Café de Nuit

In my campaign, I used "modified" ettercaps, making them less "obese" and more...
errr...
"skinny". ^_^
A bit like these:
(yes, I really like the LoK saga)
They were, in the game, "sons" of the Darklord of a "travelling" spiders-based domain.

Then I used a behir in Markovia (I'm currently playtesting my big adventure set in Markovia after the events of Neither man nor beast ^_^) as one of Markov "stitching" experiments...
Then I had the PCs meet some carrion crawlers in the sewers of Port-au-Lucine...
Uhhh... Let me think...
Then, in Lac Cahagnet, in Dementlieu, I put none other than the Deep Ones.
I even put a KAORTI (from the Fiend Folio) in Markovia, as one of the main NPCs.

As long as every monster you use is kept "gothic", I don't see any problems...

The only troubles coud come from the aforemntioned giants, and dragons too, I think.

Was there REALLY a tarrasque in Ravenloft?
WHERE?

Jakob wrote:Was there REALLY a tarrasque in Ravenloft?
WHERE?

*lol* We don't know. It was a hint from the Black Box, which got no echo since then.

Joël

It was the Beast of the Swamp adventure hook in the old black box. it was never specified where that swamp would be, though.

Joël of the Fraternity wrote:When reading books and stuff from the good old days, I'm always surprised to find here and there a monster that we do not generally associate with Ravenloft.
Do you know of other examples?

Hmm, let's see... (since I had the day off for President's Day and am avoiding the house chores my wife wants me to do, and I did get the taxes done already)
From the Black & Red Boxes
Driders and Ettercaps in Arak (Black box)
Griffons and Hippogriffs in Darkon and Falkovnia
Kobolds in Kartakass and G'Henna
Hobgoblins, norkers, and pegasi as random encounters
Jermlaine just about anywhere
Anything at all can go in Vechor
From Light in the Belfrey, Hook Horrors
From I6, mini red dragons and rust monsters
From I10, orcs, ogres, stirges, giant toad, owlbear, peryton, black dragon, displacer beast, drelb
From Feast of Goblyns, bulette, ankheg, and giants(!)
From Ship of Horror, giant starfish, vodyanoi, (and don't get me started on 'skeletal sharks!)
From Night of the Walking Dead, giant frogs
From From the Shadows, Beholders
From Root of Evil, morkoths
From Thoughts of Darkness, duergar, Drow, and Stone Giants
From Black Roses, ogre, draconians, blue dragon
From Circle of Darkness, catoblepas, kobolds, osquip
From (the best forgotten) Forgotten Terror, orc, gnoll, minotaur, bugbear, lizard king, xorn, ogre, umber hulk, galeb duhr, red dragon, eye of the deep
From Die Vecna Die, ogre, killer mimic
From Shadow Rift, avanc
From the Van Richten's Guides, ancient dead minotaur, lycanthopic trolls
From the Monstrous compendium III, feathered serpents, drow liches and drow vampires
From the Requiem, half-orcs

I didn't look through the novels or the magazine adventures yet, I stopped when Fear Factor/Las Vegas came on.

Re: Giants
These aren't really all that difficult to gothic up. Truthfully, it's already been done for us. George Lucas did it for us in (oddly enough) the first five minutes of his first Ewok Adventure movie. There were two parents outside their grounded ship calling out into the forest at night for their children. The tall trees were covered in a dense fog and a terrible roar erupts from them coupled with the sounds of undergrowth being crushed and the loud impact tremors which were so disturbing in 'Jurrassic Park'. Suddenly the fog parts and huge hairy monstrosity crashes through carrying a huge two-edged stone axe. Replace the ship with a vardo or a standard peasant dwelling and we have a perfect scene for Ravenloft. See?

That's more horror than gothic. There's very little that is subtle about 30ft tall giants crashing through some trees. It's scary but not quite the right type of scary. Scary like Giger's Alien or the shark from Jaws. Just this big, not completely visible monster.

Speaking of giants in Ravenloft--how about the Wendigo from "Pet Sematary"?

Joel, your comment about "Even a T. Rex would fit in Ravenloft with a good backstory" reminds me of one of the coolest movies I ever saw (at least, at the time--I was six or seven). It was an old black-and-white film set in Mexico, and somehow the local people found or revived an allosaurus, which, of course, was not a very smart thing to do...

They ended up trapping it in a cathedral and burning the cathedral around it to kill it. Great scene.

But I think that would be much cooler in a Masque of the Red Death campaign.

Actually, "The Castle of Otranto" (sp?), one of the seminal works of gothic fiction, featured a ghost that grew larger and larger for every year that his murder had not been avenged. The suspense built over time, as bits and pieces of the ghostly knight's armor -- all preposterously oversized -- kept being found in and around the castle.

Imagine a curse that makes the cursed person's body grow to immense proportions, little by little. At first, the bullying villain who's been cursed this way (probably by Vistani) would revel in his increasing strength, only to end up branded a monster and driven away when his size became too abnormal. Perhaps his bodily growth is accompanied by a decline in his intellect, essentially transforming him into a hill giant ... or perhaps the nature of his crime (killing innocents with a shock weapon?) causes him to develop a supernatural affinity for lightning (ever sicced a *storm* giant on your PCs?).

There is a giant in Ravenloft, the onme from Spectre of the Black Rose, I just can't remember his name and I'm too lazy to reach up two feet to my copy of Heroes of Light (my copy of Spectre was lost in the recent floods to my city).

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:There is a giant in Ravenloft, the one from Spectre of the Black Rose.

That's the stone giant Nabon, former elevator operator of the Veidrava mines, now a member of the Wanderers after being healed by the Bloody Cobbler.

IMO, fantasy creatures do have a place in the mists. In my notebooks I have several ideas for using them. A wyvern in Barovia (sort of inspired by the CG movie in the Iron and Blood game for PS1), a deepspawn in the caverns beneath Kartakass, and a gorgon called the Iron Bull in Hazlan. And though I haven't written anything down for it yet, I had a plan to place a dragon in Nidalia as well.

I tend to keep fantastic creatures fairly rare, but I think they do help add some spice to a campaign. When I do use them, it is usually for a one-shot adventure, or a side-trek to the main campaign, as some of them can be a little difficult to build a long campaign around.

As others have said, it all really depends upon how you present the creature. I have had a dragon in my games .. a dark, molevolent and all consuming presence in an untamed woodland. A creature fealt, rather than seen ... the beat of its wings occasionally causing sudden, reaking drafts and a sound like brooding thunder. I never let the party see the thing in its entirety, but it was most certainly a dragon.

I've also had a medusa, its home littered with weathered statues, corrosion leaving long tear motes in the fading likenesses.

Though some of these beasts may not seem appropriate for a gothic game ... one has to remember that Ravenloft is a Fantasy Gothic Horror setting ... so the fantasy will, and should, slip in from time to time.

You know, your experience with the dragon puts me in mind of "Children of the Corn". The malign entity, "He who walks behind the rows" was depicted as a dragon - and though it was never seen, its presense was distinctly felt.