QtR 27 review thread

[Joël of the FoS]

Please provide here your feedback and comments on this Halloween 2020 issue!

[Rock of the Fraternity]

First off: compliments on the cover art for this year!
Very well-crafted and eerie.

Some text on page 32 describing the idol appears to have been cut, though... and I notice that some of the Greek letters have been changed into question marks.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Oh, wow... Loose Ends may be short, but it has HUGE impact. As usual, Azalin's character flaws wreck his own opportunities. If Von Bludt had been allowed to continue his work, who knows what might have been?

[Joël of the FoS]

First off: compliments on the cover art for this year!
Very well-crafted and eerie.

Thanks you, and thanks to the artist, Raúl Ramos Melo!

Some text on page 32 describing the idol appears to have been cut, though... and I notice that some of the Greek letters have been changed into question marks.

I don't recall cutting anything. Greek letters? Oh? Darn Word styles Sorry about that.

For any similar comment, write me a PM or email (point it precisely please) and I'll fix these in V2.

[KingCorn]

I really loved the operas, really adds more life to the land of mists.

As for the Dominia article, anyone think the psychic conduit in room 319 connects to Nosos? Cause it "releases rats and belches noxious fumes" which fits the 2e description of Nosos.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

I really loved the operas, really adds more life to the land of mists.

As for the Dominia article, anyone think the psychic conduit in room 319 connects to Nosos? Cause it "releases rats and belches noxious fumes" which fits the 2e description of Nosos.

Haven't read anything yet since I was working and then played some Castle Ravenloft boardgame with some friends. I am going to start now. But I have to say that I've messed up the chronology in Borcan Epic because I was confused with the different timelines in the various products and since I was writting until the last minute before the deadline ended, I forgot to correct the timeline that was changed in the last hours before sending it in most parts of the article. The first box in the article is the correct 710BC being the death of the Leskoviches, sorry about that I ll gather all the wrong dates and make some notes in this thread in the following days.

And thank you your majesty for the feedback

[Rock of the Fraternity]

I just read Errant Bloodlines, and I loved it. It had me chortling at the absurdity of it - and it was interesting to see Azalin's more... I won't say 'human', but perhaps more 'relaxed' mode.
Also, it's interesting to see a day in the life of a relatively low-ranked Kargat agent, one of the not completely monstrous ones. I'm a big fan of the Thraxas-series, so seeing another detective in a fantasy realm operate is a bit of a treat for me, too.

Will there be more entries from Alexandre's private casebook in the future?

My one and only quibble is that the whodunnit and whydunnit of the Nartok case isn't revealed in the story. I would have loved to read more about the investigation, and not only its aftermath.

[Mistmaster]

Now, time to review this wonderfull issue:
Bitter Victory (Short story): Nice, even if this Strhad is a bit too much blatantly evil for my taste, I like him more chivalrious.
Friedliches Königreich (Peaceful Kingdom, New Domain) : Good work, nice idea and fitting scenatio.
Conferences of Victor Gagné Part the Fourth:
Out of One, Many: Poor Victor, at least he is alive once again; Nice idea that of the Red Haunt; She needs more goodaligned personalities, however.
Borcan Epic “The Knife of the Ba’al Verzi”
an epic music drama and other operas Nice, my rendition of the tales will include happy endings thought.
Forgotten Shades (50 New Darklords) :
As usial, very niceIdea, I could takeinspiration from some of them, even if someone strike me as not very deserving (Wrath, for exemple, if any, is Griphis the one who deserve it in that Manga)
Loose Ends (Short story) Nicestory, even if I can't see the reason of this assassination.
The Tale of Ivar Skytte - A Companion to the Conferences A dark tale with dark characters, interesting.
Sithicus:The Land of the Prophetess (Domain rewrite)Nice job, I might adapt something for my Sithicus.
Detective Alexandre’s Private Kargat Casebook:
Errant Bloodlines: Hilariously, so is this the reason Alexander will tur in akid-killer monsret, lately, now is it?
Lost Souls (30 new NPCs) Very interesting, I need to introduce theEx Vampire to Lazendrak and the wonders of safe-feeding, thought.
Excerpts from “The Register of Monsters” Some of these needs stats. Many of these; All of these!!!
Dominia Survey (Sea of Sorrows FoS Report preview)Nice, even if it's really too tiny to be one of my domains, I think I would integrate it as a part of my Zherisia (since I intend to put a lot of Batman vibes there and I need an Arkam Asylum and a Hugo Strange.)

