Café de Nuit

Luckily I'd been playing with my group for a while. However I was only a player and never a DM. Later I asked if they'd be interested in a Ravenloft game and surprisingly they were all to eagre to agree.

I think its because I said I would be aiming for some high role play with some angst, fear, love, and a whole range of other emotions that would be explored. That appealed to them, for something darker and more human.

The first part went really well -their only complaint was they couldn't play it for longer each session due to other's work comittments. Now I'm writing the next part which is taking longer than I would have hoped due to my current status of being employed.

Overall I suppose you have to compromise in these situations. Ask the players what they want and then try to add a Ravenloft spin on it. Sometimes even that won't work and you'll just have to look for other people.

Well I got a new one for this. One of the potential players was spouting off claims of an interview where Gary Gygax said he didn't like Ravenloft because "it was too deadly." Then he asked me to run a setting with a lower mortality rate, "like Darksun."

Scipio wrote:Well I got a new one for this. One of the potential players was spouting off claims of an interview where Gary Gygax said he didn't like Ravenloft because "it was too deadly." Then he asked me to run a setting with a lower mortality rate, "like Darksun."

Why, oh why do we all come across such wackos on our way to find good players?

Yeah, now he's saying he'll play ravenloft as long as I let him play a Mule monk. The problem is that its impossible to bring mules over to 3e without them being a moderately high ECL race.

There's no room for power gamers in Ravenloft.

It's not about the power, it's about the RP

That's what I told him, he wants the mule character for the roleplay aspects but the mechanics would be insane for it.

Adding characters with ECL is insane in Ravenloft. Unless you can come up with a sensible achillies heal, that character sounds totally inappropriate. Monks are all about combat in the end, and resisting diseases and poison and such. I don't personally feel they have much of a place in Ravenloft's atmosphere (except maybe in Rokushima Taiyoo or similar islands or clusters).

I'd suggest giving them an ultimatum of playing someone more sensible, or find someone else to play. You're the DM after all.

Oh, I don't think it'll work with that player. When I said I wasn't interested in playing a Rokugan game (the player knows im not really into oriental settings) he called me a gaming bigot and decided not to join my game.

Ah. The old, "Ravenloft is icky" problem.

Yes, Ravenloft certainly does suffer from a bad rep. It's something that Ravenloft fans will have to deal with. Whenever I go to a convention and mention Ravenloft, people always wince at me, or make faces. "Oh. That's the campaign where you get screwed, right?"

What I usually do when I start running Ravenloft for someone is to being by telling them what Ravenloft is not:

-Ravenloft is not a game where the DM screws the players.
-Ravenloft is not a game where you are constantly overpowered.
-Ravenloft is not necessarily low-magic item setting.
-Ravenloft is not a deadly game.

I usually explain Ravenloft as a campaign placed in a superstitious Eastern European setting. In Ravenloft, magic means something. People are awed at spells and magic. So, no, the bank doesn't have glyphs on the doors, and there aren't continual lights in the street lamps.

Being a demihuman means something. In other settings, being an elf is being a human with pointy ears who likes trees. In Ravenloft, you feel the consequences of being an elf all the time.

In many ways, Ravenloft is like the first fantasy novel you ever read, when being an elf was something exotic, where magic had mystery behind it...and where the villains gave you nightmares when you went to bed.

About the mul monk...what I always, always do before designing a campaign is set down guidelines as to what people can play. The last game I played, the PCs had to be members of a Barovian noble family that was fading from the scene. In my upcoming campaign, everyone will have to play a spellcasting student who attends the Institute of Brautslava. Now, I always tell my players...if you want to play something weird, fine. But you have to justify it somehow. This policy seems to work.

It also gives you an out so that you can disapprove characters. For example, if someone came to the table wanting to play a drow weapons master, I would simply say, "That's cool, as long as you can explain how he got into Ravenloft, and why he's at the Brautslava Institute. By the way, don't forget that anyone staying in Darkon for a few months beings to believe they are from there."

If the player protests, then I simply explain: "Look, the campaign is going to be about solving mysteries, and exploring forbidden lore. How is your character going to fit into that kind of storyline?"

This does not limit character selection. For example, in the old campaign, I had someone play a half-demon, and he justified it very well. He actually didn't even over-power his character. It was pretty cool.

Really, the attitude most people have against roleplayers and Ravenloftlers especially, is absolutely annoying.

Set aside that *popper* players tend to come up with things like *...so after starting RL, when did you begin to worship satan?* and that every wanna-be gothic ennerves you why you don't allow him/her to join your group with his CE Lvl 14 *Kindfresser* Gangrel character, most players expect you to do all their work.
Hell, if someone wants to play a character IMC for which I don't have the data or whom I judge innapropiate for the setting, he has to do the *fleshing out* himself.
If he's a long time veteran of my GG, I'd consider helping him, but never, if he's a n00b and shows arrogant behaviour.
Players should never consider it a favour to the DM that they play in his campaign.

Besides, but this is my personal opinion like everything else, I'd not play RL with WoD players. As far as I experienced they don't really get the idea of a *good or neutral* character... *You'll see soon*

Well, an Athasian mul isn't THAT bad...He could ask for a...THRI-KREEN barbarian!!! (it happened to me some time ago )

Go to http://www.athas.org for a 3.5 version of muls.

Also, a Rloft site I can't recall right now had a very interesting article on how npc's react to different races, and it included muls. Hope this helps.

Oh I agree about how he could try for Thri-kreen. In fact I shot down that option without even letting him try to explain how it would fit.

Ultramyth wrote:I'd suggest giving them an ultimatum of playing someone more sensible, or find someone else to play. You're the DM after all.

In my experience, ultimatums just don't work, from a player or from a DM. One of the main reasons to play (and to DM) is because it's fun. If you're at the point of giving ultimatums to each other, it's probably a lost cause anyway.

"Gaming bigot"... *shakes head* oookay, moving on...

Couple of options:

#1: You go with the suggestion about allowing the mul (or whatever exotic thing the player wants to run as a PC) as long as the player can reasonably justify how the PC got into Ravenloft (if not a native) and if it adds something to the campaign. If one player is running a 1st-level fighter, maybe all you need to know is that the guy's a Talon deserter on the run from Drakov and won't put one toe over the line into Falkovnia for fear of getting it chopped off. If another player wants to run a half-dragon or something (one of the more interesting half-breeds I've heard of actually working in Ravenloft was a half-shadow dragon/half-drow... one of Ebb's cousins or somesuch), a little more background is necessary.

#2: Allow the quote-unquote "overpowered" character in, but (and this is a little heavy-handed) privately rule that he/she has failed a few horror or madness checks. The mul can take insane amounts of damage... provided he isn't hallucinating the entire battle. He's amazingly strong... provided he isn't curled up in a corner in the fetal position, weeping his lashless eyes out. This can give the player an opportunity to develop his or her roleplaying skills, while at the same time "hamstringing" the munchkin character so it doesn't unbalance the rest of the game.

If you make option #2 interesting enough, the player might stick around just to see what happens.

I'll allow the Mul, more than likely, but he has yet to justify it.

Well, we have a reason for a Mul in Ravenloft. His backstory is that his character was actually in Kalidnay when it was brought from Athas. I'd say that counts as justification for an Athasian race lol.