Why would destroying Ravenloft be a bad thing?

[HuManBing]

That's interesting. I've never heard of a Gothic Earth-Urth-crossover until now. Definitely 2nd edition had nothing to do with it, and I have the MotRD book for 3rd ed. I don't think it mentions Urth, but I could be wrong.

Your argument could go either way. Say the Red Death is one Dark Power. It has created fairly profound changes throughout one Prime Material world - changes that translate into extensive alterations to the game's mechanics (including changes to magic, technology, etc.).

We don't know how many Dark Powers there are in total, but it's conceivable that there's a finite number of populated PM worlds. There's a possibility that the Dark Powers may number large enough to impose their will on individual PM worlds.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case but as long as the possibility of interpreting this exists, then it's a valid interpretation. Hopefully people will take this in the spirit it was intended - as a suggestion and possible campaign aid, rather than as a statement intended to squash out or invalidate any other interpretation.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Jack raised a good point: What will happen with all those innocents natives to the Land of Mists? Will they survive? Will they die? Will they be dropped in a strange world? The Land of Mists ir their homeland, the great majority of them don´t even know that there is another worlds out there, and even if they want a happier life, I think they want this kind of life in his homeland.

You could also ask: Are all of them even real? Or are they made by the Mists similar to the false history.

And you could also ask "Does it matter if the Mists created them or not?" If they're living people now, then their welfare should still be cause for concern for true heroes, regardless of how they might've come into being.


Maybe when Ravenloft consisted of nothing but Barovia, collapsing the Land would've been entirely a good thing. But IMO, ever since Darkon emerged from the Mists -- a domain with no Material Plane world to return its people to; Oerth would be alien to Darkonians and doesn't count -- it's never been that simple. If anything, truly Good heroes who find out the truth about the Dark Powers should be seeking the means to free the Land of their influence and that of the darklords, while preserving its structural integrity.

Ideally, you don't destroy Strahd, you stake him and leave him that way. His hold on Barovia is so much stronger than Gundar's was on his domain, he'd probably remain as darklord, but held powerless a la Gwydion, thus leaving Barovians in peace.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

That's interesting. I've never heard of a Gothic Earth-Urth-crossover until now. Definitely 2nd edition had nothing to do with it, and I have the MotRD book for 3rd ed. I don't think it mentions Urth, but I could be wrong.

Actually, "Urth" isn't the same as "Uerth". "Urth" is the name which the Known World's planet was saddled with, before a contest in Dragon gave it the new name of Mystara.

I don't know where the "Uerth" term came from either, FWIW.

[steveflam]

That's interesting. I've never heard of a Gothic Earth-Urth-crossover until now. Definitely 2nd edition had nothing to do with it, and I have the MotRD book for 3rd ed. I don't think it mentions Urth, but I could be wrong.

Actually, "Urth" isn't the same as "Uerth". "Urth" is the name which the Known World's planet was saddled with, before a contest in Dragon gave it the new name of Mystara.

I don't know where the "Uerth" term came from either, FWIW.

Maybe they made a mistake and meant Oerth?

[The Giamarga]

HMB, no offense taken, and i didn't mean my comments to be deriding your opinion. Certainly it is all in my opinion but I do know a lot about planescape and the cosmology from 1E to 3E.

Let me explain a bit where I'm coming from. Yes, the 3E WotC Archfiends have a CR, and can be killed by low-level epic PCs. Which is a gross error on part of WotC. That's why they somewhat nebulously stated those stats are only aspects of the real Archfiends who are probably a bit higher in CR and release the next stats which were equally insufficient. WotC botched it all up massively by making those stats for PCs to kill as they thought that's what the players want. (Which is probably true in some cases) But the flavour given to these beings in the past settings and even in 3E does not fit with their stats. The D&D Cosmology hinges on the fact that Planar Lords like Graz'zt or Asmodeus need to be on par with the gods at least in their homeplanes. Else why has not Kurtulmak conquered all of Hell yet? (This is the so called Special K problem).

So if you want to have stats for gods and planar lords you need to have them make sense in relation to each other and fit with their flavor. This is what Dicefreaks spent considerable effort on in imho they excelled at it. Maybe the power level is a bit too high for some people taste but it fits with the levels that the gods where given in 3E Deities & Demigods. The flavour is also generally resonant in much of the Planescape campaign, which made some Demon Lords lesser deities and even more powerful on their homeplanes.

