Lamordia

[ewancummins]

In my Ravenloft GURPS ruleset, I'm doing something similar.

The only places in Ravenloft that support "standard" spellcasting will be limited, small spaces like Castle Avernus, Castle Ravenloft, or the Red Tower. Within these places you might get single rooms that are magically significant enough to grant a bonus to spellcasting. These would be so rare and treasured, that it's entirely reasonable and conceivable for the darklord to have built the fortress around this spot.

For divine faith magic, this is slightly different but largely analogous. The founding temple of the faith will support normal "recharge" of divine energies, and also allow casting of spells at full power. Other temples of the faith will be at a mild disadvantage. Lay areas will usually be at a heavy enough disadvantage as to be impossible except for the really high-powered priests.

Nifty.

You ought to post your conversion notes on SJGAMES. Have you already done so? Maybe I missed that thread...

[ewancummins]

'Science' and the Lamordians:

The insular and opinated lower classes often refuse to admit that magic is real, or that divine beings act in the world. Better educated and better-travelled Lamordians know that such narrow-minded views are wrong.

Science in the rest of the world necessarily incoporates all sorts of magical elements.

[Strahdsbuddy]

HMB, I like your idea of magical "nodes" especially for divine spellcasting. With the presence/influence of deities uncertain in the demiplane, large congregations could be a focal point for powerful spells. A pilgrimage to the Great Cathedral in Levkarest could be needed to cast raise dead since it is the only place where enough spiritual resonance exists to invoke the power. A cagey pontiff would try to play up his own power over that of the site itself, though those int eh know would have the truth.

[Hogan Van Monsterband]

My Lamordia - borderline nazis. As they're the only country that has links with Falkovnia, I figure there are a few big, old families with relatives in both countries, and the Lamordians are sympathetic to Falkovnia's 'struggle against Darkonese opression.'

Other than that, it's similar to what a lot of the other posters have said. Gentleman-scientists, relatively civilised baronies, religion as a concept practiced primarily by foreigners, that sort of thing.

[ewancummins]

My Lamordia - borderline nazis. As they're the only country that has links with Falkovnia, I figure there are a few big, old families with relatives in both countries, and the Lamordians are sympathetic to Falkovnia's 'struggle against Darkonese opression.'

Other than that, it's similar to what a lot of the other posters have said. Gentleman-scientists, relatively civilised baronies, religion as a concept practiced primarily by foreigners, that sort of thing.

Hmmm...IMC, there are no NSDAP types in Falkovnia. It's more like Prussia if the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order had been a batshit crazy version of Vlad the Impaler.

My Lamordians do indeed have ties to Falkovnia, though. IMC, the two languages are related, though not all that closely. Lamordia maintains strong trade links. Falkovnia, being a realm ruled by 'practical' men, is more to the liking of some Lamordians than is 'witchy' Darkon. Darkon is the land of Unreason, a place full of charlatans, posioners, drug-addled false prophets, semi-human freaks, and all manner of other things that Lamordians dislike or mistrust. Worse, the scientists of Darkon insist on cloaking their technology in magical mummery! It's true that such disreptuable types also exist in Falkovnia, but there are far fewer of them there. The Falkovnians are not a priest-ridden people, which is another point of commonality with Lamordia.

Of course, some kind-hearted Lamordians are appalled by accounts of Drakov's cruelty and tyranny.

[The Whistler]

Ditto on the Deism, cottage industry, and gentleman scientists... My Lamordia's called Aubreckstaat, and roughly resembles Switzerland in the eighteen-teens, culturally speaking: close to the original Mary Shelley Frankenstein. Since I've got a Meiji-equivalent domain to cover the misuse of efficient, hard-headed applied engineering, and a slightly reworked Dementlieu to cover the misuse of the social sciences, Aubreckstaat covers the misuse of the theoretical and experimental sciences -- or, more properly, the SCIENCES! that you need to capitalize and put exclamation points after. Basically, they are only pretty good at making blast furnaces and railway ties, but darn it if some guy doesn't invent a death ray or hypno-sphere every couple months.

They're tied to Falkovnia culturally and linguistically, but since my Falkovnia is a tremendous Central European miliary clusterfudge modeled after the 30 Years War, they give them a slightly wider political berth IMC than they do in canon. Some of the more "progressive" elements in the Falkovnian regime have relied on them for weapons sales and military contracting, but it's mostly unofficial. Some Aubreckstaater merchants have also cynically started funneling arms to the highest bidders on both sides of the internal Falkovnian conflict, in the hopes that they'll all just calm down and be sensible after killing each other off.

Oh, and Adam and Mordenheim co-Darklord the place. That, too.

[tomokaicho]

Call me the thread necromancer, but this is the best place for it.

In regards to the Smothering of Reason in Lamordia, I am not a fan of the implementation. Therefore I will offer an alternative. Instead of spell failure, give everyone born in Lamordia Spell Resistance 10 which they cannot voluntarily lower even for spells cast on themselves. Of course the spell resistance is only effective while the person is in Lamordia, so Lamordians traveling to other domains lose their spell resistance until they return to Lamordia.

The effect of this is that minor magics cast by low level spellcasters will quite often fail to have an effect on a person. Spell effects not targeting people or living creatures work normally.

[Mistmaster]

I start with Neo-Tiamat version; obviously, no smothering of reason, hight technology, but also a strong academic approach to magic, high influnce of the scientists, von Mordenheim chiefly beetwen them; My Lamordia was once an Empire, after the fall of which Falkovnia was born.

