Radical changes in Ravenloft in your campaign

[Isolde]

I had played and dungeon-mastered ravenloft and there were things i did not like, either not making sense to me, or just things that did not fit the way i wanted the adventures to be perceived by the players.
Things i changed, removed or added.
1. Mist-Snatching; while this could be used to abduct or transport players or a group of npcs to some domain or particular adventure location it made little sense to use it all the time and in the way of teleport to the next "episode" of our series. Used it more of a now its a gothic horror adventure signal, mists at the start was the intro for it, with no plane shift or teleport. See no 4. below.
2. Failing power checks granted certain benefits in the first few levels. This kind of sucked, as some players wanted to have the benefits, and i changed it so that failing power checks just drove the character insane and madness rules came in. You committed evil, you became tainted by action, inaction, artifact or substance? This meant that evil spirits could effect you and you would become insane. This worked great in all aspects.
3. Darklords not dying and returning almost indefinitely (only in hell could this actually happen). That felt like pointless and made victory and resolutions feel pointless. So each adventure was important and darklords would die and be later replaced by some other corrupt fella. Or not and the region would be purified.
4. Domains and the ravenloft setting being a setting unto itself and not domains within the setting, oerth or krynn or faerun or other, we were playing in. So no ravenloft as setting but domains were actual locations in the main setting we played at. Cursed small kingdoms of sorts.
5. Dark Powers. We have deities already and do not need a generic "do whatever DM and its fine". There are also these almost random religions and pseudo-religions in ravenloft and this felt like a badly stitched full body wild west woolen underwear. And since i had applied no 4. (see above) i could use the deities already in the settings, usually some divergent version of them, and this created cohesion and made sense.
6. Now this meant that i had cool gypsies in all my settings, the vistani, that could do all sorts of stuff to get players in adventures.
7. Did some more stuff i cannot remember now, but will post them if i will.

Of course this meant changing many things in the adventures, but it was fun and i liked it.

What did you fellas do?

[Isolde]

8. Curses worked.
9. Spells and Psionics worked unless one was tainted, but a caster was much easier driven into insanity via a failed power check if he had used his magic, then it was a very wicked 'wild' magic-similar table (will post if i find it) roll for all spells. So no looking into a book each spell.
10. Fear, Horror, and Madness. Fear & Horror simplified. Madness also part of power check failure as i wrote in no 2. above.
11. These were a problem. Planar Travel, Summoning, Divination but i had changed them already for my main settings. Only portals, stable constructs, granted planar travel and the spells did not exist on their own. It worked if you were in the portal and your spell activated it. Summoning worked in a domain but it opened a gate, interference from an evil deity, to a dark monster version from the monster summoning list to enter and it would serve the summoner but would then attack him if it survived. It was not stuck there. The reward was that they would get xp if they slew it (but no mmo type farming). Divination i had already changed in my main settings, so alignments could not be discerned, prophecy was from npcs or dm discretion only (receiving some vision with no spell, just a videogame cutscene fo sorts) and clairvoyance-type magic caused tears and monsters could attack the diviner (like the Krull film).
12. What is the focus? Atmosphere, Aesthetics, Cohesion and the whole Gothic horror thing.

These things made looking through lists in the books vanish and we could play without losing time searching for that particular "something".

[Isolde]

The krull film seer/diviner i mention above
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BsIivi6cyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z06DwB9rdBk

Krull (1988) The Seer's Cave for 1 hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhDzZExEKkg

[Lucius]

In my case, I made changes that were not so drastic (at least from the players' point of view, as many of them did not knew the setting well enough to notice anything).

One of the changes was the following: I changed the nature of the Dark Powers (of course, the players would never notice this at first). The campaign in question took place after my main campaign, which ended in the Time of Unparalleled Darkness.

After that, the demiplane was dismantled, but the leaders of the Fraternity of Shadows discovered the nature of the demiplane and created a new version of it, taking on the mantle of the Dark Powers.

The second change was in relation to the Darklords. The new Dark Powers remade the demiplane with the same geography they were used to, so, same domais with different individuals as darklords.

[Isolde]

I changed the nature of the Dark Powers

How did the heroes learn about them directly?
How was any sort of exposition made perhaps naming them, by using npcs etc?
How did they "interact" with them indirectly?
How were they not assumed to be deities or fiends?
Were they differentiated from the deities themselves in the stories?

