Personal Canon

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

Didn't know that, thanks!

In other words, you didn't know it because Grumpy RPG Reviews made it up.

In my defense, this entire thread is called "Personal Cannon."

[HuManBing]

Absolutely. GonzoRon was stating that in your defense. This thread is a very fanon-friendly thread!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Didn't know that, thanks!

In other words, you didn't know it because Grumpy RPG Reviews made it up.

In my defense, this entire thread is called "Personal Cannon."

Indeed, no need for a defense. In the sentence before and after what you quoted here, I was pointing to the thread title as well. You used the thread properly. Boris, however, seemed to be reading it as established fact, so I was just letting him know that he's in the wrong thread for established canon facts. No worries...

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I lived in the city of Gabrovo while in Bulgaria and the city is nestled in north-south valley in the central Balkans. Directly north of the city is a wide, flat plateau like area once home to a castle and small community. The ruins have been partly restored so as to just show the outlines of the old structures and a large radio tower now stands at the end of a sharp cliff with about a 50-meter drop. While not as spectacular as the location of Castle Ravenloft, that was/is the location of the place in my Head/Personal Cannon.

In this image you can just make out the radio tower in the background, to the right.

[Strahdsbuddy]

Every time Thread Necromancy is cast on this I assume I have previously replied. Guess I didn't!

Like the link in my sig, my demiplane formation is considerably different than canon, which leads to several inter-connected domains. So for instance, there are Tergish relics throughout Barovia, G'Henna, Markovia, and Borca. The realm of the Arak extends beneath the majority of the Core, forming something like an Underdark. Darklords can leave their domains, but with tremendous loss of power. The original lords of "Greater Domains" cannot leave those borders however. So Strahd, Godefroy, Azalin, Malken and (technically) Gwydion are free to roam the domains that make up their greater domains (still weakened outside their own), but cannot cross into another greater domain. This probably makes no sense at all without seeing my Core Genesis.

I don't use any demihumans, replacing them instead with human ethnicities. I had a pretty intricate backstory about the different tribes in Darkon once, but it is lost to time. The Darkonian ethnicities keep a little bit of their old demihuman cultural traits. The Tempus tribe (nee-Dwarves) are stocky, bearded miners and smiths, and so forth.

There is a village of immortal men living near the Mistlands in Darkon, though it is essentially a curse as their bodies have all continued to age. The majority of them are in their 4th century of existence and quite feeble.

Although Mistways exist, and transport by the Mists is still possible, almost all domains have a fixed position on the map. East of Vechor stretches the Amber Wastes and Steaming Lands. Vorostokov connects to the southern Core. West of the Sea of Sorrows is Mictlan and its derivitive domains, etc. Notable exceptions to this are Bluetspur, which is on the moon, and the Nightmare Lands which are not a physical realm at all, more like a dimension.

While the demiplane was initially created as a neutral holding area for evil, its stewards began to twist their methods and become as sadistic as those they were imprisoning. The first incarnation of the demiplane was essentially a hellscape full of arch demons and elemental beings. The Dark Powers considered these creatures boring and eradicated the entire world to remake a realm more to their tastes. They began baiting humans, taking great joy in corrupting them and tailoring poetic punishments for them. Their hubris made them blind to the fact they were no different than the monsters they collected. Madame Eva is a former Dark Power, and acts as a foil to her ex-associates who she believes lost their way when they began having a bit too much fun tormenting the demiplane's residents. She is quite powerful, even in her voluntarily diminished form. Her goals are aloof from humanity, since she tends to know the grandparents and grandchildren of everyone she meets. Her loyalty is first to the Land; she knows better than anyone that everything is temporary.

[Terminusvitae]

These are all very interesting ideas, and some of 'em have given me some inspiration for trying to get an adventure together...

One other thing I do is make a few changes to some of the shadow fey. I make the good-aligned ones a bit more, well, good, because I feel that even a spirit creature will have a hard time justifying a good alignment when they're strangling to death anyone who criticizes their begonias. I also tend to make Queen Maeve more carefree, friendly, and fascinated by mortals than her canon self, which I like to use to help sharpen the contrast between her court and Prince Loht's and play up a slow-building, burgeoning conflict between the two that could (eventually) erupt in another civil war, in which Loht will show his true colors to all his people...not just Tristessa.

To help even the odds for Loht in case the players decided to take part (either to help them or make it more challenging, dependent on which court they sided with) I drew something up that I never had the chance to implement in-game, which is strongly influenced (okay, maybe outright stolen) from the Genestealers and Genestealer Cults of Warhammer 40k. It's quite a nasty surprise for an ostensibly outnumbered and outgunned force suddenly to have an entire army of reinforcements comprised of those who'd spent centuries infiltrating societies.