[Rock of the Fraternity]

The Register of Monsters put me in mind of the Tome of Magic and its Vestiges, actually. They'd need some tweaking, but they could become excellent patrons for a Binder trapped in Ravenloft...

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Conferences of Victor Gagné Part the Fourth:
Out of One, Many: Poor Victor, at least he is alive once again; Nice idea that of the Red Haunt; She needs more goodaligned personalities, however.

The Tale of Ivar Skytte - A Companion to the Conferences A dark tale with dark characters, interesting.

Thanks for the kind word. Working with Wolfglide was a genuine treat.

The Red Haunt would only agree with you up to a point. Genevieve is proof of concept; one day the fiend might spawn another Good-aligned persona in the name of scientific rigor -- but not now. She has other projects to oversee at the moment...

As for Victor; yes, he is alive - though not 100% happy. And he's free - for now.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

First, let me once again thank everyone who contributed this year. Obviously, there would be no QTR without your submissions. Thank you for doing your part to keep our favorite setting alive. And this year was a particularly good one all around.

my reviews...

Bitter Victory - a cute little vignette. Always nice to go back to the classics with Strahd. Well written and a nice perspective.

Friedliches Königreich - This one comes into my personal biases with two strikes against it - it's a new domain, and it's heavily non-human. Again, I must stress, if that's your thing, by all means, enjoy it. It's just not for me, but not everything needs to be for me. With that caveat, it was nicely done. I don't really know much about hobgoblins, but sure, if they are orderly, one could go darklord by giving into chaos. I do feel that we got more about this priestess than about the darklord himself. Maybe that was meant to be a misdirect to make us think she was the DL? And I do really like the idea of the DL's backstory getting written on the gravestones as epitaths. That was my favorite detail, which I might steal to use elsewhere.

The Conferences of Victor Gagné IV - Another all-star. Loved it. Very glad to finally get the whole scoop on the Red Haunt, and who better to reveal it than poor Mr. Gagne? A beautifully done collaboration from Wolfglide and Rock. Not sure I've ever seen a more complicated NPC backstory than the Red Haunt, but it all fits and it a great way to have a whole cabal all in one "person". The addition of "Genevieve" to the group is particularly a genius twist. Also, great to finally get a deeper glimpse into the Brightwell cosmology, and an appearance by "mu" no less. Though now I still want to learn more.. what is the "Truth" of Brightwell's origin, if any? The World Engine is quite similar to where I was going with "The Gears" in my campaign. When I pick that thread back up eventually, I may incorporate some of this too. Looking forward to hearing about the missing sisters eventually, I hope, in particular The Centurion. And though it's almost an afterthought, I really like "The Divinity in All" as a logical progression of the Doppelgangers report and as a nice ray of hope in the Demiplane.

Borcan Epic - Excellent article. Without doing much research, I don't know how much of this story is canon and how much was created by Michail, but if I'm not mistaken, he spun a very compelling pair of NPCs from what was probably a small footnote in the Black Box Dilisnya family tree, and an obscure Dragon magazine article. (Fantastic use of the Revelations of the Price of Twilight, by the way, which I've always found fascinating, to inspire an Ezran heresy sect!). I wish this had been available 20 years ago. I might have used this Adorjan as my Bard PC's mysterious father, rather than Andres Duvall. I was a little concerend that Adorjan's travels through the Core and learning the tales of various darklords could have come off very "Mary Sue/Gary Stu", but instead, by turning them into Operas it just works, and seems very cool. And including the major story beats of each opera in the article itself is a great touch. I'm no opera fan, so I don't recognize whether any of these are inspired by real world opera stories, but they certainly feel "real" when reading them, while not being obvious step-by-step retellings of the darklord stories, which is no small feat. The artwork is also fantastic, particularly the NPC portraits. I love all the dread possibilities and adventure hooks, especially the hook about The Brain and the production of "Rennie". I might use that in my campaign...

