Ravenloft is the 2011 Campaign Setting

[Jester of the FoS]

Forgotten Realms...I never liked the setting but I felt the 4th edition version butchered it.

As I said, I get why. FR has always been problematic for the amount of novels and background the world had, so it was had to set something new in the world while sticking to canon, especially if your players were fans. And there were so many high-level NPCs and big groups that seemed to be everywhere and influencing everything. Plus, there were a heck of alot of very similar nations with overlapping hooks.
A time jump puts everyone on equal footing for content and removes the human NPCs.

Dark Sun, well it's not a matter of like or dislike. I'm just pointing out that retconning all the way to the original boxed set is rather extreme, and it's not unreasonable to think they may do the same thing to Ravenloft. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of taste, of course. I've never been a fan of huge retcons, personally.

They didn't really retcon, which implies a change or erasing of canon and content. They just set the game in what they felt was the most "open" period before metaplot changed the world in a way many groups probably didn't like.
It'd be like if they set Ravenloft 2011 at the same period as the Red Box. They wouldn't be saying Requiem and the 3e line didn't happen, just it hadn't happened yet and you could play through or make your own future.
Other than that they were fairly consistent with Dark Sun, keeping the metal and armor restrictions and defiling and not permitting divine classes (mostly). They were really lovingly accurate with the world.

[Starglyte]

What they have done with Dark Sun 4th edition makes me believe that they can do the classic settings right. The question I am asking, is what is more important, the actual setting of Ravenloft( the domains, the way the mists act, the Dark Powers, etc.) or the themes of Gothic/Fantasy Horror that Ravenloft embodied? Should they take Ravenloft and shoe horn it in for 4th edition ( which is not automatically a bad thing), or should they take the approach on how they can do Gothic Horror with the 4th ruleset and proceed from there?

[DilisnyaRevenge]

I'm with the wait until we see it crowd. I'm sure I'll buy it and use what I can and ignore what I don't like. Yes, in a perfect world I'm sure what most of us want is to magically go back in time and have the Kargatane finish the Gaz series and then we could all cry at the beautiful double rainbow across the sky, but it ain't gonna happen. Let's just be glad they are giving the setting some love and leave it at that.

[ewancummins]

I'm with the wait until we see it crowd. I'm sure I'll buy it and use what I can and ignore what I don't like. Yes, in a perfect world I'm sure what most of us want is to magically go back in time and have the Kargatane finish the Gaz series and then we could all cry at the beautiful double rainbow across the sky, but it ain't gonna happen. Let's just be glad they are giving the setting some love and leave it at that.

Well, you could always go and finish the Gaz series yourself. Isn't that what the Frat netbooks have been doing?

[DilisnyaRevenge]

I'm with the wait until we see it crowd. I'm sure I'll buy it and use what I can and ignore what I don't like. Yes, in a perfect world I'm sure what most of us want is to magically go back in time and have the Kargatane finish the Gaz series and then we could all cry at the beautiful double rainbow across the sky, but it ain't gonna happen. Let's just be glad they are giving the setting some love and leave it at that.

Well, you could always go and finish the Gaz series yourself. Isn't that what the Frat netbooks have been doing?

There's a thought...

[ewancummins]

[quote="ewancummins

There's a thought...

Yup. At this point, I'm more impressed with a lot of the fanmade materials than any 'official' that's come from Hasbro. That's true for fanmade AD&D, 3E, Pathfinder, 4E etc stuff for Ravenloft.

[Deewun]

Wow, this tickles me in all the right ways ... and all the wrong ways. An update is exciting. More info is exciting. More attention is exciting. Other than the first Dragon Magazine Domain they made (really, a tiefling with her ghoul lover melded to her back ... yeah, no) I've liked everything Ravenloft they've put out ...

But 4e is not a system built well to do Ravenloft, at least how I've always played it. Intrigue, mystery, exploration ... these things are all just sidenotes to 4e, which as a system is combat combat combat. So I'm a bit worried on that front.

The Dark Sun revision is perfect, because as a setting, Dark Sun makes SENSE for a game world built around combat. Ravenloft ... I'm worried. But hopeful.

I haven't written anything off yet. I look forward to more info, that's for certain.

[brass]

Though intial reports from Darksun have been good, giving me some hope for Ravenloft. I understand what people say when they talk about 4e as a combat heavy game. It doesn't have to be but all characters are equally equiped to prod buttock so the temptation is there.

I'll read the setting when it's out for the fluff (as long as it's not castlevania or twilight-loft), but my money is firmly with Paizo as a publisher. In fact coming round the corner is one of their adventure paths, Carrion Crown, set in Ustalav (their Barovia like set of states) and the first book of their fiction line appears to be based there. (but there again I'm becoming too much a Paizo fanboy)

[Mortavius]

I think it's worth mentioning too, that what they did with Dark Sun 4E is different than what people are worried about with Ravenloft.