***EDIT*** Also, I define Gwydion as an unbelievably ancient and powerful obyrith prince who, early in his career, had defeated a usurpation attempt by the Queen of Chaos, but she later managed to unite the other obyrith for just long enough to depose Gwydion and chase him into exile in the Shadow Plane. In an attempt to assuage his wounded pride, he manipulated the tanar'ri into their own uprising, though of course his efforts to restore himself to power in the Abyss went unrewarded. At that point, his Ravenloft lore begins and he enslaves the Arak.

[HuManBing]

My take on the Shadow Rift:

The fey don't really do it for me, although I like the idea of a completely alien style of race living there, for whom death is a strange and largely optional process.

I'm thinking of retaining Gwydion as a lurking otherworldly horror (albeit drastically renamed to be less Welsh) with the Shadow Rift as a domain of entropic quantum entities. They have consciousness and can cause significant violations of Platonic and Einsteinian physics. However, exposure to light will destroy them, collapsing them to a zero entropic state and causing them to "die" (with all the attendant cultural horror and fascination such a state entails for the fey).

Azalin's plan involves an observatory suspended over the Rift to harness the reality-bending powers of the Immortals.

[The Wolfman]

Hello all!

I've got a bunch, but I tend to make them up as I go along. I took away Darkon's memory modification (it doesn't make sense to me) for one. I use "witch" as the term for all of Hala's priests. I made Vistani (or at least some of them) playable--I don't use "half-Vistani." They're a bit less powerful than they previously were, but it's not a big deal. It's a human-only setting (while elves and dwarves exist, dwarves are practically earth elementals and elves are far too fae).

I remember seeing someone, possibly on this board, say how they replaced the Shadow Rift with an enormous forest; I liked that idea so much I took it (thanks, whoever it was). I don't differentiate between shadow and sylvan fae, and instead of Seelie and Unseelie Courts I decided to divide them into the Court of Storms (capricious and associated with the Mists) and the court of Stones (evil and associated with the Dark Powers). It's practically the same thing, but I like the terminology better.

I'm working on a re-write of several of the...less useful domains as well.

And, of course, I use GURPS instead of D&D, so there's that.

[HuManBing]

I'm the same way. I found D&D to be hard to use, primarily because of the inflexible class/prestige class mechanics, and also secondarily because it has so many mechanics that depend on the Good/Evil/Law/Chaos alignment system.

GURPS was my eventual go-to system (after I "interviewed" a load of systems) because it was pretty setting-independent and it had a better magic system than D&D, and it had good rules for Horror checks. I also later came to appreciate that the randomized dice roll mechanic is much better with a 3d6 bell curve than with the d20 flat distribution, but it did take me some time to reacquaint mathematically with that mechanic. (E.g. a +1 bonus is much more significant in GURPS near the 10 average than near the extremes.) The skill vs. advantage system is superior to the skill vs. feat system in d20, which felt much more arbitrary and ultimately seemed like it was victim to typical edition-lifetime power inflation (essentially boiling down to a way for PCs to "bend the rules with my character's kewl 1337 powerz").

TriStat dX was a very close contender, and in fact I think if I had greater mathematical acumen and a more setting-independent mindset back in 2008 (when I made the switchover) I might have gone with that ultimately. The main problem is that the publisher, Guardians of Order, went bankrupt in 2006 and the IP became entirely unsupported.

[The Wolfman]

I'm the same way. I found D&D to be hard to use, primarily because of the inflexible class/prestige class mechanics, and also secondarily because it has so many mechanics that depend on the Good/Evil/Law/Chaos alignment system.

Exactly. The lack of alignment system allows for a much wider range of personalities (although admittedly there can be some problems, such as how it's not too hard to find a demon in a GURPS books that lacks "evil" traits like Callous or Bloodthirsty).

Also, one of the characters in my game is a salesman. There's no way he could do that in D&D.

GURPS was my eventual go-to system (after I "interviewed" a load of systems) because it was pretty setting-independent and it had a better magic system than D&D, and it had good rules for Horror checks. I also later came to appreciate that the randomized dice roll mechanic is much better with a 3d6 bell curve than with the d20 flat distribution, but it did take me some time to reacquaint mathematically with that mechanic. (E.g. a +1 bonus is much more significant in GURPS near the 10 average than near the extremes.) The skill vs. advantage system is superior to the skill vs. feat system in d20, which felt much more arbitrary and ultimately seemed like it was victim to typical edition-lifetime power inflation (essentially boiling down to a way for PCs to "bend the rules with my character's kewl 1337 powerz").

I use a modified version of the Fright check table from the newest addition of Horror, and I think it works much better. At the least, it gets rid of the annoying "Stunned for 1d seconds"--saying "you're shaking so hard that you have a -2 to DX for 1d seconds" feels much more visceral. I do need to get better acquainted with the corruption rules from that book, should my characters start sliding to the dark side.

