Ravenloft Without the Core

[hidajiremi]

I was thinking about something recently that resonated with me on some level, and I wanted to see if anyone else had considered it in the past: What about Ravenloft without the Core?

I don't mean "with none of the Core's nations," just "with no central continent. As a demiplane, there's no reason that Ravenloft has to follow the rules of traditional world shapes. What if, instead of a huge continent with 30+ countries, we instead had a half-dozen large clusters that were thematically linked and physically connected by the Mists and the Sea of Sorrows?

You could easily group Barovia, Invidia, and Forlorn into a "Balinok Mountains Cluster," Borca, Richemulot, Dementlieu, and Mordent into a "Civilized Crescent Cluster," and Verbrek, Valachan, and Kartakass into a "Forest of Beasts Cluster." And so on. By dividing up the Core into a series of large clusters, you preserve thematic and cultural isolation, making it relatively easy for the nations in the cluster to trade and politic among themselves, but hard for them to make lasting connections with other clusters.

It also makes it easier for GMs to only include the elements of the setting they want to include. Want to run Renaissance or Napoleonic intrigue, politics, romance, and treachery without a ton of military stuff? Use the Civilized Crescent. Want a campaign filled with violent monster-hunting action? Go for the Forest of Beasts.

In this setup, I'm tempted to make Falkovnia (and Lamordia? maybe?) into a sort of "roaming cluster" that comes into physical alignment with other clusters every four to ten years, resulting in a few months to a year of horrific fighting. Vlad Drakov is convinced that if he can conquer another nation, he can permanently add it to Falkovnian territory, but he never has quite enough time to manage it, especially considering that he can't plan when these mini-conjunctions occur, how long they last, or who they'll be with.

This would also give me a good incentive to turn Darkon into its own cluster and actually have a country whose political borders don't match its domain borders. I'd have Darkon as a formerly united nation under the wizard-king Azalin Rex, who was destroyed in a mystical conflagration, which has subsequently fallen into chaos and civil war. The country is divided up into several domains, each of which has a darklord of its own trying desperately to become the "true heir" of Azalin by committing ever-more-depraved acts and not realizing that what made Azalin powerful wasn't just his evil but his will.

Anyway, how do people feel about the idea of "no Core, only clusters and islands"?

[MichaelTumey]

Honestly, aside from playing the original Ravenloft with Strahd modules, and some other Ravenloft Core adventures in the first version of the box set, I've never cared to stick with canon on any published setting, always preferring to go my own direction and homebrew the rest of what I need. All subsequent Ravenloft domains and adventures were always homebrew (island domains) - which is why I never participate in discussions regarding specific domains, domain rulers and their families. I just don't use that stuff in my games (and means nothing to me). I finally went as far as publishing a gothic horror Pathfinder setting based on feudal Japan (my Kaidan setting of Japanese horror for PF) that is greatly inspired by Ravenloft, but then its horrors as a setting is completely different, even worse, than Ravenloft. In Ravenloft you worry about doing evil things, which will get in trapped in Ravenloft. In Kaidan you can be the best paladin in the world, but as soon as you die you are trapped in Kaidan forever (you're stuck in a cursed reincarnation cycle with no escape).

[alhoon]

... What about Ravenloft without the Core?

I don't mean "with none of the Core's nations," just "with no central continent. As a demiplane, there's no reason that Ravenloft has to follow the rules of traditional world shapes. ...
Anyway, how do people feel about the idea of "no Core, only clusters and islands"?

Considering 5th edition (D&D Next) moves towards this direction I would say that many people are fine with it. As things stand... it is totally canonical in the new edition. While the new edition CAN support the core and the traditional setting, it's more geared towards your version.

[thekristhomas]

This kinda how I imagine the Demiplane during the GC with the core torn in chunks. Then when it got put back together bits were missing and there were pieces still in the box

[The Lesser Evil]

I like the idea because it could decentralize the focus on just one clump of canon. A lot of the islands and stuff are pretty static because they're just disconnected from the "main action." The only thing that's happened in Nosos, for example, is that Malus got upgraded from a 0-level character to a first level fighter. Joining different nations/islands together into several semi-largish clusters allows for some experimentation on different domain configurations.

On the other hand, I'm hesitant about the idea because breaking up the core could make everything disconnected. I like having seeing/playing how the domains interact somewhat naturalistically without the DPs mucking about with every detail. If everything is just islands and really small clusters, then the lines of causality get a bit messy as anything regarding interactions between domains becomes a product of D.P. meddling.

I think, if we were to break up the core, that I'd like it best if there were several larger clusters rather than a bunch of disconnected islands or tiny clusters with some semi-regular networks of Mistways to approximate something of a (perhaps Non-Euclidiean) spatial configuration. And maybe establish some alternate ways of Mist navigating.

Like a cluster I was thinking about are the domains that thematically approximate various things/time periods from the history/folklore of the British Isles and neighboring lands:
*Forlorn
*Nidala/Avonleigh/Shadoborn Manor
*the Shadow Rift (mostly for its connection to the fey and such)
*Tepest
*possibly Mordent or Paridon, but they might be too different time period wise form the others to be included.

[hidajiremi]

As I was saying in the first post, I'm thinking that the cluster method would be to break up the core into several large thematically linked clusters and have permanent Mistways between some of them. The Sea of Sorrows would still be its own cluster, but it would be one that "intrudes" permanently onto some of the domains so that you would still have coastal regions in many of them. So Dementlieu and Mordent would still have a coastline on the Sea of Sorrows, from which one could sail to any of the islands out there or to some of the other clusters. There would also be a permanent Mistway leading from Borca to Barovia, and so on.

Merging the Shadowlands into a cluster with some of the other "fairie tale" domains was something I was thinking strongly about as well.