What Everybody Knows

[The Wolfman]

Hi! This is my first post here (although I've been lurking for a long time).

I'm (slowly) working on a campaign--nothing solid yet--but I want to make some blue sheets for my players; only one of them knows anything about Ravenloft, and he only knows from the original Black Box and from what I've told him. But I'm not sure, exactly, what the players (who would be playing natives) would know.

Some of the source books seem to suggest that nobody really knows anything much about the nasties that lurk in the dark--Van Richten thought, at first, that lycanthropes were just a metaphor, and Illhousen ( just finally read the Nightmare Lands books) apparently thought vampires were just a myth. But other books seem to say that everybody knows at least a little bit (OK, maybe not everybody, but it certainly seems that way). I half expected S. to start including the genus and species names of each monster she named. And in other cases, it seems that regular people, not scholars, know stuff as well.

So, anyway, what would you think a regular, beginning adventurer-type might know about about the world, the mutability of the land, the monsters, the darklords (in the sense of being connected to their domains, as opposed to just being rulers), and so on.

Thanks!

[Ail]

Hi! This is my first post here (although I've been lurking for a long time).

I'm (slowly) working on a campaign--nothing solid yet--but I want to make some blue sheets for my players; only one of them knows anything about Ravenloft, and he only knows from the original Black Box and from what I've told him. But I'm not sure, exactly, what the players (who would be playing natives) would know.

Some of the source books seem to suggest that nobody really knows anything much about the nasties that lurk in the dark--Van Richten thought, at first, that lycanthropes were just a metaphor, and Illhousen ( just finally read the Nightmare Lands books) apparently thought vampires were just a myth. But other books seem to say that everybody knows at least a little bit (OK, maybe not everybody, but it certainly seems that way). I half expected S. to start including the genus and species names of each monster she named. And in other cases, it seems that regular people, not scholars, know stuff as well.

So, anyway, what would you think a regular, beginning adventurer-type might know about about the world, the mutability of the land, the monsters, the darklords (in the sense of being connected to their domains, as opposed to just being rulers), and so on.

Thanks!

You've just hit on a paradox I have found before. After all, judging from all the horror movies we've seen since the 60s onwards, the local peasants always know that something very EVIL is going on at the nearest castle. Sometimes, they know outright that it is a vampire and, at any rate, they do know what a vampire is and that lycanthropes are men that turn to beasts.

What you can say is that for more cultured city people this is merely folk lore, untrue legends. The problem with Ravenloft and these Gothic movies is that generaly the non-believers are civilized people from the 19th century coming from abroad, that is, Londoners for instance who are suddnely sent to rural Austria or snow-covered Russia or distanc backward Romenia. They are confronted with other lands, other cultures where these myths may well be true --- and the locals KNOW they are true because they suffer from it.

But in RL, you are playing natives, and most of the time the PCs will be coming from those very rural areas where myths are true.
On the other hand, they could come from Dementlieu or Mordentshire, where nothing stranger than a ghost is accepted to be true, and be suddenly facing things that they'd scoff at in their homeland.... safe that they are somewhere else.

So, what do I want to say? It really depends on the background of your PCs (or as a matter of fact, any character, playing or not, that you make for your story): they should know a lot about the prevalent monsters in their area. For example, I find it highly unlikely (though this has been stated in official books) that everyone outside Barovia knows Strahd is a vampire but the folks living in that village or country do not. For me, it's just the other way around.

But still, people living steadily in Krezk or Zeidenburg, big cities with an absorbing life (trading, cultural or whatever) who never go to the woods and live far away enough from Castle Ravenloft, may not believe in Werewolves or vampires.... though they will certainly have heard tales about them.

This was the approach I followed with my players: I gave them a list of things they knew about their domain and one or true generalities about neighbouring domains. They don't know anything about the rest, but I allow them to have some PLAYER's knwoledge about general monsters like Vampires (Garlic, mirrors, stakes) and Were-wolves (silver weapons). Not much else will be true anyway.
Besides, I tell them lies too, without their knowing. Amont the bits of information I gave them, some are simply twisted or outright false. It's up to them to sort it out in the actual adventure.

Most of the folklore has errors, anyway. It is usual in stories for the peasants to take a vampire for a werewolf or any kind of young woman for a sorcerer.

So, what have I told them? Only general things: rivers in Borca are poisoned; Strahd is a cruel necromancer; there are bad things in the night that you don't want to meet at all; the Mists are scary.

