Ravenloft is back in 5e?

[DocBeard]

My general approach to archetypal characters like van Richten is to stick to the basics; what you need to convey the character's essence, while leaving the messy details up to individual DMs. This can kind of run counter to Ravenloft's tone, since this is a setting that loves its intricate backstories, but I'd argue that you can still pare down a lot of characters the community is sharing to what is needed.

In other words, what makes, say, the gazetteers optional; you don't need all of that extra fluff to run a darklord, you need the basic character beats. It's nice to have, of course.

To me van Richten serves two purposes; to show the players that not everyone in Ravenloft is a patsy or a victim, that these are people, and to spark a sort of revolution through his guides, spreading the idea that the night can be more than ignored. To build van Richten we need a man of learning and letters, a man of reason, and we need to ruin his life with the supernatural. He responds by trying to defeat the supernatural with reason, a task he admits is perhaps futile, but serves as a rallying point for an entire generation of adventurers.

As far as a character flaw goes, van Richten holding a grudge against the people who ruined his life is a pretty reasonable one even for a man who is otherwise a paragon of virtue. It is only when he bothers to try and apply reason to these people, that he reaches out to them when his cardinal virtue of compassion is appealed to by Arturi, that he is able to recognize his own irrational hate and overcome it, which is a great story. Guide to the Vistani was certainly a formative work for me. If you want another albatross around his neck, I think the most interesting direction to go is looking at all those dead bodies that surround Rudolph; the curse had something to do with it, but van Richten is ultimately giving starry eyed young people ammunition to go into dark places and never return. This has the added bonus of being a debatable flaw focused on his present, instead of his origin; a mark of van Richten the adventurer.

I really think the spirits of van Richten's dead friends should've played a role in Bleak House, by the way. It's strange that his final adventure is so much about the beginning instead of the VR we've known for so may years. If I ever ran it I'd probably have at least Geddar the dwarf show up to shock Rudolph out of his confusion, or foil Randavitch.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I really think the spirits of van Richten's dead friends should've played a role in Bleak House, by the way. It's strange that his final adventure is so much about the beginning instead of the VR we've known for so may years. If I ever ran it I'd probably have at least Geddar the dwarf show up to shock Rudolph out of his confusion, or foil Randavitch.

Um, but they... did? Not sure if you've forgotten or perhaps went through it with a DM who changed it drastically. The ghosts of Alannthir, Davvyd, Harmon Ruscheider, Erasmus, Geddar, Ingrid, Ottelie, Samuel, and Claudia DeShanes all are drawn to the VR estate and bound into Madame Radanvich's service in the final act. There's substantial flexibilty given as to how to use them, and they could easily be used to draw Rudolph out of his confusion if the DM desires, and/or the PCs try to employ them to do so.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Something that occurred to me last night... another thing to worry about.

With the Core no longer a thing, and the domains focused so much on the darklords again, I'm concerned that there won't be enough around "the edges" in this new version. Some of my favorite parts of Ravenloft are NOT the darklords, but people tangentially related to them or not at all. Will there be any adventures in these newly imagined domains beyond "slay the darklord" weekend in hell stuff? I want things like Emil Bollenbach, Angel Pajaro, Nostalia Romaine, Merilee, the Carnival, The Living Brain, Ratik Ubel, Toben the many, the Church of Ezra.... I hope that sort of thing fits in to the 30 domains we get. Whether it's updates of those existing characters or other ones, I want to see these domains live beyond just their darklords.

Maybe I'm worrying about nothing. After all, CoS had stuff like Blinsky's toys, Death House, and the Wizard of Wines, etc. It wasn't all Strahd all the time. Hopefully that will continue.

[FiranDarcalus]

Something that occurred to me last night... another thing to worry about.

With the Core no longer a thing, and the domains focused so much on the darklords again, I'm concerned that there won't be enough around "the edges" in this new version. Some of my favorite parts of Ravenloft are NOT the darklords, but people tangentially related to them or not at all. Will there be any adventures in these newly imagined domains beyond "slay the darklord" weekend in hell stuff? I want things like Emil Bollenbach, Angel Pajaro, Nostalia Romaine, Merilee, the Carnival, The Living Brain, Ratik Ubel, Toben the many, the Church of Ezra.... I hope that sort of thing fits in to the 30 domains we get. Whether it's updates of those existing characters or other ones, I want to see these domains live beyond just their darklords.

Maybe I'm worrying about nothing. After all, CoS had stuff like Blinsky's toys, Death House, and the Wizard of Wines, etc. It wasn't all Strahd all the time. Hopefully that will continue.