Forgotten Shades - I've been a fan of this series since Jack started doing them. For some reason, bite-size new domains are more palatable to me than fully-fleshed out ones. I do have to admit the format is starting to show its age just a wee bit, but there are still a some gems. I like Miss Gillian and her floating Academy, which seems like a great place to start a campaign of student PCs. Also enjoyed Odo Boffin, such an obviously great twist on LOTR that I'm surprised I've never seen a similar take before. Mr. Bousman's patchwork house is cool too. (Now I need to see this "Abbatoir" film). For "Skeleking", Skeletons seeking to "free" other skeletons from their living hosts is delightfully creepy. Very cute curse for a sasquatch: being weakened by being seen. I like it. As for "Jeanne Dark" (I see what you did there...), it's always nice to flesh out the Shadowlands some more. She evokes Elena herself a lot, while having a different twist. Anokh made me giggle. Rooka's domain hits a bit close to home. (Now I'll worry that everyone at the store is a ghoul! )


Darkon - Mistmaster had an uphill climb here for me since, personally, I like Darkon and Azalin as-is very much, so a reimagining isn't really what I'm looking for. With that said, there are quite good ideas here, and I was won over by some of them. Incorporating Vecna was very clever, as it does seem that the two Greyhawk lich darklords should have some connection. I don't love the idea of everyone knowing​ that the place was ruled by liches. That's a little too overt for my Ravenloft, but Darkon is more open with magic and such than most places, so if it fits anywhere, it fits here. Combining the false religions of the Overseer and Zhakata is a nice touch too, as is having a religion devoted to Darkonos, but I might have made it more of an underground cult. Darkon already has plenty of rival religions in power, so I feel like if there's room for another, it would be a fringe group. Overall, it was a bit too modern for my tastes (for example, I don't feel that concepts like tourism make much sense in Ravenloft's time period, but if you like it, go with it). The KargATS wordplay is cute, but I don't usually like abbreviations dependent on English spelling to make sense, in a world that speaks a non-English language. The Choosers are an interesting concept, though I'm curious: when someone disappears for five years, and comes back without knowing what they did, what do their neighbors think they were doing while gone? What I did really like a lot was the plethora of NPCs, and especially that every single one got an adventure hook to go with them. I especially liked "The Hand who Writes." Again, I happen to like Azalin's curse exactly as written, but I also like the alternative idea of him being distracted by ruling whenever he tried to indulge in research. (I tried something similar with Althea's curse in my Demise wrtite-up. I was trying to evoke the feeling of a Greek tragedy, and I think it works well for Azalin too.). Sadly, with his revised backstory, it looks like we miss out on "Azalin and Strahd's Excellent Mordentish Adventure" and the rest of their rivalry, which is one of my favorite parts of his history. I'd like to see some way to include that. So, overall, I think we have slightly different visions on what Darkon and Azalin should be, so I have to pick and choose that parts that fit with mine, but looking at it objectively and with Mistmaster's vision, a success.



more to come....

[Mistmaster]

Thanks for reviewing Ron; regarding the Choosers, the fact is that every winner of the inital ballot disappear for 5 years, so, they might have been selected as Chosers or not but they can't say who. About the adventures and rivalry, they did happen, only not in Mordent, but in Barovia, and Azalin was not a Lich, yet.

[brilliantlight]

Friedliches Königreich - This one comes into my personal biases with two strikes against it - it's a new domain, and it's heavily non-human. Again, I must stress, if that's your thing, by all means, enjoy it. It's just not for me, but not everything needs to be for me. With that caveat, it was nicely done. I don't really know much about hobgoblins, but sure, if they are orderly, one could go darklord by giving into chaos. I do feel that we got more about this priestess than about the darklord himself. Maybe that was meant to be a misdirect to make us think she was the DL? And I do really like the idea of the DL's backstory getting written on the gravestones as epitaths. That was my favorite detail, which I might steal to use elsewhere.

