Review thread of VRGtRL 5e

[Seven]

I describe myself as "woke" sometimes. I try to be progressive (or as progressive as a middle-aged white man can be) and definitely encourage D&D products to include diversity. Because everyone should be able to see themselves in the game world and feel welcome in the hobby. D&D should be for everyone.
And sometimes that means flipping people's ethnicity and gender, especially when there's no alternative

But VRGtR pushes my views to the limit. Because the diversity is turned up to 11. Heck, 15. Five characters are made black, four gay, and seven or eight made female. It's a LOT.
It just feels like each domain was made in a vacuum and every disparate author decided to make their land more progressive. So rather than a couple lands representing the diversity of humanity, instead everyone is a minority. Van Richten is the only straight white male left alive.

Same. I am pretty Progressive in real life, and roll my eyes when people complain about "wokeness" or "SJW's".

But 5E Ravenloft isn't even diverse, because almost-everyone is now a minority

I'm much more irritated by how it just destroys Ravenloft's history and canon, erasing every past event

What annoys me is how the 5E incarnation tore apart what was once an actual campaign-setting and turned it into a "weekend in Hell" adventure-setting

I had an entire plot-thread where Vlad Drakov was using the agricultural production of Falkovnia to steadily collapse the agricultural/rural economies/industries of the Realms of the Four Towers, by selling foodstuffs at cut-rate prices.

This lead to increased societal unrest in all 4 realms, and Vlad stepped up "bandit attacks" to further destabilize the realms.

In return, this lead to Dementlieu seriously considering a military option to stabilize Richemulot (which was likely the worst-off of the 4 domains, since they were most dependent on cheap food considering how most Richemuloise lived in urban centers), as well as Dementlieu and Mordent colonizing Verbrek, to both try and offload some of their population of poor, jobless angry young men, and to try and exploit the largely-unorganized Verbrekian frontier for food, furs, and lumber.

In 5E, I cant do that anymore by-canon, because even disregarding how neither Dementlieu nor Falkovnia actually meaningfully-exist any more, the geography of the Land of Mists isn't united any more

It just seems like the writers latched onto one aspect of horror for each Domain, to the exclusion of everything else that made Ravenloft a campaign setting

[alhoon]

I agree with you seven but... the books of 3e are still out there.
So, we got Saidra and a few other good ideas.

[Five]

I describe myself as "woke" sometimes. I try to be progressive (or as progressive as a middle-aged white man can be) and definitely encourage D&D products to include diversity. Because everyone should be able to see themselves in the game world and feel welcome in the hobby. D&D should be for everyone.
And sometimes that means flipping people's ethnicity and gender, especially when there's no alternative

But VRGtR pushes my views to the limit. Because the diversity is turned up to 11. Heck, 15. Five characters are made black, four gay, and seven or eight made female. It's a LOT.
It just feels like each domain was made in a vacuum and every disparate author decided to make their land more progressive. So rather than a couple lands representing the diversity of humanity, instead everyone is a minority. Van Richten is the only straight white male left alive.

Same. I am pretty Progressive in real life, and roll my eyes when people complain about "wokeness" or "SJW's".

But 5E Ravenloft isn't even diverse, because almost-everyone is now a minority

First,

Jester: don't sell yourself short based on the colour of your skin or your gender. It's unbecoming (of a progressive mind) and is a good part of the problem when it comes to so-called "racial" and gender inequality. If one is so easy or quick to put themselves down based on such a superficial difference, and keeps themselves down by believing in the ****-hate-hype as spewed by others, then the battle for true or real equality is lost. I don't mean to come off as preachy but sucker punches and such hypocrisy hidden behind words of peace bugs me on a whole other level...

Both: Help us understand your issues here when it comes to what you consider diversity.

Neither of you seem to like equality/diversity through minority, so are you wanting your version of equality/diversity represented through more domains of majority (equality through majority diversity type setup)? Be that skin colour, culture, gender, etc

Should NPCs, their "skins" (superficialties), be mathematically equal/diverse?

Short of it, how would you present equality/diversity in Ravenloft?

I'm honestly curious. I see a lot of complaints about this version of Ravenloft, and I've had and have my own!, but not much of the constructive criticism type.

[Jester of the FoS]

Both: Help us understand your issues here when it comes to what you consider diversity.

Neither of you seem to like equality/diversity through minority, so are you wanting your version of equality/diversity represented through more domains of majority (equality through majority diversity type setup)? Be that skin colour, culture, gender, etc

Should NPCs, their "skins" (superficialties), be mathematically equal/diverse?

