So we're either getting Ravenloft 5E or The Innistrad Show With Special Guest Cameo By Ravenloft, And By The Way Ravenloft Couldn't Make It Tonight So Here's More Innistrad.
DISCUSS!
I absolutely adore Ravenloft, so I'm down.
No, I will not tone down my Vistani in the slightest.
Didnt they alrewdy do ravenloft for 5e?
Quote from: Slambo on February 22, 2021, 11:06:40 PM
Didnt they alrewdy do ravenloft for 5e?
They did Strahd and the lands surrounding his castle, but there is still a lot more to the setting than that.
I ran the original Ravenloft module for 5E and had a lot of fun with it.
I don't really like the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, though. I feel like it actually reduces the horror for it to be an isolated demi-plane as described, as compared to just having horror adventures in a fantasy setting.
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2021, 12:07:10 AM
I ran the original Ravenloft module for 5E and had a lot of fun with it.
I don't really like the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, though. I feel like it actually reduces the horror for it to be an isolated demi-plane as described, as compared to just having horror adventures in a fantasy setting.
I've always seen Ravenloft horror as more tied to the nature of a horror prison than traditional horror.
Not being able to escape the demiplane, and therefore having to be subjected to it without a glimmer of hope is pretty horrific. The corruption of the demiplane also tends to exacerbate the hopelessness that pervades the adventures. You can't escape and the longer you stay, the more likely it is you'll become corrupted.
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2021, 12:07:10 AM
I ran the original Ravenloft module for 5E and had a lot of fun with it.
I don't really like the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, though. I feel like it actually reduces the horror for it to be an isolated demi-plane as described, as compared to just having horror adventures in a fantasy setting.
But then you run into the problem that the demi-plane was set up to solve - how do you have horror when the PCs (and NPCs) can just leave? That's one of the tropes of horror, you can't escape. PCs have many ways to escape, so the (rather ham-fisted) approach of the demi-plane is there to prevent that. At least that's my take on it.
I started with Ravenloft in 1991, have been a fan for years, and even wrote a couple of Dragon articles and had shadowy influence on bits of the 3rd Edition.
I have no interest in this. WotC doesn't want me as a fan, and I just don't trust them to get it right. Not the Vistani--I'd be perfectly fine with losing them--but D&D and Ravenloft have always been uneasy bedfellows at best, and with D&D becoming so self-absorbed, I don't know that the setting will retain its unique feel. More importantly, the moral dimensions of Gothic horror don't seem likely to survive WotC's devotion to the Death Cult.
Sorry, but Ravenloft has got to be the most over-hyped setting in D&D. I mean, I understand its appeal (somewhat), as it does present a different thematic feel. But seriously, the mechanics of D&D have never really fit the thematic elements of Gothic horror, and Ravenloft really doesn't fix that (as far as I've seen). I'm glad folks enjoy it, but I always feel a little... juvenile... whenever we attempt a campaign. Like we should be teenage girls getting all hot and bothered over the menacing (yet somehow suave and romantic) Strahd. I guess the whole WoD stuff has permanently warped my view of vampires in RPGs, and not for the positive. At least Ravenloft doesn't seem to be designed to use to hit on tween girls (like Vampire: the Masquerade)...
Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 23, 2021, 11:25:15 AM
Sorry, but Ravenloft has got to be the most over-hyped setting in D&D. I mean, I understand its appeal (somewhat), as it does present a different thematic feel. But seriously, the mechanics of D&D have never really fit the thematic elements of Gothic horror, and Ravenloft really doesn't fix that (as far as I've seen). I'm glad folks enjoy it, but I always feel a little... juvenile... whenever we attempt a campaign. Like we should be teenage girls getting all hot and bothered over the menacing (yet somehow suave and romantic) Strahd. I guess the whole WoD stuff has permanently warped my view of vampires in RPGs, and not for the positive. At least Ravenloft doesn't seem to be designed to use to hit on tween girls (like Vampire: the Masquerade)...
Considering the Square Peg, Round Hole approach that so many people take to settings and trying to force them into vanilla D&D, it's no wonder Ravenloft is so popular when it only reinforces that.
