Beauty and the Beast as a Domain
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2017 12:45 pm
With the live-action movie coming up soon, I've been thinking some about the viability of using the region and plot of the Disney version of 'Beauty and the Beast' as a Ravenloft domain. Here are some of my thoughts; curious what others think or might come up with.
The domain itself slots very nicely into the Core, between Richemulot and Dementlieu; it represents the rural French countryside that the Dementlieuse sneer at and that the Richemuloise are encouraged to depart in favor of the rat-infested cities, and to some degree it helps explain both viewpoints. The people are backward, superstitious, and hide-bound to tradition, thinking that because they do something that their parents did and their parents before them, it must be the Right Thing To Do. The common folk aren't evil per se, but they're easily led and distrust anything that's unlike them or outside of their experience. (There's more than a little similarity to Tepest here, but without the Celtic flavor of that domain.)
A good chunk of the flavor of any domain, especially the Core domains, comes from the choice of Darklord, and in this domain, we've got a number of options:
- The Beast/Prince Adam
A fairly obvious choice, and one with problems even outside the obviousness. For starters, if you really want to incorporate this domain into the Core, you've got to divert from the story -- the Darklord is, by definition, irredeemable, so the whole 'cursed until he finds someone to love and be loved by' doesn't really work. (You might get it to work as a one-shot adventure in a pocket domain, where the actions of the PCs can actually help 'fix' the central problem in the domain, but that's a different focus.) Also, when played straight with The Beast as Darklord, the central problem makes the domain very similar to Barovia, just with a slightly different cultural flavor.
However, there is a wrinkle that might make the domain usable on a more long-term basis: have the domain's present be set after the events of the film, with Prince Adam returned to his human form. The problem is, since everyone learned to care for and love Adam (including the woman he loves) while he was a beast, he slowly begins to realize that those around him loved The Beast more than they love him as Prince Adam. Adam, therefore, is growing more and more irritated with those around him while simultaneously trying to discover how to return to being a beast so as to recapture the hearts of those around him.
(You might even take this a step further and use Adam's situation as a somewhat perverse critique of success -- for example, even though the story makes plain that Adam's curse is broken at the end of the film, numerous later appearances (such as his 'appearance' with Belle at the Oscars that year) still portray him as The Beast that everyone knows and loves. Probably more appropriate for a darkly humorous Ravenloft game rather than a traditional Gothic horror game, but could still work with a motivated GM.)
- Gaston
Gaston actually makes a great Darklord candidate -- he's pretty clearly revealed in the film to be selfishly evil, and his situation mirrors that of Dominic D'Honaire in Dementlieu: a superior man in the company of inferior companions.
Gaston's curse as Darklord would be an interesting blend of D'Honaire's and of Strahd's in Barovia -- he's cursed to be admired, even worshiped, except by the one woman he loves, who rejects him to live with a beast in a nearby castle, whom he then is compelled to fight. Gaston dies, but is then reborn, grows up again in the village, and again meets a strange woman who comes to the village from Outside whom he falls for, starting the whole cycle again.
(It's significant that we never meet Gaston's parents in the film -- for the purpose of this story, it doesn't really matter who Gaston's parents are. Any couple in the village could sire him, and he'd still turn out exactly the same way.)
The challenge with presenting this domain with Gaston as Darklord is to figure out what the PCs roles are in the story -- are they there to try to fix the problem, as with the Beast pocket-domain scenario above, or are they simply there to bear witness to Gaston's curse, which doesn't give them much to actually do?
- Belle
Belle might make an interesting Darklord, but I'd be loath to try to take such a project on. While she certainly has some flaws that could be magnified to become Darklord-worthy -- the most obvious being her desire for adventure, which would be easily thwarted by becoming a Darklord and thus being trapped in her 'provincial life' -- it would be a challenge to choose one or more of those traits and exaggerate them without turning Belle into a caricature, and a likely misogynist caricature at that. Exaggerate her pretentiousness and disdain for the common folk of the domain and you're well on your way to making a carbon-copy of Queen Magdalena from 'Galavant', as an example.
