Café de Nuit

As the title of the thread says, what is true in your home Ravenloft game that isn't necessarily true in the setting as-written? What have you entered into "canon" for your own campaigns?

For example:

In my game, Borcans are culturally intrigued by the concept of twins, almost to the point of obsession. Under Borcan law, twins are considered to be the same person rather than separate individuals. Some of this is because of the complexities of inheritance law and primogeniture, and some of it is from the Borcan belief that you should only have as many children as you can take care of. Some families take this to its most literal end and abandon or drown unwanted second-twins, but it's a common legend that doing this will inevitably result in the surviving twin being haunted by his dead sibling, so most endure the extra expense rather than risking their child being cursed.

The Church of Ezra can legally declare a woman to be a virgin after annulling a marriage (like the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages).

Lamordia has working steam engines in museums, but pretty much everyone considers them a dead-end technology, since they're unsafe to use outside of laboratory conditions.

Revolvers exist, as do multi-shot rifles. They're just incredibly expensive.


Let's hear some of yours!


Jeremy Puckett

I have a whole thread for this, my background notes for Mists over the Musarde.

I love the modular nature of Ravenlofts domains - I tend to make my own version of the core each time I play.

Here was my last version of the core:

Vorostokov
Sanguinius
Barovia
Lamordia
Souragne
Borca
Falkovnia

Lost Heretic wrote:I love the modular nature of Ravenlofts domains - I tend to make my own version of the core each time I play.

Here was my last version of the core:

Vorostokov
Sanguinius
Barovia
Lamordia
Souragne
Borca
Falkovnia

Interesting. I've given serious thought to adding Sourange to the Core, or rather, placing it as an island across one of the two seas.

ewancummins wrote: Interesting. I've given serious thought to adding Sourange to the Core, or rather, placing it as an island across one of the two seas.

That one's true in my campaign too: Souragne is a colony of Dementlieu accessible by ship across the Sea of Sorrows, rather than being a true Island of Terror.


Jeremy Puckett

Anton probably doesn't like that too much. Or is he involved in a passionate exchange of letters with Ivana, playing her and Ivan against each other to maximize his own influence?

Because I love Ravenloft more as a style of play than as a setting-I think because it was designed as a series of unconnected modules instead of as a game world like Greyhawk, it is difficult to get a feel of history, which certain creatures need to establish their credentials, so my tendancy is to employ all the Ravenloft magic adjustments, limiting planar travel and detecting alignments and use a map of the wprld, altering it's history to include these great and terrible beings.

The ancient dead of Egypt dwell in the Necropolis where they accept worship from their living descendants and keep Egypt safe from invasion, though they've been a secret of Egypt since Alexander, placing Ankhetepot in lower Egypt and Tiyet in upper Egypt. They can still close borders and such, but now have the wealth of Egyptian history at their claws.

Barovia rests in the Balkans, it's borders those of tiny Wallachia. Though technically Romania or Czechoslovakia, all know who rules there.

Most of the domains fit nicely into the RL areas that inspired them and give me the feeling of history the Ravenloft setting can't provide.

Besides, I really want to do a MesoAmerican horror and no domain quite fits...

Sareau wrote: Most of the domains fit nicely into the RL areas that inspired them and give me the feeling of history the Ravenloft setting can't provide.

Besides, I really want to do a MesoAmerican horror and no domain quite fits...

Interesting...kinda like Masque of the Red Death with classic Ravenloft villains?

I simply add to and alter the Ravenloft setting as it has been presented, giving it more depth. I have expanded the history of the world- and it would not be wise to dismiss all that came before the current crop of darklords as 'false history.' Cannot reveal too much in open forums...
I have made some changes to better integrate the various domains.


The one change I'd make, if I had it to do all over again, would be to eliminate the Shadow Rift. As it is, I enlarged most of the Core, but left the Rift small. A huge hole in the middle of the map is a bit much for me.