Quote from: Thornhammer on February 22, 2021, 10:03:18 PMNo, I will not tone down my Vistani in the slightest.
Yikes! Read the heckin' room sweetie before you do a racism that is literally killing Romani folx.
Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 23, 2021, 01:44:47 AM
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2021, 12:07:10 AM
I ran the original Ravenloft module for 5E and had a lot of fun with it.
I don't really like the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, though. I feel like it actually reduces the horror for it to be an isolated demi-plane as described, as compared to just having horror adventures in a fantasy setting.
I've always seen Ravenloft horror as more tied to the nature of a horror prison than traditional horror.
Not being able to escape the demiplane, and therefore having to be subjected to it without a glimmer of hope is pretty horrific. The corruption of the demiplane also tends to exacerbate the hopelessness that pervades the adventures. You can't escape and the longer you stay, the more likely it is you'll become corrupted.
I think that's something that got lost over the various iterations of Ravenloft. I seem to recall descriptions of some domains as beautiful wilderness. A few have such subtle lords that its hard to really tell it is a kind of prison. I ran a game in which characters had established a home base in Nova Vaasa, so they had a fairly large 'base' that wasn't overloaded with undead or monsters.
Quote from: Lynn on February 23, 2021, 12:13:52 PM
I think that's something that got lost over the various iterations of Ravenloft. I seem to recall descriptions of some domains as beautiful wilderness. A few have such subtle lords that its hard to really tell it is a kind of prison. I ran a game in which characters had established a home base in Nova Vaasa, so they had a fairly large 'base' that wasn't overloaded with undead or monsters.
The official setting books tried to highlight the duality, but the fan impression of the setting was 'a hopeless, relentlessly horrid place where PCs go to die.' WotC could go either way.
One thing that's different--back in Ravenloft's heyday, there wasn't much for Gothic horror in any form. The closest you'd get would be some old
Chill books,
Cthulhu by Gaslight, or the radically different World of Darkness. Nowadays, we've got
Leagues of Gothic Horror from Triple Ace (which has now covered almost all of the Van Richten's Guides topics),
Rippers and
Accursed for Savage Worlds, and plenty of others. The setting may find itself pushed closer to the "D&D with bats and doom" motif than the "Gothic horror with some D&D touches" pole at the other end; it typically wavered between these two in its previous lives.
And that's not counting the 'play the monsters' motif that a lot of people want and that the blurbs highlight as being catered to with the new lineages.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 23, 2021, 12:24:54 PMThe official setting books tried to highlight the duality, but the fan impression of the setting was 'a hopeless, relentlessly horrid place where PCs go to die.' WotC could go either way.
I think that is very much a result of the way most Ravenloft campaigns started, namely in a different world altogether, with the PCs being sucked into the Demiplane by some vortex portal while chasing a random baddie.
Players tended to see it as bleak because they saw it, rightfully, as a "the PCs go to jail....with Vampires!" sort of thing.
I don't think I've ever seen a Ravenloft campaign being run with adventurers native to the Demiplane.
P.S.: Also, Masque of the Red Death was a variation of Ravenloft much more akin to traditional Gothic Horror, and very well done IIRC. I've only run one Ravenloft campaign ever, so never had a chance to try Masque in my groups.
I have never played in Ravenloft as a setting beyond the original AD&D module I6 Ravenloft. It didn't really go over well with my group at the time and we preferred the more traditional medieval setting with a few Barrier Peaks type adventures thrown in from time to time.
I was not surprised to see the cult of PC come for Ravenloft though.
I adored Ravenloft. I ran it all through the 90s and early 2000s (and ran it again using 2E in 2009-10). I was never able to really get as excited by the d20 Ravenloft material (ran it, and it just didn't have the same feel in play). The WOTC 3rd edition Expedition to Castle Ravenloft really didn't work for me (not did the S&S stuff). I bought the Curse of Strahd, and found that was just not for me. I know people who played it and love it. It just didn't feel like classic Ravenloft to me (to me classic Ravenloft is anything from the original module to the Domains of Dread). For me, the best core Ravenloft Material will always be Black Box, Van Richten Books and supplements like Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn.
