Black Box thoughts

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Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

Here I will post some ideas about a stripped down and rebuilt Ravenloft, based mainly on the Black Box and the two Ravenloft (pre campaign setting) modules.
Later elements will show up in some places.
I will likely use some stuff from Castles Forlorn and Forbidden Lore, as I own those boxed sets.

Gunpowder: semi-magical, uncommon; similar to presentation in PHB

Overall technology of the Core: Medieval with some Rennaisance features and anachronisms

Religions of note (in the Core):

The Cult of Zhakata
LE
The High Faith
LG or LN
The Barovian Church
NG

The Barovian Church maintains its de facto headquarters in Borca, although its leader bears the title Abbot of Krezk.The Devil Strahd kills any powerful clerics who dare show themselves in his domain.
Although much diminished in its ancient heartland, the Church has spread into other central and southern domains.

The High Faith abandoned its home chapel in Mordentshire after a series of disasters and a political struggle with the gentry. Now its ruling synod meets at the cathedral of Sainte Ronges, in Richemulot.
In Mordent the Faith is practiced in the home, with limited public rituals and a shortage of properly trained and ordained clergymen. It is more elaborate and ceremonial in Richemulot, Dementlieu, and other countries.

The Cult of Zhakata dominates life in G'Henna, brooking no rivals. But it has only spread beyond the borders of that country in a sporadic fashion. Subject to persecution in every neighboring domain.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

Has anybody else done anything like this?
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by Five »

My Ravenloft was pure Black Box, later supplemented with Domains of Dread (to this day I still use Table 39 as the benchmark for ability scores), Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium's Volumes 1 and 2 (the best AD&D supplements ever created, IMO. Pure imagination adrenaline), and the module Hour of the Knife (that was/is unplayed). Later I would pillage the 3E line for hooks and ideas, but Black Box is my Ravenloft bible, so to speak.

The thing that kind of stalled my ride was DoD's inclusion of Cultural Levels. On the one hand, I always did understand it to be a thematic enabler that allowed a DM the ability to tap any horror source he or she would come across and "Ravenloft" it. And from that end it was a really cool inclusion. Yet from my (selfish) perspective, I found it to be an awkward inclusion. For much like the written intentions of the 3E developers I had always thought of Ravenloft as more than a weekend of horror. I had planned, early on, to have my players trapped in the mists in a campaign of horror. So the world had to be somewhat logical. And the neat containment of technology was/is illogical. So this became the first time I found myself shredding a D&D product at the editing table.

My first change was that technology of the Core was more stable (Black Box), but if I wanted to "Quantum Leap" my PCs into a weird atmosphere, "alien" landscape, or any such "dream within a dream" environment, I kept the CLs around as a sort of reference guide. I contained them to Islands of Terror or Pocket Domains.

If the "Core" was actually viewed as a massive jigsaw puzzle, with the domains/prison cells switching places at the whim of the DPs/Mists, then there wouldn't be an issue. But I want solid ground, political intrigue, nosey neighbours, seemless borders (closing the borders is redundant in my RL, given the nature of the Mists/DPs). I want Ravenloft to be viewed as the same as the Forgotten Realms, only rife with the sinister. Hell, I've played with the idea of using the different campaign settings of AD&D (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Dragonlance and Ravenloft specifically) as individual continents on the same planet at one point in time, only I never actually plugged it in to my table.

So yeah. My Ravenloft may not be that far, imaginatively, from the Black Box, but it certainly does have its mechanical tweaks.
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

RE Cultural levels:
At one time I used these as written, but now I think I'd do it differently.
I'd drop all the CL 9 domains in the Core to CL 8 and raise the CL 6 domains to CL 7. The narrower range seems more plausible to me.

The paddleboats of Arkandale were semi-magical steamboats in my previous campaign. In a Ravenloft redux, they'd be like the old Chinese paddleboats.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DVxpDW-EX14/V ... -china.jpg

DOMAINS and Core Geography:

I've written elsewhere about how I would interpret G'Henna (as a Core domain) and the Nightmare Lands. Also some Bluetspur ideas. In the case of those last two, I do deviate a good deal from canon.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by Five »

Magic in Ravenloft

Magic is esoteric in my Ravenloft. It is dark, dangerous, misunderstood, occult, and barely tapped...even by those considered "masters" of the Art. As such I've always played it (its potentials) as the Darkness to the Light, the Left-Hand path to the Right, etc. In short, it was always more of a plot device to help me twist NPCs, some intentional some unintentional, into something more sinister than normal, but still beneath that of a Darklord. Someone(thing) that the PCs could take on and vanquish...all the while showing just how evil a magic-using Darklord can actually be, should they get that far into the thick of things. And as such, we had no magic users/wizards in our group.

