by 17 miles...153 square miles. Still sounds way way bigger than it should be to me, but not the insanity of domains like G'henna in Circle of Darkness that are supposed to be hundreds of miles long.

[ewancummins]

9 by 17 seems just fine to me.

If anything, it's small. The goblyns need to feed, and they've devastated a fair chunk of the land.

[alhoon]

9 x 17 miles? That's very small. It is smaller than this USA forest.
In a real, non-artificial world, it could support about 3-4 packs of wolves. Say... 30 wolves or other predators or something. If we go by "Ravenloft is artificial world, fauna works much more efficiently!" ... I would say 100-120 predators. With Goblyns counting as half a predator and those weird treants counting as double.

In short, 9 x 17 miles is a forest that one could traverse in a day even if it's dense and it's too small to have a large number of dangerous animals.

[ewancummins]

9 x 17 miles? That's very small. It is smaller than this USA forest.
In a real, non-artificial world, it could support about 3-4 packs of wolves. Say... 30 wolves or other predators or something. If we go by "Ravenloft is artificial world, fauna works much more efficiently!" ... I would say 100-120 predators. With Goblyns counting as half a predator and those weird treants counting as double.

In short, 9 x 17 miles is a forest that one could traverse in a day even if it's dense and it's too small to have a large number of dangerous animals.

That's the biggest--pun intended--problem with official Ravenloft maps. There is nowhere near enough habitat for the number of prey animals required to support all the wolves, much less other monsters that need to om nom nom stuff.

You can ignore realism entirely.

You can say the Mists brings in new animals all the time, or actually generates new prey animals.

Or you can enlarge the scale of the setting.

I do a little of both those last two.

Thus, my Forlorn is larger.


I think the canonical scale works if you assume it is an unnatural, enchanted land and normal natural laws do not apply.
But I'd play that up. Not just a handwave. Really get into the wrongness of Forlorn...

[Five]

Yeah, it seems that in 3E's effort to transform Ravenloft from a weekend in hell (supernaturally-isolated lands)
to a full-blown D&D campaign world that in-house sustainability of said upgrade was either a non-issue or oversight. Sort of. Kinda. Maybe. Meh.

That said, it's a shitty campaign setting that leaves little room in the sandbox for other DMs to play in.

Maybe it's a built-in wall of sleep between Ravenloft timelines (2E and 3E)...?

[ewancummins]

Yeah, it seems that in 3E's effort to transform Ravenloft from a weekend in hell (supernaturally-isolated lands)
to a full-blown D&D campaign world that in-house sustainability of said upgrade was either a non-issue or oversight. Sort of. Kinda. Maybe. Meh.

That said, it's a shitty campaign setting that leaves little room in the sandbox for other DMs to play in.

Maybe it's a built-in wall of sleep between Ravenloft timelines (2E and 3E)...?

The Black Box presents a smaller patchwork world , and one in which it seems the Mists frequently bring in people, things, and creatures from beyond.
The domains are mostly quite small and centered on their respective darklords.

When Domains of Dread came out, I bought it. Nice hardback. It contained a lot of info for making native PCs.
It also introduced Cultural Levels.

But the CLs never made much sense to me, with the small scale of the maps and the settled nature of most human cultures in the Core, unless justified by 'the Powers made it so.'

[Five]

The Black Box presents a smaller patchwork world , and one in which it seems the Mists frequently bring in people, things, and creatures from beyond.
The domains are mostly quite small and centered on their respective darklords.

When Domains of Dread came out, I bought it. Nice hardback. It contained a lot of info for making native PCs.
It also introduced Cultural Levels.

But the CLs never made much sense to me, with the small scale of the maps and the settled nature of most human cultures in the Core, unless justified by 'the Powers made it so.'

DoD's introduction of Cultural Levels in and of itself wasn't so much of an issue with me as it was and is a neat flavour "framing device" that doubles as a DM's tool for converting literary inspiration/sources into the setting. My issue is with its EQ with the politics (trade/commerce/etc) of the world (the Core. Clusters are exempt).

As you said DoD made the first attempt to make Ravenloft a stand alone setting but it didn't quite make the separation complete. CLs are weird with the amount of commerce now injected into RL. So we're lead to believe that there's full-on trade amongst the core but technology remains by and large stagnant and people's perception of it, things such as arms and armour, are enough to up the OR so to speak? If trade and therefore travel is so open (unless the Vistani are now the UPS or Ravenloft) then the opposite would happen. People, all but the most isolated of villages, would get used to strangers with differing equipment, ideas, and the like. Ravenloft domains can't carry both CLs and such politics as described unless, as you said, it's a supernatural thing...which then raises questions of reliability of said commerce. Yet to go the other way and the theme of isolation becomes dulled.

