Quote from: RPGPundit;755424On the other hand, the Ravenloft d20 main book was oddly incomplete; it chose, for unfathomable reasons, to not include information about who the Dark Lords were for each realm.  As in, they don't even tell you "this guy is the dark lord here". You're left to guess.

I agree that they did some odd things (and personally the overall feel of the d20 Ravenloft stuff struck me as too white wolf from time to time). They did release a seperate darklords book, and i am guessing the reason they blurred their identity in that way was to keep players from knowing who the lords were.

While the initial printing of d20 Ravenloft did hide the Darklords in a slim separate folio, the later printing actually put them in the substantial Dungeon Master's Guide to the setting. True each one only got about a paragraph of detail there, but I suppose it was enough to work with if you were more interested in the setting's general capabilities than in Darklord hunting.

I think that was the designer's intent actually, to play down the Darklords in favor of making the rest of the setting more self-sufficient as a campaign landscape. Just look at all the examples of gothic adventuring and villain design provided in the Dungeon Master's guide that have nothing to do with the darklords at all.

(and just a note for anyone who isn't familiar with the line, the Gazetteers include all the info on the Darklords in full glory)

Quote from: RPGPundit;755424On the other hand, the Ravenloft d20 main book was oddly incomplete; it chose, for unfathomable reasons, to not include information about who the Dark Lords were for each realm.  As in, they don't even tell you "this guy is the dark lord here". You're left to guess.

   Developer mandate: Do a 'player-friendly' core book and a 'DM's secrets' screenbook. I strongly suspect that "Kelly Jester" had trouble getting his head out of the typical White Wolf design space.

I like using the movie "Waxwork" as a touchstone when I think about Ravenloft. The world is dependent upon the villain, and the villain is imprisoned in its own world. Outside of a vague dreamlike (nightmarish) remembrance that it all shouldn't be real, and there should be a way to leave, everything plays out like an archetypal legend of fear. Which would explain the deep ethereal planar placement, and why domains conform to darklord selfish desires while endlessly tormenting them.

As a full, lucid world, interesting potential but I think I'd have trouble sustaining it as people would gun for the border and keep walking. Dream logic is easier to work with in some ways. That and darklord curses and desires really shape the terrain in ways I find more gothically interesting than otherwise. The really tiny island domains are a bit more challenging, though, in my opinion.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;755604Developer mandate: Do a 'player-friendly' core book and a 'DM's secrets' screenbook. I strongly suspect that "Kelly Jester" had trouble getting his head out of the typical White Wolf design space.

Yes, a fucking stupid White-Wolfism; it ruined an otherwise decent presentation of the setting.