A really talented GM/author could probably pull this off, but I don't see myself having enough sensitivity to be able to make Belle into both a sympathetic and pathetic Darklord without erring too heavily on the pathetic side.
- Chip
Here's the mind***k option.
Begin with the observation that Prince Adam has been the Beast for roughly ten years. Add in that Chip, the cracked teacup being raised by Mrs. Potts as her son, appears to either be younger than ten years old, or is pretty danged naive and cute for his age, while Mrs. Potts seems almost too old to have such a young son. This leads to an internet fan theory that Chip is actually the Beast's illegitimate son, being raised by Mrs. Potts to avoid scandal.
But in this formulation of the domain, the 'tell' as to what is really going on is the library.
The castle contains a massive library, which in the movie is used by the Beast to help win Belle's heart. But folks who work with books can tell you that, while fire is dangerous to books, the true nemesis of books is rot. And in a castle where the Prince himself barely learned to read and thus has no reason to visit or maintain the library, it's difficult to explain how the books stay in such good condition over the years. But what if there's someone else who uses, even needs the library?
In this formulation of the domain, the arrival of the enchantress ten years earlier is actually in the domain's false history -- it's a memory that is shared by the castle residents to explain how they got here, though, if you asked them, each of them would give a slightly different account of specific details from that night, maybe the color of the old woman's cloak or whether the wind was blustery or just chilly.
Chip, as a child, is fascinated with stories, but he's torn -- he wants them to turn out 'the right way', but he doesn't have the knowledge or experience to know how to get from where he is to where he wants the story to go. Thus the library -- the repository of all the stories Chip knows are 'good' and thus worth experiencing. When the PCs arrive, the main story is that of Beauty and the Beast, but they might well find evidence of side stories, or related tales, going on along the margins, additional stories Chip turns to when the main story gets dull.
With Chip as Darklord, the domain becomes an odd, childlike version of Scaena -- a story is playing out, and everything the PCs do to try to change the story or resist its influence is resisted by a power they can't perceive, but unlike the motivation of Lemot Sediam Juste to tell a story with 'artistic purity', Chip's motivation is for the PCs to 'get the story right'.
I think there's definitely some potential in this idea, even if it borrows some tropes from other, already existing Ravenloft domains.
--
Pauper
The domain itself slots very nicely into the Core, between Richemulot and Dementlieu; it represents the rural French countryside that the Dementlieuse sneer at and that the Richemuloise are encouraged to depart in favor of the rat-infested cities, and to some degree it helps explain both viewpoints. The people are backward, superstitious, and hide-bound to tradition, thinking that because they do something that their parents did and their parents before them, it must be the Right Thing To Do. The common folk aren't evil per se, but they're easily led and distrust anything that's unlike them or outside of their experience. (There's more than a little similarity to Tepest here, but without the Celtic flavor of that domain.)
A good chunk of the flavor of any domain, especially the Core domains, comes from the choice of Darklord, and in this domain, we've got a number of options:
- The Beast/Prince Adam
A fairly obvious choice, and one with problems even outside the obviousness. For starters, if you really want to incorporate this domain into the Core, you've got to divert from the story -- the Darklord is, by definition, irredeemable, so the whole 'cursed until he finds someone to love and be loved by' doesn't really work. (You might get it to work as a one-shot adventure in a pocket domain, where the actions of the PCs can actually help 'fix' the central problem in the domain, but that's a different focus.) Also, when played straight with The Beast as Darklord, the central problem makes the domain very similar to Barovia, just with a slightly different cultural flavor.
However, there is a wrinkle that might make the domain usable on a more long-term basis: have the domain's present be set after the events of the film, with Prince Adam returned to his human form. The problem is, since everyone learned to care for and love Adam (including the woman he loves) while he was a beast, he slowly begins to realize that those around him loved The Beast more than they love him as Prince Adam. Adam, therefore, is growing more and more irritated with those around him while simultaneously trying to discover how to return to being a beast so as to recapture the hearts of those around him.