Priestly magic, a PC magic, mechanically remained the same as that found in the Player's Handbook(s). But I layered it under the theme of "blessings". Simply put, a priest said a prayer and something happened. No light show, no earth-altering events, just an invisible force that brought light to the dark. Food and water that was blessed by a priest acted as healing potions. Sacraments and other such holy materials (and whatnot), left fully to the PC's imagination should they feel the need to jump in creatively, acted as spiritual defences that granted in-game bonuses. A blessed weapon was a temporary "magic weapon" (a ritual could act as its increments), etc. Ultimately I found it a pretty cool ride, as the PC clerics had to sometimes come up with some very genius ways, flavour-wise, just to cast a common D&D spell. Essentially the PHB gave them the effect, but their own minds gave them the cause. A sometimes game of hide-the-cause. And I was able to, as a DM, tone the magic aspect of D&D down in our Ravenloft game without having to tinker too much with the core mechanics of the game.

I understand that this could come off as some sort of harsh DM restriction on my players, but it really wasn't. It was discussed beforehand that our RL campaign would be backboned by morality (and secretly enforced by me through the Powers Check), and everybody was onboard from the start. The group back then only had only player hooked on magic users, so that probably helped.

Anyway, that was another tweak of mine. A simple "restriction" and some fluff.
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by Five »

ewancummins wrote: The Barovian Church maintains its de facto headquarters in Borca, although its leader bears the title Abbot of Krezk.The Devil Strahd kills any powerful clerics who dare show themselves in his domain.
Although much diminished in its ancient heartland, the Church has spread into other central and southern domains.
You're running that as a legit religion, hey?

I've always been meaning to run that as something slightly less than. A cult of good intentions, but not a (magic-imbuing) religion in D&D terms.

Not that I'm combatting you. Just saying.

Also, I'd be interested in a quick cap of your moulding of the Nightmare Lands and Bluetspur. Hell, be as detailed as you like. Bluetspur was always "meh" with me, and the Nightmare lands have huge potential, as far as I'm concerned.

Even a link if you got it.
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

Five wrote:
ewancummins wrote: The Barovian Church maintains its de facto headquarters in Borca, although its leader bears the title Abbot of Krezk.The Devil Strahd kills any powerful clerics who dare show themselves in his domain.
Although much diminished in its ancient heartland, the Church has spread into other central and southern domains.
You're running that as a legit religion, hey?

I've always been meaning to run that as something slightly less than. A cult of good intentions, but not a (magic-imbuing) religion in D&D terms.

Not that I'm combatting you. Just saying.

Also, I'd be interested in a quick cap of your moulding of the Nightmare Lands and Bluetspur. Hell, be as detailed as you like. Bluetspur was always "meh" with me, and the Nightmare lands have huge potential, as far as I'm concerned.

Even a link if you got it.
Cut and pasted from another thread:

Nightmare Lands:
VIEW CONTENT:
Abber Hunting Grounds/Nightmare Lands: a pleasant region of grasslands, located in the far east of the Core. Travelers who spend more than a short while here feel sleep pulling at them, a drowsiness seemingly induced by the environment itself: the murmuring wind in the grass, the splash of shallow streams, the warmth of the sun, the perfume of wildflowers, the humming of insects at night. Anyone falling asleep (or entering an elvish reverie) enters the true realm of Nightmare, as a dreaming psyche floating away from a sleeping body. Sometimes sleepers even disappear in the flesh, leaving unattended horses roped to stakes and empty bedrolls laid beside dead campfires.
Few people live here besides the Abber Nomads.
Hunters from neighboring countries sometimes enter to kill bison, but only fools or desperate men stay long.

(Dread Possibility: This ‘waking’ aspect of the domain is the shared dreamscape of the Abber people. They all go here when they dream during sleep. An Abber who leaves the bounds of the Domain falls into a coma in the true Nightmare lands.)


---------------------------------------

RE Bluetspur:

I seem to have lost most of my detailed Bluetspur notes. I hadn't settled on much, except that the land would have a normal day/night cycle and the landscape was barren and eerie but not so alien. I assumed a lot of the areas described as just dead rock in the Black Box only seemed that way to people used to the lush woodlands that cover much of the central and western Core.

The huge change was dumping the illithids.

One possible take on this involved Neanderthals who ate brains and worshipped an Ancient Dead kraken. When hunting on the surface they wore squid masks.

I might rework that with ghouls that eat human brains, stealing memories and possibly even magic (like the Brain Collector) by doing so.

I'm not really a huge fan of illithids in Ravenloft.

