Café de Nuit

This time I wanted to do something fun so I came up with my top 5 dumbest Ravenloft moments. I left out Sheriff von Zarovich (been mentioned enough already) and TSR cancelling Ravenloft.

5. Where's the Ravenloft Logo?
In the last few products before TSR would cancel Ravenloft, the Ravenloft Logo was either missing or really small and hidden. The words for use with any campaign setting was also somewhere on the product. When I first saw Carnival I was not sure it was a Ravenloft product until I saw the logo hidden on the back. I get trying to find a broader audenice but I don't see Carnival or COTN series working in Dragonlance or Dark Sun. Shame on TSR.

4. Somebody was getting high.
The Grim Harvest series gets alot of flack and rightly so but to me the stupidest thing about it was the photocopy pictures of rats and bones in the middle of my paragraphs. Was that supposed to be scary? The scary part was that somebody approved it for 3 products and from top to bottom in the company nobody had the sense to say "What the hell is this crap?

3. Sheriff von Zarovich
I know I said it would not be on the list but the Sheriff is too bad an idea to leave off.

2. Round one, fight.
I love chocolate and I love a good steak but I'm not going to mix the two. But during the fighting game craze of the 90's somebody thought Ravenloft would make a good fighting game. The idea is so absurd it needs no explaining. With "smart" ideas like that I can not believe TSR went out of business.

1. WOTC tells Ravenloft fans "we know better than you so shut your mouth."

I had no problem going from 2E to 3E. So I had no problem going from 3E to 4E. But not including Ravenloft was a dumb idea. Horror never goes out of style. Horror video games make money, It seems every network has a horror tv show on and their is at least two horror movies a month at the movie theater so to just kill the horror market was a bad idea. What ticks me off is the tease.
They know it was a mistake but instead of listening to the fans they double down. About a year after Ravenloft was given the axe they release Expediton to Castle Ravenloft. Abomination! Fans are rightly upset and all is quiet on the Ravenloft front for a while. Then we get the "We are bringing back Ravenloft, in novels."
This was a cheap attempt to cash in on now famous authors and reprint some of their earlier works, just givem new covers. Wait, there is more, they come out with three new novels. I saw through the ploy. The new novels had nothing to do with Ravenloft for the most part. They were hard to find at the book stores and one of the novels was never published in book form.
So another failure and the novel line goes out with a wimper and all is quiet for a while. Then we get the news: Ravenloft will be supported in upcoming Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Okay, promising news. Instead, what we got was a bunch of half ass Shadowfell domains and a terrible rewrite of the Headless Horseman. It would be so easy to just pick up where Ravenloft left off but they came up with Shadowfell and it is so much better.
Shadowfell sucks and if you are not going to do Ravenloft justice then just leave it alone. Now 5E has been announced and Ravenloft has a chance to come back. My hopes are low.

I don't know about specific moments/characters/business decisions, but when I read this post I thought of the backstories of major Ravenloft NPCs. Many of them seem overly complex, and make me scratch my head and wonder "why in teh world did the authors think it was a good idea to put all these moving parts into this guy's history?"

A good example, to me, is von Kharkov. He was an outlander. Also a panther. Then he became human. As part of an elaborate plot for revenge by another guy. Then he became a vampire! And also a Kargat slave. And he can cause lycanthropy. Now don't get me wrong, in general I like von Kharkov and have used him in games before. (In my upcoming campaign one of the players is going to play a thug from Valachan who wanted to become a Black Leopard but balked and fled when he found out what was really involved, and is now trying to atone for past thuggish sins -- I'm sure the PCs will deal with the Baron or his minions as part of this atonement.) I just think he is significantly more effective and significantly easier to use if his backstory is streamlined. I feel like players can appreciate and react to the horrific atmosphere of the setting better if they can eventually find out the details of their adversaries' curses and backgrounds, which is hard to pull off in a seamless manner with super complex backstories.

Anyway, this is not really a problem in my opinion, as very complex backstories give the DM lots of creative material to pull from. I like handling the backstories with lots of moving parts as dread possibilities, and I pick and choose aspects of them to use and aspects to ignore or change. But for me it qualifies as a "what the ______?" aspect of the setting, because of the large amount of tweaking I feel I need to do to make it work.

There were just too many characters in Ravenloft where one could go what the #@!*. Although it would make for a good list in the future. Just look at Malken. His backstory is a nightmare.