[Mortavius]

I like the idea of the Smothering of Reason, but I agree with others that the implementation means that it almost never comes into play.

If I were to run a 5E game in Lamordia, I might consider the following change. As a caveat, I have not play tested this at all, it's just something that came to mind.

Any spells that normally take a single action to cast now require an action AND a move action. All other spells are unaffected. And I would have this affect ALL spells, not just arcane.

This means your casters can still go to Lamordia and play, but it's a bit harder for them, in combat. It doesn't make foes more resistant, or spells automatically fail. It also doesn't affect things like bonus action spells or reaction spells, so no game-breaking there. Really, it just simulates that it's harder for spell casters to call upon their magic most of the time, but not in a way that would make them odious to play.

[Leliel]

I like the idea of the Smothering of Reason, but I agree with others that the implementation means that it almost never comes into play.

If I were to run a 5E game in Lamordia, I might consider the following change. As a caveat, I have not play tested this at all, it's just something that came to mind.

Any spells that normally take a single action to cast now require an action AND a move action. All other spells are unaffected. And I would have this affect ALL spells, not just arcane.

This means your casters can still go to Lamordia and play, but it's a bit harder for them, in combat. It doesn't make foes more resistant, or spells automatically fail. It also doesn't affect things like bonus action spells or reaction spells, so no game-breaking there. Really, it just simulates that it's harder for spell casters to call upon their magic most of the time, but not in a way that would make them odious to play.

I'd also have it as a domain with very few soulless individuals (ie, from Curse of Strahd 5e, which has it that darklords' own desires for faceless masses to rule creates people who lack souls from nothing, who if you talk to them turn out to have consciences but are incapable of most strong emotion other than fear). This is both to torment its dual Darklords (there are no shortage of souls to show exactly what Mordenheim he's missing and remind Adam of what he's isolated from) and for the sake of irony (the ur-rationalist culture has the most among them who are carrying critical evidence they're wrong about materialism; the very capacity to wonder about the world and find explanations needs the immortal essence). Also because adventures there are very social, and a souled being is fundamentally more stubborn and clever than a soulless (without emotion other than fear, it's easy to glare at someone until they do what you want, and with emotion logic is possible, as decisions need passions to recognize "Oh, this is better than that").

[Mistmaster]

The idea of generalized soullesnessness is something I have completly scripted out by my take in Curse of Strahd.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

I'd never even heard of this soullessness, and I have to say I wouldn't go with it, either.
Everyone in Ravenloft is a prisoner and plaything of the Dark Powers, not just the Darklords. Only rare exceptions to the rule should be 'empty'. That's why 3E and 3.5 had the Hollow-feat; something that needed to be decided upon at character creation, and something extraordinary at that.

[Leliel]

I'd never even heard of this soullessness, and I have to say I wouldn't go with it, either.
Everyone in Ravenloft is a prisoner and plaything of the Dark Powers, not just the Darklords. Only rare exceptions to the rule should be 'empty'. That's why 3E and 3.5 had the Hollow-feat; something that needed to be decided upon at character creation, and something extraordinary at that.

That's the thing though. So are the soulless. In fact, it's actually outright worse for the soulless, because they don't have the ability to stand up for themselves, when in fact they are as miserable and feel as trapped as everyone else. Soullessness does not mean lacking consciousness, it means being depressed (actual, diagnosable depression, which is characterized by inability to feel emotions) and fundamentally never being able to leave. Having a soul means you have hope. Lacking one means you're an extra meant to be killed and solve the problem of why there are more maneaters than can be reasonably supported by a population that grows normally without some way of supplying extra bodies, and you know it.

Really, if I ever get around to homebrewing 5e, imma going to write a Background for a soulless who has actually broken the cycle and grown a soul.

[ewancummins]

Elves are soulless (as per good old Deities & Demigods/Legends &Lore-- not the case in all editions, but I like the concept), but they don't appear to suffer chronic depression.

I assume that's due to the nature of elf-spirits.

Elves reincarnate, as do many demihuman and humanoid races with spirits instead of souls.

Is the same true of Ravenloft 'soulless humans'?

[Mortavius]

So the way they describe this "soulless" aspect in the module is thus.

Souls aren't able to flee Barovia when they die. They get trapped by the Mists. (Incidentally, this is something I've believed for years; it explains why there are so many Geists in Ravenloft, as well as characters in 3E and beyond having the Ghostsight feat being able to see spirits.) For some reason, these spirits aren't able to reincarnate right away. The births of live Barovians outpace the reincarnation of old souls, so you get a situation where many people are born soulless.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, they are despondent individuals with not much capacity for real emotion except negative ones like fear. Basically, they're playthings for the Darklords to torment. (Another aside, Vampires cannot gain nourishment from feeding from soulless individuals, and can sense this before they try. Or at least, this applies to Strahd.)

There's no rhyme or reason as to when a soulless individual is born. Two parents with souls can birth a soulless child, and two soulless parents can have a kid with a soul. And finally, Barovians born with a soul often have some resembling features of their previous existence. This explains why Ireena resembles Tatyanna, being a reincarnation of her soul. (In 5E Barovia, Strahd is not tormented by the Dark Powers with Tatyanna constantly reincarnating; this just seems to be the way things happen, rather than a plan.)

Overall, I echo the sentiments of other posters here. I don't like the soulless aspect. I much prefer the Hollow option presented in previous editions. I don't see why the DPs couldn't just grab people to imprison in Ravenloft, instead of going to the trouble to create simulacrums. And it just turns soulless characters into fodder; why should a PC be concerned with saving them?