Coming Back and Looking for Inspiration

[Intrepid]

So, because life is well.. life I haven't been keeping up with the boards here the way I would have liked. You all know how it is. One day you have all the tie in the world and then the next turns into a couple of years later and you are like "Whoa! Where did the time go." Anyway I am back for a bit and getting ready to kick a new Ravenloft campaign into gear. I have been mulling over a few ideas but can't seem to get pas the initial thoughts of "I want something dark and ghostly." I think I want to base my new campain in Mordent since out of all the domains it seems to lend itself best to ghost stories, but beyond that I am running into a bit of a wall. So, anyone want to throw out a couple of suggestions to maybe get my creative juices flowing?

[Hazgarn]

In my opinion, ghosts and hauntings are one of the best ways to explore madness tropes. Not only are their backstories are often steeped in high emotion--grief, passion, betrayal--of the sort that causes people to abandon reason, the phenomenon of hauntings themselves can easily fool the mind, and cause madness. Characters involved in these stories often have difficulty separating what is real from what is not, what is living from what is dead. If you can continue to maintain doubt in these situations, then you've got a really good tool at your disposal

[Intrepid]

I totally agree with that sentiment and I think a haunting is a great idea and is just what I am looking for. Okay a bit of a brianstorm just hit (thank you!) so let me kind of throw something out there and people can chime in if they so desire.

I currently live in New England, and it has a very old world feel to it. One of the things I really dig are the old lighthouses that dot the shorelines around here. So I am thinking maybe I want to go with a haunted lighthouse. Extrapolating on that idea as well as running with your madness theme I am thinking that the haunting has somehthing to do with the owner of the lighthouse marrying a foreign beauty who had a strong need to be social. While at first the husband was fond of taking his brid "ashore" he started to grow distrustful of her and feared she would leave him. For this reason he started to force her to remain on the island when he would go to the mainland. While at first his wife did well because she had the company of servants and her children, over time she started to lose grip on reality (am thinking some kind of tragedy started the proces) over time she completely looses her mind and maybe poisons everyone or something.

Thoughts?

[Hazgarn]

Sounds good. I'm partial to lighthouses as well. the part about the family that built the lighthouses of Mordent was my favorite part of Gaz III.

I like the story about the keeper and his wife. I like the idea of her going mad from the enforced isolation. One way you might even go with that is to have had the husband using mindgames to keep her there in the first place. Perhaps he made up paranoid rumors about people talking about her back in town, or something similar. Or if you want to go with tragedy, perhaps he was dosing one of their children with something to keep them sick, so that she had a reason to stay. If that backfired and the child died, you could have your haunt and your madwoman in one easy move.

[Intrepid]

Okay I really like the idea of the husband making one of the children sick on purpose and that eventually causing the death of the child but the child returns as a ghost taunting the mother for not keeping them safe and protecting them from what their father was doing. Slowly this constant torment drives the wife to slowly kill eveyrone else who lives and works on the island of the lighthouse and eventually commit suicide. This leads to the keeper returning to the island to find not just a dead child but dead employees and a dead wife. The keeper does his best to hide the events that occured and in an attmempt to distnace himself from his deeds sells the island and the lighthouse and flees the area. The first year for the new keepers of the lighthourse is a good one but then on the anniversarry of the childs death and the week that followed where the wife killed off everyone who lived and worked on the lighthouse island. Now the new keepers are fearing for their lives and thus the brave investigators enter the scene.

I think this is turning out quite well.

[Epically]

Have you had a look in the DM resources and looked at Mordent domain of the month?

[Intrepid]

Oh now there is an idea! Okay will haz to schedule some time to get my nose in there sometime tonight for sure. Thanks for the tip!

[A G Thing]

Also something I noticed with the child idea you both brainstormed...

The child was suggested not to know who actually made it sick and killed it, and blamed the mother. The revelation of the father as the true villain could become a point of extreme passion that could be great fodder for plot twists and mystery.

If the wife had figured it out she may be trying to convince her child's ghost to accept this. It may be a second condition that could prevent her resting easily and keep the haunting going.

[Dark Angel]

The show American Horror Story (especially the first season) is a dark and complex web of generational hauntings and I have been mulling the concepts around in my mind to work it into Mordent (just fits well). Now I have not (or am unaware of) others commenting on this series, but for sake of not ruining anything I will not get into any spoilers or plot details. Maybe in a new thread to help prevent the spoilers from running rampant as they are great fun!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

The show American Horror Story ...Now I have not (or am unaware of) others commenting on this series,

Ahem..
http://fraternityofshadows.com/forum/vi ... f=5&t=7890

[Dark Angel]

Yeah, I figured I was coming far too late to that bar-be-que, but not by two years. Still trying to keep up with all of these trends....

[Jimsolo]

I'm a big fan of the blood taint theme of Ravenloft when it comes to ghost stories. People paying the cost for their ancestor's sins, being cursed with punishments for things that they didn't even do? Now, that's horrible. If you can work some atrocities committed by the PCs' own ancestors into the history, then it leaves them guessing about whether or not they'll be next. Or hell, just make them the victims in the first place!

In a non-Ravenloft game, I had an NPC who had been killed by the PCs when they were still level 3. (They used Charm spells to get him to kill his own brother first, no less. To be fair to the PCs, both the brothers were evil, and it was self-defense.) The NPC, unbeknownst to the PCs, had contracted a high level cleric to raise him as a ghost in the event of his untimely death. As a ghost with the possession power, the NPC plagued them for the rest of their adventuring career. They couldn't even lay him to rest by completing his unfinished business, since ultimate revenge on them WAS his unfinished business. Making someone pay over and over again for the crime of a moment is another great Ravenloft plot, and something like this could really drive an ongoing story.

In any event, I hope that helps.