How to use Van Richten in my campaign?

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

How cosmologically-aware should van Richten be? Like, did he ever find out about the nature of Ravenloft? Does he know what a darklord is?
(Same for other relevant NPCs)

[Mephisto of the FoS]

How cosmologically-aware should van Richten be? Like, did he ever find out about the nature of Ravenloft? Does he know what a darklord is?
(Same for other relevant NPCs)

The best source of his cosmological viewpoint is VRGtFiends, he has no idea what a darklord is, mistaking Gabrielle Addere's connection with her land as a result of a Power Ritual similar to the one Outsider Fiends do. He knows that other lands lie beyond the Mists, as he has met many outlanders through his travels and adventures and he knows that the Vistani come from some other place, probably hiding from some outlander entity. But his knowledge is more of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of information.
From the people he corresponds with only Lord Balfour de Casteelle has knowledge of the nature Ravenloft, and he keeps that knowledge to himself and his subordinates in the FoS.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

How cosmologically-aware should van Richten be? Like, did he ever find out about the nature of Ravenloft? Does he know what a darklord is?
(Same for other relevant NPCs)

The best source of his cosmological viewpoint is VRGtFiends, he has no idea what a darklord is, mistaking Gabrielle Addere's connection with her land as a result of a Power Ritual similar to the one Outsider Fiends do. He knows that other lands lie beyond the Mists, as he has met many outlanders through his travels and adventures and he knows that the Vistani come from some other place, probably hiding from some outlander entity. But his knowledge is more of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of information.
From the people he corresponds with only Lord Balfour de Casteelle has knowledge of the nature Ravenloft, and he keeps that knowledge to himself and his subordinates in the FoS.

Okay. This was very important, thank you.
I'm writing a fanfic whose climax would probably depend on the fate of a certain darklord, and I needed to know whether or not Rudolph and his partners would be aware of the relevant considerations.
(BTW, if Lord Godefroy is defeated, who do you think will take his place as the darklord? I was thinking about taking George Weathermay even further through his villain arc, but showing that in the fic would take a whole third plot line.)

[The Dark]

George could fit, but would need a (minor and easy) backstory adjustment since he's never returned to Mordent after starting his pursuit of Natalia Vhorishkova (per Champions of the Mists).

If a DM wants to keep the Darklord a ghost, Burton Wescote would be a good option (the maybe-villain of Howls in the Night - the adventure has multiple potential endings).

A dark horse candidate would be Lian de Loranche Punchinel from Children of the Night: The Created, who makes Min'kins (small golems assembled from just a few body parts and assigned a specific task) in Idlethorp, Mordent. He's officially Neutral Good in the adventure, but could descend into evil as he tries to improve on his creations.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

And let's say I don't want to replace Godefroy with another, possibly worse darklord. Let's say I want the characters in my story to discover at the last moment that this is what's going to happen if they destroy him, and instead find a way to imprison him or otherwise prevent him from inferering in the matters of the living.
What would be a good way for them to find this information? (Without a Deux Ex Mechina like an outworlder showing up or a prophetic dream. Something that will show their invastigative skills.)

[Solan]

I had to go find the write-up of Chilling Tales that I was trying to remember. Over the course of the book:

1. He falls for an obvious set of lies because of how much he hates the Vistani.
2. He decides a ghost is a harmless poltergeist and leaves the PCs to handle it.
3. He murders and decapitates three innocent bards after being tricked by a vassalich's illusions.
4. While hunting lycanthropes, he sees three people being attacked by wolves. Despite their clothes being ripped but them being completely uninjured by the wolves, he decides to trust them.
5. He gets kidnapped going alone into a back room to see "magical monster-hunting items."
6. During a hospital stay, he falls in love with a vampire nurse. He decides to lure the vampire into an ambush by hiring three goons and equipping them with non-magical weapons.
7. He goes to Har'Akir to pick up a magic item. When some slaves escape, he suggests the PCs go recapture them, then stays where he is to eat dinner while they confront the villain.
8. When arriving at a town surrounded by a weird shimmering haze and full of soldiers imprisoning people who break bizarre laws, he decides to march into the mayor's office and confront him (an old friend) about what's going on rather than investigate. He's promptly captured by the fiend-possessed mayor.

Surprisingly, The Sea Wolf (an adventure cut from Chilling Tales and placed in Dungeon #55 for space reasons) only has a minor foolishness in that Van Richten hires the PCs to be his bodyguards on a trip in case someone he helped imprison years ago tries to get revenge; the person in question died in prison a year earlier and has no bearing on the adventure (but neither does Van Richten).

