The Magnetic Compass, or, Pet Peeves

[Nathan of the FoS]

I've always deeply disliked that detail, because it creates horrible logical conundrums; where, exactly, is Ravenloft's magnetic north? What does "north" mean in a non-spherical world? Is a compass pointing "north" in Valachan parallel to one pointing "north" in Vechor? If so, are they pointing to a common point or to "map north"? Did drawing the map, then, create north?

Presumably, the four cardinal directions were mapped out by 4th century Barovians, when they saw which direction the sun rose or set in (giving east and west). When the compass made its first appearance in Ravenloft, the DPs twigged the fake physics of their construct so that their needles would point in the direction corresponding to "North" by that standard. Ravenloft's cosmology doesn't need a "magnetic north" for a compass to appear to function, any more than it needs to orbit around a huge, flaming sphere of hydrogen (or some magical equivalent) for its inhabitants to witness sunrises and sunsets.

This does leave us the question of whether Bluetspur has directions, since it doesn't have sunrises or sunsets. But it could have retained the same usage from when it was part of the Core.

Yes, but this lands us in other difficulties. Does the sun appear to progress across the sky during the year in Ravenloft? If it does, then "orthogonal to the sunrise" isn't a constant. Plus, if the magnetic compass is a CL 8 invention, it wasn't a Barovian thing--so who came up with it, anyway.

It's not insoluble, as you correctly point out. But it bugs me. As long as I'm complaining, here are two other things that I've always thought were weird:

1) That people would assume that the land is static when, in fact, they know it changes quite a bit, all the time. This from the RL PHB, where it is mentioned that sometimes the land seems to stretch or compress, making a journey of a day into that of a week, and that people are reluctant to believe the land could change. I think that's an importation of our own ideas (perhaps an inevitable one); we are convinced that the world isn't shifting while we aren't looking, so the idea of it doing so is difficult to accept and eerie. I think a native of Ravenloft would accept it as a matter of course--"The road was against me today," "The Mists didn't want me to arrive," etc.

2) That science and magic should be considered to be in opposition to each other, or even mutually exclusive. That's a common idea in speculative fiction, but it works because we have so little evidence that "magic" really describes and changes the real world, whereas science now does so routinely. In a place where magic and science both work routinely, I think they would be considered the same thing, just as the forerunners of true science like Paracelsus and even Newton were convinced that what we would call "magic" and what we call "science" were indistinguishable.

Okay, them's my peeves. I will now hold my peace and think happy thoughts.

[Jasper]

I think he his the nail on the head with the sunrise/sunset thing. For centuries on our world "north" was 90 degrees from where the sun rose on a set day (usaly a equanox) and the idea of a set magnetic north is a reltively new addion to mapmaking.

For the vast majority of people in Ravenloft travel and finding north is still governed by the old ways-

1. The shadow method. Put a stick in the ground at noon and wait unill you get a shadow. That shadow is now pointing east (give or take your possition on the globe, mostly accurate) and 90 degrres from that is north.

2. North star/southern cross. While each domain has thier own constalations the stars are the same over the core and a north pointing star would be the same for everyone.

3. old wives tales. Moss grows on the north sides of trees/water allways flows north to south/etc:

For the average person traveling anywhere in the core they would travel well worn roads and not realy care about directions. All roads lead to Darkon

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Not to mention that available maps of all but the most well-surveyed of domains are bound to be imperfect, in many details. It took centuries of checking and re-checking before maps of the globe began to look even moderately accurate, IRL, and that's for a landscape that doesn't keep rearranging itself every few decades.

But FWIW, I agree with Nathan that the "science vs. magic" dichotomy is overplayed in the 3.5 products. I can understand Lamordians being a bit unclear on the concept -- they've inherited the effects of Mordenheim's rationalistic bias, which from the viewpoint of the wider D&D cosmology is just plain wrong -- but Ravenloft as a whole has such ample precedent for magic's reality and potency (rare though it is) that extending that parochialism to other Renaissance domains is just silly.

[Ronia Sun]

I think you could approach it one of two ways:

1.) Natives of RL are used to the land's shifting nature, and since they don't know any better consider it natural, even normal. The differences in night skies of the different domains would likewise be treated as the way it is. (I can't imagine that astronomy is a very workable science in the Mists...)

