Considering making a new Mistbound world

[Nevermorrow]

Hello, all. It's me again, SpiritCaller. I rejoined under a new name because I couldn't remember the password to my old account or the email address I had joined with. Oh well. I like this name better anyway.

I was working on a campaign where I tinkered with the domains and DLs extensively. I came up with a lot of other domains and used quite a few from the various netbooks in the process. More than one player commented to me that I may as well go whole hog and make a new world. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. 1. It could help me resolve a few issues I'd been working on and 2. It would unleash my creativity even more.

I've been playing Ravenloft off and on since the mid-90s, before the red box setting came out. I don't recall the exact date but at the time, the black box was all there was to the actual game setting. So, believe it or not, I've grown a bit tired of some of the stock villains and wouldn't mind seeing a nice twist or two thrown at them. A powerful vampire lord? Yes but I'd like to go a different route than basing one on Dracula. A "flesh golem" villain? Sure but not one based on Frankenstein's monster (though I love the novel!). In other words, I'm ready for something different and my players expressed their enthusiasm for this idea too.

The basis would be late medieval Europe but the knowledge that there were islands and other lands beyond, just as it was in medieval Europe (and freely open to development). However, I'm strongly thinking of incorporating some anachronisms, especially where that can raise the sense of mystery. For instance, my equivalent to late medieval London would have a mysteriously advanced clocktower in it... and no one is sure who built it or when. It's even better if it gives the realm a certain dreaminess in feel.

One of Ravenloft's most intriguing features is also its greatest weakness. You need darklords to have a domain and vice versa. I want to do away with this limitation as was done in Gothic Earth. In GE, there were darklords but they weren't DLs by Ravenloft standards; they had no domains (and were thus free to wander) and weren't necessarily cursed. This freed the devs from the burden of coming up with a good curse for every darklord and freed the players from the same when coming up with a new major villain. GE's darklords were also a bit more of a threat since they could conceivably chase the heroes all over the world. Getting out before the DL closes the borders was no longer the way to safety.

I'm also thinking about modifying the GE darklord concept to encompass situations. When I was imagining an alternate Gundarak, I got the idea to replace the vampire DL with a bloodline cursed with insanity. Every lord of the land of the ruling Malimuraz family is doomed to lose his mind. Every one of them tries to find some way around this curse but... well, that why I said "doomed." Another theme is their brutality in repressing rebellions (remember that Gundar once had rebels gruesomely slaughtered and hung from the trees?). It would indeed seem that both the Malimurazes and the land they rule are cursed.

Of course, many of these dark situations would be villains. A few of them could even be cursed like Strahd. But frankly, I need a cooler-sounding term than "dark situations." I'm open to suggestions.

There are several ways that I want this world to remain Ravenloft-ish. Most significantly would be the Mists. I want the Mists to be just as enigmatic, dangerous and prevalent as in Ravenloft. Another is the Vistani. Though I picture them being a bit more like the real-life Romany, they would still be decidedly Vistani. Dark magic would be enhanced though no longer limited by domain borders. Lastly, curses would work the same as in regular Ravenloft.

Ruleset: Rules are welcome, especially to give a character a baseline for how powerful they are, but I want this setting to be rules-agnostic as much as possible. RL is rooted in 2nd Edition AD&D and has been converted to later rules several times. And there are people like me using alternate rulesets (I use my own homebrew variant on True20 myself; feel free to download that if you're interested). There are people playing RL with many different rulesets nowadays so a rules-agnostic approach seems best.

Monsters: I've always found the monsters of folklore preferable. All too many of the monsters with the same names in FRPGs seem to have statted up just for the game but all their mystery and feeling were left out (this is why VRGTG is my fave monster book in all of d20; those are what ghosts are supposed to be like, not just game stats given to various words for "ghost"). In the old days, you needed various books to research folkloric critters but now, if you're online then you have the greatest monster book ever published at your fingertips--Wikipedia.