This list is unfair! 1. is understandable, 2. I don't know about. 3. is completely understandable! 5. I don't know about 7. is untrue! Van Richten is the guest of honor and can't leave his own banquet, and he tells the PC's to find the escaped slaves to locate their refuge, so then Van Richten and the PC's could help the rest of the slaves escape to that sanctuary. Lastly, on the Sea Wolf, he has no way of knowing that the person he put in prison had died a year before and in Ravenloft, better safe than sorry!

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I had to go find the write-up of Chilling Tales that I was trying to remember. Over the course of the book:

1. He falls for an obvious set of lies because of how much he hates the Vistani.
2. He decides a ghost is a harmless poltergeist and leaves the PCs to handle it.
3. He murders and decapitates three innocent bards after being tricked by a vassalich's illusions.
4. While hunting lycanthropes, he sees three people being attacked by wolves. Despite their clothes being ripped but them being completely uninjured by the wolves, he decides to trust them.
5. He gets kidnapped going alone into a back room to see "magical monster-hunting items."
6. During a hospital stay, he falls in love with a vampire nurse. He decides to lure the vampire into an ambush by hiring three goons and equipping them with non-magical weapons.
7. He goes to Har'Akir to pick up a magic item. When some slaves escape, he suggests the PCs go recapture them, then stays where he is to eat dinner while they confront the villain.
8. When arriving at a town surrounded by a weird shimmering haze and full of soldiers imprisoning people who break bizarre laws, he decides to march into the mayor's office and confront him (an old friend) about what's going on rather than investigate. He's promptly captured by the fiend-possessed mayor.

Surprisingly, The Sea Wolf (an adventure cut from Chilling Tales and placed in Dungeon #55 for space reasons) only has a minor foolishness in that Van Richten hires the PCs to be his bodyguards on a trip in case someone he helped imprison years ago tries to get revenge; the person in question died in prison a year earlier and has no bearing on the adventure (but neither does Van Richten).

This list is unfair! 1. is understandable, 2. I don't know about. 3. is completely understandable! 5. I don't know about 7. is untrue! Van Richten is the guest of honor and can't leave his own banquet, and he tells the PC's to find the escaped slaves to locate their refuge, so then Van Richten and the PC's could help the rest of the slaves escape to that sanctuary. Lastly, on the Sea Wolf, he has no way of knowing that the person he put in prison had died a year before and in Ravenloft, better safe than sorry!

May I ask why exactly beheading the bards was understandable?

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

It could also be interesting to have a recurring villain, a monster, that keeps causing trouble and getting away because it also read the van Richten Guides, and used them to compensate for its weaknesses and anticipate the actions of hunters.

This one could be interesting, but the more I read of the Guides the less I'm convinced this would work. You see, Van Richten rarely srictly recommends a specific course of action. He never says 'this will 100% work'. The only clear pattrens he's advocating for are caution, reconsideration and research - which are, honestly, things most players I've played with seem to avoid like the plague anyway. He puts a lot of emphasis about how dangerous generalizations are.
What I could see, though, is a monster using the information in the Guides against another monster. Like, imagine a fledgeling vampire finally finding a relaible information source and realising how much their proginator had lied about... Inter-vampire drama ensues, the party is caught in the middle.

[Solan]

I had to go find the write-up of Chilling Tales that I was trying to remember. Over the course of the book:

1. He falls for an obvious set of lies because of how much he hates the Vistani.
2. He decides a ghost is a harmless poltergeist and leaves the PCs to handle it.
3. He murders and decapitates three innocent bards after being tricked by a vassalich's illusions.
4. While hunting lycanthropes, he sees three people being attacked by wolves. Despite their clothes being ripped but them being completely uninjured by the wolves, he decides to trust them.
5. He gets kidnapped going alone into a back room to see "magical monster-hunting items."
6. During a hospital stay, he falls in love with a vampire nurse. He decides to lure the vampire into an ambush by hiring three goons and equipping them with non-magical weapons.
7. He goes to Har'Akir to pick up a magic item. When some slaves escape, he suggests the PCs go recapture them, then stays where he is to eat dinner while they confront the villain.
8. When arriving at a town surrounded by a weird shimmering haze and full of soldiers imprisoning people who break bizarre laws, he decides to march into the mayor's office and confront him (an old friend) about what's going on rather than investigate. He's promptly captured by the fiend-possessed mayor.

Surprisingly, The Sea Wolf (an adventure cut from Chilling Tales and placed in Dungeon #55 for space reasons) only has a minor foolishness in that Van Richten hires the PCs to be his bodyguards on a trip in case someone he helped imprison years ago tries to get revenge; the person in question died in prison a year earlier and has no bearing on the adventure (but neither does Van Richten).