I'm using Ritual Path Magic and Divine Powers and they're very good, since they're both decently powered magic systems but also feel much more realistic--or at least, more realistic for a Gothic horror game than the standard D&D (or even standard GURPS) point-and-shoot magic system. I haven't quite figured out what I'll do for Halan witches, since they use a bit of both arcane and divine magic. Maybe I'll go for a magic-as-powers thing.

I've always wondered if a bell curve could be achieved in a d20 game with 2d10, or if that wouldn't be enough of one.

TriStat dX was a very close contender, and in fact I think if I had greater mathematical acumen and a more setting-independent mindset back in 2008 (when I made the switchover) I might have gone with that ultimately. The main problem is that the publisher, Guardians of Order, went bankrupt in 2006 and the IP became entirely unsupported.

I've never played TriStat (I once made a character for BESM but the game folded before it ran). I'd always assumed it was too cinematic for Ravenloft. I thought FATE might make a good system for it, though.

[High Priest Mikhal]

This is something I've been doing since AD&D 2e. Namely that ancient dead (mummies) are empowered by negative energy when they're undead. The 3e category of "deathless" actually supports the idea that some--like tomb guardians who are what they are willingly--would be deathless beings. Others cursed with their status would be regular undead and thus powered by negative energy. As would those created by improper rituals, undead mummies with the power to create more of their kind, and most forms of necromancy.

IIRC Mangrum once posted here that the idea ancients use positive energy was a typo that never got corrected and ran amok when people took it at face value even into 3e.

[Rogold Gildenman]

For the record I tend to imagine The Demiplane of Dread as being more 'Early Modern' than Enlightenment or Industrial (if only to help separate it from Masque of the Red Death), not to mention closer to 1492 than 1776 (although somewhere in-between, probably somewhere in the vicinity of the Thirty Years War).

I will also go on record and state that one of the key pillars of my conception of the Land of Mists is that it's a place of Old Cultures in a New World; I would suggest that it's fairly common knowledge amongst it's natives that they live in a different place from their ancestors and amongst different peoples, but that most common-or-academic historians ascribe this to Colonisation rather than Inter-dimensional Abduction.

[Ryan Naylor]

IIRC Mangrum once posted here that the idea ancients use positive energy was a typo that never got corrected and ran amok when people took it at face value even into 3e.

He also said that a lot of interesting things were thrown up because of it, though.

It's like a character in Hour of the Knife who could speak Silver Dragon. At the time, a number of people got uppity about how it was a mistake and didn't make any sense. Then someone (Mangrum again, I think) suggested you try to imagine why that wouldc make sense. And voila, in 3e, Draconic is basically the Latin lingua franca of the educated.

[Rogold Gildenman]

Perhaps 'Silver Dragon' is simply the local equivalent of a Silver Fox when he ascends to the level of Sir Sean Connery?

On a more serious note, I have grave suspicions that what pushed Lord Godefroy over the line from Chaotic Neutral 'Repentant yet Uncompromising' rake hell (as he is described in 'The House on Gryphon Hill' unless my memory fails me) to Chaotic Evil Cad and Darklord of Mordent was a confrontation with his trans-possessed daughter (the little girl accompanied by a black cat and eerie laughter at the end of that module perhaps?), come to free her mother and potentially even make peace with her Father if that's what it took to get the task done.

Unfortunately for that to happen Lord Godefroy would have to admit that he was ever actually in the wrong* and after a certain amount of time spent watching her father move from sheepish to sour to stormy Miss Godefroy made the cardinal mistake of sharing some Home Truths with Daddy - at which point Lord Godefroy, despite his best intentions but very much true to his own nature made sure that Family History repeated itself in the ugliest manner possible and The Mists stranded Mordent in the Demiplane of Dread, apparently in perpetuity.

*Even before he took a headlong plunge back into Chaotic Evil his lordship was NEVER wrong, he merely took a sinister turn when he should have done right (and don't you forget this: His lordship will tell YOU what needs knowing - Home Truths, Right from Wrong - YOU can only offer colour commentary).

[Joël of the FoS]

IMC, I have a PC who took the Moonchild PRC (to control his lycanthropy). That PrC is less interesting than climbing in a regular PC class, and is worth it only when you get at the last level of the PrC (you fully control the beast inside you).

That PC (Monk 5 / Mn 2) died and we ruled that the level he lost because he died was of a PC class, i.e. you can't loose a Moonchild class (or the last classes you loose are of Moonchild PrC).

That way, it was more fun (and less discouraging) for the player making all these efforts to play the Moonchild PrC.

Joël