Short of it, how would you present equality/diversity in Ravenloft?

I'm honestly curious. I see a lot of complaints about this version of Ravenloft, and I've had and have my own!, but not much of the constructive criticism type.

First, as a mod, language. That post slipped a little into PG-13.
And I should probably reiterate that we at the FoS do want this community to be accepting and inclusive of everyone.

I do want to keep this discussion mostly focused on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. This is not the place to discuss diversity and inclusion in general or delve into liberal white guilt.

That said, to define terms I would argue that diversity works best when it feels representative of society's current demographics. Perhaps rounding up when necessary. You don't want 90% of the characters in a product (such as darklords) to be cishet white dudes. That's not reality, and doesn't make people feel welcome.
But, by that same guideline, only having 10% of the characters be straight white men doesn't work either. You shouldn't exclude that audience just because they were the focus in previous products. They shouldn't be the sole focus, but they also shouldn't be ignored or just expected to take whatever content is offered. Especially when they are still a disproportionate majority of gamers. Doubly so when updating a legacy setting where the vast, vast majority of fans are white males.
If you're not going to update the setting with the existing fans in mind, why update it at all rather than just making something new?

And that's where my complaint comes in. It's not about any particular change for diversity because, individually, they're all generally fine. It's the number as a whole. And it's certainly not just about diversity; that just happens to be the easiest talking point because it's immediately visible in the art. It's all the other changes as well, which require a reading of the text. Having the darklord of Dementliue be a woman isn't an issue as there's nothing gendered about their story... it's everything else. Having the darklord of Mordent be black also doesn't matter (it's such a minor tweak that it's not even worth mentioning in the text and is literally cosmetic; I brought up the concept art not as a complaint but largely as a point of trivia). It's all the other minor changes and inconsistencies in those lands that cause problems for me.
Because unlike past setting books that tapped the original creators and big fans of the setting to produce the product, this book was mostly written by newcomers to the setting, who had no emotional attachment and were often making up these new lands on the spot.

I have a general feeling this book wasn't made for me. This was not a book made for Ravenloft fans. This was a book written for a bunch of new players who might become Ravenloft fans. Or might just as easily use it to run a couple one-off horror adventures and then forget it exists.

That's my problem. It's a book with so much diversity it becomes exclusionary rather than inclusionary, and feels written to ignore the section of the audience who should have been its biggest fans. Because WotC just assumed they would buy it anyway because it says "Ravenloft" on the cover. I feel like a sucker for having purchased the book.

[Hell_Born]

...Okay, I'm going to try and put my two cents in, but please bear with me; I am not the most verbose nor articulate of men, despite my fumbling efforts to remedy that deficiency...

Firstly, let me say this: well said, Jester. I agree with what you say 100%.

I am not a conventional Ravenloft fan. My post history here speaks to that. I've long felt Ravenloft was a case of TSR having a great idea and executing it to a less than stellar degree. In large part, I feel, my disgruntlement comes from the fact that so much of Ravenloft feels like Masque of the Red Death .05, and I don't like Masque of the Red Death. So, on paper, I should be behind a major revision to the setting...

But I don't like this iteration of Ravenloft, taken as a whole. I don't feel it respects the setting. Honestly, I feel like the 4th edition version of the Forgotten Realms was more respectful to its past than this, and everybody knows how controversial that setting was when it came out.

A huge part of it is that WotC chose to effectively destroy Ravenloft as a campaign setting. We've gone back to the very earliest days of Ravenloft as a boxed set, when the focus is entirely on doing Weekend in Hell campaigns as opposed to maintaining the setting as a living, breathing world in its own right. And I don't like that. It doesn't interest me. I got into Ravenloft because it was a D&D world built for dark fantasy - not because it was a glorified backdrop for generic horror adventures.

There's literally no effort to preserve the idea of the Core. It's taken what I've always felt were the worst domains, the ones that basically existed for a glorified "Gothic" dungeon crawl, and made them the standard. Which is a huge shame, because there are great seeds of domains here, especially I'Cath and Har'Akir, which traditionally exemplify the "one and done" domain issue. But this iteration takes every question of "why should I care to get involved in the lives of these 'people'?" and just amps it up to eleven. It's a hollow shell of what it was, of what it could be.

