Café de Nuit

The current excerpt from the upcoming Manual of the Planes, part of the section on the Shadowfell, has this to say about Domains of Dread...

Domains of Dread
Scattered throughout the Plane of Shadow are places hidden behind thick walls of mist, places ruled by dark and deeply troubled beings bound to the plane by dreadful curses. These isolated pockets within the Shadowfell are called domains of dread. A creature that passes through the curtain of mist into a domain of dread becomes trapped there—a prisoner of the dark lord who rules the domain.

Each domain of dread has a dark lord—a powerful creature with absolute hold over the domain and limited mastery over its shape and disposition. Similar to a fey demesne, a domain of dread bends to the will of its master, reflecting his or her dark mood in various eerie or disturbing ways. Some domains of dread are quite small, such as a lonely castle on a hill. Others extend for miles.

Escape from a domain of dread is tricky and usually requires one to slay the dark lord, break the dark lord’s curse, unlock the secret of the dark lord’s power over the domain, perform a dark ritual, or accomplish some other difficult goal.

What this implicates for the future of Ravenloft is beyond me. I've heard rumors that Strahd von Zarovich will appear in "Open Grave", a 2009 sourcebook that seems to be akin to a 4e Libris Mortis or the Undead equivalent of a Draconomicon, which means that Wizards might be abandoning Ravenloft as a setting to instead incorporate its basics into the very core of D&D 4e.

I guess that settles it: Ravenloft (in name and nature) as we know it has finally been retconned.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind y'all. With the Great Wheel gone it was bound to happen anyway.

I can imagine an entire 4e book (not necessarily a campaign setting) that Wizards would make based on the Domains of Dread. I don't see it, however, containing the intricate histories made in 3e.

And yes, I bet tieflings WILL be more common in the Domains. This picture in the preview article says it so:

That could just be a picture of a Shadowfell city and not neccessarily a Domain. Hell, the excerpt even mentions a Shadowfell port that's something of a planar stepping stone.

Oh wow, they stole my domain... That picture is Monte Mal, obviously.

Honestly saying? I don't like it. I feel that Ravenloft in 4E will become something akin to world of Sanctuary, of Diablo series.

Definitely not my cup of tea.

BTW, I like that picture

Lame!

Ok, for what it seems, it's a complete return to the old "Weekend in hell" style of gaming.

I agree, not my cup of tea.

BTW, Scipio, see the bright side of it: At least you have a nice picture of Monte Mal to show to your players. I can almost picture you saying "please ignore the horned guy and the draconian beside him".

WolfKook wrote:BTW, Scipio, see the bright side of it: At least you have a nice picture of Monte Mal to show to your players. I can almost picture you saying "please ignore the horned guy and the draconian beside him".

Masquerade party/carnival in Monte Mal. What more could you want?

LOL Yeah, I'd definitely tell them to ignore the characters and just look at the architecture etc. After all, that picture would be one of the nicer areas of the city. As anyone who's read my stuff knows, tieflings and dragonborn (yes a few have probably made it into the city across planar boundaries but I could count them on one hand,) would be in the slums. (By the Doge's mandate no less.)

Well, look at it this way. If we go with a "real" Ravenloft with a weak border with the Shadowfell, you could have a Ravenloft setting where "weekends in hell" could be every day of the week or so...

Personally, for my 4e games I'm running Ravenloft much as it was in 3e. The only difference is that I've moved it into the shadowfell in order to accomadate the end of the Great Wheel. It still is its own demiplane, and it doesn't have any more emphasis on "weekends in hell." (With one caveat, if my group is looking for a weekend in hell, they'll get one.)

From what I see of the Shadowfell, it sounds like they've created a plane that would make a nice home for Ravenloft. The Domains of Dread sound like the "pocket domains" or Islands of Terror, which were isolated from the core. It does not close the door to Ravenloft making it's triumphant return. What may hold it up is the policy of only one world a year, and cash cows like Greyhawk and Dragonlance not yet released...

How does Wizbro releasing something bother me at my gaming table?

I think this is a good way to keep the scenarios viable for the next generation of players, if there is one to be. (D&D sales seem to be quite bad, from what I hear.)

As a retrogamer, however, in moments like this I picture Wizbro's commander-in-chief to a bea retarded monkey who continously bangs his head on the keyboard of his computer to get out new memos and orders.

D&D never had the best ruleset, but always the best marketing.
In the late 80s and early 90s, it was the combination novels+game that pushed D&D, and the same people that bought their stuff then now keep buying it, or consider it for their children.

What Wizbro does makes no sense in that they kill one well-established franchise of the game after another, but then fail to deliver worthy follow-ups.

The last years, since the release of 3.5, we saw Wizbro kill off one popular franchise after another: Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and ultimately even FR fell one by one.
- While this is not an emotional topic for me (I honestly can live with settings being detailed in less than 30 sourcebooks), I am really starting to wonder if there is any sense at all in Wizbro's decissions there.

Nearly all other gaming companies in the biz have proven by good sales that retro-gaming oriented supplements are what the majority of the gaming community demands. I wonder why Wizbro, after all the biggest license holder, keeps castrating the scene by taking away all that settings that were once not only the things most commonly associated with D&D, but also regarded as the best on the market.

- End of Rafe's epic rant. The reatrded monkey is copyrighted, don't dare to steal it.

There was actually some sound logic behind WoTC's decision to trim down the settings. Take a good look at, say, the Dark Sun or Ravenloft lines one year out from initial release. Additional supplements go down in quality really fast. Resources were being spread out way too thin. And for every Ravenloft, you had a Spelljammer... or a D&D needlepoint set, or Dragon Dice, or Spellfire, or...

I'll have to dig around for it, but there was a long and epic tale of TSR's death and WoTC's purchase of what was, by the end, a very badly wounded property. Lorraine Williams did us no favors.

Ah, here's the story in a nutshell:

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p1.html

Here's the money quote in regards to "killing off lines":

TSR was extremely deficient in market research, and while it was very focused on individual line sales, it never bothered to look at the big picture of what its strategy was doing to the market.
"Picture it this way, it's raining money outside and you want to catch as much of it as you can. You can either make a really big bucket or waste your time and attention by creating a lot really small buckets -- either way, you're never going to make more rain." In plain English, TSR, by putting out a lot of product lines instead of supporting the main Dungeons & Dragons line, fragmented the marketplace. The same audience was giving the same amount of money to TSR every year, which had taken on the additional financial burden of creating, producing, and supporting hundreds of products. It needed to grow the marketplace, and these brand extensions weren't doing that.

...think about it. When TSR put out a new campaign setting, did you double the amount of money you spent on TSR products?

Well in my case yes. It's a matter of good books. For instance: I bought what I thought would be the best RL products and also Planescape products. If Planescape didn't appeal to me, I would NOT have bought the bad RL products. I would have bought something else not necessarily D&D related.

I do agree that having variety is a better move cause they can exploit different market with them. If you only have Core D&D, you'll run out of ideas faster (and thus making poor products that won't sell) than stimulating creativity by exploring different avenues and thus possibilities.