Why players don't like Ravenloft...

[Willowhugger]

Wow, I just got the weirdest response from a gamer friend of mine while discussing the setting. I really wanted to do a game and described it as "Castlevania meets Hammer Horror." However, his response was entirely different from my take on the setting.

Listen, Chuck, I love you to death but I don't want to play Ravenloft. EVER. Call of Cthulhu has more meaning to it's struggles. The setting is broken. REALLY broken. If you kill every monster in the setting then more will just be brought in and nothing your player character will do will make any damn bit of difference to the setting. It's a hopeless moross where you don't even get the dim satisfaction of saving reality for a couple of more years. Instead, it's a setting that mocks heroism and pretty much renders any attempt to compare it to the good vs. evil stories of old as wrong.

Well...damn. Then again, it occurs to me that many of my fellow players seem to believe that. When I described the player characters hissing to Azalin, the basic reaction was that Azalin should have destroyed them. That seemed to me strange since the PCs should/were able to defeat the Lich king. HE wasn't the star after all, the PCs were.

What is the reason in your opinion that Ravenloft isn't more popular?

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Wow, that's a little strange. I can understand some hostility to Ravenloft - since it is a difficult setting for players and requires an abstract view of success, but seriously, since when do the PCs save the world forever?
In Forgotten Realms, for example, if you beat the Red Wizards in one adventure, they're back in the next for sure. Clean out a temple to bane one week, and nothing stops them from coming back the next.

I think Ravenloft's problem is that it incorporates ideas that sound bad on paper. Villians, for example, have domains and resurection abilities. There's also a lot less in the way of magic, a low powered population who may be less than friendly, and a theme that's all based on making things tough for the players.

If I may go into Weird Pete mode; I think some players just have it too soft. They expect to have a wide range of treasure and helpful npcs - enemies they can mop the floor with, and the instant gratification of saving the world and having it stay saved.

So, when they're faced with a setting that does not favour them, they get discouraged.

[Willowhugger]

Well I disagree with me him on principle but I do think that there's definitely a vague point to what he's saying in that Ravenloft seems to be trying alittle too hard to be a static campaign setting.

In my Forgotten Realms games, it's entirely possible to destroy Ssass Tam for instance in the Red Wizards works. In my Ravenloft games, I'd feel like being able to bring Strahd back but you can damn well better believe that beating him in House of Strahd will have some HUGE reprocussions for Barovia. Like Dracula in Hammer Horror, he might be ressurected by some followers but he won't be able to step right back into place.

The Dark lords like all other evils in the setting can be BURNED by the PCs.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

He has the sound of someone who was burned by a power-tripping Ravenloft DM. Also, why does it always have to be about saving the world? Isn't it fun enough to save the village? solve the mystery? catch the serial killer?

[Charney]

He sounds like one of my player who's main complaint is that Strahd cannot be beaten.

Those players tend to view the darklords as the end of level villain in a video game.

[Willowhugger]

He sounds like one of my player who's main complaint is that Strahd cannot be beaten.

Those players tend to view the darklords as the end of level villain in a video game.

Well he does have a point though. If we're playing a game influenced by Bram Stroker's Dracula then isn't the point of the adventure to drive a stake through the heart of Dracula at the end?

I find myself unable to answer the point "If my character is genuinely heroic then won't he go after the biggest, nastiest, and meanest sources of corruption in the Demiplane?"

That's not a video game, that's playing to character type.

[Jester of the FoS]

As a setting it is rather static as the big players have to remain in play. But in personal campaigns and home games there can be alot of sucess, change and victory albeit the world will likely never drastically altered.
The Realms can be just as static with the high magic most big bads can be raised, clones and keep coming back...

[HuManBing]

That's weird. One of the things that my players liked about my Darkon was that the darklord was clearly an evil force, but there are so many things out there that are a worse bet than him. They liked the irony that for several of Ravenloft's rulers, they're good leaders heading up workable societies in the midst of chaos and decay, even though they themselves are evil individuals.


It's a similar sort of metagaming irony as in Dark Sun, where people are struggling to save the world to epic lengths... but the world itself is just a barren dustball sinking into extinction.

[Lord_Pruitt]

The one thing that grabbed my attention was him saying thaat he would rather play CoC, as the characters had more of a chance to save the world.

I agree with gonzoron - it sounds like he had a way bad experience with a power hungry DM.

Years ago, I heard a similar complaint about the old Dark Sun setting - that it "made no sense. You don't have to think, just kill the next monsters." To play a good RPG, especially Ravenloft, you can't think like that.

Personally, I like the idea of a semi-abstract campaign, something a little different. And the whole static world idea, isn't that a part of the gothic horror idea? An unchanging world of horrors lurking around that corner.

[Willowhugger]

It's a similar sort of metagaming irony as in Dark Sun, where people are struggling to save the world to epic lengths... but the world itself is just a barren dustball sinking into extinction.

Odd fact there.

Dark Sun I always took as the Post-Apocalypse "survival is what matters, not the world" and Ravenloft as "This is the place that good makes the MOST difference."

Yet, second edition Dark Sun bombed because the bad guys were all beaten and the world was on its way to recovery thanks to Tithian's chaos storms.

And the whole static world idea, isn't that a part of the gothic horror idea? An unchanging world of horrors lurking around that corner.

