RAVENLOFT IS BACK.

[Joël of the FoS]

To be fair to the EtCR Strahd he's never described with a blue jacket and long Lestat hair. That was the artist going with the Dragon cover of a couple years earlier, which was just someone working for hire likely with little reference. Neither artist likely was told what Strahd HAD to look like and neither was likely to buy a 20 buck campaign setting from eBay to make their monthly money.
Look at the cover where they obviously did a homage to the original which is much, much closer.

And to be fair, it should also be said the the EtCR writers also prefered the cover version of Strahd.

Joël

[HuManBing]

I remember when the cover of EtCR was previewed. People were looking at that and saying "Ugh. That's not Strahd. It's just some old geezer in a suit."

...

Then we saw the fey elf frilly pirate lord who prances around having "low level encounters" around Lake Baratok.

And suddenly the toothless old geezer on the cover didn't look so bad after all.

[Dimitri Mazieres]

I really liked this post at ENWorld. Specially this part:

Sure, but 4e in particular has a few weirdnesses that are going to make it more difficult.

For one, tieflings.

"Hey, what's with the horns? You a goat-man or summat?"
"My ancestors swore an unholy pact with Asmodeus for power, and --"
LYNCHMOB'D!

For two, eladrin.

"Hey, I closed the door! How'd you get in!"
"You see, I can cross between worlds for a moment, so mortal walls are no barrier to my --"
LYNCHMOB'D!

For three, warlocks.

"Sir, how did you slay that monster?"
"I sold my soul to unspeakable otherworldly forces for the power to fart magic!"
LYNCHMOB'D!

For four, dragonborn.

"OH SWEET JESUS IT BREATHES FIRE AND WALKS AS A MAN! STAB IT! STAB IT NOW!"

Who doesn't feel the urge to play a magic-farting dragonborn warlock after that?

[Pamela]

Who doesn't feel the urge to play a magic-farting dragonborn warlock after that?

Exactly how many races besides humans are well accepted throughout the Core, clusters and islands?

Oh yeah, none.

Warlocks are not any different/scarier than the game's Fraternity of Shadows, who have certainly sold their souls to something/one, if you read the descriptions of Balfour and the other Umbra.

Ravenloft is a xenophobic, low-magic setting yet it hasn't stopped people from playing non-humans or spellcasters in the past. Nor should it.

[Lord Soth]

Yeah, you already had Wizards getting lynched. Can't imagine the peasants in Ravenloft are very adept at telling the differences between a Wizard and a Warlock. And even if they could tell the difference... don't think they'd care.

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

While I'm *hoping* they asked around the office and got the resident Ravenloft fan to design the new domain (or make their homebrew canon) I'm not holding my breath for quality, although I'm praying my free subscription to Dragon lasts until the end of October....

Because it was such a popular move when an author did that last time...

[Rotipher of the FoS]

While I'm *hoping* they asked around the office and got the resident Ravenloft fan to design the new domain (or make their homebrew canon) I'm not holding my breath for quality, although I'm praying my free subscription to Dragon lasts until the end of October....

Because it was such a popular move when an author did that last time...

Well, Ravenloft rolled a critical miss in that particular case of homebrew-incorporation. But, to be fair, it's not always a disaster: the Realms, the geography of the Known World, and the divine pantheon of Dragonlance all came straight out of peoples' home campaigns. At least if a domain had been used in somebody's Ravenloft game, we know it's been playtested and that the writer isn't 100% clueless about the setting.

[Dimitri Mazieres]

Exactly how many races besides humans are well accepted throughout the Core, clusters and islands?

Oh yeah, none.

Well, Darkon is pretty accepting of demihumans (by Ravenloft's standards), and you might avoid (excessively) distrusting glances as an elf in Sithicus (unless you come by those little halflings with particular culinary tastes).

Warlocks are not any different/scarier than the game's Fraternity of Shadows, who have certainly sold their souls to something/one, if you read the descriptions of Balfour and the other Umbra.

Ravenloft is a xenophobic, low-magic setting yet it hasn't stopped people from playing non-humans or spellcasters in the past. Nor should it.

Point taken. I agree that warlocks are as playable as any other arcane class. And eladrins should face the same challenges as your standard elf.

My main concern is with the less than subtle races. Calibans were an elegant solution for incorporating a race with similar mechanics as the half-orc, but the current edition's tieflings and dragonborn, while appropriate for a high fantasy or sword and sorcery campaign setting, pose quite a challenge when it comes to fitting in Ravenloft.
I mean, I can see a few individual tieflings' physical characteristics justified as the consequences of dealing with outsider entities or failed powers checks, but it becomes significantly more difficult to do so with a whole race of them.
Even more so regarding dragonborn. And the mongrel-man trick has already been used...