So when i say Iggwilve has power on par with Graz'zt I have in mind that Graz'zt rules 3 Abyssal planes all by himself and has done so for aeons. Surely no low or even mid-level epic PCs can kill him, yet Iggwilve managed to snare him twice. And Asmodeus rules all Nine Hells and strikes fear even into the heart of the gods that have their domains encroach on one of his planes.

In 2E the Planescape campaign described in a lot of detail the Great Wheel cosmology. The Demiplane of Dread is mentioned in the Guide to the Ethereal Plane as a floating demiplane in the Deep Ethereal. The Demiplane of Dreams is described in there too, and this one bleeding into the Demiplane of Dread is most probably what we call the Nightmare Lands. Rules for demiplanes exist in 2E and 3E. Planar traits are described and who has the power to alter them. With Conjunctions it gets a bit more murky, but they do exist in Ebberon and are local effects that impose slight planar traits upon the world.

All this said, sure it could be that Ravenloft being destroyed does impose the Masque effect to all prime worlds. But i think that is a bit much. I'm not stating that as fact, but i think this would be bad game design.

[The Giamarga]

Uerth is one of the many parallel worlds of Earth, Oerth, Yarth, Aerth that Gygax mentioned.

Check out Ripvanwormer's great essay about it on canonfire.

Gothic Earth is a world either devoid of deities, or devoid of interventionist deities. It's also never been assigned a fixed locale in the Great Wheel cosmology, so it's uncertain what metaphysics govern its workings. It's not a very good basis for comparison.

In the Great Wheel cosmology all prime worlds are part of the Prime Material Plane by default. Granted it could be that Gothic Earth is a demiplane but the evidence speaks against it.

Check out rip's well-researched article above for the evidence that Gothic Earth is the same place as the homeworld of Averoigne.

Oh, well I'll paste the Uerth part here:

Uerth

Called "Uerth," "Gothic Earth," or "Mythic Earth" by planar cartagraphers, the locals mostly call it Earth in their various languages; one prominent culture calls it La Terre. The continents of Uerth are identical to those of Earth today, although in the distant past the lands of Atlantis, Lavondys, Ys, Hyperborea, and Lemuria sank into the sea, and their ruins can still be found beneath the waves. In the far future the present continents will sink, making way for the final continent of Zothique at the world's end.

The history of Uerth is mostly similar to that of Earth, although supernatural forces lurk behind many of the world's events. There are some minor differences in place-names; for example, the French province known on Earth as Auvergne is called Averoigne here, while the English county of Devon is called Lower Wessex. There is some congress with other dimensions and planes, including possibly the counter-world of Phaeree known to the people of Aerth. Magic works on Uerth, but it carries a heavy price, often resulting in its practitioners being enslaved to unsympathetic entities with their own agendas. Uerth is likely the world where Murlynd developed his strange hybrid of magic and technology, as both sciences work on this world. Using technology to enhance his magic may have helped Murlynd avoid the thralldom experienced by so many of Uerth's adepts, though perhaps the benevolent influence of his patron Heironeous helped as well.

Uerth is quite possibly the origin of the Rhennee gypsies, the Europe of this world the true identity of the "Rhop" of their legends, although others have suggested they come from Earth or perhaps Oerth itself. Either Uerth or Aerth is the origin of the gods of the Olman pantheon, who dwell as physical entities in the stars and the far corners of the world.

Uerth is somewhat out of sync with Earth temporally, existing in the latter decades of the 19th Century, with the appropriate technological level. Time flows on the same rate on both worlds and on Aerth, but at a very different rate on Oerth and Yarth. As with Aerth and Earth, for every day that passes on Uerth, a month passes on Oerth and Yarth.

Uerth is here interpreted as the world of Clark Ashton Smith's writings, as introduced to D&D in Castle Amber. It's also the Earth of H.P. Lovecraft and, by extension, Robert E. Howard. It's the world of the AD&D "Historical Reference" series and of the Gothic Earth setting. I snuck in a reference to the novels of Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) as well.

In the parlance of the 1st edition Manual of the Planes, Uerth's physical factor is 5, its magical factor -3, and its temporal factor 5.

Soo....
We can say that Masque of the Red Death (the RPG from Arthaus/TSR, not Poe's short story) takes place here?

Absolutely. That's the "Gothic Earth setting."

Part of my inspiration here was Roger E. Moore's article Chronomancy and the Multiverse, which explicitly says that the Masque of the Red Death setting is the same as Averoigne from Castle Amber/Clark Ashton Smith, and suggests Murlynd has visited it.