Hunters from nearby lands named this wilderness (on the surface) region the Blood Trail or Bluetspur.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)
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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by Five »

ewancummins wrote:RE Cultural levels:
At one time I used these as written, but now I think I'd do it differently.
I'd drop all the CL 9 domains in the Core to CL 8 and raise the CL 6 domains to CL 7. The narrower range seems more plausible to me.
Agreed. I like this. It's still a what, 200-350 year gap, but it's more easily manageable/explainable. It's familiar D&D territory plus it's thematically inclusive, in a tangible retroworld sort of way, of a lot of the "classic" horror/gothic(ish) literature out there.

Lamordia - CL 8 (down 1)
Dementlieu - CL 8 (down 1)
Necropolis/Darkon - CL 7 and 8 (up 2 and even)
Falkovnia - CL 7 (same)
Keening - CL ruins of 8 (same)
Tepest - CL 7 (up 1)
Mordent - CL 8 (down 1)
Valachan - CL 7 (same)
Richemulot - CL 8 (down 1)
Verbrek - CL 7 (same)
Sithicus - CL 7 (same)
Indivia - CL 8 (same)
Borca - CL 8 (same)
Barovia - CL 7 (same)
Kartakass - CL 7 (same)
Forlorn - CL 3/? (define "evidence of a more advanced society")
Hazlan - CL 7 (same)
Nova Vaasa - CL 7/Egertus 8 (same)

Black Box Core realms not lifted from DoD (the easier way for me to CL the domains):

Arak - CL 7 (?)
Arkandale - CL 7 (?)
Bluetspur - CL ?
Dorvinia (if it still exists) - CL 8 (same)
G'Henna - CL 7 (up 3?)
Gundarak - CL 7 (?)
Nightmare Lands - CL ?

Is that about right? Just curious.


Abber Hunting Grounds/Nightmare Lands: a pleasant region of grasslands, located in the far east of the Core. Travelers who spend more than a short while here feel sleep pulling at them, a drowsiness seemingly induced by the environment itself: the murmuring wind in the grass, the splash of shallow streams, the warmth of the sun, the perfume of wildflowers, the humming of insects at night. Anyone falling asleep (or entering an elvish reverie) enters the true realm of Nightmare, as a dreaming psyche floating away from a sleeping body. Sometimes sleepers even disappear in the flesh, leaving unattended horses roped to stakes and empty bedrolls laid beside dead campfires.
Few people live here besides the Abber Nomads.
Hunters from neighboring countries sometimes enter to kill bison, but only fools or desperate men stay long.

(Dread Possibility: This ‘waking’ aspect of the domain is the shared dreamscape of the Abber people. They all go here when they dream during sleep. An Abber who leaves the bounds of the Domain falls into a coma in the true Nightmare lands.)
I have yet to fully read through the Nightmare Lands boxed set (I know), so I don't know the extent of changes you may have done, but I like this little teaser so far.

Have you read Jester's "A Guide to Dreamwalking"? It's 3E (dunno if that's an issue with you or not), but it's peppered with some solid leads, IMO. I found it through a link Jester posted on one of these threads, a while back now.
RE Bluetspur:
The huge change was dumping the illithids.

One possible take on this involved Neanderthals who ate brains and worshipped an Ancient Dead kraken. When hunting on the surface they wore squid masks.

I might rework that with ghouls that eat human brains, stealing memories and possibly even magic (like the Brain Collector) by doing so.

I'm not really a huge fan of illithids in Ravenloft.

Hunters from nearby lands named this wilderness (on the surface) region the Blood Trail or Bluetspur.
Neanderthal ghouls (the Missing Link as tongue-in-cheek social commentary? heh) carrying an ancient curse/hunger? And with a Lovecraftian twist?

I'm in. :)
Last edited by Five on Wed Jul 20, 2016 3:42 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

MORE BRAIN OM NOM NOMMERY

The Goblyns of Forlorn eat human brains.
They call it "head cabbage", IIRC. That's a published, official TSR detail from Castles Forlorn boxed set. Not my invention. I think the box also mentions this custom sometimes misleading people into thinking Goblyn attacks were done by mind flayers.


Musings on Bluetspur and Old Thaan, with a minor connection to the Nightmare Lands

Old Thaan was a shining, utopian crystal city built at the border of the Dream and the Prime Plane.
It's prosperity rested on two factors: Dream engineering, and a docile labor force of brutish semihumans.The alchemists of the city distilled the people's dreams, and then used those to remake reality. They discarded all the bad dreams like toxic waste, putting them down into a vast cavern. (The brute labor force dreamed only the simplest dreams, not useful for processing)
But long years of this purging and dumping spawned an army of feyrs (FR monster, which I think shows up on a recommended monster list for Ravenloft). It wasn't mind flayers described in the distorted accounts of " mind blasting, tentacled horrors."
Old Thaan fell. Part of it shifted into the realm of the Nightmare Court and part of it was entombed under Bluetspur.