I have to say if they are going to do the Van Richten thing again, it is going to be really hard in my opinion for them to outdo the original van richten books. Those really enhanced play at the table for me in a way no other product ever has. I also think there were a lot of bad books done in that vein after the line left TSR (the books are sort of in first person, but the TSR books dealt with them in a more hammy, humorous, hammer horror type of way, that was a little over the top----and the later lines, IMO, got lost in the first person thing, took themselves too seriously and were little too goth). One feature of the Van Richten character they are probably going to have to jettison is his prejudice against the Vistani. This was a recurring trait, that was used as an ironic source of humor (it was meant as a flaw, and not a view the readers were meant to share). There is one line in one of the books where he talks about a Vistani who helped him on investigations and how he 'won't blame an individual for the failings of an entire race'. Van Richten was the butt of the joke (and it is clearly spinning off the common wisdom of not blaming a whole race of people for the failings of individuals). Those kinds of touches were important to the character and tone of the books. I don't think they will be able to do that in the current version (though I could be wrong).
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2021, 12:07:10 AM
I ran the original Ravenloft module for 5E and had a lot of fun with it.
I don't really like the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, though. I feel like it actually reduces the horror for it to be an isolated demi-plane as described, as compared to just having horror adventures in a fantasy setting.
I think something that gets lost is Ravenloft was a little on the campy side. It wasn't super serious horror all the time. It was more like a setting stitched together from universal, hammer and other classic sources of horror. If you grew up on that stuff, having a whole world that felt essentially like it was cobbled together from Hammer Film sets, was a wonderful foundation for adventures. But I think it did require a sense of that landscape to click.
Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 23, 2021, 12:35:08 PM
I don't think I've ever seen a Ravenloft campaign being run with adventurers native to the Demiplane.
It was the intended style as of
Domains of Dread and the 3rd Edition relaunch, but I think there were a total of two adventures and two anthologies produced with that as the guiding principle. (There were more than two post-Domains of Dread adventures, but a couple of them really highlighted the 'weekend in Hell' approach--
The Forgotten Terror and
Vecna Reborn.)
Without good adventurers or even a good 'Player's Guide' supplement to help train players and DMs how to play natives in Ravenloft, it's no wonder that it never took off.
Quote
P.S.: Also, Masque of the Red Death was a variation of Ravenloft much more akin to traditional Gothic Horror, and very well done IIRC. I've only run one Ravenloft campaign ever, so never had a chance to try Masque in my groups.
Masque is good despite the Enlightenment biases of its history. :)
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 23, 2021, 12:52:29 PM
Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 23, 2021, 12:35:08 PM
P.S.: Also, Masque of the Red Death was a variation of Ravenloft much more akin to traditional Gothic Horror, and very well done IIRC. I've only run one Ravenloft campaign ever, so never had a chance to try Masque in my groups.
Masque is good despite the Enlightenment biases of its history. :)
The major strength of Masque is that it puts the Gothic horror of Ravenloft back into its original context: the 19th century.
The major weakness of Masque is its Enlightenment biases. Gothic horror originally
challenged those biases, while Masque doubles down on them.
Quote from: RandyB on February 23, 2021, 01:01:52 PM
The major weakness of Masque is its Enlightenment biases. Gothic horror originally challenged those biases, while Masque doubles down on them.
Fortunately, most of those show up in the 'secret history' section and can easily be ignored or reinterpreted. And the
Gothic Earth Gazetteer wins points with me by celebrating Leo XIII and giving him a connection to van Helsing, who is the head of the iconic Lawful Good qabal. :)
More details at https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwieland/2021/02/23/the-mist-beckons-a-return-to-ravenloft-for-dungeons--dragons/ (https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwieland/2021/02/23/the-mist-beckons-a-return-to-ravenloft-for-dungeons--dragons/) and https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/945-the-mist-has-lifted-around-d-ds-new-sourcebook-van (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/945-the-mist-has-lifted-around-d-ds-new-sourcebook-van)
They've radically reimagined Dementlieu and Falkovnia, and gender-swapped Dr. Mordenheim.
