How to Re-energize Gothic Eath

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Hi guys,
It should come as no surprise that Masque of the Red Death is below the radar of most roleplayers. This is a real shame because Masque has a huge amount of potential.
I was wondering if any of the hardcore fans had any ideas of what fan projects we could develop to increase interest of this setting.

What would catch attention to this setting?
A gazetteer featuring the locals of Gothic Earth?
A netbook of different historical NPCs?

Or perhaps something in the style of a Plots Points book - adventures taking the players from begining to end?

[Jasper]

Right off the bat it needs modernising.

The biggest drawback I see of playing gothic earth is that fact its set in the past and either suffers from Pardox syndrom (PCs end up killing the president and now the DM needs to rewrite a hundred years of history) or suffers from a bad case of Out of character knowledge ("I just read that gold was found in the mountains of New Mexico a year from our characters time. Lets all go there and make our character filthy rich by striking first claims!")

Now if you fast forward it to a modern day setting it works beautifly. No need to rewrite history and the PCs can use as much outside knowledge as they want as there is a good chance thier characters could just as easly know it. Al lthe classic monsters are just as scary in a modern setting, maybe even more so as modern science has tryed to convince us they don't exist.

I've even wrote up a campaign write-up for a failed online campaign called Red Death Rising.

I had at the end of WW2 the forces of good (Einstien, Rachel Van Helsing, Maria Frankenstien, Srg David Jones, Houdini's ghost and Eve(created by Frankenstiens monster as a child) leading the main assault) battled the Red Deaths first rung villians in a massive battle in the arabian dessert. While the soldiers of the main good quabals held off an army of undead the quabal leaders put into action a modified verson of a Mystic Cage powerfull enough to trap the essance of the Red Death.

By sacficing thier life force the leaders were able to trap the Red Death in a massive stone seal that they burried ten miles below the earth. With thier source of power sealed away many of the lesser undead crumbled and turned to dust while the more powerfull ones feld back to thier lairs to hybernate.

Over the next sixty years the worlds supernatural evil dissipated untill sociaty dismissed thier tales as but ghost stories. The quabals disolved and for the most part the world was amuch safer palce.

Fast forword to he summer of 2004. A US lead strike force drops a a MOAB on a small village in the arabian dessert though to house terrorists. The resulting blast can be felt for miles.

Under the city the blast chips a small crack in a stone seal.....


Now in the modern day the Red Death has excaped and is slowly rebuilding its army. Its more powerfull alies are reawakening and causing havok all over the globe.

The PCs- direct decendents of the last of the Watchers line must now continue the fight against overwhelming evil.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Okay, thats a familiar one.
While the aforementioned Red Death Rising is one alternative, is there any projects that can be attempted that stay a little closer to the source material?

Or, conversly, is that really what is holding Masque back - its archaic setting?

[William Blackmoor]

Netbooks and Gazetters?

Hm...
"Gothic Earth - London", a city book (might work well as some of the people here are already working on Paridon, doing some resarch in London and some would've liked more technology there, but were stoped by canon. But London has it all.)

"Gothic Earth Gazetter - (Countryname)" (I would suggest the British Isles, Germany and Egypt, in that order)

"Heros and Monsters of Gothic Earth" a NPC-book (we might take the characters suggested in the thread here atthe fraternity as a basis)
might be combined with
"Behind the Masque - Races of the Gothic Earth" (part monster compendium, part Players Handbook, creating/explaining the background for standard DnD races and creatures for Gothic Earth, for example one of my group is an elf from Ireland, but all other members still think him to be human because of his glamoure-masque)

"Masque of the Jade Dragon", fan-made and to fit the current setting of Gothic earth, not the earlier period suggested.

An Adventure for Gothic Earth (maybe based on a not so famous book, like A.C.Doyles "The Maracot Deep"?)


As for the time area:
I for my part am against a change of the time. We are talking about "Gothic Earth" and not "Horrors of the Modern World". I must admit that "The Great War Project" was done well, but it wasn't very Gothic.
Maybe a future netbook (but not one of the first) could handel different timeperiodes of Gothic Earth like it was done in one Dragon Magazine article a long time ago. But as you see below, my Campaign is destined to end the year, Gothic Earth starts to become "ungothic".
If time-paradoxes occure, hey, it's fantasy, and Gothic Earth is not our "Real World". So you need not concern with changes at all. Killed the President? A doppelganger takes his place. Characters using player-knowledge? There is no gold found in New Mexico where the characters are looking (but apretty strong native american mummy) . Problems solved, and to me it's part of the fun.
And it's more easy to plan ahead: In the modern world you face the same time- problems as in the victorian age. Your players accidently killed George W.? Now what? Same problem...and I don't know what's going to happen next week...but i do know what happend in 1893 after my game completed 1892.
I for my part started the Game in 1892 and intend to end my campaign in 1914.
These are 3 of the 4 major artifacts of my campaigns metaplot.
(Players of my Round keep your eyes shut!)

