To Retcon or Not Retcon: That is the Question

[Le Noir Faineant]

What if the next Frat project is set after the ToUD? No story, no reason, nothing.
THEN: everything gets explained slowly?

I don't know... Like I said, just throwing ideas. Maybe it'll inspire someone else with something better.

Patrick

Why not? Say, everyone writes a chapter of ~ 10 pages. That should be doable. No big connections or whatever, but simply a *Year One* or *Civil War* like ueber-plot everyone has to follow.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Can you think of a ghoul eating up Ivana Boritsi?

Well, I can imagine a lot of things...

But, yeah, the way I DM my games, it would be possible... Even an interesting option for a RL campaign... Say, the heroes witness this scene from a balcony, unable to interfere... Amd then, the ground shakes under their feet, as the DP choose a new darklord... One of them - he who has enjoyed the scene...

[Rotipher of the FoS]

The non-combatant darklords needed to gain some levels in 3E, not just to justify their survival in the face of danger, but to account for their social skills. Certainly Ivana shouldn't be beating up ogres with her purse, but she should be a darned good negotiator and seductress, which a 1st level aristocrat wouldn't be (few Diplomacy and Bluff ranks). When D&D made social interaction a part of the skill-system, NPC classes became mandatory for such characters.

If you want Ivana Boritsi to be a physical wimp, fine, give her lousy hit points and a sub-normal Strength score IYC. But don't destroy her ability to compete on the social battlefield, by dropping her skill ranks and feats into the basement: that's the whole point of her character.

[Jonathan Winters]

Rotipher,

You just summed up what I was thinking, but couldn't really put my finger on.

Thanks.

Patrick

[Le Noir Faineant]

The non-combatant darklords needed to gain some levels in 3E, not just to justify their survival in the face of danger, but to account for their social skills. Certainly Ivana shouldn't be beating up ogres with her purse, but she should be a darned good negotiator and seductress, which a 1st level aristocrat wouldn't be (few Diplomacy and Bluff ranks). When D&D made social interaction a part of the skill-system, NPC classes became mandatory for such characters.

If you want Ivana Boritsi to be a physical wimp, fine, give her lousy hit points and a sub-normal Strength score IYC. But don't destroy her ability to compete on the social battlefield, by dropping her skill ranks and feats into the basement: that's the whole point of her character.

That's what I do - and, returning on the retcon debate, I think this is one of the great advantages of RL - since virtually no player will know the background details of the setting, the DM can adjust things as he or she sees it fit. (Actually, never presented Ivana in any of my games, btw.)

[Lord Cyclohexane]

Sorry to interrupt the current stuff with something a bit previous in the discussion (as for the current stuff: I'm not too crazy about fast-forwarding to the ToUD already, as I like that hanging over people's heads, and I like having it be a mystery that no one has an answer to).

I do not want to get rid of DLs. I like them. What I was wondering was more along the lines of wether we absolutely needed them for every adventure. Or to introduce people to RL.

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. My apologies. I thought you meant to remove the DLs and simply make it so that nations were not linked to an individual personality and its curse.

In RL, 99.99% of people have no clue that DLs exist.

AND, to Lord Cyclo...
(please correct me if I'm wrong)
It is pretty much a DM's prerogative what happens when a DL dies. So why not use some domains without them? Maybe the world would make more sense to newcomers this way?

Does RL really (still) need to focus so much on DLs as a setting to make sense?

No, I don't believe it does, and I agree with you on that point. My Ravenloft campaigns rarely if ever have guest appearances by the DL, just as my non-Ravenloft campaigns rarely if ever have guest appearances by the King or other ruling individual. As such, I really hadn't thought about your point as a problem, as I personally don't bring in the DL.

Now that you've further defined your point, though, I do see and agree with it. Far too many of the canon adventures have been centered around Darklords, and I get a touch tired of that myself. I'd like to have more Ravenloft adventures that, like the adventure ideas in the CotN series, are unrelated to the Darklord but retain the overall gothic horror feel. I still like having Darklords for domains, as the Darklord's personality allows me to better grasp the overall feel for the domain as a whole, but I prefer having the Darklords on the sidelines rather than out in front, and that's if I have the Darklord take part at all.

