Café de Nuit

alhoon wrote:Drinnik, it is not the bottom just because it is different than what it is already in our libraries. It is certainly nowhere near as professional as Curse of Strahd, it is certainly not the product of love like the gazeteers, it has lost much of its Gothic Horror elements but it is not bad. It is just...different. Compare it to the Ravenloft monster manual of 3.5e, that I don't even remember the name of, where even the mechanics were wrong (8d12+5d8 hp for mummy clerics etc).

If you started with VRGR, then read Domains of Dread, or the Black Box, afterwards, I think 99% of people would then look at the setting and see that VRGR is objectively worse in relation to story and plot to everything that came before it.

I presume you mean that in Hyperbole(the 99% of people that is), I'm not convinced if I was introduced to the 5e product and worked backwards that I'd consider one 'better' than the other story wise. I'd just consider them alternative timelines that I can play with, much like I do now reading it 'forwards'.

That being said if I compared VGR to Champions of Darkness solely I can tell you that I'm already using far more of VGR than I've ever extracted from CoD. (Only ones I can think of off the top of my head thus far is Estiban, and I've extracted the Ebon Gargoyle and modified their storyline to fit my game better) So I've already drawn more elements from VGR than that.

I'd go with Alhoon's and Gonzoron's suggestion as well, start with the newest product and if that interests you maybe work your way backwards and see where the references in the product come from. I've always liked finding out little references like that. I'd definitely pick up the Gazetteers as they are a more focused look at some of what the domains are if you want to run them as a Core. Basically, all the domains connected to each other like neighboring countries. GL on your quest to find out more about Ravenloft!