The Cassandra-Tablets - The secret Leagacy of Heinrich Schlieman
Forbidden Lore: When the German archaeologist Heinrich Schlieman died in 1890 it was not because of his illness or the operation. Agents of the Red Death followed him to Greece and killed him but failed to claim the price they had come for, something Schlieman had found and out of fear kept hidden ever since.
When Schlieman unearthed Mykene, he not only found the mask of Agamemnon, but also clay tablets that bore inscriptions, prophecies by the seer Cassandra to be exact. Besides the fall of Troy and her own destiny, these prophecies had a specific theme: the past and future horrors enacted by an ancient unspeakable evil entity. The tablets speak of great wars and annihilated cities, but they also speak of the possibility of banishing the evil by taking it through the Gate of the Gods.
Before his death Schlieman hid the tablets and literally took them with him into the grave.

The Canopic Jars of Djoser
These jars are supposed to contain the organs of Djoser. Maybe they still reside within a hidden cache of Djoser’s pyramid, but maybe they were scattered across the Earth by greedy graverobbers.
Forbidden Lore: As Djoser was still alive when Imhotep conducted his immortality ritual, the jars only symbolically contained the kings organs. But they were a vital part of the ritual and they contain something: the first spark of the Red Deaths essence. From his very first moment, a fragment of his power was woven into these jars. Should they ever leave Gothic Earth The Red Death will have to follow.

The Ishtar-Gate
Found 1899 by German archaeologists within the ruins of Babylon, the Ishtar-Gate is reconstructed within the walls of the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. It will be finished in 1914. Babylon was called “the Whore” but also “the Gate of the Gods”
Forbidden Lore: When it is reconstructed, the magic of the Gate will allow to open a gateway to the planes (maybe to the Mists of Ravenloft).

[Bryan1108]

Red Death is a very cool game but I think that it is going to be held back by the perception that it lacks flexibility and the fact that Gothic Horror is just a very difficult genre to game in. The mood is difficult to achieve and even if you do, it is difficult to maintain. Even if you can, eventually, players want to feel like they are going to "win" at some point or that it is at least possible to win.
All of this adds up to Gothic Horror being a difficult, if not the most difficult, genre to game in.
Because of this, I expect that most people who want to play a Victorian game will lean towards broader games like d20 Past.
The other problem deals with perception. The 19th century was one of the most exciting and interesting periods of history but for most people, it is a generic fog covered city with a train station.
A Red Death game will generally be limited to a few cities (London, Paris, New York, Boston and Rome) and maybe the Old West.
I really don't know what to do to fix this.
If I had been designing the game from scratch, I probably would have started by creating an original Victorian level fantasy setting and tried to avoid these problems. Possibly something closer to the original Ravenloft but with more advanced settings.
Working with the core material, I would probably suggest fan made Netbooks and lots of them.
Start with the Jade Dragon and expand from there to try to diversify the setting a little.
The Great War Project is a good expansion of Red Death. You may want to expand on that.
Remember that to many people, classic horror means the classic Universal Monster Movies and those took place in the thirties and fourties, mostly. It may not be a bad idea to come up with a Netbook advancing the setting that does not deal only with war.
I would suggest a Netbook that works characters from Victorian History and Literature into the settings. Not just obvious ones like Dracula and Frankenstein but, well, pretty much all of them.
Look, get a copy of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and when all of those references have been exhausted, we'll figure out some more.
The thing of it is that these problems didn't just pop out of nowhere.
I think that these samke issues are what held Red Death back in 2E.
Just my $.02

[Kel-nage]

The biggest drawback I see of playing gothic earth is that fact its set in the past and either suffers from Pardox syndrom (PCs end up killing the president and now the DM needs to rewrite a hundred years of history) or suffers from a bad case of Out of character knowledge ("I just read that gold was found in the mountains of New Mexico a year from our characters time. Lets all go there and make our character filthy rich by striking first claims!")

I don't like that suggestion (Red Death Rising) for several reasons.

Firstly, sure the players can kill a president. A good DM will take that on board and act appropriately. But the point is, is that it doesn't matter. The players aren't on Earth, they're on Gothic Earth. On real Earth, do we have the Red Death? Do we have creatures of the night stalking our streets? Ignoring conspriracy theorists, no, we don't. So, if a player did research that gold had been found in New Mexico, or whatever, sure play along for a bit, but then jump out with some evil underground cult instead of gold. Whoever said Gothic Earth was real Earth?

Secondly, modernising Gothic Earth would, IMO, rip out the heart from Gothic Earth itself. Masque of the Red Death could no longer seriously be called that because it had deviated so far from the original material. Sure, make a seperate setting for MotRD, but it won't be Masque anymore. Whilst your ideas do have merit, I think you are suggesting them in the wrong place. We don't want to make a new setting, we want to improve on what we've got.