Anyway, to say again, I agree that the Darklords need to stop appearing all the time. An adventure for 1-4 level PCs should have, at most, offhand references to the Darklord as the ruler of the domain; for the Darklord (equivalent of a King, and sometimes the actual King) to be interested in low-level nobodies is ridiculous and should really be toned down to the most rare of occassions.

[Luke Fleeman]

To address earlier concerns:

Has anyone played the Star Wars RPG? The books offer three different time periods to play in, and have little icons denoting what things are available at what date.

A similar thing could be done with Ravenloft, I think. You put out a small conspectus detailing the changes and details, differences between eras, and allow the DM to pick what he needs. Pick an icon to assign to each era. One could conceivably do thus:

(Pre-)Black Box
Grand Conjunction
WW/Gaz Era

And then, when a supplement/article/item is released, you do this labelling with said icons:

New Villain X

Old Domain Y

Strahd von Zarovich

This means that New Villain is only appropriate for GC or WW, Old Domain is no good for WW, and Strahd is good for all settings. Each item is followed by info.

This is nice, because if people want to get in on the ground floor, or start earlier, they may. It gives a potential retcon if necessary, but can also offer options for others.

My instincts think that a larger, more complex WW era Ravenloft would be more popular now, considering the size/complexity of Eberron and FR. But I think, personally, the mood is better served by an older version.

Another point that makes the whole argument moot is that each DMs Ravenloft is going to be a little different. And even if Zherisia and Nova Vaasa exist in his game, if his players are only ever in Lamordia and Mordent, does it matter? I am going to use what suits me.

A side note: doe sthe FoS have any plans for any supplement/netbook on the ToUD?Like preventing/hastening it adventures?

[Joël of the FoS]

A side note: doe sthe FoS have any plans for any supplement/netbook on the ToUD?Like preventing/hastening it adventures?

Not for the moment, no !

By the way, in the vault you have a fan's interpretation of these events.

Joël

[Luke Fleeman]

I saw it. I like alot of the ideas, but it leaves a little ot be desired.

I guess what I meant as a plan was somethign along the line of City of the Spider Queen; a series of interconnected adventures, like a campagin book. That'd be sweet.

Hmmmm.

If a person were to coordinate such a thing, would the FoS be willing to post it?

[Manofevil]

I just finished reading this thread and am going to repeat a post I placed on the thread 'If YOU designed RavenLoft' because I feel the points are relevant (I'm including the first one mostly for amusements sake)

Firstly, Expanding the scale of the domains of Ravenloft is all well and good but remember this: CAMPING OUT OVERNIGHT IN RAVENLOFT IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN A FATAL PASSTIME! Travel in RavenLoft involves getting up at the crack of dawn (Largely because that's when they pry open the doors that they nailed shut the night before the keep the werebeasts and undead out), hitting the road and eating your meals on the fly all so you'll get to the next town (or roadside inn) before sunset when they nail the doors shut again, because if the party doesn't get to it's destination before sunset, they're locked out for the night in a land crawling with werebeasts, vampires, et al. No one opens their doors after sunset (twice) because anyone pounding on the door asking for help is likely to be an undead monster or some such. I don't remember where in the Black Box I read that, but I do remember reading it. So expanding to scale of the domain is fine but remember to stick some small towns and roadside inns along the main roads so there's someplace for travelers to go at sunset.
Secondly, Expanding the history re: the point about ancient dead:
My impression of the way RavenLoft gathered beings of this sort was put forward in the novel 'Knight of the Black Rose'. In this novel, Soth is collected by the mists, does what he usually does, and earns a domain. This was, I thought, one of the two ways the DPs operated in this regard. The other being the example of Anktepot who was collected along with his entire domain as a ready-made DarkLord. You're really not going to have ancient dead that predates Strahd in the RavenLoft Timeline even if they do predate Strahd in the timeline of the greater multiverse. Perhaps what's needed is for ancient dead to have small quasi-domains created for them and attached (very carefully) to existing domains like they'd always been there. I say carefully because you probably couldn't stick one in Barovia or Falkovnia because every square inch of those domains is known to some character someplace and a change as momentous as that would raise awkward questions. One could however be placed in Darkon or Har'Akir without disturbing the continuity too much.