And so much of this lore feels mediocre to me. Jacqueline Renier, for example, had a great Gothic curse in that she yearned for love, but could never be in the presence of someone she loved without letting her inner monstrousness be revealed - that's a classic bit of Gothic Horror. What does this nu-Jacqueline have? I can't even remember. Why is Ramya the darklord of Kalakeri? Literally what did she do to deserve damnation? She was nothing but a loving sister who gave her siblings the benefit of the doubt when they really didn't deserve it, and they murdered her for it! Like the Headless Horseman of the Winding Road, she did nothing to deserve being damned to eternal torment - she should be the instrument of someone else's torment. Arijanji, or their sister, or both of them, preferably. Ivana Boritsi is... well, not BAD, murdering her entire family to get what she wanted is certainly a classic Gothic crime and it shows that she deserves her damnation, but changing her backstory from a crime of passion - a Gothic classic - to basically being ticked off that she wasn't recognized for being a strong independent woman is... well, it lacks... what's the word? Pathos? It's a dime-a-dozen backstory these days; you can't throw a rock into media without hitting a strong independent woman fighting the patriarchy to make them recognize her true genius.

There are seeds of greatness here. I really like what was done with I'Cath and Har'Akir. And on paper, I should like Viktra Mordenheim; I've always felt a problem with Ravenloft was leaning too blatantly on its Gothic Horror novel roots, so a less obvious "Frankenstein" would normally be up my alley. Saidra does not deserve to steal Dominic's domain, but as a Darklord in her own right, she is perfectly well written - she's got a great Gothic backstory, a meaningful and understandable path to damnation, and a fitting curse. If only she wasn't trying to steal a well-written domain that predates her...

Really, that's the crux of the issue here. There is nothing inherently wrong about including different human races, different sexualities, or disabilities. But a lot of it is done at the expense of previous lore, which makes it look lazy and, in some cases, clearly done for pandering. Saidra, Vladeska, and Chakuna all have great set ups to run their own domain: why cheapen them by having them take over existing ones? Why race lift the Weathermay-Foxgroves or Harkon Lukas when you could instead have put the effort into making interesting new NPCs who aren't European in appearance? You have Har'Akir and I'Cath and Kalakeri just in this book alone - give us more characters from those realms! Crippling Alanik Ray, I actually approve of, because it plays into two of the major themes of Ravenloft - that your heroes are the primary lights against the darkness, and that battling the darkness will leave you scarred. But making him gay and married to Sedgewick was obviously done to pander to the yaoi fangirls of the Sherlock Holmes franchise; it's so obvious and cheap it makes my eyes roll.

To repeat: there's nothing wrong with more diversity. It's when you sacrifice respect for the lore to include it instead of just organically including it that you end up with people complaining. This book could have been better. Plain and simple. And too many people, it seems, are willing to downplay, completely overlook or defend its faults just because it ticks the diversity boxes, which only makes it look worse.

[Five]

First, as a mod, language. That post slipped a little into PG-13.
And I should probably reiterate that we at the FoS do want this community to be accepting and inclusive of everyone. [/color][/b]

I do want to keep this discussion mostly focused on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. This is not the place to discuss diversity and inclusion in general or delve into liberal white guilt.

Sigh.

Ok, what? I get the context of all that (though it reads a bit...different), that you want this forum to steer away from hot button topics (and all that jazz) and to focus mostly on Ravenloft the game (even though the topic at hand has one foot in the real world and one in the make believe), but...

My response was just that, a response to YOU posting your liberal white guilt (I've already addressed that from my pov so no need to go deeper on it). So the delve here was done by you. Surely I can't be the only one who sees that? If it's a walkback, cool. I get it. You just need to do a better job of owning that. As it stands it reads like a mic mute (of a positive message in regards to the topic at hand, or, one foot of it). It's just a...weird way of going about it all.

You're a mod who happens to be human with real thoughts and opinions (fancy that!), and you got the power to do what I think you just did (cest la vie), but here's some honestly friendly-intentioned advice: as a moderator you should be extra careful of your posts, in addition to all of ours. To delve into something, to initiate, and then topically shut down responses by tagging them out of bounds is, to put it bluntly, straight-up mucked.

Anyway, I seriously had an internal debate if whether or not posting this, but opted to go ahead and be baffled "out loud". It's something that I feel just couldn't not be addressed. And out of fairness to everybody else here, and out of respect to those who host this awesome fan site (yourself included of course) I will pledge to further this no more.

I won't apologise for this sidetrack (though it is at the same time regrettable), but to everyone here please, judge "me" and my views how you see fit, but do continue this discussion of this thread's topics, and all that comes with it. It's important for both the game and setting.