I bring this up with regard to monsters because of one land I came up with, Belleterre. It was originally a revamp of Verbrek that was based on medieval France and given a feel very muck like Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne. In the old werewolf lore, werewolves acquired their shapeshifting power via a token obtained in a deal with the Devil (usually a belt of wolf fur). Translating that to Belleterre, werewolves gain their ability in much the same fashion in a deal with a demon (folkloric demons, not the D20-style creatures). Hence, there's nothing tragic about folkloric werewolves; they're not cursed. Nor were they particularly vulnerable to silver or unknowing of what they did as werewolves.

Edit: I should add that I have nothing against adding fictional creatures.

So, anyone have any thoughts or ideas? I'm especially curious if anyone else has ever worked on a similar premise. And I know I've missed some relevant points, so please point out the flaw in my plan if you spot one.

[Nevermorrow]

Another thing I want to keep is the Nightmare Court. I've always thought that The Nightmare Lands was one of the best RL supplements ever, worth every penny (that's high praise from me; I'm poor and a cheapskate). I don't think I'd want it linked to a specific place in Nevermorrow's World though; let it be in the border ethereal, spirit world, or whatever that plane next door is in this reality.

Yeah, I know the name "Nevermorrow's World" is no better than the term "dark situations" but I haven't come up with anything better for that either yet.

What do I mean by dark situations anyway? Well, let me elaborate. Imagine these setups:

The heroes land on a gorgeous tropical island where the people are friendly and everything seems perfect... until dusk. Then the natives seize the heroes, tie them to stakes and scramble to their homes. That's when the things come. Hungry things.

Parents in Salandis are right to be fearful when their children take ill. An epidemic strikes about every 20 years or so that invariably kills a large number of children somewhere in Salandis but similar deaths occur in between epidemics. Moreover, some remember seeing a dark shape hovering over children that die in the epidemics.

Rumor has long held it that King Iain gained the throne of Ardis by murder. Though many call him a hero for his campaigns to defend Ardis from invasion, he seems unable to get along with the other noble clans and all of his efforts at diplomacy fail. He once alienated the nobles by marrying a commoner woman, Moira then allegedly had her murdered a few years later when she bore him no children. After that, he married a noblewoman from Belleterre, alienating the Ardisian nobles further. But every child he has with his new wife dies in their early childhood. Now rumors fly that Moira is haunting them and killing their children in their cribs.

Any of the three scenarios above could be a specific DL-type villain or not. The things on the island could be led by their own progenitor. The dark shadow that preys on the children of Salandis could be just be a monster or it could be a major villain who became a monster. Iain could be enduring a curse as consequences of his evil acts or the rumors could be lies.

Should all the major villains be cursed like traditional darklords? Of course not. Not even all the major villains of RL were cursed though there's no denying that the DLs were the stars. Non-DL villains weren't as impressive or as memorable with a few exceptions (such as Toben the Many). But what I have in mind with major villains in "Nevermorrow's World" is that the curse that a major villain endures should be the consequences of their own actions or a curse laid by someone they (or an ancestor) wronged, not something handed to them by the dark powers. This means that many villains, even major ones, would be curse-free.

Religions: As a replacement for the Ezran faith, I was thinking of a faith that worships gods called simply the Mother and the Father in a manner similar to Catholicism. However, there is no powerful central church like the Church of Rome. Hence, as with the Ezran faith, there are sects. But I think there should be more than 4 sects rather than basing them on alignment. Sects would have somewhat different ideals and philosophies. Though not necessarily hostile to each other there should be friction. One bone of contention between them is over their sacred book, the Codex (note: need to expand on that title a bit). There are differences with the Codex of each sect. Unsurprisingly, each sect claims that theirs is the correct, original Codex, though even many of their priests admit that the true original Codex is most likely lost to history.