Of course individual tastes may vary, and you may argue that it could be as feasible to incorporate drows, githyankis, muls, half-giants or thri-kreen, but that doesn't mean they would mesh well with what has come to be Ravenloft's standard flavor (if there's such thing).

Jus my two cents.

[High Priest Mikhal]

(unless you come by those little halflings with particular culinary tastes)

Afflicted kender (usually) aren't cannibals. They're murderous, hateful, xenophobic monsters that will cut your head off and stick it on a pike and use your corpse for target practice, but I never heard a thing about them being cannibals. Unless you count kender vampires. Athasian halflings are cannibals, but that's another domain entirely.

[Dimitri Mazieres]

(unless you come by those little halflings with particular culinary tastes)

Afflicted kender (usually) aren't cannibals. They're murderous, hateful, xenophobic monsters that will cut your head off and stick it on a pike and use your corpse for target practice, but I never heard a thing about them being cannibals. Unless you count kender vampires. Athasian halflings are cannibals, but that's another domain entirely.

You're right. It's been a while since I read through my Ravenloft books, and it seems that my memory is failing me.
My most sincere apologies to Sithicus' kenders for my unintentional slander.
I shall make haste to send them a gift of new spikes with which to maintain their quaint style of border fences.

[Igor the Henchman]

I really liked this post at ENWorld. Specially this part:

Sure, but 4e in particular has a few weirdnesses that are going to make it more difficult.

For one, tieflings.

"Hey, what's with the horns? You a goat-man or summat?"
"My ancestors swore an unholy pact with Asmodeus for power, and --"
LYNCHMOB'D!

For two, eladrin.

"Hey, I closed the door! How'd you get in!"
"You see, I can cross between worlds for a moment, so mortal walls are no barrier to my --"
LYNCHMOB'D!

For three, warlocks.

"Sir, how did you slay that monster?"
"I sold my soul to unspeakable otherworldly forces for the power to fart magic!"
LYNCHMOB'D!

For four, dragonborn.

"OH SWEET JESUS IT BREATHES FIRE AND WALKS AS A MAN! STAB IT! STAB IT NOW!"

Who doesn't feel the urge to play a magic-farting dragonborn warlock after that?

*raises finger timidly*

...y'know, that issue might be examined as one single flaw related to the setting, rather than four flaws related to the game system.

It could be that tieflings, dragonborn, eladrin and warlocks might fit Ravenloft fine if people actually tried including them.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Blasphemy!

Seriously though, tieflings and draconians really blow the mood for gothic horror.
That's not to say that people can't or shouldn't play with what races they want, but it should really really really be kept the exception and not the rule in a setting like the demiplane of dread.

[Amicus]

Oh nonsense, there must be dozens of dragonborn-type creatures found in classic Gothic horror. I think we all recall with fondness Bram Stoker's popular sequel to Lair of the White Worm: the classic Son of the White Worm, in which young Nathaniel White-Worm discovers the dark secret of his parentage and the origin of his unfortunate skin condition.

Then there was the famous Frankenstein 2: Gator Bait, in which the Creature's attempt to build itself a mate using the corpse of a New Orleans prostitute and the skin of a dead alligator goes hideously awry.

And of course who can forget Robert Louis Stevenson's immortal cautionary tale, Dr. Gecko and Mr. Hyde.

[Isabella]

And here I was thinking of the Rainbow Serpent twining about his trees in his garden of nightmares, alligator men plaguing the swamps, abominations lurking in the sewers, and twisted gargoyles haunting abandoned cathedrals.
Conceptually, how is that worse than a fish man?

As for tieflings, even if they don't fit in to horror, there's enough fiends in Ravenloft it'd be stranger to leave them out. >.>

[Creepy Old Woman]

"Gothic horror" is the albatross around Ravenloft's figurative neck. Even the official designers didn't consider the Gothic aspects of their adventure modules when they came up with Falkovnia (military/tyranny), Saragoss (look, A SHARK!), Vebrek (dog eats dog), Odaire (Pinocchio gone wild), Wildlands (crocodiles, monkeys, and dogs, oh my!) et cetera. Let's not forget Bluetspur, the big giant middle tentacle to the concept of Gothic horror.

I personally would embrace a wider concept of horror when it comes Ravenloft, since the designers were iffy on the whole Ravenloft=Gothic concept themselves.