Not really. When I think of Gothic Horror, I think of the Hammer Horror Pictures and Castlevania as mentioned. Peter Cushing's Doctor Van Helsing and Captain Kronos the Vampie Hunter are able to match the bad guys blow for blow.

furthermore, in horror movies, the heroes always end up offing the villain with the exception of the Phantasm Movies.

Part of the disconnect is in D&D, your player characters are the stars while in most horror the villains are the stars. The problem with D&D is that your player characters are expected to be every bit as powerful and dynamic as the villains they face.

The BIGGEST oddity of the guys complaint for me is the fact that he's played in campaigns where the Nazis won WW2 for Strahd's sake. My best solution is to say that we'll run a game that's "different" and then run him through a bunch of Darklord killing modules.

After he offs a few of them then he'll probably be willing to come back to the Table. I'm one of the few that honestly don't think the Dark Lords are necessarily that important as long as they're not Azalin or Strahd.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Not really. When I think of Gothic Horror, I think of the Hammer Horror Pictures and Castlevania as mentioned. .

Ah, but in both cases, didn't Dracula come back as many times as the Belmonts or Van Helsing killed him? So maybe your solution is to weaken the darklord's combat abilities to a point where they can be killed for a time, but strengthen or emphasize their ability to come back for more. (And of course, as others have mentioned, emphasize that killing a DL, even temporarily, can be a great deed.)


By all means, I think you should try to get him to understand that Ravenloft doesn't have to be what he's heard or experienced. I think the best counter argument is to ask him his favorite setting and how it's different in the ways he mentioned. For example, in Forgotten Realms, is it possible to "kill every monster in the setting" without more being brought in? I'm not familiar with Ssass Tam, but if someone killed him in their home game, would the next FR setting book say he's dead? If he was killed, would there be no way for a DM to bring him back? I'm fairly sure the answer to all of these is no.

Tell him, yes, Ravenloft gives the DM some fairly powerful tools for railroading. (Mist transport and border closure probably being the most egregious examples.) But a bad DM can abuse any setting, and a good DM won't need to use those tools except to increase the mood, and therefore the fun, of all involved.

[HuManBing]

Yes, that's another thing that surprised me - that he preferred Call of Cthulhu because it wasn't so unfavorable to the players.

That's weird. In all my CoC games (where I was just the player, not the GM) my characters always started to go slightly crazy as they inexorably lost sanity points.

This was great fun as a roleplaying aid, but on a metagaming scale you can see that you probably wouldn't have too many campaigns with a single given character. There's only so much the human psyche can take in CoC and you'd have to retire favorite characters or possibly stick with low-key adventures that had no chance of meeting anything truly occult.

Also, in CoC your characters didn't actually become any tougher with Experience. They only became more skilled. So that led to the interesting (and more realistic) scenario where you'd never be strong enough to really take a blow from the big meanies in the game - you merely became skilled enough to avoid it or work around it.

All these differences make me think that Ravenloft, which is still ostensibly based on the d20 system, is actually quite a bit more favorable in game terms to the PCs. Your hit points increase, your killing power increases, your magical inventory increases with each level, and you can take on bigger and badder bad guys. Although there are Dark Powers checks which are largely irreversible, they're primarily a matter of choice. Sanity, Fear, and Horror checks are all reversible to some degree (unlike Sanity Loss in CoC).

So in conclusion, that player must have had a really sucky Ravenloft DM

[Jakob]

Yes, that's another thing that surprised me - that he preferred Call of Cthulhu because it wasn't so unfavorable to the players.

That's weird. In all my CoC games (where I was just the player, not the GM) my characters always started to go slightly crazy as they inexorably lost sanity points.

I can't but agree with you.
Anyone remeber the uber-adventure that was named something like Masks of Nyarlathotep (I mille volti di Nyarlatothep here in Italy)?
It was, essentially, a big meat grinder: a lenghty campaign in which was not unusual to change at least three charachters (either gone mad, killed or turned in a monster)... And after the whole adventure, you could save the world from old 'Ny or not.
In either case, history would have gone the same way: in one case, the horrors of 20th century were inspired by the influence on 'Ny, in the other, things would have been much worse...

A CoC charachter has LESS probabilities of saving the world...

So in conclusion, that player must have had a really sucky Ravenloft DM

Talk about trauma!

[Brandi]

furthermore, in horror movies, the heroes always end up offing the villain with the exception of the Phantasm Movies.

Actually, starting right around the time of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and until pretty recently, the villains were more likely to, if not triumph outright, at least not be permanently defeated.

[Willowhugger]

Actually, I'm his Call of Cthulhu Gamemaster (or Keeper as they call them).

The way I run my Call of Cthulhu games is invariably to run them "wrong." The Masks of Nyarlathotep and Over the Mountains of Madness are two mega-adventures that I'm particularly famous for since both of them lead the players to invariably saving the entire planet from destruction at the hands of the Great Old Ones at the novel's climax. I also have an affection for Raid on Innsmouth where the players shell an entire Deep One's city with torpedoes at the end of the fight.

The games are still a meat grinder for PCs but the "Society" continues on even after the original members are largely dead or have been transformed into NPC sponsors for the society. I also give players the optional rule of regaining sanity from killing monsters plus also small points back for "burning" insanity by taking up destructive habits like alcoholism, paranoia, delusions, or drug addiction.

My CoC games are thus very much in the Pulp mode I suppose.