[Joël of the FoS]

OK guys, let's move this thread back to VRGtR's review.

I will delete any other posts on recent matter.

I'm not sure this forum is the place for these discussions (which I think are very interesting and needed in a society, but simply here isn't the place), and I also feel everybody said what they had to. And as often for Internet, not sure anybody will change his mind here anyway

I think there are good ideas and point of views in all these recent posts, but now back to RL. Same for politics and religion, not appropriate here (this discussion is kind of political in a way).

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation!

Joël

[Seven]

It's a book with so much diversity it becomes exclusionary rather than inclusionary,

For me, it isn't so much that I feel "excluded". It is just that much of the diversity feels incredibly performative, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKxpwlKRQ2Uakin to JK Rowling before she metaphorically **** the bed and went full-on TERF.

and feels written to ignore the section of the audience who should have been its biggest fans. Because WotC just assumed they would buy it anyway because it says "Ravenloft" on the cover. I feel like a sucker for having purchased the book.

When VRGTR came out, I read a review that encapsulated my feelings pretty well. It looks to have been deleted, but let me paraphrase:

"It’s a Ravenloft book for people who hated Ravenloft"

I've read chunks of VRGTR online and it..... just doesn't feel the same. Even ignoring the changes to Domains and Darklords and the world of Ravenloft itself, 5E has a very different focus and outlook on RPG-ing that just feels..... not "wrong", but that might be the closest term.

Its like a movie reboot, in a way.

[Five]

Its like a movie reboot, in a way.

Yeah, very much looks that way. And like movie reboots it looks like they went right back to the beginning. Just as Curse of Strahd was a reboot of the Ravenloft module, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft looks to me to be a reboot of the Black Box.

Its presentation, its text to visual mood/tone ratio (I can't think of a better way to express that) was lost in translation, but then again back then campaign settings were (at least in my view) meant to be a sort of shock load to Dungeons and Dragons. There was D&D, then there was the setting we played it in, or which completely framed the game (Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, etc). Now it seems to be a focus on a universal framing of Dungeons and Dragons. Not sure if what I'm trying to say is getting through with that. We all knew it was all D&D, but when talking of our games we spoke of the setting, almost as if it were it's own game. That's gone as well, by mine eyes.

Like I mentioned earlier, some of those unique setting rules (like RL's Powers Checks) were double-edged. Some might say it was a railroad track, and they wouldn't be wrong. In RL's case the game, it's mechanics, were built around morality. But focused on keeping PCs "good". That's a limitation in today's D&D, as it caters to only a portion of the game's players. Gothic (fantasy) horror is another limitation, in that it doesn't provide the "olive branch" to the imaginations of all players/fans of the horror genre.

Now I get that it's a great feat to convey tone when you're piecemealing subgenres under one roof, but a greater text-visual tone ratio could've really taken this book to the next level. Darker pages (Black Box's simplistic yet punctuated beauty IMO, expressed through layout and art), horror subgenre specific art to really suck the imagination in, optional rules (such as moral reinforcement; Powers Checks, sliding alignment perks and penalties ala 5E Star Wars' Force Alignment variant rule) ...these things and more should've or could've really beefed up this book. Sure there would be less Ravenloft (as we know it) between the covers, but Ravenloft could've doubled as a vehicle for horror in D&D in general, as an example realm and/or setting. As it is (my opinion), VRGtR looks like it doesn't know what it wants to be. A campaign setting or a D&D flavour injection.

Anyway, few more thoughts to throw out there.

It reads to me like the Black Box was it's inspiration, but it's colours somehow bled out in transit. I dunno. It's not a bad book. But it's also not a great book.

P.S.: I like the idea of Falkovnia being assaulted by giants. And depending on how much fantasy I want to inject into the gig I could even turn Falkovnia into a dwarven realm. "Nordic"/Cold by default but up to the vote. It's a natural line of thought.

