Café de Nuit

What would you add to Ravenloft if you had the chance?

A 5e update done by White Wolf.

And a completed Doomsday Gazetteer.

Rock wrote: And a completed Doomsday Gazetteer.

That.
A 5e update for the rules and rules only, would also be welcome. And I say that as someone that liked VRGttM although I realize it has its flaws.


Furthermore, I believe Ravenloft misses decent rules for gunpowder combat. Saying "guns ignore armor at close range" would probably be sufficient, even if simplistic. But we need something to show that guns are not arrows.
Personally, I use armor penetration. I.e. firearms ignore an amount of armor, not all armor.

More novels! I say again MORE NOVELS!!!

A complete conversion to Swords & Wizardry Basic-but honestly, our gang did most of that ourselves...

Canon

Grit.

An update to the timeline.
After so many years, it is boring to see always the same characters in the same timeloops, beside With Wolf, no publisher take care of the story. Since the balck box it is always the same thing, with little change, but always at the same time.

It is why i loved the thread about the war in the core.

Five wrote:Grit.

Did you say ... 'grit'? You want it ... 'gritty'?

Rock wrote:

Five wrote:Grit.

Did you say ... 'grit'? You want it ... 'gritty'?

Haha

Yes, Ravenloft needs an injection of non-gothic colour, given the fact that the Mists have reached out to claim and reform things from sources other than gothic literature.

Multiversal evil (the core of every domain birth) needs to be more of a trigger for those who fight for Good, and it needs to be a heavier burden at the same time. Ravenloft in many ways is a flip of standard D&D. General/societal evil replaces general good to the point where good is the outcast or fringe mindset (the resonance of the roots of evil; its core, should be a case-by-case domain feature as well, and whose inhabitants are mostly grey folk). And that toll of going against the grain (even if "only" emotionally/spiritually) should be framed to a degree. Not necessarily a mechanical focal point, but at least brushed into the canvas.

So says my mind anyway.

I actually agree, a lot of the focus on Ravenloft is on the classic horror but doesn't tend to go much further then that. The first thing I did was add Domains based on fears of people from Earth.

I googled the most common phobias' and had the PC's roll to find out where they ended up - I called the Cluster 'the Elements of Dread' - each one a microdomain based on a single fear.
We did Falling, Beards, Puppets and then moved on to one that had grown big enough to be a full domain - Social Anxiety - the fear of 'losing face or being embarrassed in public'.

This was my first remix domain... I turned Timor sideways and modernised it for the 'hive' to be a High School ala Mean Girls in all American 'classic' safe suburban setting. Where under the town aboleths lurk in the sewers and drains ready to drag their victims down where they discover that under the water is a entire world, a upside down mirror to the town above where 'everyone floats!'.
This turned it from eww-bugs into the horror of being a awkward teenager and it became a domain where you could go into really dark places that made the old gothic horror lightweight in comparison. It allowed more modern stories of real life horrors like racism, sexism, bullying can play out. Stories like Get Out!, IT, Stranger Things, Donnie Darko, 13 Reasons Why? all fit into this Domain now.

One thing I really would like to see added is a focus on each domain existing for a reason, to ask a question or challenge the player in a way beyond just the 'Kill the Dreadlord, Save the World' but use the Domains of Dread as a way to challenge how we see each other and the world.

Horror is great for this because it lets you turn the 'abstract' concepts into something you can deal with. - for example unease about modern technology may turn into fighting evil robots or having to deal with a rogue AI. You can make a Domain where the party are turned into Animals and play out Animal Farm or Babe in trying to outwit the Farmer who plans to turn them into a meal once they've been fattened up enough. Vampires are fun but have you ever wondered what would happen if Strahd had to fight a robot?

I had a Domain where Strahd and Vecna had to fight Cylons and it was amazing!

That does sound amazing, Muggs.

One question, though. "Beards"? How'd that play out?

Rock wrote:That does sound amazing, Muggs.

One question, though. "Beards"? How'd that play out?

In a word.. Hilariously!

Mechanically it was quite a simple domain. Each PC grew a beard (regardless of gender/logic) and the only escape was to shave it off.

This should be simple right? But the themes of the domain was obsession, vanity and 'destroying something that you love' - so the beard was described in seductive terms going all the way into edging the lines of erotica to impress upon them how much pleasure they gained from their beard and the ones around them (but obviously each believed their beard to be - the best!). Cue lots of beard stroking, braiding, fondling of each others beards and well... things quickly got weird.

Poor Vecna got stuck for well over a half hour because he just, couldn't bring himself to get rid of the first hair he'd had in who knows how long?

I'm not quite sure where to post my new and remixed non-canon domains as they're obviously still Ravenloft and based on Canon but twisted or expanded from the VRG2R and the 2e Domains of Dread? But if people would like them I'd be happy to share as they are all 5e updated and can be run straight for a more 'normal' Ravenloft experience. I'm also working on a Dramatisation of the campaign so you can see them in context alongside the 'comedic' element of putting Dreadlords in places they really don't belong

My answer would be a mediterranean sea.

While the geography of the Core was a good way to keep the setting geared toward a "weekend in hell" type of setting, I always had the feeling that transportation around the core where really slow for PC that want to go explore many domains. And it would help the more "native" approach to Ravenloft that 3e tried to add and more connectivy between the domain.

That and vikings! The dark ages had a lot of communities afraid of raiders and it always struck me that in such dark medieval setting, raiders from the sea weren't really a threat anyone had to be afraid of.