In the bad moments of the setting, you can add the Tracy and Laura Hickman reaction on the fact their creation was now stuck in Ravenloft.

Cam wrote: I just think he is significantly more effective and significantly easier to use if his backstory is streamlined. I feel like players can appreciate and react to the horrific atmosphere of the setting better if they can eventually find out the details of their adversaries' curses and backgrounds, which is hard to pull off in a seamless manner with super complex backstories.

Anyway, this is not really a problem in my opinion, as very complex backstories give the DM lots of creative material to pull from. I like handling the backstories with lots of moving parts as dread possibilities, and I pick and choose aspects of them to use and aspects to ignore or change. But for me it qualifies as a "what the ______?" aspect of the setting, because of the large amount of tweaking I feel I need to do to make it work.

I think the detailed backstories are good, because they make the characters more fully developed. Say what you like about whatever other flaws it's got, Ravenloft has always had the more lifelike characters of any game world.

However, if you're looking for easy way to convey backstory, have a look at Mangrum's ideas about sinkholes of evil in the 15th anniversary thread.

Thanks Ryan. I do like interesting detail in backstories, which is one of the reasons I like the setting so much. I guess one man's interesting detail (that will help drive an NPC's motivations) is another man's overkill/surplus. I would always rather find too much detail in an RPG supplement, as opposed to not enough detail, that's for sure.

I also do like the sinkholes idea, and think that one of the marks of a good DM is ability to convey detailed backstory in a way that's fun for the players, keeps the game lively, doesn't degenerate into a monologue, etc. Always happy to hear about new ways to do that.

Also, I like the Valachan section of GazIV quite a lot! Didn't want you to get the wrong impression about that. Thanks for writing it, and for the many hours of good gaming it's given me!

One of the things that has irked me in regards to questionable decisions in the game of Ravenloft is choosing the location of Lamordia in the Core, or more specifically placing it beside Darkon; only Bluetspur and the Nightmare Lands were more misplaced than Lamordia was (imho).

Lamordia: the most “modern” domain where they are (IMO) on the verge of harnessing steam energy (which would lead to steam engines for pumps, locomotives, boats and ships, weapons and mill factories), has gunpowder firearms, intricate clockworks let alone the beginning of modern sciences of chemistry, biology, psychology, physics, etc. The people don’t believe in gods, barely believes in magic and are not even superstitious.

Darkon: taken from the granddaddy of all D&D fantasy worlds Grayhawk (if you acknowledge those things) the land is classic RPG family with piles of races, classes, monsters and magic galore (well, not supposed to be a whole lot of magic, if it was true to the original Oerth). As Lamordia is to science Darkon would be for magic in the Core. Darkon is the most "fantasy" of all the domains and heck, gun powder (aka smoke powder) isn’t even supposed to chemically react in Oerth!

Now, my understanding of the Core domains is that they are all supposed to be directly linked through history or share many characteristics (like how clusters form) but it has never made sense to me why Lamordia would a) appear next to Darkon or b) how the citizens of each domain be able to cope with each other, especially the Lamordians. The level of denial required to preserve the Lamordian mindset with Darkon as a neighbor approaches the Powers actively keeping them in some-sort of mind-fog.

Lamordia also has a unique language found nowhere else in the Core and has no relation/connection to any other domain in the Core (later Ravenloft products have hinted on a relationship between Tepest and Forlorn and Gundarak and Barovia). Sithicus could also be considered unique/alone (but there is that really thin link between Falkovnia and Sithicus coming from the same world, Krynn) as well could Arak (though it is kind of moot, as the surface culture of Arak has been practically exterminated, Arak's population could have been taken from any world). Lamordia’s weather system, independent from all other domains, also impresses on its misplacement by the Powers.

The Grand Conjunction (GC) would have been a perfect time to fix Lamordia’s placement but that didn't happen, which I think is kind of a shame as with some shuffling of the Core domains the logic of the Core domain cultures would have made a lot more sense (again, imho).

Or maybe it’s just me lol

Eric has a fine point about Lamordian placement so I will include that as many of my gripes have Lamordia involved even though I loved the domain concept.

1. Lamordia high tech next to Darkon, Lamordia's severe timeline discrepancies and contradictions especially with Dr. Mordenheim and Adam.

