Le Noir Faineant wrote:
NWoD had a fan-made fantasy mod that worked pretty much like "The One Ring". I don't know where I got it from, but I ran some of my best fantasy games with it.
Nowatdays, I am tinkering a lot with Dragon Warriors (the second edition from Magnum Opus Press), as well as the unpronouncable DCC RPG, but for 3e, I find it hard to come up with a full substitute.
My personal issue is, my games are grim, deadly, and very bleak. And I can't have my players roll out a new char for 30 mins... Every 30 mins.
I developed and Jonathan McAnulty authored
The Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy, for my Kaidan Japanese Horror setting - which I and the reviewers can attest was very gritty, dark and deadly. While the first adventure had a more 'gothic horror' feel, especially with two very dark and ghostly locations, the second and third is in places like a survival-horror game, very bleak as characters are on the run, trying to remove a curse put on them, and escape the dire situation that keeps seeming to get worse and worse. As one reviewer put Dim Spirit, the second module "shakes the player characters like ragdolls".
At least in Kaidan, when the PC dies, he will be reincarnated in a very dark way, of course, as long he doesn't slip and become a ghost or demon (oni). PCs in Kaidan tend to have long careers over multiple lifetimes...
I've got ideas for a "The Grudge" type of adventure as a possible one-shot for Kaidan.
It uses Pathfinder RPG rules, but some of our customers are using it for 4e, L5R and other game systems.
While I cannot claim that Pathfinder rules are best for a Ravenloft game, GMs should be able to work with whatever system they are comfortable with. It might take some extra work by you to add any missing subsystems - I do it all the time, but any general RPG system should be able to handle it.
