Ravenloft Reanimated: Should We?

[Irving the Meek]

As I've posted over in the D&D forums, I think that we should start thinking about Ravenloft as a "real" world with a very intimate relationship with the Shadowfell. Igor's take on it close to what I'm envisioning, but I'm considering a more "stable" world that discards some of the tropes of earlier Ravenloft editions.

What I'm envisioning is a "core" world that is strictly native, without extraplanar oddities. No "sealing the borders", no exiles from other planes, planar isolation, no Islands of Dread, no domain-only weirdness like Darkonian "native amnesia" - at least, not in their current format. The Darklords are natives of Ravenloft who have committed heinous crimes, and consequently have been bound to the land and granted great power. (This isn't as difficult of a change as you might think, seeing as WW couldn't refer to other settings by name.) The natural laws of magic in Ravenloft permit such bindings to occur, as well as granting curses great power and permitting the Shadowfell to interact with our own world in a heartbeat.

The Islands of Terror can serve as Domains of Dread - places just barely on the other side of reality. Bleutspur can be anywhere, at any time, if the stars are right...

What I'm really suggesting is this: If the Ravenloft community is genuinely opposed to the "weekend in Hell" style of Ravenloft gaming, then let's ditch everything that defines Ravenloft as such a setting. No more talk of "escaping" Ravenloft; it is a world and a home all its own, and you would no more escape it than you would "escape" from Toril or Greyhawk. There are deep problems with Ravenloft than need to be fixed, perhaps. Perhaps the Dark Powers that reside at the root of all magic in Ravenloft need to be purified or removed. But that does not mean that the world itself needs to be evacuated; not by a long shot.

[WolfKook]

Well, that's a serious decision, and one that should be adressed soon: Should it be a world in the full sense of the word (Well, a world which is slowly going to hell, but a world nonetheless), or should it keep being the amorphous and undescribable demiplane of dread we all know and love...?

'cause there is already a project (Led by Nathan) going on covering the first possibility. If people agree that that is the path to take, and Nathan agrees on this, we could use his work as a solid ground from which to build the rest of the world, perhaps using Igor's ideas to address some of the design decisions to be taken.

OTOH, such decision would imply some risks, as the setting will lose some of its modularity, and some decisions would have to be taken as to how several of the well-known setting mechanics (The mists, darklords and domains, etc.) would work in such a world.

[Irving the Meek]

I'm not sure that "modularity" is a feature worth keeping in 4e. What would you plug Ravenloft into? Especially since 4e's "Domain of Dread" conceit permits that modularity?

I'll agree that the mechanics we love so much will take some rethinking if we made this design choice. Some will have to be modified, some flat-out discarded. I feel that something like the Mist-pact warlock would be useful as a place to jam oddities.

But there was a saying we had back in theater: "How many directors does it take to change a lightbulb?" "Why does it have to be a lightbulb?" Why do the domain borders have to seal? Why do Darklords have to come from outside Ravenloft?

If we go to 4e, we have the opportunity - and the challenge - of questioning the value of everything in Ravenloft as we know it.

[Lucien Doomdark]

From what I've read of Nathan's outline for a new Ravenloft, he aims to create a realistic geography and topography to make the Domain of Dread look less obviously fake...

There are obvious fixes to many of Ravenloft's issues, especially the issue of the timeline, which a realistic and created world would solve (especially the 'ooh look a new domain, what moral lesson will it teach us this week?', a personal and philosophical gripe of mine). However, this doesn't mean I'm entirely for changes like 'all indigenous DLs', I had a discussion with a freind of mine who was familiar with the setting and he gave me the best model of the Dread Powers. There aren't any. Not any more. There might have been at one point but there aren't any now. Ravenloft is like a rotting prison hulk adrift. No-one can get off it but it's shipping water and gradually decaying. Eventually, it might meet another Aship, and some souls might escape. After all, the gaolers have gone. all that's left is various groups of prisoners carving out their little domains amongst the locks and the bars are still there but the fabric of the world is slowly slipping away (into the Shadowfell?).

Meandering back to the point here, I do find myself agreeing with Irving's points but there are some things which are kind of integral. After all, we could end up reimagining ourselves an entirely different setting altogether (not a bad idea, but not I suspect WolfKook's original plan).

So what is integral to your idea of Ravenloft?

Avoid the obvious...

[Rotipher of the FoS]

To play devil's advocate on the "Is it still a demiplane?" issue, I think one of the assets of the patchwork-quilt nature of canon Ravenloft, from a metagame perspective, is the freedom this gives DMs to add whatever or whomever their campaigns need to the setting. Need a monster that's a tough enough threat to challenge high-level PCs, even though they're in a low-level region of the map? No problem: the Mists dropped it off there, and this terrible threat must be stopped before it destroys the area. Feel like giving suspense a rest, and running a plain old dungeon-crawl for a night? No need to concoct an elaborate history of ancient civilizations whose ruins the PCs can plunder, a la the Forgotten Realms: the Land is a collage anyway, so there's no reason not to slip a dungeon in under the PCs' feet. Wish you could incorporate a cool evil cult from a non-Ravenloft game product into your campaign's story-arc, despite the fact it's not on the list of religions from the RLPHB? Easy: some Mist-napped outlanders founded a branch of the cult in Ravenloft.