2.) Folks simply don't notice--and when they do, they pretend they didn't. Human beings are wonderful at not believing what they can't wrap their heads around. A trip that should take a day takes a week? "Oh, I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, I got lost, etc, etc." The night skies in Barovia are different than in Darkon? "Says who? One star looks pretty much the same t'me..." (Though I imagine it would cause sailors along the coasts to be in bad need of a lie-down when trying to navigate. That sort of things would cause terminal headaches...)

Personally, I like the first option better, and the previous suggestion of sayings such as "The road was against me today" and so forth.

As for the compass...well, I imagine that it, like traveling in RL itself, is unreliable at best: it may *appear* to work, most of the time, but sometimes it takes you in a direction you didn't plan...

(And here is where an artifact like Jack Sparrow's compass would become the most priceless treasure Ravenloft has ever seen... )

[Irving the Meek]

...only if you know what you want, my neighbor. Even Jack's compass points in strange directions at times.

Seroiusly, though, anyone who takes compasses as gospel in Ravenloft is asking for it. The spinning or strangely-behaving compass is a good old horror trope, and probably gets exercised regularly in Ravenloft.

[mistshadow2k4]

1) That people would assume that the land is static when, in fact, they know it changes quite a bit, all the time. This from the RL PHB, where it is mentioned that sometimes the land seems to stretch or compress, making a journey of a day into that of a week, and that people are reluctant to believe the land could change. I think that's an importation of our own ideas (perhaps an inevitable one); we are convinced that the world isn't shifting while we aren't looking, so the idea of it doing so is difficult to accept and eerie. I think a native of Ravenloft would accept it as a matter of course--"The road was against me today," "The Mists didn't want me to arrive," etc.

2) That science and magic should be considered to be in opposition to each other, or even mutually exclusive. That's a common idea in speculative fiction, but it works because we have so little evidence that "magic" really describes and changes the real world, whereas science now does so routinely. In a place where magic and science both work routinely, I think they would be considered the same thing, just as the forerunners of true science like Paracelsus and even Newton were convinced that what we would call "magic" and what we call "science" were indistinguishable.

Okay, them's my peeves. I will now hold my peace and think happy thoughts.

1) Exactly. S&S, quite frankly, didn't know the RL setting as well as many of the long-time players when they made their new rules. For proof, turn to Champions of Darkness where the author is of the opinion that killing a DL wouldn't be a good act since that would cause his or her domain to dissolve, presumably along with the natives thereof. We know from experience that this is not the case -- Gundarak was simply divided between Barovia and Invidia; it didn't dissolve. Obviously, if anyone was in charge of the RL project at S&S they missed this part or knew no better themselves.

There's a great deal of the stuff like this S&S did that I simply have to ignore because that's not the way we played long before S&S existed, contradicts the older canon or is just plain silly. Another good one is in Van Richten's Guide to the Mists, where outworlders are placed in asylums for claiming to be from another world. RL has had a history of outworlders appearing from the beginning so that seems pretty unlikely. Another is that the Mists bring heroes or villains to RL -- all of the 2nd ED works clearly state, over and over again, that the Mists bring a lot of perfectly ordinary people to RL. There might be purpose to the Mists but there seemed to be a lot randomness as well.

I think one of the hardest things about RL is that what the natives believe was never defined, which resulted in a lot of contradictions. S&S tried to define a lot of this stuff, but their answers to the questions were silly, at times. The evidence that their world is so abnormal is all around them and the impossible is a matter of course. How could they not know that their world is not static?

To say that RL's natives simply turn a blind eye to the plentiful evidence that theirs is not a normal world ignores human nature. Sure, there would be hard-headed rationalists who would deny it all while the "impossible" was happening to them, but in a world as supernatural as RL they would most likely be the minority. Consider our own world. How many people believe in ghosts? UFOs? Sasquatch? Other phenomena? How much more likely is it that the natives of RL are believers? I'd say pretty high. So the mandate in the new canon that they're entirely ignorant or deny the changing nature of their world seems outright dumb. I think what they're the most ignorant about would be the DLs -- in fact, if one knowledgeable of RL's history were to sit and think about it they might gain an understanding that nations are domains in the game sense, and I would guess that some people have -- but not that RL can change and does so on a regular basis.

