As I always say, if you have a choice between the
Ravenloft Player's Handbook and
Ravenloft Third Edition, pick whichever is cheaper. They're 99% identical, ditto the Monster books and published due to licence restrictions.
And while the change in editions may require some of the older books (GazI, SotDR) to be editied/updated, it's really a minor tweak at best and only if you really want to throw Strahd at your players.
eldritch wrote:I think you managed to articulate my main gripe: there are no new Ravenloft adventures (and in our campaign we used the adventure products) I find them a very useful structure for my adventures and to me that was the point; to play ravenloft adventures not just define the world so creative Dm's can come up with their own off a one paragraph adventure hook. It is the fact that I would have to convert every one of those old adventures or just start new (as the new products suggest) and wing my own adventures. I'm just not that interested in doing that. it's not that I am not creative enough it is just that I bought all of those old 2e Adventures to play them!
Well, you've admitted you're not really playing now or often so it's not really a problem.
Still, this is NOT a gripe with the game system, 3.X, or anything else you've really complained about before. It's a gripe with the publisher who decided adventures don't sell.
Alright, everyone has already defended and stated how much they love 3.X, I'm not going to chime much in on that subject. Although I love mah BAB now instead of the massive headache that THAC0 always was for me.
Ahhh, the fun "Ravenloft in Trouble" thread, one of the two really bad low-point arguments where everyone acted like complete jerks and had it out (don't look for the other one, while it was cathartic at times it was deleted for the good of the community). However, despite the tension and rage, we were still making good arguments until the very end.
Don't read it and assume it is the common state of affairs, we were all still tense over the developers (f-ups for sure but who were unfairly treated as the worst thing to ever happen to Ravenloft) and the foreseen ending of the line (almost a full year and several products later; if you prophecies failure enough you'll eventually be right).
So, how did
Ravenloft fair with 3.X? We can now safely give a retrospective of the entire line from beginning to end.
It rocked. Hands down, balls out, full throttle rocked.
2001-2005, four years and 18-21 products. Two reprints, one almost redundant product and three-four poor additions to the line leaving at least 14 absolutely kick-buttocks books that include some of the best work on the line ever. That's a 70% success ratio and pretty darn good.
The Gazetteers were an excellent high-point and truly inspired pieces of work. Whole domains fleshed out with masses of new information and some of the most troublesome and hard-to-play lands made functional and desirable. All that while adventure hooks were added, stories advanced, canon was fixed and things were generally improved. Each book was 150+ pages and 4/5ths of that was rule-untouched fluff.
The new VanRichten books from the Arsenal to the free Guides (including the one to the Mists available for free at the White Wolf site) were great with the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins readily developing into fun and interesting characters with their own plotlines and supporting cast. Monsters I always thought of as expendable cannon fodder like skeletons or mist horrors were suddenly made unique and interesting and the Shadow Fey became so very much more than the simple static monsters in the
Shadow Rift mega-adventure.
We had surprising and enjoyable books that caught everyone off guard with their quality, such as
Legacy of the Blood: The Great Families of the Core or
Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends. I'd have never thought to propose either of those books and fans, constantly suggesting new books, never proposed those.
In a surprising twist, Ravenloft, once a crux in the D&D Prime Material Plane where every established land met, mixed and intertwined, actually benefited by standing alone. True, Hazlik couldn't be described as "A Red Wizard of Thay" and certain worlds, deities and the like couldn't be directly mentioned by name, but their identities were obvious. We all knew who the Cursed Knight/Black Rose so actually saying his name would have been a non-event.
Instead of being a land of outsides and visitors where the lords were walking references to other game products it became an independent and functional setting on its own. People were encouraged to play natives, lands were made more than simply settings of the lord to live.
The new rules definitely made the lords much more threatening and terrifying. As lycanthropes and vampires can now have class levels Strahd can be much more than just a generic vampire with some necro levels tacked on and the werewolf lords can be more than cookie-cutter beasts with an extra power or two (I adore these templates). Stahd is a fighter/necromancer (he was a warrior who drove off foreign invaders from Barovia before he fell) and more than a match for high level characters. Ivan and Ivana are now much more than just 0-level commoners able to be taken down by a lucky second level character (NPC classes? Brilliant!).
It's easy to complain (unbelievably easy, some people do nothing but) and just as easy to gripe about the line ending, but I got several new products out of Ravenloft before the end and got seriously involved in the fan community because of the new books. I didn't start posting at the MGT until the RL: CS was released and would never have written all I have for the line or become a member of the FoS without the 3.X books. Over the past three-four years my writing skills have dramatically improved and I'm a much more competent and confident crafter of words. Heck, even my grammar and punctuation skills have been kicked up a notch. Looking through the "Is Ravenloft in Trouble" thread, a mere year old, I wince at some of what I had written.
Ravenloft for Third Edition helped make me what I am today. I am happy to have been here for its too-brief existence.
Oh, and for more ranting on 3.X and the like check out:
http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... 30&start=0
Fun-fun arguments abound!