It's true, they did present Dark Sun 4E in an earlier time; but having looked over the original and the newer version of the setting, I can say...not a lot changed. Now, don't get me wrong, they added new races, and advanced some things here and there, but I would actually say that more changed in the Grand Conjunction in Ravenloft, then changed between the original Dark Sun release and the re-release.

And just to throw my two cents in; I predict that they will not go back to a Black Box version of Ravenloft. I love the setting as much as the next guy, but the Grand Conjunction fixed a lot of problems with the original set, IMO. And I mean problems like basic geography and such; making the world as a whole feel a bit more "believable."

[Jester of the FoS]

Being in a box and a stand-alone game could be a good thing or a bad thing.
They could be releasing the game as a stand-alone product to remove some of the action hero elements from PCs and add a touch more "vulnerable everyman" to characters. The game could be separate because they want simpler characters and to provide PC options unrelated to the base game, and archetypes more common horror games. After all, Mike Mearls was the author responsible for Fantasy Flight Games product Darkness & Dread, which shares alot of similarities with the Ravenloft philosophy. The yet unrevealed physical product could be a Tarokka deck, with rules for fortune telling or perhaps character creation via cards. The hinted rules for playing vampires and werewolves might be the result of Powers Checks, with avoiding corruption and evil being part of the game so alignment has consequence.

Or

It could be a game with PC vampires and werewolves, rampant corruption and taint rules akin to the Heroes of Horror supplement. With the same grasp of gothic horror as the 3e Castle Ravenloft book that seemed to think demons, devils, and rampant use of aberrations fit the mood of the castle.

[Dimitri Mazieres]

And just to throw my two cents in; I predict that they will not go back to a Black Box version of Ravenloft. I love the setting as much as the next guy, but the Grand Conjunction fixed a lot of problems with the original set, IMO. And I mean problems like basic geography and such; making the world as a whole feel a bit more "believable."

Plus, the Shadow Rift is too cool to get rid of, even more so after the accessory that detailed it

[Le Noir Faineant]

I am fairly confident Wizbro will do a good job with RL - except maybe the fact that they will adjust it to become their *universal* horror & undead setting, as hinted.

The reason is fairly simple - they want to cash in on older fans, or they would have created something entirely new. So, what's the odds that the authors are consciously trying to annoy us?

[Mortavius]

I seriously doubt that they're consciously trying to annoy us. BUT, the people who worked on Ravenloft back in the day are gone now. The people working on the new setting may very well have a different vision for it than the fans here may have. Hell, we have shown many times that we all have different ideas of how Ravenloft is; I've seen so many different takes on so many aspects of Ravenloft around here that it's not wonder that the iterations of the setting have so many fans and detractors.

One thing I keep in mind, is that although I love the setting, it wasn't doing something right. Case in point, it was discontinued. It wasn't selling enough. If it had been, it wouldn't have been put aside. Now, maybe there's nothing that can be done about that; maybe Ravenloft is and always will be a niche market, and that would require a dedicated company to keep it alive in the face of small profits. And as far as I know, companies don't get big and stay big by following such business plans. So I don't blame them. But if they change the new setting to draw in a bigger audience, I might not like it (depending on the changes), but I'll certainly understand why and won't blame them for trying.

[HuManBing]

I would be interested in seeing how well horror-style games in general are selling these days. I think World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu are both well above the break-even point, although they probably owe some of that to the squee demographic currently jumping on the Twilight bandwagon. Even absent that, I would suspect they have a decent enough market support. Nowhere near the generic fantasy or sci-fi role play, but enough to survive and then some.

d20's game system, which was established to facilitate heroic fantasy role playing, struck me as poorly reconciled to the needs of horror gaming. This is something that's systemic, not substantive. So Ravenloft specifically may be a less-favored campaign setting in DnD terms, but it's simply because it's tied to a less-favored system.

I'm active on the GURPS forums, and GURPS is updating the various sourcebooks from 3rd ed. to 4th ed. rules. GURPS Horror is one of the most hotly-anticipated updates, to judge by the vocal groups on the forums.

There's life in the genre yet but it's best to find a suitable vessel for it before you send it tottering off the operating table.

[Le Noir Faineant]

The point is, RL was initially conceived as a crossover point, like later SJ and PS.

To make it a setting on its own, was TSR's poor response to feed the needs for a full-fledged horror setting.

Ravenloft done PROPERLY, with a consistent backstory, and a less artificial look would have been one of the very best settings ever made.

The way it was done, it is suprising that so good stuff was created on the base of such a rather confuse base.

And I say that as one of the friends and lovers of the setting. Imagine how others talk about it.