S&S's new canon of the natives' belief is based on assumptions and those assumptions were invariably the easiest answer. Unfortunately they break down quickly the more you know about RL and it's history. "New domains were there all along but simply revealed when the Mists drew back", for example. "False history" is another -- how do you know it's entirely false? What if Dementlieu is an imprefect copy of the land d'Honaire's ancestors came from? Maybe he knew about the original Dementlieu from the stories of his elders. Why should Lamordia have a false history at all? Lamordia is the land the good doctor and his creation were in at the time they were drawn into RL. No, I'm pretty sure the natives are aware that the new domains are taken from other worlds; after all, many domains aren't even all that old and came to exist within living memory, even welll -established domains like Dementlieu. Why would the question in Rl, not if.

2) They weren't separate until about the 17th century. Before astrology and astronomy were nearly the same science, along with alchemy and chemistry being the same. The separation of science and magic is a modern separation. The Age of Reason birthed this separation, but it's just another philosophy among many. We assume it's right because we're still in that Age.

I'm not one to tell you what your world view should be, but in order to truly understand how other peoples have regarded the universe you have to abandon the idea that everything you assume about reality is the absolute truth, whether it has to do with religion, science or whatever. They regarded magic as real (many people all over the world still do) and science was not seperate from magic. Practically everyone practiced a bit of magic, whether it was fortune-telling (if the groundhog sees his shadow), little incantations to change things ("Rain, rain, go away") or rituals to affect another (an exchange of rings to ensure faithfulness). As people born to the Age of Reason we denounce beliefs and actions as superstition (knock on wood) not realizing what they are -- folk magic.

[Garudos Celestar]

We know from experience that this is not the case -- Gundarak was simply divided between Barovia and Invidia; it didn't dissolve. Obviously, if anyone was in charge of the RL project at S&S they missed this part or knew no better themselves.

Correction - it's not always the case. We also have a very good canon example of a domain that did disintegrate when both of its darklords were killed: Daglan in Feast of Goblyns. The final scene in the adventure involves the PCs desperately fleeing toward the Mists while the domain literally falls apart around them...

"As soon as he completes his speech, the glow will fade and the crown will crumble into dust. As the wind scatters its remains around the area in which the last battle took place, the entire domain of Daglan will begin to break up. There will be violent earthquakes, volcanic eruption, great storms, and the usual special effects associated with the end of the world. One by one, each of the PCs should fall victim to some horrible fate. For example, one might be buried in the collapsing church while another might be swallowed up by a crack in the earth."

[mistshadow2k4]

Correction - it's not always the case. We also have a very good canon example of a domain that did disintegrate when both of its darklords were killed: Daglan in Feast of Goblyns. The final scene in the adventure involves the PCs desperately fleeing toward the Mists while the domain literally falls apart around them...

"As soon as he completes his speech, the glow will fade and the crown will crumble into dust. As the wind scatters its remains around the area in which the last battle took place, the entire domain of Daglan will begin to break up. There will be violent earthquakes, volcanic eruption, great storms, and the usual special effects associated with the end of the world. One by one, each of the PCs should fall victim to some horrible fate. For example, one might be buried in the collapsing church while another might be swallowed up by a crack in the earth."

True, but that example applies only to those who bought a copy of Feast of Goblyns (I didn't until years later). For everyone else with the basic rulebooks, namely the red box and Domains of Dread, Gundarak was the only canon domain in which the DL was killed. Adventure modules can't really be considered part of the basic rules set; some people never buy any of them.

[Garudos Celestar]

For everyone else with the basic rulebooks, namely the red box and Domains of Dread, Gundarak was the only canon domain in which the DL was killed.

Also Bakholis (former lord of Invidia), Camille Boritsi nee Dilisnya (former lord of Borca), and Claude Renier (former lord of Richemulot).

The Grand Conjunction is a canon event in Ravenloft's history, however, whether one played through the adventures leading up to it or not. Adventures provide the mechanism for the setting to progress, whether they detail the signs of the Conjunction, the birth of the Dukkar, or the details of the Grim Harvest.

[Ronia Sun]

I've always rather felt, too, that the conept of destroying a darklord and automatically having the domain disentegrate made things in RL rather *too* hopeless. What's the point of fighting for the forces of good if, when you actually achieve a victory, everything is destroyed? Knowing my players, that depressing approach would only make them (and me) angry...