It is an unusal domain by being heavily non-human but I like to go off the beaten path from time to time. Hobgoblins, at least my version of them, are very lawful. The whole society is run like an army. Hobgoblin soldiers would give Roman Legionaires a run for their money when it comes to order and discipline in my games.

I used the comment that hobgoblins saw orcs as "uncouth barbarians, an undisciplined rabbble they were amazed that were able to cross a room on the first try" in the game when describing the situation to the party half-orc LN cleric. The player was amused, the character obviously wasn't. He figured out I was using the same relationsships between orcs and hobs in this game as I did in the others. Hobs see orcs as mindless rabble and orcs see hobs as elitist snobs. This how I described he was treated in his home world, he was treated decently in this domain.

The backstory of the priestess is so large because she is one of my former PCs in a kind of jokey evil campaign. Her background is basically what happened in that campaign, prior to her winding up in Ravenloft which never happened in the game. I used her as the NPC written when I used her in my RL camaign using this domain. I didn't think of the fact she might overshadow the darklord in the article which I agree now is quite likely.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Loose Ends - very nice story. Loved the new perspective on the Dead Man's Campaign. And SPOILER...

VIEW CONTENT:

a wicked little twist at the end!. I suppose Mistmaster is right that the motive for killing him doesn't seem clear, but I'll let it slide

Harrington Dale - (I hope you don't mind, Mistmaster, that I took the liberty of removing the extraneous "h" in the name Harringhton throughout. Maybe it was a deliberate addition, but it doesn't look right as a native English reader, and since this domain in particular is meant to reflect the U.S., I figure it should look right to me. ) Anyway... A huge update to the original. I'm curious what Wiccy would think of it. (His last visit here was 4 years ago... Wiccy, are you out there?) This definitely brings it from a weekend of hell domain to a full-fledged long-term domain, but in doing so, changes so much that it was a wise choice to change the name. (It's almost unrecognizable apart from the scarecrows.) On its own merits, the idea of a domain caught between stagnation and progress is very cool, and there are, like in all of Mistmaster's work, plenty of NPCs with adventure hooks. I could easily see this being a place for several adventures. I'm a bit confused to see Zhakata at the Lawgiver here when he was the Overseer in Darkon. Are they connected? I guess we could use a run-down on Mistmaster's version of the Ravenloft Pantheon. Maybe in a future QTR? (Also not sure what to make of the cats and the Bastet worship. (but then, I'm a dog person. ) An import from Nova Vaasa?) Well done.

The Tale of Ivar Skytte - Another incredibly impressive (and huge!) work from Bauml and Bartels. It somehow manages to take the fantastical wide world of D&D and somehow bring it down to earth in way that doesn't break my Ravenloft believability. Very creepy and useful NPCs. I especially like "Honored Mother" (and I wonder how the Overmaster she births gets chosen. Would like to know how conscious they are within her. Is there infighting among their spirits?) I actually read this before the main Conferences article, so I wasn't sure it needed the framing story, though I liked seeing The Red Haunt again and getting some further glimpse at the Brightwell cosmology. Little did I know how much more I'd get in the Conferences. So, in retrospect, I wonder if this would have been better more focused on Ivar's backstory than his current situation, leaving that part for the Conferences. But that's splitting hairs over the structure. The content is excellent. And the idea to have actual music included to spice up the text... inspired. I've never seen that before in a D&D supplement, that I recall. (not counting stuff like A Light in the Belfry).

Sithicus: The Land of the Prophetess - A very different take on the domain. This Inza is better than the canon one, at least in motivation, but I don't see much of Soth's Sithicus left here. It might be better as an entirely new domain, and that's ironic coming from me.

[brilliantlight]

Sithicus: The Land of the Prophetess - A very different take on the domain. This Inza is better than the canon one, at least in motivation, but I don't see much of Soth's Sithicus left here. It might be better as an entirely new domain, and that's ironic coming from me.

A lot certainly has changed but the cities are the same and elves are still numerous as are incopreal undead. But yes, I focused on changing Inza into something interesting more than keeping everything the same as under Soth. There is not much you can do with canon Inza becasue she is so bland. Things can be done with Inza here as she has goals and motivations. You can't say the same of canon Inza.