Something Rotten...

[Keith Senkowski]

So we played our first session of what is going to be a monthly Ravenloft game and it turned out nicely and I thought I would share what her are doing with it. I should note that we are using the mechanics from Conspiracy of Shadows and not DnD.

The Pitch
There is something wrong in St. Archard but it is like a puzzle missing pieces. People have had accidents, but letters arrive in their names well after they have been buried. Soldiers are sent to eliminate rebels in the outlying villages, but only a few return and their memory is hazy. And the Marquis St. Archard has parties at his manor, inviting astrologers, macbre artists, alchemists, taxidermists, and others who's profession is a mystery.

Then, late one night as you work to put these pieces together, a woman wrapped head to toe in swirling robes places an infant with mismatched eyes into your arms and a note pinned to the cloak it is wrapped in. A sudden gust of wind comes and when you look up she is gone. Only her shimmering cloak remains, twisting in the wind.

Mechanics Note: When you reach a Taint Rank of 6 you will have become a darklord and set up a domain of your own.

Players' Contribution: PC Concepts, a concept for the Cell and a Group Kicker.

The Changes
There are no demi-humans. Only humans. Also, the fantastical elements are not overt. No wizards in towers or clerics running around with healing spells. We stripped all that out.

We also leveled the technology playing field and set it at around the sixteen/seventeen hundreds. Cannons, muskets, pistols and rapiers.

Also, the horror is under the skin. More in the vein of Gothic novels and less like DnD. As a group we felt that in order for the fantastic/horrific to have any effect it had to not be common place.

The Map
You will notice that we bunched the domains together into groups. These groups are countries, but the Darklords still are the real powers. It just isn't overt.

Darkon is like Czarist Russia. Azalin doesn't rule though. Instead he is a sort of Rasputin character ruling through the wife of Czar Peter.

Falkonia is pretty much the same as in the books. Vlad the Impaler if all the rumors are true and he is constantly duking it out with Darkon.

Iles de Paynes is like France (the red area is our starting point). The place over all is ruled by King Louis and his right hand man Cardinal Henri, though the Darklords really control their own areas. The country has two major conflict going on. Lamordia in the north, which it recently conquered (and we are keeping the Germanic feel to it) and Invidia in the south, which we are saying just recently gained its independence.

Invidia is like the Kingdom of Navarre. Think of it as if the Basques had won their independence. However, it is a cultural mix of French and Slavic groups. We are keeping the Dukar thing going on and he is the reason it won.

Barovia is like the former Yugoslavia. A bunch of Balkan like states held together by a dominant personality. We are saying that it is ruled by the Devil Stahd through the proxie of his mortal decedents.

Nova Vaasa is like the Ottoman Empire. Across the Nocturnal Sea we are saying the majority of the empire sits. It is our great threat from the East.

Oh and the Shado Rift is just a big canyon no one can explain, or really is willing to deal with. It is dark, creepy, filled with mists, and stange weather rolls out of it from time to time.

That's a far too long summary of where we are going with the game. If anyone has any questions, comments, or ideas for us, I'd love to hear them.

Keith

[alhoon]

Nice.

What about size & population? Have you decided upon that?

[Keith Senkowski]

Thanks.

We really haven't thought about populations. It really isn't important I don't think outside of stuff like, "the big cities are crowded, the spooky cities are empty, the villages are small and cluttered together, and the wilderness is wild and untamed." The sort of standard gothic descriptions...

Did you mean something else by size or where you just talking about the population size?

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

Nice work.

I like the take on Invidia. And the Nova Vaasa as Ottoman Empire as well.

[alhoon]

The sort of standard gothic descriptions...

Did you mean something else by size or where you just talking about the population size?

Population size of the Core and the size of the Core in general. Is it as small as Switzerland and has 500000 people or it is larger?

[Keith Senkowski]

Size doesn't seem all that important, but I would roughly estimate we are talking about maybe half the size of Europe. I doubt it will become a factor in play at all.

Same goes with the population. When cities need to be crowded cause of what is going on in the game, then we will make them crowded. When they need to be empty or whatnot we will just make them empty.

Keith

[Keith Senkowski]

Nice work.

I like the take on Invidia. And the Nova Vaasa as Ottoman Empire as well.

Thanks. I thought we really need an exotic East sort of element. That is the one thing I think Ravenloft misses is the influence of the Turks on Eastern Europe, which domains like Barovia and Falkovia are obviously being drawn from.

Keith

[alhoon]

Size doesn't seem all that important, but I would roughly estimate we are talking about maybe half the size of Europe. I doubt it will become a factor in play at all.

Really? Traveling is an important factor in campaigns. It happens in the background and is often overlooked.

Consider Richemulot... Wilderness almost uninhabited. So if it is large, you need to be equiped with food or be able to hunt.

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

Nice work.

I like the take on Invidia. And the Nova Vaasa as Ottoman Empire as well.

Thanks. I thought we really need an exotic East sort of element. That is the one thing I think Ravenloft misses is the influence of the Turks on Eastern Europe, which domains like Barovia and Falkovia are obviously being drawn from.

Keith

Yeah, particularly Barovia.

Then again, we tend to remake each domain as we make characters from there, and even that changes from time to time.

[Keith Senkowski]

Really? Traveling is an important factor in campaigns. It happens in the background and is often overlooked.

Consider Richemulot... Wilderness almost uninhabited. So if it is large, you need to be equiped with food or be able to hunt.

Well that stuff is important color no doubt. But it's a part of the background cause we are only interested in dealing with conflicts that are important. The game isn't about finding food in the woods, it is about fighting an evil that cannot be overcome. So stuff like needing to be equiped with food for the travel between important things to the game really doesn't matter and need to be dealt with, if ya get what I'm saying...

Keith