EDIT: It also sounds like it's going to be less 'older D&D'
and less 'pure Gothic', judging from the art samples (there's a piece with two tieflings who look more vulnerable than anything) and the comments.
QuoteFurther teased and suggested were even more flavors of horror: from most dangerous games to traditional ghost stories, and even D&D's spin on cosmic dread.
"I'm a huge fan of all things horror, so it was an absolute thrill to frame this book around bringing frightening elements like mummy lords, cosmic terrors, and urban legends to more D&D tables," said Schneider.
F. Wesley Schneider is taking lead, and he's a Ravenloft fan from
way back--he got his start in the Kargatane's
Book of S* netbooks. So I expect a mix of fanservice and reimagining from this one.
Quote from: RandyB on February 23, 2021, 01:01:52 PMThe major strength of Masque is that it puts the Gothic horror of Ravenloft back into its original context: the 19th century.
I completely agree.
The Gothic Earth Gazetteer and
A Guide to Transylvania were fantastic! Why meddle in obscure demi-planes in the Ether when you can take you PCs to somewhere they
think they know and do battle against the original Vampire Lord?
This is one of the books on my 5e wishlist (the other being a Daleands/Cormyr/Moonsea guide for FR).
I know Wes is a huge fan off Ravenloft, so I have some hope. That being said, I haven't bought any WOTC products since Wildmount and I don't see myself getting anything beyond Ravenloft. Just getting this for old time sakes.
Quote from: Azkaliban on February 23, 2021, 01:18:36 PM
Quote from: RandyB on February 23, 2021, 01:01:52 PMThe major strength of Masque is that it puts the Gothic horror of Ravenloft back into its original context: the 19th century.
I completely agree. The Gothic Earth Gazetteer and A Guide to Transylvania were fantastic! Why meddle in obscure demi-planes in the Ether when you can take you PCs to somewhere they think they know and do battle against the original Vampire Lord?
I had the complete opposite reaction. I liked the freedom of a fictional setting. The Gothic earth stuff, while it was interesting, just never clicked with me. I love history, but I had a really hard time getting into the Guide to Transylvania. I think because I was drawn to Ravenloft more for the over the top elements, than by any fidelity to its gothic roots (though it was the thing that got me to start reading gothic horror).
One thing I would argue is that Ravenloft was never really meant to be pure gothic horror. It was really classic horror, drawing a bit on gothic, but also on lovecraft (actually a lot of the horror advice in the black boxed set was drawn from lovecraft), and I think that worked in terms of playability more than if it were rigorously modeled on an academic attempt at doing gothic horror. Not that there isn't gothic horror there, just there is also an awful lot of old horror movie stuff in there too, a lot of camp, a lot of the howling, etc.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 23, 2021, 01:09:42 PM
More details at https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwieland/2021/02/23/the-mist-beckons-a-return-to-ravenloft-for-dungeons--dragons/ (https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwieland/2021/02/23/the-mist-beckons-a-return-to-ravenloft-for-dungeons--dragons/) and https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/945-the-mist-has-lifted-around-d-ds-new-sourcebook-van (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/945-the-mist-has-lifted-around-d-ds-new-sourcebook-van)
They've radically reimagined Dementlieu and Falkovnia, and gender-swapped Dr. Mordenheim.
EDIT: It also sounds like it's going to be less 'older D&D' and less 'pure Gothic', judging from the art samples (there's a piece with two tieflings who look more vulnerable than anything) and the comments. QuoteFurther teased and suggested were even more flavors of horror: from most dangerous games to traditional ghost stories, and even D&D's spin on cosmic dread.
"I'm a huge fan of all things horror, so it was an absolute thrill to frame this book around bringing frightening elements like mummy lords, cosmic terrors, and urban legends to more D&D tables," said Schneider.
F. Wesley Schneider is taking lead, and he's a Ravenloft fan from way back--he got his start in the Kargatane's Book of S* netbooks. So I expect a mix of fanservice and reimagining from this one.