This also might solve the problem of how to expand domains the DM feels are too small. A small chunk of territory with a fairly powerful adversary at it's center is added on to the domain Shmuckland and it's DarkLord, Shmuck, manipulates a group of heroes into entering it and defeating that adversary. The domain now has several new hectares of usable land for its peasantry to work as soon as they findthe nerve to actually enter it.

Lastly, Demihumans races. I know these races can be done over in a gothic horror curse style because I've SEEN them done in the Dragonlance books. There, An elven king, Lorac Caladon, attempts to use a powerful artifact to drive the Dragon armies from his kingdom. In his arrogance he fails to realize how powerful the artifact is and is imprisoned by it. The artifact calls a dragon to whisper nightmares into the kings ears and then changes the surrounding landscape to reflect those nightmares. The trees all bleed red and twist into tortured shapes (think the tree in the movie 'Sleepy Hollow') and any living animals or people were twisted in similar ways. Black clouds moved in overhead casting the land into permanent darkness and the water all runs red from the bleeding trees. Of course, the building were all twisted and blackened as well. I suppose it would bear a resemblance to Necropolis but I always pictured Necropolis as a dried out old skull and the elven kingdom here reminded me more of an oozing infected wound.
There was a similar cursed landscape in DragonLance following something called the DwarfGate wars. Following the Cataclysm (See Lord Soth's background) The hill and mountain dwarves grew so desparate that they turned on one another and fought against one another in hopes of bettering their lots. By the final battle, the motives had boiled down to raw hatred for the other side and dwarf slew dwarf in a conflict that would divide the peoples for centuries to come. The war ended that day with a massive magical explosion set off by a nearby human mage that leveled the plains for miles around killing the armies of both sides. The magic caused a lot of bizarre occurances. The only one which sticks in my mind is something which resembles a very still lake at a distance but when approached is shown to be actually a massive piece of crystal at beneath which are some dozen dwarves frozen in mid-combat.
So you see demihumans, dwarves and elves at least, can and have been done in ways that would fit well into RavenLoft it's just that no one's bother to DO any of them yet. We should really think about changing that. My two cents and change.

I also feel that there should have been a 'Van Richten's Guide to Non-human Races' I wouldn't have had it limiting the existance of Elves, Dwarves, etc. but I think it would have firmly established the nature of their existance in RavenLoft.
I've also never liked the term 'Weekend in Hell' It really flew in the face of that other old standby from the Black Box: 'There are many ways to enter RavenLoft. Leaving is another matter.' I don't think it was ever intended to be a Weekend in Hell. I think it was supposed to be a campaign hijacked to hell. I think it became Weekends in Hell because when DMs took their parties there, they saw how much trouble those parties had there and used their DM's perogative to force the Dark Powers to release them rather than alienate their players. Perhaps that's the reason the setting's been in such trouble. You have to work hard to win in RavenLoft. It's like the video game that's so hard the player gives up and plays something easier. It's also it's greatest selling point, to be sure. I wouldn't change that for anything. Hell, that's the thing I liked most about the setting and I'm a player not a DM. I don't think there's anyplace else in the the D&D settings where the cards are stacked so heavily against the players. Perhaps that's the way it should be marketed for a revival- like the difference between Minor league and major league ball playing. You need the talent AND the drive to play at this level. This is A-list gaming. Only the best need apply. We might not just bring in new players but the right kind of players.- the ones who like the idea of sinking their teeth into a challenge.