[Seven]

I was rereading through the r/ravenloft subreddit, and I came across this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ravenloft/comm ... long_term/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ravenloft/comm ... _grimdark/

and some of the posters there came up with a good point: 5E Ravenloft isn't horror, but "grimdark". Everything is turned up to 11

The 3E stuff was careful to point out that, in spite of all the horrors of the setting, Ravenloft-as-it-was was not all horror, all the time. Here is a quote from the 3.0 book

" The world of Ravenloft is much like our own, at least in the basic ways. People awaken in the morning, work for their wage, return home to be with their families and enjoy some diversions, sleep soundly during the night and awaken again the next morning. Despite appearances, it is not a world overwhelmed by countless horrors. The horrors exist, but the average persons are unaffected by them. If they were, they would hardly be considered as horrifying. It is the relative normality of daily life in Ravenloft that makes the abnormal seem so terrifying, and the desire to return to normality often provides heroes with motivation to fight the darkness"

"Ravenloft is a beautiful land. The forests are lush and gorgeous. The sky is a brilliant, unspoiled blue. The mountains are awe inspiring in their simple majesty. The rivers are clean and refreshing, and the air is crisp and sweet. Ravenloft is a land worth living in. It is a land worth fighting for. Don’t surrender it to the night"

"Just as valuable as the land itself are the people within it. Yes, many of them are ignorant and cowardly, but just as many are brave and helpful. Communities in Ravenloft are often close and dedicated to each other. They are largely good people who deserve a world better than the one they have no choice but to live in. Player characters should have the opportunity to forge true friendships and meaningful romances, because it is in these relationships that heroes find strength to fight on."

The above cannot truly be said for the 5E incarnation of the setting. Who is living a normal life in Curse of Strahd Barovia? Who is happy in nightmare-debutante-ball-Dementlieu? What is there to contrast the darkness?

The Realm of Terror guidebook has some very succinct advice for running Ravenloft games (and horror games in general): thou shall not commit overkill.
"Modern" Ravenloft commits overkill, drastically so, to the point where I would even venture it isn't horror, just "noise".

[tomokaicho]

For me, it isn't so much that I feel "excluded". It is just that much of the diversity feels incredibly performative, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKxpwlKRQ2Uakin to JK Rowling before she metaphorically **** the bed and went full-on TERF.

That video was pretty funny. You've got to wonder why "homophobes" go after people like JK Rowling but not Clive Barker. I think its a lot to do with the performative aspects of it you mention, which are present in JK Rowling but absent in Clive Barkers characters.

This Ravenloft diversity thing is the new norm. A Disney executive says that 50% of Disney characters will be “LGBTQIA and racial minorities.” Of course, the way people are represented is also at issue, so guess which race and sexual orientation is going to be cast as the villains in almost all circumstances because there are some that cannot be cast as such.

If you feel strongly about this stuff, all you can do is exercise consumer sovereignty and refuse to buy. The worst thing is to say "well, I hate what they are doing but I need this for my collection".

[Sith]

This new version of the Ravenloft setting is rich with new ideas. What I find less interesting is the elimination of the concept of the Core. I play Ravenloft since 1993 and I was disappointed by this return to "week end in hell" version of the setting. Anyways I find this book really interesting for inspiration.
I see the different iconic NPC version of this book like a "different universe" doubles. I don't hate seeing some characters with a different ethnicity or sexual orientation. I like more the old version of this NPC's but really this is indifferent for me.
I would have handled some changes differently (i.e. why don't make the new Falkovnia female darklord simply Vlad Drakov's daughter and successor?), anyways I think it's really a good handbook.
I will as usual use the 2nd and 3rd edition versions of the setting for my campaigns, but I intend to use as well this new material!

[Speedwagon]

It's been about a year since the release of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Thanks to that book, I was able to get into the setting and was introduced to the Fraternity of Shadows and other fan communities for Ravenloft across the internet, and I was able to read up on the 2e/3e lore. I've used quite a few ideas from the 5e book (my current party is in my homebrew interpretation of Borca and the guide on using the Noble families in the Borca section of the book was super helpful) and while it definitely isn't everyone's cup of tea, I'm happy that with its release there are more and more unofficial products up on the DMsGuild for me to buy (or stare longingly at while I get more money). I know that Gonzoron and Joel had their own thoughts they wanted to share on this, so I'm curious to hear them, as well as the thoughts of everyone else one year later.

[Rucht Lilavivat]

All right.

I'm going to post a review of VRGtR. Here's the deal. I avoided posting a review of this book for a long while, because unlike most people here...I actually liked it. I didn't want to get into a 'net war. Totally not worth it.

Now to be fair to people who don't like it - I absolutely understand the distaste for it. In fact, one of my very best friends in the world bought it, read it, and returned the book the same day. He explained to me why he detested it so much, and I definitely saw his point of it.

In short, let me explain why I liked it, overall. I am only offering my opinion, and I am in no way invalidating many of the reviews and comments here. I understand them and I agree with many of them.

