Café de Nuit

Anyone remember this PC game? I never played any other of the series, but I have good memories of this one. It was set in some eastern european-like country and had vampires, gypsies, card reading, a Rusalka, a Domovoi and strange rituals, at least as far as I recall. It was perhaps a bit light but I had good ideas and good inspiration from the game and I still remember it fondly, though I never finished it.
Anyone else used it for inspiration?
And what do you make of the identification of gypsies and werewolves ? And good ones, at that. Is it workable?

Alex

Ail wrote: It was perhaps a bit light but I had good ideas and good inspiration from the game and I still remember it fondly, though I never finished it.
Anyone else used it for inspiration?
And what do you make of the identification of gypsies and werewolves ? And good ones, at that. Is it workable?

I love the entire QFG series, although like you, my brother and I have never managed to finish QFG4 due to the sheer number of bugs in the game. However, the various locations over the course of the five games have become standard locales for our (non-Ravenloft) gaming group - Wolfgang Abenteuer (from QFG1) is quite possibly the favorite all-star NPC in brother's campaign.

I'd say that QFG4's twist on werewolves is fantastic for a non-Ravenloft campaign but a little too... not sinister enough to be placed in, say, the Core. It reminds me a lot of the lythari (one of the elven subraces in the Forgotten Realms, who have a natural shapeshifting power to transform into wolves.) Still, it would certainly be workable.

The rusalka and domovoi are two legends I'm very glad QFG4 introduced to me - particularly the rusalka, and I was very glad that she appeared in Frostburn. She even comes with a full, unique quest for how to put her to rest, which is perfect for the Ravenloft setting. Katrina is wonderfully tragic, and I think the interactions between Tanya and Toby would also fit nicely into Ravenloft.

As for the other QFG games, there aren't too many features that scream "put me into Ravenloft," although QFG1 is based entirely around a curse from Baba Yaga, so perhaps that could fit into Vorostokov or perhaps the Core (say, Hazlan?)

Garudos Celestar wrote:

Ail wrote: It was perhaps a bit light but I had good ideas and good inspiration from the game and I still remember it fondly, though I never finished it.
Anyone else used it for inspiration?
And what do you make of the identification of gypsies and werewolves ? And good ones, at that. Is it workable?

I love the entire QFG series, although like you, my brother and I have never managed to finish QFG4 due to the sheer number of bugs in the game. However, the various locations over the course of the five games have become standard locales for our (non-Ravenloft) gaming group - Wolfgang Abenteuer (from QFG1) is quite possibly the favorite all-star NPC in brother's campaign.

I'd say that QFG4's twist on werewolves is fantastic for a non-Ravenloft campaign but a little too... not sinister enough to be placed in, say, the Core. It reminds me a lot of the lythari (one of the elven subraces in the Forgotten Realms, who have a natural shapeshifting power to transform into wolves.) Still, it would certainly be workable.

The rusalka and domovoi are two legends I'm very glad QFG4 introduced to me - particularly the rusalka, and I was very glad that she appeared in Frostburn. She even comes with a full, unique quest for how to put her to rest, which is perfect for the Ravenloft setting. Katrina is wonderfully tragic, and I think the interactions between Tanya and Toby would also fit nicely into Ravenloft.

As for the other QFG games, there aren't too many features that scream "put me into Ravenloft," although QFG1 is based entirely around a curse from Baba Yaga, so perhaps that could fit into Vorostokov or perhaps the Core (say, Hazlan?)

It is so far away I've forgotten most things about it. Tanya was the little girl, right? But Toby.... that doesn't tell me much. was it an ape of some sort?!

The other things you mentioned actually made me wish to know more about the series. Since Baba-Yaga is a creature of folklore, and so are the Domovoi and the Rusalka (there is even a classical piece with that name, I guess by Dvorak), can I say the authors have a strong grounding in eastern culture?

Of all things, what I remember most is Katrina, yes, but I forgot the true tragedy of her life. Did she love the main character or was it a red herring? I also liked the old couple in the woods that had been turned to ghosts. As I said previously, the game was a bit on the light side, but I guess many things could be made darker and more RL-like.

Ail wrote:
It is so far away I've forgotten most things about it. Tanya was the little girl, right? But Toby.... that doesn't tell me much. was it an ape of some sort?!

The other things you mentioned actually made me wish to know more about the series. Since Baba-Yaga is a creature of folklore, and so are the Domovoi and the Rusalka (there is even a classical piece with that name, I guess by Dvorak), can I say the authors have a strong grounding in eastern culture?

Of all things, what I remember most is Katrina, yes, but I forgot the true tragedy of her life. Did she love the main character or was it a red herring?

Toby was Tanya's guardian. It's never explained exactly what he is; he's simply the "bogeyman" who turns out to be a kind, protective monster and friend.