This religion would also include belief in a being of supreme evil known as the Old One. Sects have different origin stories for the Old One; he is the son of the Mother and the Father in one sect, unrelated in others (the idea that the Old One is related to their heavenly parents is outright blasphemy in another sect). At least one sect calls him the Older One and speaks of the Mother and the Father taking the world from him and banishing him. Regardless, there is one thing all sects agree on--he's evil in the extreme and trapped just outside the world, ever seeking a way in so that he can take over. Despite being banished he is still able to influence things in the world. And unlike in Christianity, in this faith there's the possibility that the Old One could win. One saint wrote of his return in a nightmarish vision in which he saw the words "He is here" appear on the outside walls of the Grand Cathedral as birds began to fall dead out of the sky.

Naturally, other religions would be needed to flesh out this world as well, such as equivalents to Islam, Zoroastrianism, etc. I'm interested in keeping the horrid faith of Zhakata around too. In another thread, I gave a backstory to the takeover of Zhakata's faith where it replaced the Ezran religion in a sort of revolution. Other religions and heresies flourish in some places because the Mother and Father faith has no strong central organization.

Be back soon.

[Nevermorrow]

Domains no longer exist in this campaign--but the presence of a major "dark situation" usually causes a large sinkhole of evil effect if it remains in one area for long. In cases where the situation stays in one place, then this is effectively permanent. Think of the legendary haunted castle... the entire village nearby could have this effect.

Powers checks: I prefer the term "corruption" because a powers check in True20 refers to the use of supernatural powers. Other than this, the only difference is that corruption is saved for truly evil actions--and therefor, the chance of it happening is higher.

In a more realistic world, one has to accept a certain amount of "banal" evil. These include abuses, rapes and even some casual murder. It takes going a step beyond that to acquire corruption in the sense of a dark powers check. In another thread, I posited that there was a difference between a truly evil person and a sociopath or psychopath. The latter essentially don't know any better because they're unable to empathize with other people. They're literally incapable of feeling sympathy or emotions like love. A truly evil person knows better but does evil things anyway. (One of the accusations leveled at King Iain is that he has others do his dirty work for him, never looking his victims in the eye. If true, then he qualifies as true evil.) Only great acts of true evil draw corruption in "Nevermorrow's World." But what's the point if the evil character never becomes a darklord? That sinkhole of evil effect. The more corrupt a villain becomes the larger and more powerful that effect grows. In essence, the more evil the villain becomes the more powerful his aura of evil grows. At the fifth stage of corruption, that aura spreads for miles.

But dark situations can have that aura of evil too. It would be no surprise that Schloss Malimuraz is a sinkhole of evil. However, the ruler has it too even though he never made a decision to do any great evil before he lost his mind. In RL terms he couldn't be a darklord because he didn't earn that status when he was sane enough to make such decisions with any rational understanding of his choices. That doesn't matter here because him and his cursed bloodline are the focus of the dark situation. (I really need to come up with better terms for this stuff!) The current Malimuraz ruler has no corruption. There could well be other psychopaths with no corruption because they didn't choose to become psychopaths; that was beyond their control. However, they might still have the negative aura effect as they've basically become living sinkholes of evil.

To summarize, darklord domains are replaced with auras of negativity similar to a sinkhole of evil effect but can spread miles. Dark situations have the same effect even if there is no villain at the center of it, merely the situation; this applies to beings as well, even if they haven't "earned" it by being evil.

[Dion of the Fraternity]

Aren't Gothic Earth and the world of the Jade Dragon technically "Mistbound worlds"?

[Nevermorrow]

Aren't Gothic Earth and the world of the Jade Dragon technically "Mistbound worlds"?

Well, I'm not familiar with the Jade Dragon--sounds interesting!--but Gothic Earth certainly is. It adjusted RL's rules to 1890s Earth. What I'm proposing is something similar: another fantasy world (though largely based on late medieval Earth) that uses RL's nature a lot like GE did.