Most of the Thaani went mad or perished.

Some survivors straggled into Barovia( as per Forbidden Lore).

The brutes who survived...


I'm not sure. But these could be the Neanderthal/ ghouls.

Just kicking ideas around. This is assuming no ancient dead kraken, but a different tentacled horror.
Feyrs derive from nightmares of people, so while they look alien, there is a definite human connection.
That might help with the Gothic aspects.
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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by Five »

ewancummins wrote:MORE BRAIN OM NOM NOMMERY

The Goblyns of Forlorn eat human brains.
They call it "head cabbage", IIRC. That's a published, official TSR detail from Castles Forlorn boxed set. Not my invention. I think the box also mentions this custom sometimes misleading people into thinking Goblyn attacks were done by mind flayers.


Musings on Bluetspur and Old Thaan, with a minor connection to the Nightmare Lands

Old Thaan was a shining, utopian crystal city built at the border of the Dream and the Prime Plane.
It's prosperity rested on two factors: Dream engineering, and a docile labor force of brutish semihumans.The alchemists of the city distilled the people's dreams, and then used those to remake reality. They discarded all the bad dreams like toxic waste, putting them down into a vast cavern. (The brute labor force dreamed only the simplest dreams, not useful for processing)
But long years of this purging and dumping spawned an army of feyrs (FR monster, which I think shows up on a recommended monster list for Ravenloft). It wasn't mind flayers described in the distorted accounts of " mind blasting, tentacled horrors."
Old Thaan fell. Part of it shifted into the realm of the Nightmare Court and part of it was entombed under Bluetspur.

Most of the Thaani went mad or perished.

Some survivors straggled into Barovia( as per Forbidden Lore).

The brutes who survived...


I'm not sure. But these could be the Neanderthal/ ghouls.

Just kicking ideas around. This is assuming no ancient dead kraken, but a different tentacled horror.
Feyrs derive from nightmares of people, so while they look alien, there is a definite human connection.
That might help with the Gothic aspects.
Had to look these Feyrs up, but pinned it: Monstrous Compendium: Forgotten Realms Appendix.

So these things, the common ones anyway, are formed by/feed off of the emotions of the Thaani who never or couldn't escape, and in turn compile into some greater Feyrs, who in turn serve...the Nightmare Court?

Dream within a dream within a dream, within...madness! haha

Great start, IMO.
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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

Thanks.

I like the idea of building some connections between Bluetspur, the Nightmare lands, and nearby domains.

I started with the Thaani, as they are about the only thing in canon that connects Bluetspur to anyplace else in the Core, so far as I know.
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Re: Black Box thoughts

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So these ghoulish Thaani...as they are said to be simplistic in psychic nature, do they eat the brains/bodies of their victims to somehow alleviate the pain of the assumably sometimes starving Feyrs sucking/scratching at their feeble output? Are they, the ghouls, actually absorbing the psyches of their victims and "trading" it to their dream masters?

I would imagine that the greater Feyrs' numbers are reduced with this starvation. If so, is there some sort of payment for the Thaani in helping keeping around greater Feyrs? Are they granted some sort of normalcy? A temporary dream of a blissful nature, or, ways things were/could have been/never can be?
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by ewancummins »

Five wrote:So these ghoulish Thaani...as they are said to be simplistic in psychic nature, do they eat the brains/bodies of their victims to somehow alleviate the pain of the assumably sometimes starving Feyrs sucking/scratching at their feeble output? Are they, the ghouls, actually absorbing the psyches of their victims and "trading" it to their dream masters?

I would imagine that the greater Feyrs' numbers are reduced with this starvation. If so, is there some sort of payment for the Thaani in helping keeping around greater Feyrs? Are they granted some sort of normalcy? A temporary dream of a blissful nature, or, ways things were/could have been/never can be?
Not sure.

But those are good suggestions. :D

Hungry feyrs fits with the terrible nightmares of things coming up from underground that plague sleepers in Bluetspur, as per the Black Box.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Black Box thoughts

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Five wrote: Lamordia - CL 8 (down 1)
Dementlieu - CL 8 (down 1)
Quibbling, but Lamordia and Dementlieu are both Renaissance (9) cultural level domains.
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Re: Black Box thoughts

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

The Lesser Evil wrote:
Five wrote: Lamordia - CL 8 (down 1)
Dementlieu - CL 8 (down 1)
Quibbling, but Lamordia and Dementlieu are both Renaissance (9) cultural level domains.
I believe Five was saying that he is deliberately moving them down 1 to CL8.
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