Ravenloft had a lot of very interesting, original female domain lords. I don't quite get the gender swapping there. I can sort of understand why they may felt the need to change Falkovnia, given the current climate on things. But I really found the old take much more interesting than zombies. Escape from Falkovnia was a great type of adventure. And it was drawing on dark history that resonated well with most players
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 23, 2021, 01:32:50 PM
Ravenloft had a lot of very interesting, original female domain lords. I don't quite get the gender swapping there. I can sort of understand why they may felt the need to change Falkovnia, given the current climate on things. But I really found the old take much more interesting than zombies. Escape from Falkovnia was a great type of adventure. And it was drawing on dark history that resonated well with most players
According to an article on comicbook.com, they've also genderswapped Vlad Drakov. Since Drakov was the Vlad Tepes expy, with strong pushes in a Hitler direction from 3E (the 3E version of Falkovnia was one of that era's sour notes, for me; too overt and heavy-handed), that switch for 'representation' could evoke ... interesting reactions ... from the Usual Suspects.
How can a PC have Hag lineage? What non-evil characters would want someone with Hag lineage with them?
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 23, 2021, 02:02:04 PM
According to an article on comicbook.com, they've also genderswapped Vlad Drakov. Since Drakov was the Vlad Tepes expy, with strong pushes in a Hitler direction from 3E (the 3E version of Falkovnia was one of that era's sour notes, for me; too overt and heavy-handed), that switch for 'representation' could evoke ... interesting reactions ... from the Usual Suspects.
That's hilarious and an awesome twist without much subtlety.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 23, 2021, 02:02:04 PM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 23, 2021, 01:32:50 PM
Ravenloft had a lot of very interesting, original female domain lords. I don't quite get the gender swapping there. I can sort of understand why they may felt the need to change Falkovnia, given the current climate on things. But I really found the old take much more interesting than zombies. Escape from Falkovnia was a great type of adventure. And it was drawing on dark history that resonated well with most players
According to an article on comicbook.com, they've also genderswapped Vlad Drakov. Since Drakov was the Vlad Tepes expy, with strong pushes in a Hitler direction from 3E (the 3E version of Falkovnia was one of that era's sour notes, for me; too overt and heavy-handed), that switch for 'representation' could evoke ... interesting reactions ... from the Usual Suspects.
Is WOTC trolling, or stupid? I wouldn't put money down...
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 23, 2021, 02:02:04 PM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 23, 2021, 01:32:50 PM
Ravenloft had a lot of very interesting, original female domain lords. I don't quite get the gender swapping there. I can sort of understand why they may felt the need to change Falkovnia, given the current climate on things. But I really found the old take much more interesting than zombies. Escape from Falkovnia was a great type of adventure. And it was drawing on dark history that resonated well with most players
According to an article on comicbook.com, they've also genderswapped Vlad Drakov. Since Drakov was the Vlad Tepes expy, with strong pushes in a Hitler direction from 3E (the 3E version of Falkovnia was one of that era's sour notes, for me; too overt and heavy-handed), that switch for 'representation' could evoke ... interesting reactions ... from the Usual Suspects.
My memory was it was already getting into that territory in the 2E material so I checked the entry in the black box. For some reason I remembered the hawk brand being for demihumans, but it was for everyone born in the domain. Demihumans were essentially state property and used like slaves and chattel. The police force is basically the military. I seem to recall these themes getting more pronounced as the line evolved (but can't remember the S&S books on it as I found those impossible to get into). I feel like the association was close enough that in one campaign, when I advanced the timeline and increased technology to stuff like Zeppelins and cars, Falkovnia served as a Germany stand in for a WWII like scenario.
Do you happen to remember where they take it in the 3E S&S material?
I found most of White Wolfs take on Ravenloft to fall flat really. It had some little gems here and there but like alot of the 2000s onwards WW product, its mostly sub-par.
Quote from: Omega on February 23, 2021, 03:30:12 PM
I found most of White Wolfs take on Ravenloft to fall flat really. It had some little gems here and there but like alot of the 2000s onwards WW product, its mostly sub-par.