FWIW, I've never been convinced that making Ravenloft "real" needs to have anything to do with situating its lands on a big round ball. We've already got flat worlds, hollow worlds, and geocentric solar systems in the Material Plane of D&D, to say nothing of the bizarre constructions on the pre-4E Outer Planes or 4E Astral Sea. Nor did historical cultures on our own world necessarily expect the world to be a sphere (e.g. the Norse said it was a flat disk encircled by a giant serpent). We shouldn't confuse a coherent world -- which is what I suspect most people are looking for -- with a necessarily Earth-like one, when we're talking about a fantasy setting.

[Irving the Meek]

Agreed. A less-surreal Ravenloft does not have to be a "real" one. Heck, the vast majority of Ravenloft games ought to be focused on the Core; that's a small enough land mass (even if you expand it to European dimensions) that the issue of a "flat" or "round" earth is immaterial, at least at this point.

I'm not convinced that you can't keep the modularity you're looking while returning Ravenloft to its "real" roots. Several people have suggested that Ravenloft and the Shadowfell might have a very weak boundary; you can find yourself in a Domain of Dread in a heartbeat without even noticing the change (Silent Hill is a good example of the mechanic at work).

As for what's integral to Ravenloft? Well, Gothic Horror, first and foremost. I know you said to avoid the obvious, but, well, that goes without saying.

Beyond that, though, I think that the Darklords are one of the most defining and entertaining aspects of Ravenloft. A Ravenloft game without Strahd and Azalin is missing something terribly interesting, IMHOP. I wrote and rewrote Azalin's state obsessively under 3.5; a part of me is kind of sad that it's so much simpler to do so under 4.0. Almost everything else is negotiable.

[WolfKook]

Well, thinking it tiwce, i guess there shouldn't be a problem. As Roti points out, most people before Columbus believed the earth was flat, and legends abound about sailors and travelers trying to go somewhere and ending up somewhere else (Simbad, anyone?).

So, decisions about the true nature of the world could be left to the specific DM (Maybe as suggestions, in some kind of DM specific section), while all the information points to the PCs that Ravenloft is a "real world" with some strange phenomena (i.e., The mists move people thousands of miles away in seconds, travel distances sometimes change... Most of these would not be very different than paranormal phenomena reported in our own world).

So what is integral to your idea of Ravenloft?

Well, deep characters, complex politics, an emphasis in roleplaying, a "points of light" approach, the opportunity to explore feelings and emotions in-game, the idea that not everything is known about the world (As happens in our own, but usually doesn't happen in game worlds)...

[WolfKook]

Well, on a related subject, the project has been reopened. The design goals and global mechanics threads are still open for discussion, and a votation thread has just been opened on the Community Projects to set the domains and darklords that will inhabit Ravenloft Reanimated.

[Gnarfflinger]

Thanks, Wolfkook, That's exactly how I saw this breaking down. The most important part would be the "fluff" committee, but I suspect that it would be as fluffy as a brick wall. The Rules committees would form as the demand was there, and would cater to those that want ruled for the systems in question.

I agree that we don't need Ravenloft as a "normal" world. By removing that constraint, you remove some of the predictability that would reduce the horror value that comes with the unknown. I love the concept of a demiplane that's everywhere but nowhere, that creates domains for the most unforgivably evil jerks out there. I love the cruel irony of their punishments. By having it remain a demiplane, there are still pockets and clusters in addition to the core domains.

[impworks]

most people before Columbus believed the earth was flat

Sorry to divert this thread but this is an urban myth popularised in the 1800s.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Depends how you define "most people". Throughout history, a majority of the human race wouldn't have been educated enough to know, or well-fed enough to care, what shape the world was.

[Irving the Meek]

Let's put it this way. The majority people in the Core/central Europe in the time frame that Ravenloft oh-so-very-very loosely encompasses probably would not care or know what shape the world was.

(And just so you know, I'm visualizing 1500 Eastern Europe, in and around Poland, Albania, and Latvia, as the loose historical analogue for the Core.)

[Lucien Doomdark]

most people before Columbus believed the earth was flat

Sorry to divert this thread but this is an urban myth popularised in the 1800s.

Hurrah! I didn't want to say anything...

[ewancummins]

Ravenloft is ''flat.'' People who come from other , spherical, worlds would likely be laughed at for making preposterous claims about gigantic round planets.

I think developing the false histories into more of a coherent whole would lend greater versimilitude. In fact- it doesn't have to be false history. I don't assume that the canon history [very short] holds true in my home campaign. I blend false history with histories I've created for the various domains.

Altering the physical scale of Ravenloft is often mentioned. I very much agree with enlarging most of the domains. I've multiplied everything by a factor of ten.

Any proposed revamp of RL should include guns. Functional gunpowder tech that isn't magical ''smokepowder'' tends to set it apart from other settings.

I also prefer keeping the magic level in moderation, or actually low. Ravenloft contrasts nicely with high magic, high fantasy settings like Eberron anf Realms.

[Paladyn]

Perhaps Core could be curved? It would solce some problem (linie of horizont for example).

I agree ingun/smokepowder case as well as with low magic level. I see ultimate Ravenloft as an almost "normal, ordinary and everyday" fantasy world, with a little twist, visible for those, who dig to deep into forbidden secrets.