There isn't much point in fighting if you *never* win...

[Rotipher of the FoS]

For everyone else with the basic rulebooks, namely the red box and Domains of Dread, Gundarak was the only canon domain in which the DL was killed. Adventure modules can't really be considered part of the basic rules set; some people never buy any of them.

Actually, DoD explicitly cites adventures in its timeline, as well as novels and short stories. The fact that a particular gamer may not own a copy doesn't change the fact that it's a part of "canon" Ravenloft lore.

[mistshadow2k4]

For everyone else with the basic rulebooks, namely the red box and Domains of Dread, Gundarak was the only canon domain in which the DL was killed.

Also Bakholis (former lord of Invidia), Camille Boritsi nee Dilisnya (former lord of Borca), and Claude Renier (former lord of Richemulot).

The Grand Conjunction is a canon event in Ravenloft's history, however, whether one played through the adventures leading up to it or not. Adventures provide the mechanism for the setting to progress, whether they detail the signs of the Conjunction, the birth of the Dukkar, or the details of the Grim Harvest.

Good point, although I was aiming at in the event no one in the domain is really corrupt enough to replace the slain DL. After the Grand Conjunction Dr. Dominiani was given his own island domain in the Sea of Sorrows, leaving Gundarak without a DL -- but it didn't just dissolve. In that case, as with Gundarak, it would be divided up and absorbed by neighboring domains. I think the case with Daglan dissolving had a lot to with it still being partially in formation at the time.

As a follow-up to this in the game world, I think it would be best to define what happened from the viewpoint of the people in RL -- if anything besides the death of a famous person happened at all. Dominiani took over Gundarak when Duke Gundar was killed, but then disppeared during the Great Upheaval. With the disppearance of Gundarak's ruling tyrant, Strahd immediately started his campaign to conquer Gundarak, ultimately succeeding in annexing half of the land. While Strahd was busy doing that, Gabrielle Aderre claimed the other half and he didn't challenge her. Dorvinia became a part of Borca because the rulers joined together. Unfortunately, they didn't provide us with an in-game view of Arkandale's absorption into Verbrek; you can see the result in the S&S Gaz, where people seem to have fogotten that Arkandale was a separate domain to begin with. IMC I've never specified whether Arkandale was abosrbed by Verbrek or not; since the werewolves of Verbrek crossed over into Arkandale before then anyway, how would the folk know the difference? With a DL who doesn't actively rule his or her domain, would the people even notice the change? Something to keep in mind in case a DL is killed or darklordship of a domain should change in your own game.

[mistshadow2k4]

No, I'm pretty sure the natives are aware that the new domains are taken from other worlds; after all, many domains aren't even all that old and came to exist within living memory, even welll -established domains like Dementlieu. Why would the question in Rl, not if.

Okay, maybe I should start another thread with this, but it ties in best with this thread so I'll just put this here. If you're going to play it with RL's folk aware of some of the things that mark their world as unnatural, what are the popular beliefs of why and who?

There are several IMC:

We Are Accursed
“A curse was laid on the land when the Mists wrenched it away from where it was before. Perhaps the curse was deserved, perhaps it was not. Who can say now? We only wonder when the curse will be lifted, if it ever will.”

Normality is a Myth (oder domains)
“Some say the world is unnatural, that things shouldn’t be like this. How would they know? Just because they sit around the fire and tell tales supposedly from another place before the Mists came? No, no, that’s just wishful thinking, to believe that the world their ancestors came from was better than this. It gives them hope, because if the world used to be so much better, they think maybe it could be again. But there is no hope. This is how things are supposed to be, and the old stories of a better world are fantasies.”

Second Chances
“This place was created to give the fallen a second chance. Everyone who is born or brought here has committed evils in a past life they don’t remember. This is their opportunity to purge their souls of the corruption they brought into themselves. Few succeed, but those who do attain salvation in the afterlife.”

We Are Being Tested
“It’s much harder to be a good person when you live with such evil all around you. This is why we’re here, to prove to the unseen gods that we are still good people, no matter what. All that really matters is hanging on to that spark of goodness in your soul, because that’s your only hope.”