I have NOT told them about Darklords and Darklordship, closed borders (but locals living near them will know about those), but they understand them as kind of another natural effect, like an earthwake or so, and not as a darklord's will; the powers of the Mists. My players have been transported by them and have found them very unpleasing, also because one PC fought a bad battle inside them once and was left with 1hp, but they don't know anything concrete. They just have understood that there is fog and then there is bad fog, and they can't quite tell the difference so they fear ALL kinds of fog now

[Jasper]

I take that the morority of elightened peoples in Ravenloft have a sort of "Bigfoot" belief in monsters. They sort of believe that these legendary monsters may be out there and kinda believe the old man with the tale of excaping one by the skin of his teeth and just barely bealive in the scant evidance they exist. However if you come out and say Bob Smith on market street is a werewolf they will laugh you right out of town. Any "evidence" you provide will be explained away scientificly and unless Bob wolfs out on them you have nothing to work with.

Now you say the same thing in a unelightened domain (Darkon, Verbek etc: )
the entire town will burn Bob at the stake with just a word. If they haven't yet seen a undead or a legendary monster they have a uncle or grandmother or cousin who has. Many saw the dead rise during the wars and that changes minds very quicky.

[Nathan of the FoS]

[IMHO]
Let's see. I think everyone would know that the land is mutable--sometimes it just takes longer to get from A to B, back before the Great Upheaval Sithicus was north of us instead of east of us, etc. etc. I would say that no-one except darklords, people (like S.) who could reasonably have learned from darklords, and those who have spent their liftetime in pursuit of arcane knowledge (van Richten, S. again) would know that darklords per se exist at all. I think everyone would know that there are "lands beyond the Mists", although they would probably be sketchily and inaccurately informed about what those lands are like.

In terms of monster lore--the less educated one is, the more likely one is to believe in monsters and to have some idea (not necessarily a correct idea) of how to combat them. More educated people (Drs. van Richten and Illhousen) would be less likely to believe in monsters, but more likely to have accurate information if they did.
[/IMHO]

Anything else?

[Ail]

[IMHO]
Let's see. I think everyone would know that the land is mutable--sometimes it just takes longer to get from A to B, back before the Great Upheaval Sithicus was north of us instead of east of us, etc. etc. I would say that no-one except darklords, people (like S.) who could reasonably have learned from darklords, and those who have spent their liftetime in pursuit of arcane knowledge (van Richten, S. again) would know that darklords per se exist at all. I think everyone would know that there are "lands beyond the Mists", although they would probably be sketchily and inaccurately informed about what those lands are like.

In terms of monster lore--the less educated one is, the more likely one is to believe in monsters and to have some idea (not necessarily a correct idea) of how to combat them. More educated people (Drs. van Richten and Illhousen) would be less likely to believe in monsters, but more likely to have accurate information if they did.
[/IMHO]

Anything else?

I don't necessarily think everybody knows of lands beyond the mists. Take for example someone living in a backward village in an interior domain... once again, Barovia since I have been immersed in it for so long that it is practically the only thing I know. These people have never seen the borders of their own country let alone other lands beyond them. The last time they were alone was perhaps 2 centuries ago. That's a lot of generations and most of them did not have ancestors that roamed away enough to actually have seen Forlorn or Invidia. Tales told may be only tales. After all, a peasant is very pragmatic in his day-to-day life. You have a hard time convincing them that it is the earth that moves around the sun. As a Portuguese writer has put in book form once, in a witty dialogue between two farmers in a tavern about the son of another farmer who has returned from studying in university away in the city:
(something along these lines)
"- to see the sun moving in the sky, I don't need to go to (big city name). You can see it just from here".

And I've heard from real people that lived in villages away in my country that when they were young they thought the world ended after the mountains that surrounded them.

So, I'd have the average inhabitant not knowing much about that.... Even the Great Upheaval is not much believed unless by those that do travel wide.
Now, land being mutable and taking more or less time to reach A from B: that depends on your style. If you want to use that often, then everybody knows about it. If you want to surprise the players with that, perhaps know one does, but if the players protest, have some old character say that he has heard tales of that before...

Ail

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Note that the "believing peasant/doubting scholar" dichotomy isn't totally one-way. For creatures that are highly urbanized and/or associated with the high-CL domains, the respective ignorance and skepticism would probably run the other way: a sophisticate from Dementlieu would know more about, say, red widows than a Barovian shepherd, and an educated Lamordian could posit a more accurate explanation for a mad scientist's monstrous creations than a Valachani ranger could even imagine.