This list is unfair! 1. is understandable, 2. I don't know about. 3. is completely understandable! 5. I don't know about 7. is untrue! Van Richten is the guest of honor and can't leave his own banquet, and he tells the PC's to find the escaped slaves to locate their refuge, so then Van Richten and the PC's could help the rest of the slaves escape to that sanctuary. Lastly, on the Sea Wolf, he has no way of knowing that the person he put in prison had died a year before and in Ravenloft, better safe than sorry!

May I ask why exactly beheading the bards was understandable?

Of course you may! It's understandable because the illusions used made all of the Bards appear to be vampires for certain. There's nothing wrong with beheading proven vampires, quite the contrary.

[Igor the Henchman]

Nothing much to add to the good advice so far, except I think that for a campaign centered around monster-hunting missions, it would be an interesting idea for the party to at some point meet Ivan Dragonov, whom I always found to be a cool dark mirror of VR. You know, just in case you find things aren't already morally-grey enough.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Nothing much to add to the good advice so far, except I think that for a campaign centered around monster-hunting missions, it would be an interesting idea for the party to at some point meet Ivan Dragonov, whom I always found to be a cool dark mirror of VR. You know, just in case you find things aren't already morally-grey enough.

Fascinating. Can you tell me more about that Dragonov? (I read the Mistipedia article, but they tend to leave the good stuff out.)
I was thinking about using George Weathermay as the dark/morally gray monster hunter...

[Igor the Henchman]

Fascinating. Can you tell me more about that Dragonov? (I read the Mistipedia article, but they tend to leave the good stuff out.)
I was thinking about using George Weathermay as the dark/morally gray monster hunter...

He's basically your classic "stared too long into the abyss" monster hunter who now sees the thrill of the hunt as a goal in itself. Infected by Loup Garou lycanthropy, he refuses to seek a cure until he has eliminated all other Loup Garou lycanthropes in Ravenloft, and has decided that turning into a monster is an acceptable price to become better at hunting monsters. Since he's stopped aging after getting his curse, he's technically the oldest and most powerful (level 20) monster hunter in the realms of dread. Even though 2E sources list his alignment as Chaotic Good, I've always felt his steely focus on getting his targets at any cost and general indifference about protecting or comforting their victims gives him an "evil path" vibe. He's described in Champions of the Mists (available on DMs' Guild) and is featured as an antagonist in the novel Mordenheim and as a protagonist in one of the stories in Tales of Ravenloft.

If you have already decided you prefer George Weathermay as your "morally grey" figure and want to make him a tad darker than just "goody-two-shoes led astray by a bad girl", I would recommend to maybe give him some of Dragonov's characterization to really drive the point home.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Fascinating. Can you tell me more about that Dragonov? (I read the Mistipedia article, but they tend to leave the good stuff out.)
I was thinking about using George Weathermay as the dark/morally gray monster hunter...

He's basically your classic "stared too long into the abyss" monster hunter who now sees the thrill of the hunt as a goal in itself. Infected by Loup Garou lycanthropy, he refuses to seek a cure until he has eliminated all other Loup Garou lycanthropes in Ravenloft, and has decided that turning into a monster is an acceptable price to become better at hunting monsters. Since he's stopped aging after getting his curse, he's technically the oldest and most powerful (level 20) monster hunter in the realms of dread. Even though 2E sources list his alignment as Chaotic Good, I've always felt his steely focus on getting his targets at any cost and general indifference about protecting or comforting their victims gives him an "evil path" vibe. He's described in Champions of the Mists (available on DMs' Guild) and is featured as an antagonist in the novel Mordenheim and as a protagonist in one of the stories in Tales of Ravenloft.

If you have already decided you prefer George Weathermay as your "morally grey" figure and want to make him a tad darker than just "goody-two-shoes led astray by a bad girl", I would recommend to maybe give him some of Dragonov's characterization to really drive the point home.