A Red Death game will generally be limited to a few cities (London, Paris, New York, Boston and Rome) and maybe the Old West.

I think, if we do create any Gazetters, we possibly start with somewhere other than the listed places. Eygpt - where a lot of things happened during the 1890's, would certainly be a place we could focus on.

I'd love to help (in any way possible) with the improvement of Gothic Earth. I'm somewhat of a new convert, but I've certainly got enthusaism

[Edit:] Now I've mentioned it, I've just remembered an adventure I came up with for Gothic Earth. I'll start a new topic on it, once I've got the synopsis written up.

[Le Noir Faineant]

I think ScS is right - Gothic Earth, although being something of the very best TSR had produced in its days, has vanished from most D&D players' perception.

Now, what would be my ideas to re-energize the setting:

1. Making all the LD modules easily available. (I have searched for them, but they're nowhere to be found on the WotC site.)

2. Work on detailed city descriptions for GE - It's just a pain to run adventures in real cities without detailed information. (My vote would go for a *Gothic Guide to Paris*-like book...)

3. FIND the fans! Are there really any GE players left that haven't switched to d20 modern already?

Just my two cents...

[Bryan1108]

I think, if we do create any Gazetters, we possibly start with somewhere other than the listed places. Eygpt - where a lot of things happened during the 1890's, would certainly be a place we could focus on.
.

Egypt could be cool but to be honest, it would not be my first choice.
If I were going to put out a Netbook right now, the subject would have to be Transylvania.
I mean, think about it. Anyone who picks up MotRD is probably already thinking along those lines anyhow. Rather than going in the oppoisite direction, I think that we should fufill their expectations and then expand from there.
Think about it. How much does the average person actually know about Transylvania?
The city of Budapest could substitute for most Gothic cities. Castle Dracula would be an obvious draw. The land could be as diverse as you wanted it to be.
Even if it is not traditionally accurate, many people associate all of the Universal monsters with Transylvania.
Look at the Castlevania video game series. I am not suggesting that we convert Castlevania into Red Death, just that there is a great deal of flexibility in the setting.
I honestly think that a Netbook combining historical and fantasy elements of Transylvania would be the way to go.

[Kel-nage]

Transylvania would be cool too.

Gothic Guide to Paris

As it happens, I was in Paris this spring and I admit, GE certainly jumped to mind in certain places. I just feel we shouldn't concentrate on London firstly, as whilst London is where a lot of GE stuff is happening, because of that, London is also possibly the easiest place to set adventures. I'd prefer to highlight places players maybe wouldn't think of going first.

[Malus Black]

If I were going to put out a Netbook right now, the subject would have to be Transylvania.

Seeing as there already is a 2E Guide to Transylvania, I think that's slightly redundant.

As for my suggestion for a re-energising netbook, I think an adventure compilation would be a good idea. You can have all the background information and fluff in the world, and still not have time to get it all organised and write a good adventure (as anyone who's tried to run an original Masque adventure knows, there's a frightful amount of research needed if you want to stay true to history), but with an adventure netbook, DMs can just pick it up and run a one-shot or two, which I think will really spark an interest in the setting.

[Jester of the FoS]

I think Jasper is wrong. We can't modernize and improve a setting my taking away what makes it special and reducing it to just another varient on d20 Modern or Call of Cthulu.
Updating the timeline is one thing but advancing things a hundred years is a tad much. Especially since the modern world is a tad too sterile and cynical for the same brand of gothic horror. You just don't see the same kinds of heroes now, and all the tools would be expensive and high tech toys. John Carpenter's Vampires instead of Dracula.
We already have Buffy and d20 Mod and CoC and dozens of others, do we need a Mordern Masque as well?

The problem is the lack of information on the world and setting, it takes alot of knowledge and research to really have a decent MotRD campaign. That's one place the new book was superiour to the original, it actually had world information.

Personally, I think if we wanted to expand the sub-setting a mini-Gaz would be the way to go. A guide to some small town and adventure hooks for there and slowly describe the countryside. A series of FoS adventures if you will.

[Le Noir Faineant]

What about describing Odiare, after the Paridon Gaz, then? - It was taken from GE Italy and could maybe be used as an introduction. Also, it would be a good compromise for RL-purists and GE players, I think.

[William Blackmoor]

No, Odiare is in Ravenloft now. I think That won't help to "re-energize" Gothic Earth . Add to this: How much could you possibly write about Odiare if you keep to canon?

Concerning an adventure collection: it's my experience that this is a more time intensiv project and often isn't finished. A netbook with smaller passages like a gazetteer or NPC-Collection will probably get more submissions.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Ah, I am not sure. I just think Odiare would fit in as a GE scenario as well and has much potential left unused.

[Jester of the FoS]

Personally, I think we should describe la Fraternity des Shadows and the small French villiage they headquarter in.
Their basic mandate would be the same, but are they good or evil?