This is Hell (very harsh domains)
“Maybe it’s not what you were expecting, but this is it. Of course you don’t know what you did to deserve this. No doubt the people you did terrible things to didn’t know what they did to deserve that either. But there’s no getting out now, no matter how hard you try to be good or pious. It’s far too late for any of that nonsense. So how does it matter what you do now? You’re already damned.”

As you can see, I've worked on this a bit already. Anyone have more ideas about how the people view RL's obviously unnatural nature? If so, I'd love to hear them, because I'v always ran my campaign under the presumption that the DPs did little to hide this from the folk (although a few DLs might try to).

[Rotipher of the FoS]

For proof, turn to Champions of Darkness where the author is of the opinion that killing a DL wouldn't be a good act since that would cause his or her domain to dissolve, presumably along with the natives thereof.

Don't condemn everything S&S ever wrote because of one lousy product. The 2E products shouldn't be condemned because "Death of a Darklord" implied outlander clerics lost access to their spells in Ravenloft, should they? Judge a product-line by the preponderance of its content, not its stinkers.

Besides, in context, the paragraph you're citing is one of several that are meant to show how DMs can, if they want to, make their Ravenloft campaigns very, very dark and depressing, indeed. It never stated that a domain whose darklord dies HAS to disintegrate -- indeed, the core 3E RL books openly state that there are several other options -- but only that it's a possibility if a DM wants to foster despair and guilt on the PCs' part.

Another good one is in Van Richten's Guide to the Mists, where outworlders are placed in asylums for claiming to be from another world. RL has had a history of outworlders appearing from the beginning so that seems pretty unlikely.

To cite the immortal (and 2nd Edition) "Bill Rule": Always go with what is scarier, in a Ravenloft game. Having the natives accept whatever wild tale an outlander PC tells them is a lot less scary than having said PC in danger of being thrown into an asylum. Plus, the practice needn't be a universal one; heck, many domains don't even have asylums. Either way, it's a useful way to isolate outlander PCs, and a classic staple of horror tales, if the heroes' reports of real danger are ignored because they're considered "crazy".

Another is that the Mists bring heroes or villains to RL -- all of the 2nd ED works clearly state, over and over again, that the Mists bring a lot of perfectly ordinary people to RL.

That, I'll allow ... but then, consider the source. The WF twins are still a bit on the naive side, despite their own adventures, and tend to see things as a bit rosier than they are. Plus, the "ordinary people" who come into Ravenloft via the Mists aren't the sort to feature in tales which the twins might uncover, in their research: either the non-adventurers get eaten, or they settle down and lead ordinary, boring lives in Ravenloft; either way, they don't make it into the legends and documents the twins would have consulted.

You don't see many supermarket check-out girls on the news, IRL, and might not realize they existed if you were a space-alien learning about our world solely from television broadcasts. Yet there's a lot more of them out there than there are, presidents or sports heroes or movie stars. It's a bias in reporting, not in the Mists' actual conduct.

The evidence that their world is so abnormal is all around them and the impossible is a matter of course. How could they not know that their world is not static?

What's "normal" for a world? Are huge towering masses of steel and glass "normal" for IRL? Ask a 10th century Manhattah Indian, and they'll say no; ask a 21st century New Yorker, and they'll say yes. "Normal" is whatever you grew up with.

To a Ravenlofter, the Mists are normal. Not pleasant, but normal. That includes whatever tricks the Mists might just happen to play with the landscape ... although such stunts aren't as commonplace as you seem to be suggesting. Indeed, S and Azalin both remarked on how very strange it was, that the Mists affect Mordent and the Mistlands so often, because most realms' geography isn't as plastic as they are.

The Mists' messing with their realm is, for Ravenlofters, like the weather is for IRL people: it's an uncontrollable part of their environment, which is capable of doing damage or disrupting daily life. The Upheaval was like a huge hurricane, remarkable because it was much more destructive than usual ... but the Mists, themselves, are always out there. It's not that a majority of natives won't accept the Mists can do such things; it's just that they believe they won't do it to them, any more than people IRL who build million-dollar mansions in Tornado Alley seriously expect to get hit. Complacency isn't smart, but it is very human.

What if Dementlieu is an imprefect copy of the land d'Honaire's ancestors came from? Maybe he knew about the original Dementlieu from the stories of his elders. Why should Lamordia have a false history at all? Lamordia is the land the good doctor and his creation were in at the time they were drawn into RL.

