"This time around [...] we provide you all of the elements needed to be somebody from Har'Akir, and to have this world be your world. This isn't necessarily a story about going into tombs and grave robbing and pillaging somebody else's past. This can very easily be [a story about] your home. [Your character] can imagine a world where there are not these horrors, and it's up to you to make them better. That's a quite different proposition from what you see in many of these classic horror stories, but also nonetheless terrifying because now what's happening is within your own home."

Isn't this "cultural appropriation"?

Not that it matters: anything these days can be distorted to make you the evilest person in the whole history ever 

Quote from: Reckall on May 07, 2021, 01:46:16 PM
"This time around [...] we provide you all of the elements needed to be somebody from Har'Akir, and to have this world be your world. This isn't necessarily a story about going into tombs and grave robbing and pillaging somebody else's past. This can very easily be [a story about] your home. [Your character] can imagine a world where there are not these horrors, and it's up to you to make them better. That's a quite different proposition from what you see in many of these classic horror stories, but also nonetheless terrifying because now what's happening is within your own home."

Isn't this "cultural appropriation"?

Not that it matters: anything these days can be distorted to make you the evilest person in the whole history ever 

It's also not new—rules and details for natives of Har'Akir and other non-European domains go back to Domains of Dread 24 years ago. Har'Akir actually got a Good-aligned secret society and a unique priest kit in the 2E days.

The new edition definitely has zero interest for me. But then I started losing interest in S&S Ravenloft and WOTC handling of it in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft completely killed my interest in anything Ravenloft from WOTC. The new stuff looks like it might appeal to modern fans a bit, but I find the aesthetics of it very off-putting. Stuff like the focus on other types of horror, rather than making the main dish classic and gothic horror, completely kills any interest. I don't mind changes to the setting, as it is in its nature, and I don't mind swapping up characters genders here and there and races if they are rebooting, but the way they are doing it feels very ham-fisted and done for the sake of scoring political points rather than because it is good for the domain (more female domain lords for example is a plus for me with Ravenloft, because I think some of the the best domain lords were female, but I don't want them all to be so woke: I like my horror messy, troubling, and not doing this balancing act with its villains where they are evil but their storylines are also wholesome enough that they don't violate peoples current senses of propriety. The safety tools stuff I also find very off-putting in a horror setting. It just feels like it is Ravenloft written for elementary school kids who can't handle anything a little difficult. Also completely removing the core as a concept (from what I can see), bothers me. I really liked having both a core with connected lands and islands of terror. And this appears to be turning things into the island of terror approach (which is great for monster of the week, but Ravenloft is more than monster of the week). The islands were definitely good for having a campaign where players drifted from one threat to the next, and the GM had lots of control for planning adventures. And they should have been explicit about that in the book this time. But I think you also need to have a more open area to run games so Ravenloft isn't as limited. Maybe they have a core and I just missed it, but big important domains look like islands of terror now. That said, even though I don't like the aesthetics of the art, the art quality looks good. And it looks like a lot of interesting creative decisions were made when you ignore the things I am complaining about (and it is nice to see Jiangshi in there). It is just too far away from the philosophy laid out in the black box for me, and seems to be a little hostile to older fans (getting what I would call Last Jedi vibes on it).