[Teravala]

One of the changes I made to my games became necessary when one of my players wanted to use the Magic of Incarnum book for his character. (If you're not familiar, it uses soul power to basically create temporary magic item emulating effects called soulmelds that you could both boost using a thing called essentia, and bind to chakras in the spots magic items normally occupy to further amplify their effects. super cool system, underrated as hell in my opinion) because of the nature of their magic, I tweaked it so you were tapping into souls other than your own, and when you shaped a particular soul meld, it remembered. There were treated as intelligent items, with their own ambitions and desires, and could attempt to influence the character's decisions though an ego check. My reasons for this were twofold. 1) We play 3.5, and the RPHB has a powers check related weakness for all of the classes as a way of showcasing the dread realms propensity for corrupting even the most stalwart hero. Psionics was interesting in that rather than failing powers checks, you ran the risk of drawing the attention of the Elder Brain in Blutspur, and being slowly transposed into that absolute nightmare realm. I loved that this was something unique for this "magic" system, and wanted to do something unique for incarnum, as I consider it, psionics, and magic to be the three pillar systems of the game for "casters". 2) it added a lot of flavor and a level of consideration to the class. sure, the mantle of flame return damage is cool, but when it's literally a flaming cloak made of insane souls and just wants you to get hit as much as possible so it can burn everything around it and knowing you may not be able to resist running about screaming "Hit me you cowards!" so perhaps one of the more gentle minded soulmelds. I really loved seeing my player develop relationships with their melds, and it was fun to work out with them personas and goals for the various melds. (we definitely did the most likely ones to be used, and took it on an as needed basis from there.)

[Isolde]

I played Ravenloft with 2e and 3.5 and was fine with it, but i never used magic of incarnum nor am i very familiar with it.

[Teravala]

I played Ravenloft with 2e and 3.5 and was fine with it, but i never used magic of incarnum nor am i very familiar with it.

I've always wanted to learn 2e, I even have a couple of books I picked up at yard sales or thrift shops for ravenloft in it. I like the ideas behind some of the ravenloft 2e modules, but they do seem a bit railroading to me.

[IanFordam]

...they do seem a bit railroading to me.

Speaking as someone who was there during the transition from 1e to 2e... Sorry about that. We were still new to the idea that D&D might involve something other than killing monsters and looting treasure. Most of us hadn't yet figured out how to motivate players to engage in a shared storytelling experience. And so... railroading.

Later 2e products got better. Personally, I'm fond of the short adventures in the various Children of the Night products. They aren't epic, but then epic has never been my style.

[Isolde]

I like the ideas behind some of the ravenloft 2e modules, but they do seem a bit railroading to me.

a number of them are bad, but they can be remade into very fine adventures, even if it means you would keep everything but the text and consider the text an incomplete messy draft which you will throw most of its already existing structure away.

[Teravala]

...they do seem a bit railroading to me.

Speaking as someone who was there during the transition from 1e to 2e... Sorry about that. We were still new to the idea that D&D might involve something other than killing monsters and looting treasure. Most of us hadn't yet figured out how to motivate players to engage in a shared storytelling experience. And so... railroading.

Later 2e products got better. Personally, I'm fond of the short adventures in the various Children of the Night products. They aren't epic, but then epic has never been my style.

Nothing to be sorry for! I didnt start playing until 3.x was in full swing, so my perspective has been heavily shaped by that. To be honest I wish I'd been able to get into the hobby during those days.

[Teravala]

a number of them are bad, but they can be remade into very fine adventures, even if it means you would keep everything but the text and consider the text an incomplete messy draft which you will throw most of its already existing structure away.

Yeah that's exactly what I've been doing so far with 2e modules I want to run. It's actually pretty fun getting to update them and feel like I'm breathing new life into them.

[Isolde]

Even the bad material from 2e Ravenoft has such a strange feel to it, an atmosphere and something implied inspiration-wise that is very useful that is absent in most modern products in general.

[Teravala]

Even the bad material from 2e Ravenoft has such a strange feel to it, an atmosphere and something implied inspiration-wise that is very useful that is absent in most modern products in general.

I completely agree. I was enamoured with ravenloft the first time I cracked open a book on it. Got a copy of 2e domains of dread and was hooked. I truly wish they had kept the style and format of the 2e books moving forward. Not edition bashing, but in my opinion the 5e ravenloft books just feel so...commercial I guess? Like, the art style is interchangeable with any other 5e book, but when I look at 2e or 3.x ravenloft stuff it has a distinct style, both in art, font, and just general vibe. Idk if I'm explaining it well, haha.

[Isolde]

5e ravenloft books just feel so...commercial

they have the aesthetic aura of throwaway plastic, a pseudo-product that was made in 90s China or something simply petty and insulting to claim it has a connection to the actual atmosphere and Gothic horror itself. Its not horror, its horrible and pitiful. Its a waste of energy, of paper of everything. We want things of quality, things that are worth it.