Ordinary things not found in Ravenloft

[Nikolas of the Mists]

Even then the profits outweigh the risks. Being Mist-led is still rare and the prices just go up to compensate for the lost "goods."

Outweigh the risks? Yes. Getting lost in the mists? Not really rare at all.
Moderate reliable mistways [incidentally those most likely to be used for trade and smuggling] have 30% drift. That's one in three operations having a slight delay or detour at best. Not exactly stellar numbers.

[High Priest Mikhal]

30% is nothing. Even with a loss of 30% of the original, that's still 70% left to make an ungodly profit in excess of hundreds or thousands of times what the "goods" cost to begin with. If the "goods" are illegal or simply impossible to get otherwise then the people pay what the smugglers demand or they don't get squat. And history has proven time and again that people will pay anything for anything.

I'm dropping this subject, actually. I really don't care about smuggling in Ravenloft enough to do this.

[Archedius]

I'd say Mikhal is correct. Smuggling is no doubt prevalent in Ravenloft and still can be highly profitable. If you have let's say a 30% chance of a caravan being mist-led and perhaps say a small chance of that caravan ever reaching its original destination - you are still left with a good success rate.
Regardless of the losses from any source, if the demand is high for goods such as coffee, liqour, human/demihuman traffiking, drugs, weapons, alchemical components etc. there WILL be a black market for it.

What does this mean? It's simple: any extra costs will be relegated to the buyer. Smuggled goods and even foreign goods in general cost THAT much more.

For whatever mistway would have to be used to move the goods- add it's drift chance to the price and perhaps add an extra 10% to account for monsters or brigands attacking= we see at least a 10 to 70% increase in the black market price. Running an insurance firm in RL would be very brutal to say the least : )

Nikolas makes a great point about the risk- but that's also what makes it so lucrative.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

People also need to remember that the premier smugglers of RL are the Vistani, and by extension, the Carnival and Mist Captains. Problem solved.

Even in economics, nature abhors a vacuum.

[Hashmalum]

It's also worth noting that non-Vistani smugglers have the option of using the desperately poor as expendable couriers, in much the same way that real-world drug cartels hire "mules" to carry cocaine in condoms inside their stomachs across the borders. If the goods entrusted to the mule are particularly easy to fence, or something that the mule might otherwise fail to deliver due to voluntary behavior, obedience might be improved by using poisons with very specific antidotes, with the antidote to be administered upon successful delivery.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Also, most smuggling wouldn't entail the mists at all. Just within a cluster or the Core, there plenty of opportunities. (smuggling vistani out of Invidia, demihumans out of Falkovnia, weapons into Falkovnia, horses out of NV, magic items out of Darkon during the crackdown, food into pre-conjuction G'Henna, opium out of Hazlan, tatyana reincarnations out of Barovia, poisons out of Borca...)

[Nikolas of the Mists]

Greek and Roman advancements would be out, requiring some equivalent counterparts and developments.

this would mean
-Mathematics
-astronomy, navigation and the astrolabe
-the foundation of drama, theatre and tragedy
-Aristotlean Logic, and the scientific method
-medicine and physiology eg the Humours
-universal language -> Latin
-law and the Twelve Tables

[Isabella]

Greek and Roman advancements would be out, requiring some equivalent counterparts and developments.

this would mean
-Mathematics
-astronomy, navigation and the astrolabe
-the foundation of drama, theatre and tragedy
-Aristotlean Logic, and the scientific method
-medicine and physiology eg the Humours
-universal language -> Latin
-law and the Twelve Tables

Well, there is a faux-Arabia, which got all that stuff from Greece and gave it to Europe, but I think trying to list cultural differences is an exercise in futility. For one thing, the domains were lifted piecemeal from other worlds and dumped into the demiplane, which meant they may very well have been sitting next to Greece for all we know; for another thing, any major concept or literature would probably have to be replaced with something nearly identical, or you're faced with the logistical nightmare of trying to remove that influence and keep the culture intact.

[DocBeard]

Isabella's right. The closest thing you get to being able to track Core cultures is by language; you've got Darkonian-speaking states, Mordentish-speaking states, Lamordian/Falkovnian-speaking states, Balok-speaking states, Vaasi-speaking states, and Tepestani/Forfaran/Whatever other five 'celtic' languages they had not be connected at all for some damn reasion-speaking states.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

I didn't say that those influences wouldn't be there, just that we wouldn't recognize them the same way a Ravenloft native would.

Things change when Newton wasn't the guy that had an apple fall on his head.

[Isabella]

I didn't say that those influences wouldn't be there, just that we wouldn't recognize them the same way a Ravenloft native would.

Things change when Newton wasn't the guy that had an apple fall on his head.

Aside from them being called something other than "Newton's Laws", I'm not sure how far you'd want to take that.

[cure]

The certainty of death.

As our favourite swamp Darkord opinioned: "Death it's necessarily an option."

[cure]

It is a slight stretch, but there are probably no wandering stars, i.e., planets. And there is likely no northern or southern lights.

There are, however, falling stars.

A jet stream and a prevaling wind direction are nowise certain.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Yes, things like the laws of mathematics or the various disciplines of the arts are best regarded as world-neutral phenomena, IMO. There was never a Shakespeare in Ravenloft -- or the Forgotten Realms or Krynn or Eberron or Mystara, for that matter -- but that doesn't mean somebody else couldn't have written a bunch of plays about star-crossed lovers and murdered kings' ghosts and prank-playing faeries, in every one of those worlds.

Things that aren't built into the structure of the universe and/or human nature, OTOH, can be entirely missing from a world, and I thought finding those "voids" (at least, "voids" as we perceive them) might give some fun insights into how Ravenloft's natives live and think. Heck, there aren't any "silt seas" in our own world -- a fact which would seem like quite a geographic lapse, to an Athasian! -- so a curious Dark Sun scholar might be curious how that lack affects our world-view.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

- Consistent North-South migration patterns of birds
- Geological fault lines