Messing with "canon": what do YOU do?

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

We have a guy in our game, who took a vow of non-violence.

The vow of non-violence doesn't prevent you from killing undead and constructs
Although I would love to have such players... If I showed them these feats they would laugh hysterically. All my players love to kill stuff...

We're fortunate to have a GREAT group, which includes Samael (J. Ambrus) as well. We like to make these very 3 dimensional characters as well as making groups of PCs that fit nicely together... but not nicely enough that there isn't any friction. And we like to stir things up a little.

Personally, I think something like this is fun: the guy who took the vow is a neutral good fighter who was training to become a paladin of Ezra but was repeatedly refused admittance to the order... (of course, it's not that he's anything less than pure or anything, he's just not quite lawful enough... ) So, he determined that he needed to purify his soul. So, he took this feat and like 3 other vows. He took the subdual strike feat from BED? I think?... Anyways, whenever he is fighting with his longsword (he trained as a Paladin of Ezra, so it's only reasonable!) he fights with the scabbard still on the blade. I think it's really cool. (In fact, in game, I think we're all afraid to see what he'll be able to do when we face off against unliving foes!)

But yeah - we can freely destroy undead and constructs!

I've got a vow of poverty... we're playing with the idea of religious belief and such in this game. My character is a cleric of the Morninglord who was never orddained and was excommunicated from the church for exhibiting "sacriligous" powers. I guess they didn't like his stigmata... So, he's essentially a geretic. One of the other PCs is a convert to my PCs message. He's from Gehenna and wants to expose Zakhata as a false god. And the last PC is the tisted/Caliban love child of the Divinity of Mankind's belief that they need to create the uber-human... but the experiment went a little wrong.

Anyway, didn't want to take over the forum with this, but I got carried away... But, in the spirit of what we change... Well, we mess around with a lot of things in small ways, but also very telling ways. We just like to mess with concepts, I guess.

(For those who DO wnat to read more - click the link in my signature - all the characters post on a blog: diary entires, in-character session notes, prayers, etc. It's fun read I think.)

[Barovian gravedigger]

My Ravenloft setting is very.. very much like a big Lovecraftian setting!

I`ve change the scale to a point were it almost match those like Forgotten realms or Eberron.

No other races permitted but humans, so it means human (or human as base creatures) n.p.c`s only!

I`ve made big cities here and there where you could do an entire campaing, big gothic cities like old London or Budapest. For exemple the city of Krezk (my capital for Barovia) counts 65,000 peoples with one big univercity, a hell lot of dark alleys and corners, nightclubs were vampire goes to hunt and so on (à la Vampire, the masquerade a little bit).

i use the Ravenloft horror/fear system but i use (a lot) the Darkness and dread (legend and lairs) madness system.

All in all it gives me, and my players, a nice and complete mix! cities à la Vampire, the masquerade... isolated hamlet far from everything much like old dark age Eurpean era. Beeing a Lovecraft fan you can imagine that every bit of my Ravenloft is strongly Lovecraftian.

p.s. the best companion book i can suggest you is by far the legends and lairs "Darkness and Dread" book (DD47).

[Irving the Meek]

I've made some changes that seem to be on par with other DM's out there. Darkon is a Chivalric domain; Necropolis never happened, and Azalin sit confidently on the throne. Neighboring domains are quite different, though. Tepest and The Shadow Rift do not exist; instead, we have The Wood, a faerie-tale domain run by the Queen of the Night.

Right now my players are walking through Invidia, to the southeast. The Darklord there is Daimon, a bard who's been partially transposessed by a balor. (The transposession is "locked" by his Darklord status, so the process can't be completed.) Invidia is a Rennaisance-level domain, with a clan of dwarves who freely use Davinci-esque tech. (They're also all insane to a man and enraptured by Galatea, a beautiful dread golem who doesn't understand their infatuation.)

Eventually, they'll probably have to go through Falkovnia - one of the PCs was framed for murder by Damion in a town on the route home. Falkovnia's a mideval realm with some Mongolian touches (think the beginning of Bram Stoker's Dracula). Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, is on the throne there; he's mortal, and still frustrated in his attempts to invade Darkon. I have a sort of rule of thumb that each section of Ravenloft has at least two horrific evils going on. Darkon has evil fae from The Wood and undead going on; Invidia has the infernal a dread golems from Galatea's dwarves. Dunno what Falkovnia will have... Tepe's soliders will be pretty bad and scary, but I need something else, too. Maybe some grisly aberrations created by a mad wizard from Hazlan...