[The Giamarga]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oerth#Alternate_Oerths

Alternate Oerths

In a 1984 interview for Polyhedron Newszine, Gary Gygax revealed several "alternate Oerths" while explaining the setting for his HEROES CHALLENGE game books, co-written with author Flint Dille and published under the aegis of the Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corporation by the Wanderer Book division of Simon & Schuster.

"By the way, action takes place on Yarth, a place somewhat similar to Oerth, the setting of Greyhawk, et al. It has fewer magical properties than Oerth but more than Earth. It is not impossible that additional works will be contracted for in months to come, action being set on Yarth or perhaps another alternate world, Aerth. On Earth, magic is virtually non-existent. On Uerth, dweomers are weak, chancy things. Yarth has a sprinkling of things magical, and Oerth is pure magic."

Other references to these alternate Oerths appear in the Gord the Rogue short story anthology Night Arrant as well as in Gygax's Epic of Aerth campaign setting for the Dangerous Journeys roleplaying game. The five parallel worlds of Oerth, Aerth, Uerth, Yarth and Earth were recently mentioned in the 3rd Edition adventure Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk and thus found their way into 3rd edition canon.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Interesting. A bit too crowded and un-Gothic if Rip's cramming Lovecraft into the mix, but I can see how other factors might synch up for "Uerth".

I'm not sure if the d'Ambrevilles or McGregors really fit with Gothic Earth, though, particularly when one considers Étienne's Immortal status. It's hard to justify an epic-level NPC coming from a world that's even more magic-starved than Ravenloft is. Also, having the Masque rules apply to Averoigne's werebeasts doesn't fit with the White Werewolf, Malachai du Marais (who was born in Averoigne), being presented as a good guy in Night Howlers and the Glantri boxed set.

[The Giamarga]

Interesting. A bit too crowded and un-Gothic if Rip's cramming Lovecraft into the mix, but I can see how other factors might synch up for "Uerth".

I'm not sure if the d'Ambrevilles or McGregors really fit with Gothic Earth, though, particularly when one considers Étienne's Immortal status. It's hard to justify an epic-level NPC coming from a world that's even more magic-starved than Ravenloft is. Also, having the Masque rules apply to Averoigne's werebeasts doesn't fit with the White Werewolf, Malachai du Marais (who was born in Averoigne), being presented as a good guy in Night Howlers and the Glantri boxed set.

Huh? My knowledge of Mystara or C.A.S is unfortunately very limited. No idea who Etienne or the McGRegors might be. I do have Night Howlers though and i remember the very different take on Lycanthropes in Mystara. Why don't you sign up on canonfire and ask rip those questions? I'm sure you two can come up with a good explanation for it and make the essay that much better.

[The Giamarga]

Your argument could go either way. Say the Red Death is one Dark Power. It has created fairly profound changes throughout one Prime Material world - changes that translate into extensive alterations to the game's mechanics (including changes to magic, technology, etc.).

We don't know how many Dark Powers there are in total, but it's conceivable that there's a finite number of populated PM worlds. There's a possibility that the Dark Powers may number large enough to impose their will on individual PM worlds.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case but as long as the possibility of interpreting this exists, then it's a valid interpretation. Hopefully people will take this in the spirit it was intended - as a suggestion and possible campaign aid, rather than as a statement intended to squash out or invalidate any other interpretation.

Absolutely. It is a valid interpretation. And it also highlights the reason why the nature of the DPs and the Demiplane of Dread should be left somewhat obscure. To leave such options. I just threw this bit out there to see if we could deduce anything from it. As i said above my Masque knowledge is very limited.

I'd rather not have a finite number of prime worlds though. The same argument applies here: why make them finite when you can leave options. As for the Dark Powers I would prefer them to be finite in number but as i said above it is probably best left open.

[Sylaire]

Hm...well, if you genuinely wanted to push things, Malachie as presented in the original CAS story "The Enchantress of Sylaire" ( ) is a wizard who inflicted lycanthropy on himself by drinking from a cursed pool and was turned permanently into wolf form except at certain moon-phases and when he eats a particular root that grows in Sylaire. In "Castle Amber" Malachie is merely a normal Expert-rules werewolf that happens to be a wizard in human form. Indeed, even in the Glantri gazetteer he's still evil (though I'm not quite certain just how it is that TSR missed that Sephora was essentially supposed to be a lich...but that's neither here nor there).