I believe they mentioned (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that there will be adventure hooks put in each domain in order to also accommodate characters of different levels.

Unfortunately, given that each domain will get nowhere near as much detail as Barovia got in CoS, I would imagine there will be very little color added in terms of colorful NPC's. Maybe one or two other NPC's that you can use, but I would be surprised if you get anything like a revamped Conseil de Brilliance in Dementlieu sort of thing. But to be fair, even in previous additions of Ravenloft, you didn't get a lot of Ravenloft NPC's in the campaign setting books, the interesting NPC's came in through further supplements and books.

[tomokaicho]

Its branded Ravenloft but it's not Ravenloft. I hope that we will collectively carry the torch for the real Ravenloft and keep the real Ravenloft alive.

Who is with me?

[Jester of the FoS]

Something that occurred to me last night... another thing to worry about.

With the Core no longer a thing, and the domains focused so much on the darklords again, I'm concerned that there won't be enough around "the edges" in this new version. Some of my favorite parts of Ravenloft are NOT the darklords, but people tangentially related to them or not at all. Will there be any adventures in these newly imagined domains beyond "slay the darklord" weekend in hell stuff? I want things like Emil Bollenbach, Angel Pajaro, Nostalia Romaine, Merilee, the Carnival, The Living Brain, Ratik Ubel, Toben the many, the Church of Ezra.... I hope that sort of thing fits in to the 30 domains we get. Whether it's updates of those existing characters or other ones, I want to see these domains live beyond just their darklords.

That will almost certainly be the case as each domain will likely only receive 2-3 pages of description and the "weekend in hell" style of game makes it more usable to casual fans.

[Manofevil]

I've been trying to follow this exchange and I have a few questions and points. I apologize in advance if I just missed the answers along the way.

Question 1- Is this product still in development or is it finalized and ready for the market?

Question 2- Is this product going to introduce new domains/darklords or just change current ones? (For the record, I also do NOT approve of simply changing the gender of established characters without at least writing it into the current storyline. We have a term for in comic books- retconning- and we readers HATE IT! If this is to be done, the end product had better be DAMN GOOD! Otherwise they're just breaking our favorite toys so they can have some that aren't as good to give to somebody else. How is that fair to the unrepresented?

Question 3- Did I understand that border closures are going to be eliminated? I hope not. I liked those, even if nobody used them.

Point 1- When I first got the black box, I was left with the impression that the borders of Ravenloft are covered with mists. I believed it was impossible for the person within a domain to actually see the horizon. Indeed, I had the impression that some of these domains may not even have a word for horizon. I thought that was intensely disturbing. If the publishers intend to make that canon, I'll consider that to be a plus against the many minuses, though there had better be one hell of a transformative event to explain it.

Point 2- If domains/darklords based on unrepresented groups were needed, there is an absolute ocean of material out there to be drawn upon and we fans are positively drooling for new stuff.

I.E. The novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan. A Vampress who targets young women. Heavy lesbian overtones

Alexander the Great and Hephaestion. A perfect example of two men who were the love of each other's lives. They might also be combined with J Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson who it is believed were also lovers and Hoover was blackmailed by organized crime so he would deny their very existence.

There are all kinds of Mexican movies about Aztec and Inca ghosts and vampires that could have been adapted for Ravenloft. Hell, some of them have been done HERE.

Point 3- If this publication is NOT superior or at least equal to some of the stuff we've done here, we are completely justified in asking what they're paying this woman for. That said, I also agree that we'll be just fine taking what we want from it and pretending the rest of it doesn't exist, even if it's 90% of the publication. We do that with the QTRs every year.

[Five]

My general approach to archetypal characters like van Richten is to stick to the basics; what you need to convey the character's essence, while leaving the messy details up to individual DMs. This can kind of run counter to Ravenloft's tone, since this is a setting that loves its intricate backstories, but I'd argue that you can still pare down a lot of characters the community is sharing to what is needed.

In other words, what makes, say, the gazetteers optional; you don't need all of that extra fluff to run a darklord, you need the basic character beats. It's nice to have, of course.

To me van Richten serves two purposes; to show the players that not everyone in Ravenloft is a patsy or a victim, that these are people, and to spark a sort of revolution through his guides, spreading the idea that the night can be more than ignored. To build van Richten we need a man of learning and letters, a man of reason, and we need to ruin his life with the supernatural. He responds by trying to defeat the supernatural with reason, a task he admits is perhaps futile, but serves as a rallying point for an entire generation of adventurers.

I'll agree with all of this. Well said.