2. Lamordian 2nd Ed. Adventures Chilling tales:the surgeon's blade and Adam's wrath both messing with the lobotomy of PCs or killing them outright without any roleplay opportunity, to even begin the adventures. No Player characters are going to stand for that without a fist fight or the complete disruption or dissolving of the gaming group. These adventures are unplayable as written and have to be heavily tweaked to be usable. I just mined them for info.

3. Not finishing S's story or the Gazetteers. What a loss.

4. declaring stuff non cannon. I get declaring Tristen/Malken's backstory mess and failure to resolve it by making most of it non cannon because of crappy writing and lack of continuity, but why punish good writing such as Lord of the Necropolis because of an in-story explanation that can easily be explained away as Azalin's deluded interpretation if the DM didn't like it? just to preserve ambiguity of the Dark Powers. Lame. They should haves supported the products produced for the line. Sink or swim.

5. The Soth debacle. Why did Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (authors who came up with Soth) throw a tissy over their character getting more mileage after they left TSR? The storyline of Soth in Ravenloft was good, producing a good adventure and two good novels. Besides, with the strange time possibilities in Ravenloft, when they came back to work for TSR on Dragonlance stuff they could have just pulled him back with little or no DragonLance time elapsed and called it all a bad dream. I bet that words to that very effect were in some contract somewhere. Instead they went on a rampage and became Ravenloft deniers even going so far as to writing conflicting material for Soth and screwing with his timeline. Um maybe its just me but didn't TSR own the rights to this character when they started writing for TSR in the first place? Hickman didn't own any legal rights to his intellectual property at all and wasn't even working for the company anymore. This pretty much invalidated their entire qualm. Especially strange when Tracy Hickman wrote the first Ravenloft product ever (with Laura Hickman) and is responsible for the entire horror fantasy concept at TSR and ultimately the ravenloft campaign setting, how could he balk at putting one of his favorite creations, an undead Death Knight, (a horror figure if there ever was one) into another of his favorite creations (Tracy stated that Ravenloft was his best work) the one place where he was surely destined?

6. They should have really run with the Van Richten's guides concept more than they did, what a great way to introduce how monsters in Ravenloft are different and produce a Monstrous Compendium at the same time. they should have milked that teat dry for sure. Best D&D products ever as far as I am concerned. I am convinced that it Changed all of D&D forever and led to many new ideas about monsters and how they should be run. Van Richten easily became the best and favorite NPC in the setting because of his wealth of background information and easy insertion into any campaign due to occupations as a monster hunter and author.
More should have been done in 3X editions with the Van Richten heirs apparent, the Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins and VR Society. some of the best stuff in 3X e. Although Guide to Mists was sort of vague and rambling. Twins storyline could have been a lot better in it. The charcater of Van Richten has proved more inspirational for DMs and Ravenloft fans than any other plot device.

Yeah some of the more minor/less iconic darklords like Von Kharkov or Tristen Apblanc have really sordid backstories that seem to require a lot of context to understand. However, this isn't all bad, as it makes their lives seem a lot more "organic", like they were real characters whose story unfolds through play much like the lives of player characters, rather than the storybook simplicity that is the life of some other NPCs. In my view, it takes all kinds to make Ravenloft the diverse patchwork it is.

On another note, reading some of the earlier works of Ravenloft (that came out before it really found its niche) had me kinda scratching my head. You could tell the gears were turning on the stuff for horror, but a lot of it seemed fairly... I don't know... archaic or random by today's standards.

Ship of Horrors and Meredoth, the infamous (and curseless) isolationist 20th level necromancer. Before reading the Nocturnal Seas Gazetteer, I was like "who's this guy, and where'd he come from? Where's his curse?" Kinda interesting potential, but it left you wanting for more, especially when the early bits of the adventure are fairly well enough draw out. Aside from the giant starfish and ship of ghouls that come from nowhere.

Another one, the Book of Crypts. This one was filled with quirky little ditties of adventures, a few of which were a little bit incoherent or oddball. Baron Evensong and the King/Jester adventures in particular. A lot to fill in but nifty and unusual.