Really, that discrepancy between what the DM and certain darklords know -- that Ravenloft is a construct, that all the monsters are for real, that anything is possible because the DPs can darn well make it so -- and the ignorance which afflicts the realm's inhabitants, is part of what makes this game-setting an heir to the Gothic tradition. From the beginning, Gothic fiction incorporated these issues: initially as a satire of the gullibility of those the Enlightenment had passed by (which is where Lamordia gets its attitude problem from, thematically ), but later as a means of building terror with the implication that the superstitious might (in the context of the novel) actually have been right (! !), all along. It's not unlike how H.P. Lovecraft scared people with the notion the universe was both indifferent to humanity and too weird for human minds to handle if they saw it clearly ... or how contemporary writers like Stephen King, Clive Barker, and the better class of horror-filmmakers freak people out, by turning suburbia into a place where the impossible becomes suddenly, shockingly real.

Thinking you already know how the world works, and then finding out that you're totally, dangerously wrong, can be scarier than any monster. So by all means, if you want to play into that, keep the average character ignorant of the dark things around them -- either misled by folklore that's potentially mistaken, or willfully blind to reality -- right up until something pounces on them or their loved ones. Only then will they know the truth ... and tough luck, even if they survive, convincing their neighbors of what they've discovered.

[The Wolfman]

Jasper Posted:

I take that the morority of elightened peoples in Ravenloft have a sort of "Bigfoot" belief in monsters. They sort of believe that these legendary monsters may be out there and kinda believe the old man with the tale of excaping one by the skin of his teeth and just barely bealive in the scant evidance they exist. However if you come out and say Bob Smith on market street is a werewolf they will laugh you right out of town. Any "evidence" you provide will be explained away scientificly and unless Bob wolfs out on them you have nothing to work with.

That's probably one of the best ways to go--list a few legends, maybe name a few monsters in an urban-legendy sort of way ("Old Man Whatever lives by the river and eats tresspassers, so don't go there").




Many thanks, all of you, for your imput.

[cure]

First, remember that a majority of people have never been farther than the next village and few indeed have travel to other lands and lived to tell about it.

Second, knowledge and man's relation to it varies by domain. In Kartakass people suspect the truth but do not want to believe it and exceptions to the rule have short lifespans. That the oral history is the possession of the wolfwere bards closes the circle, assuring that literal truth about the wolfweres is almost never heard. Figurative truth, however, is abundant, with endless tales of grandfather wolf. In Lamordia there is a deliberate and thoroughgoing attempt to reduce the supernatural to the physical so all knowledge is violently distorted through this lens. If there are drinkers of blood, this is a crude, but perhaps effective, response to anemia . . . . In Mordant, the principle that "left alone evil leaves you alone" dictates that knowing about evil is dangerous to your health, just as knowing about the mists is dangerous too, so know enough to leave well enough alone. In Richemulot, the situation is comparable to Kartakass. In Verbrek, the facts of the werewolf infestation are perfectly known and understood. In Darkon, the facts about the dangers posed by the dead are similarly understood. Barovia falls between Kartakass and Verbrek with the added element of absolute terror of Strahd XI and his near omniscience. Admitting to knowing anything is broadly considered to be suicidal in Barovia.

More broadly, among the educated the political leaders of significant other domains and their political goals are generally known. As to the political leaders themselves, there is wild gossip of all sorts concerning them. For example, the incestuous relationship between mother and son in Invidia, Drakov's cannibalism, Strahd XI's necrophilia, Strahd's immortality secured by drinking the blood of beautiful peasant girls, the von Zarovich line being Vistani cursed to exceptionally long lives devoid of true love, Strahd's barbarism for want of education, Ivanna's homosexuality, Ivanna's court poisonings, Ivanna the innocent victim of the slander of spiteful and jealous nobles, Azalin's war against the dead, Azalin's truce with the dead, Azalin's pact with the dead, Azalin being dead, etc. Whatever truth is to be found in the gossip is well hidden and contradicted by other gossip.

As to the Vistani they are taken with wildly varyings seriousness. In Barovia they are as feared as Strahd. In Kartakass, they are recognized as double-edged swords of unusual potency. In Richemulot they are considered quaint by the humans and dangerous by the wererats. In Verbrek they are respected as possessors of great wisdom. In Darkon rumours are spread by the Kargat that they are spies of Azalin.

Third, all peasant knowledge is local. If a domain has no vampire problem then nothing is known of vampires. The educated of that domain in gossiping about Strahd might whisper that he drinks the blood of beautiful young women to hold off death, but only the most educated in the ways of the supernatural would know what vampirism is and that Strahd might be an instance of it. Invidians then probably have some knowledge of what men-beasts are, with Verbrek and Valachan as neighbours, and more than a few visitors from Kartakass. These same Invidians, however, would know next to nothing about the walking dead and would dismiss tales from Darkon on this subject as far-fetched to say the least.