I couldn't get into it either. I would devour the TSR ravenloft stuff (especially the earlier material), but the WW books were verbose in the wrong ways, and just didn't land with me somehow. Also by making the setting literally have no consistent scale (which if I remember was their way of dealing with some inconsistencies of scale between releases under TSR) it made it that much harder to run (I was always fine running it with the old overlay hex map for the black box)
I'm all for including more (interesting) female Darklords (Darkladies?). Or genderless beings, or trans or what have you. But this kind of ham-handed genderswap smites me as "woke-for-wokeness sake", and I'm not a fan. Do something new, instead of retconning things that have already been done to "erase" something you don't particularly like...
I disagree though that the original was humorous or had any Hammer/Universal/Lovecraftian tones.
The only real humour was mostly in the little titles of books on shelves and coffins in the crypt.
Now the boxed sets on the other hand had everything at some point and drew on alot of sources.
I mean we have stand ins for The Mummy, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, Jekyl/Hyde, Dr Moreau, the Wolfman and so much more.
Quote from: Omega on February 23, 2021, 03:59:55 PM
I disagree though that the original was humorous or had any Hammer/Universal/Lovecraftian tones.
The only real humour was mostly in the little titles of books on shelves and coffins in the crypt.
Now the boxed sets on the other hand had everything at some point and drew on alot of sources.
I mean we have stand ins for The Mummy, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, Jekyl/Hyde, Dr Moreau, the Wolfman and so much more.
To be clear I am primarily talking about the line following the original module (not the original module itself)
There is a lot of dark humor in the van richten books.
The lovecraft stuff isn't lovecraftian horror, but that they use lovecraft's advice for achieving horror in the black box. It isn't lovecraftian setting. The setting material definitely drew pretty freely from hammer IMO. I can concede that the setting wasn't presented as a humorous one (though I do think it had a lot of camp and a lot of melodramatic flourishing), but I mean van richten is clearly modeled after Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, the Fabian Art looks like a composite of the Universal horror sets and the hammer sets. To me Ravenloft had the look and feel of Hammer (to the point that they even were borrowing from obscure hammer movies like the Lost Continent for domain ideas)
The real horror is thinking that you know Ravenloft and then getting to experience the 5e version of it - subtly twisted to make you doubt your own memories.
Brilliant!
>Ravenloft
YES!
>5e
NO!
eh, despite its virtue signalling at the start and low treatment of Mordenkainen, and one or two other possibly questionable insertions, it was overall not bad.
Quote from: Omega on February 23, 2021, 03:59:55 PM
.
Now the boxed sets on the other hand had everything at some point and drew on alot of sources.
This is largely what I was talking about. I like the original module a lot. But the campaign setting to me, is really content like the black box, the red box, the van richten books, and adventure settings like Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn. For me, the material that resonated was the universal and hammer inspired stuff because I grew up watching those movies.
QuoteI mean we have stand ins for The Mummy, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, Jekyl/Hyde, Dr Moreau, the Wolfman and so much more.
Definitely. I am not trying to reduce it to just hammer (I think calling it hammer horror inspired is good short hand for the vibe of the setting though). I see it as a blend of classic horror novels and classic horror movies.
Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2021, 12:07:10 AM
I ran the original Ravenloft module for 5E and had a lot of fun with it.
I don't really like the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, though. I feel like it actually reduces the horror for it to be an isolated demi-plane as described, as compared to just having horror adventures in a fantasy setting.
Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 23, 2021, 01:44:47 AM
I've always seen Ravenloft horror as more tied to the nature of a horror prison than traditional horror.
Not being able to escape the demiplane, and therefore having to be subjected to it without a glimmer of hope is pretty horrific. The corruption of the demiplane also tends to exacerbate the hopelessness that pervades the adventures. You can't escape and the longer you stay, the more likely it is you'll become corrupted.