Each of the five games takes place in a different cultural setting:
QFG1: So You Want to Be a Hero - Spielburg, a classic medieval Western European town. Goblins, brigands, and trolls wander the woods; Baba Yaga is a visitor to the valley who cursed the Baron von Spielburg and his family.
QFG2: Trial by Fire - Shapeir, Arabian Nights style setting. Complete with genie of the ring, flying carpet, and a delightful parody of Casablanca.
QFG3: Wages of War - Tarna, an African trading metropolis. From the city the hero visits savannah tribes and explores jungle ruins.
QFG4: Shadows of Darkness - Mordavia, based on Eastern European folklore. Nosferatu, gypsies, rusalka, and lots and lots of garlic. This is where Baba Yaga fled after your hero defeated her in QFG1.
QFG5: Dragon Fire - Silmaria, a classical Greek island. Battle the hydra, dance with the dryads, visit the lost city of Atlantis, and enter the gates of Hades.

My personal favorite of the lot is QFG3. It's the easiest and most straightforward of the games, but the setting is beautifully crafted and the NPCs are wonderful. (Although, had QFG2 come out a couple of years later, and thus had things like, oh say, more than 16 colors for its pixels, it might be the favorite.) If you ever get the chance to play through the whole series, I highly recommend it.

Yes, Katrina did fall in love with the hero in the game. To me, however, the more poignant part of her story is her desire to have a daughter and her kidnapping and subsequent indulgence of Tanya. The really touching part is that Tanya truly loved both "'Trina" and Toby on her end, rather than being an unwilling prisoner.

My favorite parts of QFG4 were the fortune telling sessions with Magda. They're all wonderfully crafted (if a bit obvious) and the designs of the St. Petersburg tarot are beautiful!

Was number 4 the one with Baba Yaga's Dancing hut?

Luke Fleeman wrote:Was number 4 the one with Baba Yaga's Dancing hut?

Yes, her hut was there, but she appeared in number 1 too, though I never played it.

That game was great. Alot of problem solving and little puzzles. I think I still have the disks sitting around here somewhere. Might have to break it out.

Oh man - this thread is old, but I have to resurrect it now that I've found it, because this game deserves another bump.

This is the game that got me into Ravenloft. This is the game that, for me, Ravenloft will always take second place to. This is the game I always want to point to when people say that Ravenloft shouldn't be typical heroic fantasy. Your hero gets to do everything from reconcile an estranged couple to save the world, but it's still a Gothic game to it's very core. The game knows when to be funny, and when to be serious. The characters are well fleshed out, and do a wonderful job of gradually changing from suspicious villagers to friends who care about you. The villains are fantastic. You don't have to have played the other three games before it to enjoy it, but there's a wealth of familiar things and faces, even in this strange and isolated land, that really shows the planning and care the creators put into the entire series.

The cross between an RPG and an adventure game is very clever - it allows your character to fight back when he should be able to (as opposed to just falling over dead - I'm looking at you, King Graham). At the same time, there are dangerous situations where your character can die. Unlike many old Sierra games, the deaths are sensical and there are little to no sticking points. (And yet poorer game design, such as Kings Quest, ended up being more popular. )

The only thing I would complain about is that the combat system in Quest for Glory 4, unlike its predecessors, isn't the best - that and the slew of bugs that tragically makes this game practically unplayable. Even so, I love this game so much I still break out the CDs every once in a while and slog through the bugs any way I can. If you can find a patch, or a program that might get you past the bugs, Like DOS Box, I recommend this game for everyone.

I don't think the gypsy werewolves are unusable in Ravenloft. I'm sure many people would disagree with me, but I think of them kind of like the Vistani - not good, but not evil, mostly misunderstood by the people around them. They could be an unusual tribe of Vistani (an idea that I'm sure would not be appreciated by the original setting creators ), replacing the evil eye and other weird traits with a shapechanging ability.

Hi, Isabella. I actually think I agree with everything you say, even in the shapechanging Vistani

Alex

I also loved the entire QfG series, and actually still have the disks sitting around and play through them every now and again with a different character class. And I actually did run a (low-level) RL adventure loosely based on Tanya and Toby, though I forget now what I statted up Toby as.

For those of you who have never gotten through the game due to the bugs, if you've still got it lying around you might try dusting it off again, and downloading some of the fan-made fixes here or here. They don't fix *all* the bugs, but they cover most of the major and especially game-stopping ones.

I could certainly imagine a tribe of shape-changing Vistani being easily confused with werewolves - or even just the simple rumor that Vistani are all werewolves. Perhaps one village had a bad experience with the specific tribe that actually could shapechange, and now tells everyone who travels through that all Vistani are secretly werewolves...of course, with everyone blaming things on the Vistani, the real werewolves might easily escape detection...

I have a player character right now that's running an Ogre character. I used the Elderberry pie reference from the Baba Yaga Sequence.

The PCs are in a Traveling Circus(the ogre is the strong woman) and every once in a while I have a townsfolk call her Baba Yaga in awe. I'm thinking about making her a descendant/relative of BY and using it as an adventure hook when they get a bit higher level.