Probably the easiest thing to rule is that, when Etienne d'Ambreville (um...I'm going to stick to the English names after this 'cause they're easier to type) hauled the folk of Averoigne cross-worlds to Mystara, part of what occurred was that their supernatural aspects were left behind in Gothic Earth (i.e. that in this case the Ravenloft "house rules" didn't follow along).

On an entirely out-there note, since Castle Amber states that Averoigne was the Amber family's original homeland, that leads to the idea that way back when, an Amber, perhaps Stephen, found a way to plane-shift out of Gothic Earth and into Mystara. It was there, on the far side of the plane-shift, that Stephen started on the road to Immortality, but when the family revolted against him, Stephen's curse essentially turned Castle Amber into kind of a plane-traveling pocket domain, only one linked to Gothic Earth instead of Ravenloft proper--hence the Gray Mist. Once the curse was broken--which necessitated resurrecting/restoring Stephen Amber, he then achieved Immortality and "went back" to Averoigne, bringing out his family.

We can actually take this one step farther, though: the Averoigne of X2 actually combines characters from CAS's various stories which take place centuries apart from one another. Likewise, Averoigne is a "closed environment"--the X2 PCs can't travel out of Averoigne and go visit the rest of France if they had a yen to. So, I'd postulate this: the Curse of Stephen Amber not only uprooted Castle Amber from Mystara, but it also caused Averoigne itself to become a domain of Ravenloft, populated simultaneously by a variety of legends and horrors from throughout Averoigne's real history. That is, while the Curse of Stephen Amber is in effect, the domain of Averoigne and the pocket domain of Castle Amber were created and linked to one another. And therefore, it is the Ravenloft domain of Averoigne which was dumped into Mystara by the Immortal Stephen Amber, not the "real-world" Averoigne, which is why so many different characters from Averoigne's history exist in Glantri at the same time period.

This latter explanation, then, removes Averoigne from Gothic Earth and puts it into Ravenloft proper, which better suits the rules and restrictions of the domains themselves. In addition, it strongly implies that the original Averoigne from which the Ambers originated did not come from Gothic Earth but from a different Prime Material plane which like Gothic Earth is highly similar in its history to the real world. This addresses (1) the ability of the Ambers to leave this plane and go to Mystara, and (2) Rotipher's concern with having the Lovecraftian CAS-stories merged with Gothic Earth's cosmology.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Again, interesting. I'll have to read the discussion that Rip was engaged in on Canonfire.

Frankly, though, I'm not sure it's not selling the sheer scope of the game-multiverse short, if we try to cram X2-Averoigne into Ravenloft, or CAS-Averoigne into Gothic Earth into Uerth. Even if the Material Plane is finite, there could still be trillions of "alternate Earths/Oerths/Uerths" in D&D-reality, both within the bounds of the Great Wheel, and in other cosmologies, published or homebrew or as-yet-uninvented. Why do we need to assume that everything significant happens in just the tiny handful of those that Gygax happened to concoct weird variants of the word "Earth" for? Or that Ravenloft is the only place Averoignians from different time periods could be drawn into, and that happens to have fog in it?

The whole history of D&D products, novels, and even homebrew worlds have barely scratched the surface of what's possible. Trying to narrow things down to a bare handful of worlds could mean confining ourselves too much; it's like how Domains of Dread overdid it, by ret-conning darklord backgrounds just so it could fit in a token BBEG from each game-setting then in publication. We know there's a lot more worlds out there than just the few TSR ever published -- there's the magic-poor Von Zarovich homeworld, the Mordent/Souragne world of origin, a world ruled entirely by vampyres, the Shadowborns' Great Kingdom, the Black Land of the Akiri, the world that possessed stone giant from CotN:G came from, etc -- and the fact that Ravenloft draws in people from places we know little or nothing about is one of its many sources of mystery and the unexpected. I say, the more worlds the Mists have to pick and choose from, the better!

Heh. Guess I'm more of a "splitter" than a "lumper" at heart. (Biologist joke, there. )

[Matthew L. Martin]

All I have to say is that this thread reminds me of one of the things I'm loving about 4E--final freedom from the Greyhawk/Planescape Axis of Lawful Neutrality.

[The Giamarga]

Guess I'm more in favour of Occam's Razor. Why use more things for an explanation than you need. I think it only adds to the setting's depth rather than to it breadth.