Maybe so. But was S in a position to know the difference? Again, consider the source; you're dealing with reporters who are living in the proverbial fishbowl themselves, and are used to blue sand and little ceramic treasure-chests! Ultimately, anything beyond the natives' own in-character -- hence, biased -- opinions comes down to a DM's own preferences and theories as to what Ravenloft really is and why it was built ... and that, unequivocally, the designers at S&S did NOT choose to nail down, and rightly so.

[mistshadow2k4]

Besides, in context, the paragraph you're citing is one of several that are meant to show how DMs can, if they want to, make their Ravenloft campaigns very, very dark and depressing, indeed. It never stated that a domain whose darklord dies HAS to disintegrate -- indeed, the core 3E RL books openly state that there are several other options -- but only that it's a possibility if a DM wants to foster despair and guilt on the PCs' part.

The very fact that each succeeding author keeps re-writing the basic rules of the setting doesn't speak very highly of those running the project. Frankly, I do like some of the stuff S&S did with the setting, particularly the added cultural detail in the Gazs, but too much of it was so hokey.... and too easy. It made me roll my players roll their eyes and I could easily understand why. So my solution has been to keep the good stuff and throw out the stinkers, replacing those parts as I need to.

To cite the immortal (and 2nd Edition) "Bill Rule": Always go with what is scarier, in a Ravenloft game. Having the natives accept whatever wild tale an outlander PC tells them is a lot less scary than having said PC in danger of being thrown into an asylum. Plus, the practice needn't be a universal one; heck, many domains don't even have asylums. Either way, it's a useful way to isolate outlander PCs, and a classic staple of horror tales, if the heroes' reports of real danger are ignored because they're considered "crazy".

That's all well and good if it makes sense. Gimmicky plots that don't make sense are still gimmicky plots that don't make sense no matter how the author tries to spin them. But then I'm a rather jaded horror afficianado.

What's "normal" for a world? Are huge towering masses of steel and glass "normal" for IRL? Ask a 10th century Manhattah Indian, and they'll say no; ask a 21st century New Yorker, and they'll say yes. "Normal" is whatever you grew up with.

To a Ravenlofter, the Mists are normal. Not pleasant, but normal. That includes whatever tricks the Mists might just happen to play with the landscape ... although such stunts aren't as commonplace as you seem to be suggesting. Indeed, S and Azalin both remarked on how very strange it was, that the Mists affect Mordent and the Mistlands so often, because most realms' geography isn't as plastic as they are.

If it's snowing on the border of Lamordia it should be snowing a little over the border as well, but it doesn't; it's pretty weird if you're standing two feet in front of the border and seeing it snowing there but not an inch farther Before the death of Soth Sithicis had a black moon, whereas all other domains are supposed to have a moon much like ours. Also keep in mind that the Nightmare Lands and Bluestpur used to be part of the Core -- and Bluetspur doesn't even have a sun or moon at all. Most significantly, new lands appear from out of nowhere, with people and civilizations, where there was nothing yesterday. And no domain is older than 4 centuries, many less than 100 years -- that's no where near time enough for the idea of what is normal to "reset". And to go by the Bill Rule you quoted, it should be scarier for things to be abnormal and known to be abnormal, with many theories as to why (and few them would involve things with the best interests of the folk at heart, especially in RL).

Maybe so. But was S in a position to know the difference? Again, consider the source; you're dealing with reporters who are living in the proverbial fishbowl themselves, and are used to blue sand and little ceramic treasure-chests! Ultimately, anything beyond the natives' own in-character -- hence, biased -- opinions comes down to a DM's own preferences and theories as to what Ravenloft really is and why it was built ... and that, unequivocally, the designers at S&S did NOT choose to nail down, and rightly so.

Which is a really good reason they shouldn't have written those books that way in the first place. Firstly, books supposedly by the same person -- but by different authors -- contradict each other. Secondly, it really does impinge on our freedom to draw our own conclusions. Think not? Then why are those works treated pretty much as gospel when anyone posts on this board? The very idea of whether something is canon or not pretty much sets their ideas down as right or wrong. You proved it; by shooting down everything I wrote as wrong and the canon as correct, you showed that what they wrote was supposed to be right and I was playing against the rules. They did nail it down and everything you posted was showing how they were supposed to be correct and I wasn't.