Tweaking Van Richten like I did (which was a leapfrog idea from a musing from tomokaicho if I remember right) wasn't primarily intended to bring in or reach out to modern gamers sensibilities, that was a secondary objective; it was more to provide a setting example of mechanics put into play and for the Ravenloft players to see a Ravenloft "ideal". Done through character essence.

Rudolph Van Richten is more akin to the PCs than any of the Dark Lords. Popularity for this purpose is irrelevant. He is the settings example of a "good guy". Ravenloft's moral compass. Yet how did he get to be who is?

We know of his journals and in them are excerpts of his investigations and adventures, yet only enough for him to drive home a point or put some experience to his words. That worked and works for establishing him in a way most of us know and love...

Powers Check, stages of corruption, redemption, these are setting specific mechanics that makes Ravenloft interesting in that they frame the game into that of a morality play. But to really showcase these mechanics they need great and extreme examples (for the DMs and players to benchmark).

The stages of corruption, the failing of powers checks, is well documented. The Dark Lords do that. Not individual stages of the process but the end result, or, extreme exmples. And their examples are unavoidable. That's Ravenloft Evil personified.

Ravenloft Good is personified through Van Richten, the Weathermays, etc. We all know that. They are the extreme examples to the players.

All we're left with really is Redemption. And as an extreme example of that we have...nothing. Gondegal is probably the best example, but it's not extreme. He never crawled from the Pit, if you know what I mean. His was moreso a philosophical change. I wouldn't call him a great example of redemption.

If you two birds, one stone...

Anyway, that's all. Just some hobby tinkering (that's kinda getting winded now in that I feel it may be clogging other threads of thought in this thread). I knew it wouldn't be popular, and expected resistance. In fact I was hoping for it. With resistance I'll know if the proposal can stand on its own or fall flat. Three little pigs and all that haha And me "defending" is more about wanting to keep a bit of pressure on the idea. It wouldn't be the first time an idea crumbled because somebody had what I took to be a better perspective or take. Long way of saying I'm not 100% behind any of these alternative thoughts or ideas that I may post.

I'll admit that it's not a gap that needs to be filled (our table got on without it), but it is a gap that could be filled.

[Mistmaster]

At least one of my Lightlords has been the Darklord of his domain in the past.

[Five]

At least one of my Lightlords has been the Darklord of his domain in the past.

Mistmaster, I think you're just about ready to start renting space from the FoS...haha

Seriously though, do you have a website that has everything put together for that one stop shop kinda thing? I know you have a thread, but threads get buried pretty quick. And that's unfortunate for tinkers like you...

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I believe they mentioned (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that there will be adventure hooks put in each domain in order to also accommodate characters of different levels.

That may be all that's really needed to assuage me. Would I want details, sure, but the fact that more hooks exist than "slay the darklord" implies that the domain has that extra room I'm looking for.

That will almost certainly be the case as each domain will likely only receive 2-3 pages of description and the "weekend in hell" style of game makes it more usable to casual fans.

True, 2-3 pages doesn't leave much room for what I want, but even a paragraph of "who's doomed in this domain" would show there's more to the domains than the darklords. Fingers crossed....

[tomokaicho]

Fingers crossed....

If you loved the new Star Wars movies, you'll love this new version of Ravenloft.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Question 1- Is this product still in development or is it finalized and ready for the market?

It's supposed to be released in <2.5 months. Considering the lead time of printing and distributing, I'd be shocked if it's not finalized already. Maybe a few last minute tweaks could be done at this point, but the bulk should be laid out and locked in.

Question 2- Is this product going to introduce new domains/darklords or just change current ones?

Yes, "several" new domains. We know a bit about one already: "Kalakeri (endless war between two factions inspired by Indian folklore, "political machinations as dark powers vie for control of the land in a never-ending war " and "where darklords Ramya, Arijani, and Reeva each vie for control. ")"

Question 3- Did I understand that border closures are going to be eliminated? I hope not. I liked those, even if nobody used them.

We don't know either way on that, but we do know the domains are isolated in the mists, not connected as The Core. So border closure may be less important. Sure, you can leave, maybe, but you're chancing the Mists to do so.

Point 3- If this publication is NOT superior or at least equal to some of the stuff we've done here, we are completely justified in asking what they're paying this woman for.

I would say, we're justified in asking what they are paying THE LARGE TEAM OF WRITERS FOR. Singling out one of them for blame, who seems not to have been a major contributor, would be unfair, regardless of how any of us feel about her personally.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

If you loved the new Star Wars movies, you'll love this new version of Ravenloft.

Well, I loved about 50% of them, so here's hoping...

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

Fingers crossed....

If you loved the new Star Wars movies, you'll love this new version of Ravenloft.

Rogue One is the best Star Wars film. No contest.