Café de Nuit

ewancummins wrote:I also like what we get in Ravenloft, with Doctor Mordenheim, who seems more like Hammer or Republic Films Frankenstein than the character from the novel.

Ralph Bates always did somehow superimpose over Mordenheim when I think of him. And every October Hammer films always makes it into my daily horror picture lineup. Naturally.

Good times.

I've always liked a human-centric Ravenloft, but I've come around to liking odd-ball race options, if they provide a good crunch backdrop to a well thought-out character background. As long as the average village isn't going to start a pitchfork mob on sight, have at it. So the character in my campaign who has shadow-fey ancestry, sure she can be "Feyborn", without giant pointed ears or antlers, just a hint of "fey" features. I particularly liked the spin NeoTiamat and DocBeard put on a Lamordian Warforged in the Eye of Anubis campaign. A human/flesh-golemy sort of guy, patched together with wires inside, if I recall correctly, but not obvious on sight. (In fact, I had no idea what he really was until deep into the campaign). In 5e, maybe he'd be one of these Reborn.

Some people do like playing the weird stuff, even in Ravenloft. (I'm making my way through the Tales from the Mists campaign podcast, and they have 2 visibly obvious teiflings in Ravenloft, and they make it work well.) It's not my bag, but I understand the appeal. I did play an LG goblin wererat in a non-RL campaign once, and he was a lot of fun. If I had tieflings in my campaign, I'd rather they keep their horns and hooves hidden if they have them, but with the right backstory, I'd allow it. (I mean, the GC's children mostly get by, so why not someone with even smaller amounts of fiend-blood....)

I went a bit easy on dwarves in my 3Egame here, with the assumption they were semi-accepted in Richemulot so long as they kept to their own kind 'off-hours' and did the dirty work in the cesspits and sewers.
Elves were less accepted, as they seemed like strange fairy creatures and did not serve a function for the burghers or the aristocrats.

I always thought the elves of Sithicus as cool. Not as PCs, but as wilderness traps.

They herd travellers away from their villages through animal manipulation and various fear tactics as a general rule; if they have a grudging respect they'll "lead" travellers to shelter, sustenance, and to easy paths through their realm (and away from their homes); if they view said travellers as a threat they'll do the opposite and wear them down by passive-aggressively bleeding them of their resources, leading them into traps, nasty critters and monsters, possibly even slitting their throats while they sleep if they're really offended.

Heard only when they want to be heard, and very rarely seen...unless dire circumstances (the DM) dictates first contact. Even then it may be just one figure wearing gear built from the forest itself and standing at a safe distance, ready to give the signal to unleash a deathcloud of arrows.

That's just me though. I've never taken my PCs to Sithicus. The greater bulk of their time was spent behind enemy lines, in Darkon, dealing with the machinations of the Kargat as they attempted to identify and eliminate high value targets for their Falkovnian masters.

My next Ravenloft campaign will be 2E and feature a lot of differences from what I have run before, likely including some differences to the playable race line-up.

My most recent one shot had an Horse-headed Caliban, a Dhampyr, a Gnome, an Halfling and 2 Humans.

Mistmaster wrote:My most recent one shot had an Horse-headed Caliban, a Dhampyr, a Gnome, an Halfling and 2 Humans.

I assume this was in your Mistlands campaign setting.

Yes, it was set in Tepest.