Why I liked the book:

1) Branding: For a long while, in my opinion, Ravenloft has had a branding issue. For many decades, I knew many gamers who would immediately turn away as soon as they heard the word "Ravenloft". For them, Ravenloft was a setting where player characters got screwed over, where the Darklords were all-powerful bad guys, and where characters got corrupted and twisted without their consent.

For me, and from what I have observed in the D&D community - this book has changed a lot of that perception. Simply put, the book seems to invite more collaboration and more agency for player characters. How's that? That brings me to my next point.

2) The Museum: Back in the 80's and 90's many game settings were written almost as museum set pieces. You can perhaps see this the most in the old 80's supplements for the City of Waterdeep. It used to be someone's home campaign, so most of the NPCs, places, and institutions are presented in such a way that there is an implied message, "You can't touch these things. You can only view them."

The result of this was many "Tour d'Realms" campaigns where people would play in the Forgotten Realms and just take these tours of the settings, not able to really affect many things in the setting. Sort of like playing in a canon DC Comic universe.

Ravenloft was a victim of this as well. There are so many campaigns that I read about, witnessed, and took part in where the player characters were on a tour of the realm. We could interact with things, but we were ever able to affect large, real, and lasting change. Y For many players playing in Ravenloft, this issue was often compounded by being put through a meat grinder.

This new edition really seems to invite player characters to mess with stuff. Many of the adventure ideas offer missions where the player characters can affect the realm and make real and lasting change.

3) So...what do you actually do? Often, when reading the old material, it is unclear what an adventure in a particular Domain might look like. A veteran GM (like many here) could easily whip up adventures in just about any Domain. But for many beginning GMs it's not been clear what you do in any given domain. For example, I knew many people that wouldn't have dared to step foot in Bluetspur - ever. The perception was that it's just far too dangerous at any level. Now, I can see how a GM could entice player character to go there.

I really like how the new book gives you lots and lots of different adventure ideas for all of the domains. Even if you never use any of them, it provides GMs with silent sounding board to reflect upon.

I simply see a lot of possibilities with all of the Domains now. More than I did before.

4) I also like that they took the setting and advanced the timeline. I didn't need to read, again, that Azalin tried to escape and failed. That's been canon for decades. I really like that something happened in Darkon and we don't know what! Did he escape? Did he blow himself up? I really like that it's been left unknown.

I like that they advanced the timeline for Ivan Dilisnya. I think he's actually a cooler, more interesting character now. He's going to be a great villain in my campaign. I think Ivana will be more of antagonist that they simply meet from time to time.

5) So, all of this is to say: This book is especially great for people new to the setting. Which makes me very happy. For the first time in a long time, I see people wanting to play in the Ravenloft setting and being more open to horror games. I really like that. I mean, just as an example, I am running a professional game in Ravenloft for the first time in years, because people don't have an aversion to Ravenloft. In the past, I have had my home groups shy away from Ravenloft, even when I've offered to run material that I've authored.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stuff I Didn't Like as Much:

As far which Darklords I don't like and which changes I disagreed with....

There are only a few changes that I totally disliked. First would be Lamordia. For me, the Frankenstein story is definitely a twisted father and son story and works best that way. Also, I simply don't find Viktra Mordenheim to be all that interesting. I'm going to keep Victor Mordenheim and Adam from the old material.

I also didn't like Vladeska Drakov. I liked Vlad Drakov as an allusion to Vlad Tepes. Also, I just feel that character works better with male energy. I think that a female version of Vlad Tepes wouldn't have been an impaler in my mind. She would have done something different. Like Countess Bathory of something. Now there's a Darklord that would have been awesome.

I love the new domain of Falkovnia now, though. Before, zombie horror in Ravenloft was only something you could get in one module...now there's a great domain for it.

I also liked the old version of Mara in the House of Lament, so when I've run it I've kept that same storyline. Mara's tale is twisted because it's the classic save the princess storyline, but in the end the princess isn't saved and the noble hero is slaughtered. Very Game of Thrones. Anyhow, I'm keeping that in the House of Lament.

Finally, I am obviously keeping the Core. All of the Domains will occupy the same space geographically, but I'll be using the new interior maps because they are more geographically interesting.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I know that Gonzoron and Joel had their own thoughts they wanted to share on this, so I'm curious to hear them, as well as the thoughts of everyone else one year later.

Yeah, I have a draft that I was working on, and then other things took precedence, and it languished. Wasn't sure it was even worth posting at this late stage, but if there's interest, maybe I'll go back to it soon and finish...