(You might even take this a step further and use Adam's situation as a somewhat perverse critique of success -- for example, even though the story makes plain that Adam's curse is broken at the end of the film, numerous later appearances (such as his 'appearance' with Belle at the Oscars that year) still portray him as The Beast that everyone knows and loves. Probably more appropriate for a darkly humorous Ravenloft game rather than a traditional Gothic horror game, but could still work with a motivated GM.)
- Gaston
Gaston actually makes a great Darklord candidate -- he's pretty clearly revealed in the film to be selfishly evil, and his situation mirrors that of Dominic D'Honaire in Dementlieu: a superior man in the company of inferior companions.
Gaston's curse as Darklord would be an interesting blend of D'Honaire's and of Strahd's in Barovia -- he's cursed to be admired, even worshiped, except by the one woman he loves, who rejects him to live with a beast in a nearby castle, whom he then is compelled to fight. Gaston dies, but is then reborn, grows up again in the village, and again meets a strange woman who comes to the village from Outside whom he falls for, starting the whole cycle again.
(It's significant that we never meet Gaston's parents in the film -- for the purpose of this story, it doesn't really matter who Gaston's parents are. Any couple in the village could sire him, and he'd still turn out exactly the same way.)
The challenge with presenting this domain with Gaston as Darklord is to figure out what the PCs roles are in the story -- are they there to try to fix the problem, as with the Beast pocket-domain scenario above, or are they simply there to bear witness to Gaston's curse, which doesn't give them much to actually do?
- Belle
Belle might make an interesting Darklord, but I'd be loath to try to take such a project on. While she certainly has some flaws that could be magnified to become Darklord-worthy -- the most obvious being her desire for adventure, which would be easily thwarted by becoming a Darklord and thus being trapped in her 'provincial life' -- it would be a challenge to choose one or more of those traits and exaggerate them without turning Belle into a caricature, and a likely misogynist caricature at that. Exaggerate her pretentiousness and disdain for the common folk of the domain and you're well on your way to making a carbon-copy of Queen Magdalena from 'Galavant', as an example.
A really talented GM/author could probably pull this off, but I don't see myself having enough sensitivity to be able to make Belle into both a sympathetic and pathetic Darklord without erring too heavily on the pathetic side.
- Chip
Here's the mind***k option.
Begin with the observation that Prince Adam has been the Beast for roughly ten years. Add in that Chip, the cracked teacup being raised by Mrs. Potts as her son, appears to either be younger than ten years old, or is pretty danged naive and cute for his age, while Mrs. Potts seems almost too old to have such a young son. This leads to an internet fan theory that Chip is actually the Beast's illegitimate son, being raised by Mrs. Potts to avoid scandal.
But in this formulation of the domain, the 'tell' as to what is really going on is the library.
The castle contains a massive library, which in the movie is used by the Beast to help win Belle's heart. But folks who work with books can tell you that, while fire is dangerous to books, the true nemesis of books is rot. And in a castle where the Prince himself barely learned to read and thus has no reason to visit or maintain the library, it's difficult to explain how the books stay in such good condition over the years. But what if there's someone else who uses, even needs the library?
In this formulation of the domain, the arrival of the enchantress ten years earlier is actually in the domain's false history -- it's a memory that is shared by the castle residents to explain how they got here, though, if you asked them, each of them would give a slightly different account of specific details from that night, maybe the color of the old woman's cloak or whether the wind was blustery or just chilly.
Chip, as a child, is fascinated with stories, but he's torn -- he wants them to turn out 'the right way', but he doesn't have the knowledge or experience to know how to get from where he is to where he wants the story to go. Thus the library -- the repository of all the stories Chip knows are 'good' and thus worth experiencing. When the PCs arrive, the main story is that of Beauty and the Beast, but they might well find evidence of side stories, or related tales, going on along the margins, additional stories Chip turns to when the main story gets dull.
With Chip as Darklord, the domain becomes an odd, childlike version of Scaena -- a story is playing out, and everything the PCs do to try to change the story or resist its influence is resisted by a power they can't perceive, but unlike the motivation of Lemot Sediam Juste to tell a story with 'artistic purity', Chip's motivation is for the PCs to 'get the story right'.
I think there's definitely some potential in this idea, even if it borrows some tropes from other, already existing Ravenloft domains.
--
Pauper