In my experience, when shown that their characters are doomed without a glimmer of hope, then players are usually like "Whatever. Can we start a new campaign yet?" Character doom and death happens regularly in an RPG, so it's not actually horrific. I find that to get real horror flavor, there needs to be some actual hope -- and especially, there need to be things that the players care about.
Quote from: spon on February 23, 2021, 04:31:18 AM
But then you run into the problem that the demi-plane was set up to solve - how do you have horror when the PCs (and NPCs) can just leave? That's one of the tropes of horror, you can't escape. PCs have many ways to escape, so the (rather ham-fisted) approach of the demi-plane is there to prevent that. At least that's my take on it.
As you note, it's pretty ham-fisted -- which I think describes a lot of the Ravenloft demi-plane. The problem is that not just the PCs, but everyone in the demi-plane is doomed. I find that being doomed with no hope generally makes players bored and wanting to roll up new characters, rather than drawing them into the horror.
Along those lines, I'd note that most of the 2E Ravenloft modules were heavily railroaded. There was usually a scripted plot that players had no chance to change, including scripted boxed text. For similar reasons, I find that this railroading tends to make players disengaged rather than horrified.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 23, 2021, 12:47:41 PM
I think something that gets lost is Ravenloft was a little on the campy side. It wasn't super serious horror all the time. It was more like a setting stitched together from universal, hammer and other classic sources of horror. If you grew up on that stuff, having a whole world that felt essentially like it was cobbled together from Hammer Film sets, was a wonderful foundation for adventures. But I think it did require a sense of that landscape to click.
Some of it might be that I'm not a big fan of Hammer films in terms of horror, but I did greatly enjoy the campiness of the original Ravenloft modules. I have run them multiple times under different editions, and they were always great fun. But the demi-plane background and railroaded adventures of the 2E setting did little for me. It seemed like it was more fun for GMs to read than for groups to actually play. The two times I played in the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, the players had pretty much exactly the reaction I would predict.
I've also run gothic horror in some other systems, which I found good fun.
I wonder if this bit from the 2e box gets left in the introduction?
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/50/5822-240221164002.jpeg)
Quote from: robh on February 24, 2021, 11:42:34 AM
I wonder if this bit from the 2e box gets left in the introduction?
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/50/5822-240221164002.jpeg)
Doubtful. Jessica Price is working on the book and is trying to reassure people on Twitter that they're clearing out the 'problematic' bits.
Oh thats good!
So the Wokenloft will not have any white people who are not villains. No vampires as vampires represent rape and rape is bad and should never be depicted in anything everrrrrrr! No deformed or handicapped people because thats mean. Dont be mean! And no minorities because thats Wacist! But oh we will put the poor oppreseded minorities in because MONEY! er Inclusion! yay!
So in Wokenloft we will all be playing BLACK ROMANIAN ANDROGENOUS WHEELCHAIR gerbils who like to knit, but had to stop even that because Knitler! and so we will all just stare whistfully at the stars and contemplate how good we are. Jury is still out on wether the wheelchair is abelist or not. We may have to kinda undulate along like seals in our freedom from oppression!
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
Some of it might be that I'm not a big fan of Hammer films in terms of horror, but I did greatly enjoy the campiness of the original Ravenloft modules. I have run them multiple times under different editions, and they were always great fun. But the demi-plane background and railroaded adventures of the 2E setting did little for me. It seemed like it was more fun for GMs to read than for groups to actually play. The two times I played in the Ravenloft demi-plane setting, the players had pretty much exactly the reaction I would predict.
I've also run gothic horror in some other systems, which I found good fun.
I think everyone responds to settings differently. For me, Ravenloft just resonated massively and I had no trouble running it (it was literally pretty much all I ran in high school and for several years after). I had long, ongoing campaigns. The ones that were more successful, tended to be based on the monster hunt investigations you could build using tools from the Van Richten books (but that was definitely not the only kind of campaign). Mostly I ran it with the player characters as outsiders (not as a weekend in hell, but as a campaign where the premise is they are from another setting and get pulled in). Occasionally ran it with them as natives (I personally found this didn't work as well for me, but I think that was just personal preference, not a problem with the premise itself). Ravenloft did suffer from some of the usual 90s problems with RPGs. But on the whole, I found it a lot better than stuff coming from WOTC in the 2000s.