Despite being confusing and requiring a lot of adjustment, these WTF products can be good b/c they can create amusement and open up places for dms to fill in the gaps for their own games and for players to wonder about. That's why I have a certain fondness for these early installment weirdness products.

eldritch wrote:4. declaring stuff non cannon. I get declaring Tristen/Malken's backstory mess and failure to resolve it by making most of it non cannon because of crappy writing and lack of continuity, but why punish good writing such as Lord of the Necropolis because of an in-story explanation that can easily be explained away as Azalin's deluded interpretation if the DM didn't like it? just to preserve ambiguity of the Dark Powers. Lame. They should haves supported the products produced for the line. Sink or swim.

Technically, only the very end of Lord of the Necropolis (basically, from when Azalin's about to fire up the Doomsday Device) is non-canon, according to 3rd edition.

In my campaign, the Lamordians were superstitious. It’s just that their superstitions were based on ‘Reason!’ and ‘Science!’ In a world of magic, spirits, monsters, they had walled themselves off in their bleak little realm and put on blinkers. Because I used the Smothering of Reason, the typical citizen was unlikely to see much magic. He could rely on ‘rational’ explanations for such strange things as he did see. The people of the domain often believed, wrongly, that gods didn't really exist. Others were more of less deists or agnostics. Clockmaker God. Lamordians thought that most spell casters were frauds. Anything that didn't fit their narrow-minded ideas was either dismissed as bunkum or labeled 'Things Man Was Not Meant to Know' . Death should be final. This world is the only world. Gods are myths, or concepts, not actual entities. Magic is either trickery or the use of dangerous energies that are better left alone. Lamordians saw Darkon as the 'Witch Country' or the ‘Land of Unreason’; a place of freakish mutants, psychic aberrations, talking beasts, and insane cultists. Better educated or well-travelled Lamordians were not as narrow-minded as the stay-at-home common folk, of course. They had a much better idea about how the world really worked, even if they were often uncomfortable with magic, nonhumans, spirits, gods, etc.

Why are people still so bitter about Soth getting pulled out of Ravenloft? It's MW and TH's creation, and they could do pretty much anything they want with him from a writer's perspective, legalese notwithstanding. Besides, James Lowder did a perfectly good job of restructuring Ravenloft without Soth, giving us Inza as Sithicus's new darklord. Isn't that good replacement enough?

Soth rightly belongs in the Dragonlance setting. Just because Soth is dark, tragic and maybe even "Gothic," doesn't mean that Ravenloft has to claim him. As a writer myself I choose to give Weis and Hickman the benefit of the doubt. I love both incarnations of Soth in both settings, but Soth (yes I've read KotBR, SotBR, DoSD and DoHS) appears to have a better fit in Krynn.

This is much like how people seemed to despise Strahd's "elf pirate" look; dude, just let it go.

I admit that my familiarity with 4e is very low, but the introduction of things like healing surges and-- at least in one game I've seen played-- the relatively easy ability to figure out the strengths/weaknesses of a monster by skill rolls (it may just be that DM) seem pretty counter to what makes Ravenloft effective: NOT bouncing back so easily, and needing to wrack your brains as well as use your weapons!

Dion of the Fraternity wrote:Why are people still so bitter about Soth getting pulled out of Ravenloft? It's MW and TH's creation.

It was was well resolved, indeed. I like the sequel to KotBR as well as Inza.

My bone is on the bickering the authors made before it was settled. It was twilightingtish, and when they got him back, they killed him. Boo hoo.

Joël

Joël of the FoS wrote:

Dion of the Fraternity wrote:Why are people still so bitter about Soth getting pulled out of Ravenloft? It's MW and TH's creation.

It was was well resolved, indeed. I like the sequel to KotBR as well as Inza.

My bone is on the bickering the authors made before it was settled. It was twilightingtish, and when they got him back, they killed him. Boo hoo.

Joël

I was never bitter about Soth leaving Ravenloft, James Lowder gave us a great novel with an in-game explanation, plus it just made sense that the dark powers lost their grip because of Soth's ennui. The Soth Ravenloft stuff has always been really good, and his domain remained interesting and relevant after his departure all with good in-game explanations. My contention mirrors Joel's that the authors childishly went against what the company had done with their character (but TSR's property) in their absence and then basically killed him for spite. The controversy was completely unnecessary because an in game explanation for Soth coming to and leaving Ravenloft and back again to Dragonlance was easy with no harm done so to speak. they should have just left it alone and moved on with the character from there instead of acting like petulant children. They marred an otherwise fantastic character arc for selfish real world reasons that had nothing to do with the good quality game products its seems.