There are a few metaphysical changes, but in case my players stumble onto this site, I'm not going to go into detail on those, so here's the physical changes.

Rokushima Taiyoo doesn't exist. Its equivalent in the Scattered Lotus Cluster is Yashima (formerly Oyashima), commonly "Yasman" in Mordentish.

The Core had the equivalent of a Columbus voyage between 740-747. When the captain finally found his way back to Parnault Bay, he brought the exotic lands of the mysterious Occident to the world's attention, introduced the tomato to the Core, and made his family fabulously (and scandalously) wealthy. (The exact details of the voyage are still hotly debated; his description of Yasmanese language and culture were deeply accurate, but some of his maps are nonsense.)

G'henna is "at the bottom of the Shadow Rift," sorta. Its borders are now steep rock faces that disappear into the cloud cover; there are a few extremely reliable one-way Mistways, mostly around waterfalls. (Note that the Shadow Rift still exists, and if you try going back down you're never seen again.)

Souragne has historic ties to Dementlieu, as per everybody else.

Vlad Drakov is "King Vladimir I" when he's listening, and "the Margrave" when he isn't. (Even the Talons call him "the Margrave," and even impalement won't make people stop calling him that.)

A lot of the religious fluff has been lifted whole cloth from a hodgepodge of other settings. There isn't any big change to the balance of power, but Darkonese elves still maintain a few shrines to Asuryan, for instance.

The Requiem (and to a lesser extent the events of 751) had realistically-scaled repercussions. In hindsight historians call the years between 750-780 "the Thirty Years' War." (I'm actually writing up a general outline of the Thirty Years' War, which I'll eventually get around to posting.)

A pike up the backside would be threat enough to make me stop calling Vlad 'Margrave.' Why do people insist on doing it, if it gets them in so much trouble?

ewancummins wrote:A pike up the backside would be threat enough to make me stop calling Vlad 'Margrave.' Why do people insist on doing it, if it gets them in so much trouble?

I can only imagine he's not supposed to find out.

d'Ysmaul wrote:A lot of the religious fluff has been lifted whole cloth from a hodgepodge of other settings. There isn't any big change to the balance of power, but Darkonese elves still maintain a few shrines to Asuryan, for instance.

That's awesome!

I could spawn an entire chronicle with that idea!

ewancummins wrote:A pike up the backside would be threat enough to make me stop calling Vlad 'Margrave.' Why do people insist on doing it, if it gets them in so much trouble?

Outside Falkovnia, it's mostly power politics. Vlad's power isn't organized on feudal lines, and his land claims beyond Falkovnia aren't recognized, so he couldn't offer fiefs for fealty even if people wanted to be his vassals.

Within Falkovnia, it's mostly a coping mechanism. Just because you can't disagree or dissent (and have the Talon bracers to prove it) doesn't mean you can't complain. Obviously not to his face, and you deserve what you get if you do. But all the maps in the world call your country a margravate, and sometimes you're afraid to say his name aloud (because you don't know who's listening), you know? Everybody's done it before, and if you rat somebody out for it you're a brown-nosing snitch.

Within and without, there's also a bit of Vlad's curse in there too, but you knew that already.

Magic users only have access to the spells in Call Of Cthulhu D20.

Ched Nasad was drawn into Ravenloft after the events in The War Of The Spider Queen saga.

Technology is at a level akin to the 1890s.

I diverge from everyone else a bit: Souragne was a colony of Dementlieu and is now a colony of Mordentshire. My Sourange is a whole island (containing 3 domains) at the heart of a chain of Islands far to the West of the Core in the Sea of sorrows. It exports produce to the core but relies on the core for many goods. Its also more developed than it is in the original source material.

Other than some map shifts and pulling more domains into the core plus adding some domains of my own the biggest changes have been Falkovnia marching into Lamordia which is now a puppet state (although the Darklord hasn't changed). This has pushed Falkovnia's other small neighbours into an uneasy closer alliance and Mordentshire is becoming (slowly) militarised and industrialised.