Change the Cultural Level rating to a Community Cultural Level rating like Darkon, only spread throughout the Core in a "realistic" or, more balanced way (as it stands there's a what, 300-500 year gap amongst the Core domains?), and it works just fine once you redefine the sliders, or, parameters of balance (major roadways, trade routes, domain size increase, etc). It opens domain trade and politics that lends itself to a standalone setting, and it keeps whatever areas of RL that the DM wants for isolated oddities (ala Dracula Country)...

It's what my brain says anyway.

[ewancummins]

Yup.

This isn't Mystara's Hollow World with its large map and the Immortals' Spell of Preservation at work, keeping culture locked in certain patterns and at a certain range of technological development.

[alhoon]

I simply make the world larger. Differences between CR6-9 are not a problem for me and I explain it with isolationism. I.e. villagers in Barovia have not heard of gunpowder and the guys in towns don't know how to produce it.

[Cromstar]

I simply make the world larger. Differences between CR6-9 are not a problem for me and I explain it with isolationism. I.e. villagers in Barovia have not heard of gunpowder and the guys in towns don't know how to produce it.

Honestly, this is how I always looked at the original box set for Ravenloft: the intelligent life of Ravenloft, mostly human, is isolated and isolationist. Not to mention xenophobic.

In addition to keeping most villages, even in places like Kartakass where the people are less xenophobic, small and isolated, it makes the PCs stand out as outsiders...even if they are from Ravenloft natively. There's little travel. Outside of PC parties, I suspect most villages in Barovia have never seen someone who wasn't born there. Any outsider who shows up in a village is going to be, in the best of occasions, seen with suspicion. In the worst cases, you'll be blamed for the awful thing that is guaranteed to happen right after you show up!

[ewancummins]

I simply make the world larger. Differences between CR6-9 are not a problem for me and I explain it with isolationism. I.e. villagers in Barovia have not heard of gunpowder and the guys in towns don't know how to produce it.

Honestly, this is how I always looked at the original box set for Ravenloft: the intelligent life of Ravenloft, mostly human, is isolated and isolationist. Not to mention xenophobic.

In addition to keeping most villages, even in places like Kartakass where the people are less xenophobic, small and isolated, it makes the PCs stand out as outsiders...even if they are from Ravenloft natively. There's little travel. Outside of PC parties, I suspect most villages in Barovia have never seen someone who wasn't born there. Any outsider who shows up in a village is going to be, in the best of occasions, seen with suspicion. In the worst cases, you'll be blamed for the awful thing that is guaranteed to happen right after you show up!

That works, but if I ran it that way I'd actually say most places were roughly the same CL.
The big limiting factor is size of markets and number of craft specialists, not CL as such.

Tech:

Armor exists but full suits of heavy armor are much more likely to be gathering dust in some spooky old castle than made by a living smith for a warrior.
Fighting-men typically wear gambesons or brigandine jacks, things that can be manufactured by a textile or leather worker. Mail shirts for the well-equipped.

Guns? They exist but are mostly rare extra-planar imports or old curiosities hung over the mantle. Powder is scarce and it varies a lot in quality.

Printing?
Yes, but you seldom find a press outside a major settlement, which rules out most of the places in the Black Box.

Steam?
Yes, but the small populations and limited commerce have greatly hampered industrial development. Steam tech resembles the devices made in Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Think one-off gadgets and mine pumps, and a very few newfangled 'dragon boats."

[Cromstar]

Yeah, that definitely works. Personally, I put the setting's tech before those techs, just hovering on the cusp of the bubble for when those things would occur, but isolation would definitely drag down the spread of technology (there's few governments in Ravenloft that are capable of maintaining highway systems, let alone a technical revolution).

[Five]

Yeah, that definitely works. Personally, I put the setting's tech before those techs, just hovering on the cusp of the bubble for when those things would occur, but isolation would definitely drag down the spread of technology (there's few governments in Ravenloft that are capable of maintaining highway systems, let alone a technical revolution).

Intro fledgling chartered companies. A tangible reach for Dark Lords beyond their prisons (those that have the want, will, and need); Ravenloft's version of "open warfare". Merchant Princes (the Dark Lord's favorite pets), through sponsorship as well as through turf war, carve and maintain trade routes (rough "highway" systems); company goons, I mean agents, skulk in the shadows and sandbag competition in all sorts of wicked ways; mom and pop companies that are more than happy with crumbs from the pie struggle to remain anonymous in this war of wagons (some may even occasionally Robin Hood the multinational companies), and all but the most powerful (arrogant) steer clear of the Vistani, though not many would admit to their superstitiously-based reasoning...

Real-world sources: Dutch East India Company, East India Company, London and Bristol Company, Hudson Bay Company,...list is long.

D&D sources: The Republic of Darokin (BECMI Gaz 11), The Minrothad Guilds (BECMI Gaz 9), Dune Trader (Dark Sun)...that's all I can think of right now anyway.