IDK, maybe I'll use both.
My take on George is that he'd become so obssessed with destroying evil that he has no mercy left for those he considers 'monsters'. Like, he would be hostile to a Reborn party member cause they're technically undead. Would rather kill an afflicted werewolf than try to remove his curse even if it can be done safely. Would shoot first and ask questions never. The first to suggest tactics that IRL would be considered a war crime, as long as it's not against ordinary (demi)humans. He doesn't think of himself as a monster, from his perspective he just does what it takes to protect the innocents, but doesn't realize he's discriminating between innocents worthy of his protection and those 'too unnatural' to be considered such.
Like, I get it slips into your good old 'fantasy racism' territory, but in his case it's not because he's xenophobic or patronizing, but because he's so used to meeting these kinds of creatures only in combat, watched so many of them kill his friends and is so genuinely terrified they'll hurt his family, he just feels like he can't afford compassion. It's a mindset I've seen in a lot of people trying to survive in a continious, life-threatening conflict - whether literal war, some sort of oppression or another trouble -, where they're just to burnt out to feel sympathy for the other side. Some of them are usually the kindest people I know, but after they and their kids had been bombed for twenty years, they couldn't care less if the enemy's kids are starving. So... Like... I can't blame them, cause I know they're speaking out of trauma and fear, but under this mindset, it's very easy for what was once considered inconcivably cruel to now sound like common sense.
So actually, if he and Dragonov are going to meet, I pity Dragonov.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Fascinating. Can you tell me more about that Dragonov? (I read the Mistipedia article, but they tend to leave the good stuff out.)
I was thinking about using George Weathermay as the dark/morally gray monster hunter...

He's basically your classic "stared too long into the abyss" monster hunter who now sees the thrill of the hunt as a goal in itself. Infected by Loup Garou lycanthropy, he refuses to seek a cure until he has eliminated all other Loup Garou lycanthropes in Ravenloft, and has decided that turning into a monster is an acceptable price to become better at hunting monsters. Since he's stopped aging after getting his curse, he's technically the oldest and most powerful (level 20) monster hunter in the realms of dread. Even though 2E sources list his alignment as Chaotic Good, I've always felt his steely focus on getting his targets at any cost and general indifference about protecting or comforting their victims gives him an "evil path" vibe. He's described in Champions of the Mists (available on DMs' Guild) and is featured as an antagonist in the novel Mordenheim and as a protagonist in one of the stories in Tales of Ravenloft.

If you have already decided you prefer George Weathermay as your "morally grey" figure and want to make him a tad darker than just "goody-two-shoes led astray by a bad girl", I would recommend to maybe give him some of Dragonov's characterization to really drive the point home.

IDK, maybe I'll use both.
My take on George is that he'd become so obssessed with destroying evil that he has no mercy left for those he considers 'monsters'. Like, he would be hostile to a Reborn party member cause they're technically undead. Would rather kill an afflicted werewolf than try to remove his curse even if it can be done safely. Would shoot first and ask questions never. The first to suggest tactics that IRL would be considered a war crime, as long as it's not against ordinary (demi)humans. He doesn't think of himself as a monster, from his perspective he just does what it takes to protect the innocents, but doesn't realize he's discriminating between innocents worthy of his protection and those 'too unnatural' to be considered such.
Like, I get it slips into your good old 'fantasy racism' territory, but in his case it's not because he's xenophobic or patronizing, but because he's so used to meeting these kinds of creatures only in combat, watched so many of them kill his friends and is so genuinely terrified they'll hurt his family, he just feels like he can't afford compassion. It's a mindset I've seen in a lot of people trying to survive in a continious, life-threatening conflict - whether literal war, some sort of oppression or another trouble -, where they're just to burnt out to feel sympathy for the other side. Some of them are usually the kindest people I know, but after they and their kids had been bombed for twenty years, they couldn't care less if the enemy's kids are starving. So... Like... I can't blame them, cause I know they're speaking out of trauma and fear, but under this mindset, it's very easy for what was once considered inconcivably cruel to now sound like common sense.
So actually, if he and Dragonov are going to meet, I pity Dragonov.

1) I know Van Richten himselfs displays some of this 'ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves' mentality, but from the little I've seen I feel like he goes through a bit of a positive character arc in this area from book to book, gradually becoming self-aware of his obssession and prejudice and leaving more space for complexity. George, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have this self-awareness, so he's likely to go through a negative character arc. (Considering that George is also said to have started his adventuring career more idealistic and optimistic, this can actually make for an interesting dialogue. like
"George, thirty years ago, if I would have suggested something like that, you'd be horrified! You're the one who always said - "
" - I know, Dolf. I've grown tougher, more like you! There's no place for softness in a proffesion like ours."
"No! I'm the one who was wrong, George!"
Or something like that.)
2) I'd give more context about my real life inspiration here, but I'm tired of bringing in real-world politics to a fantasy discussion. I'll just say it's kinda scary to see people you love and respect being radicalized to the point of justifying murder - especially when when you try to call them out they look at you like you are out of your mind.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Even though 2E sources list his alignment as Chaotic Good, I've always felt his steely focus on getting his targets at any cost and general indifference about protecting or comforting their victims gives him an "evil path" vibe.

I think earlier editions had some sort of a patronisation toward Chaotic Good, considering it only a little bit better than neutral.