The content was fun to read. I don't think it was as self indulgent though as other 90s RPGs I remember doing that. And the enjoyment of reading it, mainly helped fuel my interest in playing. If you look at the black boxed set itself, the domain entries are pretty sparse actually, so there isn't a massive wall of text to deal with there, but there is plenty of open space to add things yourself (I was always adding towns, villages, castles, etc). And the stock cards, some of them at least, did help simplify referencing some of the material. I basically read the black box in one sitting and was ready to run it that weekend. My first adventures were things from Book of Crypts followed by Feast of Goblyns, and after that mostly made my own adventures. There was an adventure site called House of Lament if I recall, and it was a cool premise but I do remember adding an enormous amount of content myself to make it more interesting (just details that helped out and a few new monsters).
Ravenloft works well if you start with the villain, or the threat. I found it was very easy to have long ongoing campaigns if I began there and worked around it. Also one of the cool things about Ravenloft is monsters were highly individualized, spells didn't operate as players expected them, the mists could mess with people...so you could have ten lycanthrope adventures back to back that were quite different, requiring different approaches from the players (same with vampires, mummies, golems, etc).
Obviously I can only say what worked for me, and what worked for me, might not work for others, but I truly had no problem running Ravenloft regularly and found it a lot easier personally than something like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance (which I did try to run and wasn't as successful with)
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
Along those lines, I'd note that most of the 2E Ravenloft modules were heavily railroaded. There was usually a scripted plot that players had no chance to change, including scripted boxed text. For similar reasons, I find that this railroading tends to make players disengaged rather than horrified.
Railroads were definitely present (as they were in lots of 90s modules) but it really did depend on the adventure. An adventure like Feast of Goblyns had an adventure laid out, and offered up the most likely course of events, but it was also a massive setting supplement for the domain of Kartakass, and you didn't need that adventure to even happen to make use of the material (and the book emphasized that the NPCs, including the villains, were living characters who could change plans and react to what players do....so with that module and many of the other modules from the ravenloft line, I found the 'living adventure' part helped push me away from railroading often.
Also much of the railroading had more to do with things like plot immunity than a linear adventure. The Created for Example, had a lot of room for the players to explore the domain, so you could easily run it without going linear, but it had some very annoying things like specifically making key NPCs immune to death no matter what the PCs do (and if I recall it wasn't like dark lord immunity, it was plot immunity).
The bright spots of the line were things like the Van Richten Books (which were just tools really and lent themselves to non-linear monster hunt/investigations----drop the players into a situation where a flesh golem is murdering villagers and let them figure out how to handle it), Castles Forlorn (this one was amazing), Feast of Goblyns (probably my favorite adventure ever), etc. Later in the line you did start to see more adventures structured around episodes and acts (and that was mostly after the Fabian art was gone in the mid to late 90s). Prior to that, I would say it really depended on the specific module and often it wasn't all just one big railroad if it ddid have that kind of thing (even adventures that were super railroady like From the Shadows---where the players must get their heads cut off by a headless rider so their heads can end up in Azalins lab) comes with a complete map of Castle Avernus. It was definitely quite hit or miss, but there was always useable content in most adventures. Walking Dead was pretty good as well, with a little mystery and a zombie plague. Ship of Horrors wasn't something I would like to run from beginning to end, but had tons of material that was great to pull into a campaign. Adam's Wrath had some really cool stuff too even if the art kind of blew. You certainly didn't have hex crawls in the line or sandboxes, but it wasn't all uniform either.
I mostly ignored boxed text, but that was pretty standard to TSR modules at the time. Not saying they were all great. There were plenty of bombs, there were definitely railroaded situations. Also it is probably important to keep in mind, a lot of people were running games very differently then. I certainly had my share of railroady adventures to start. But over time, I moved further and further away from that, and embraced more of the monster hunt, living adventure side of Raveloft. Still it isn't a setting I would run as a sandbox. I think it does work well for particular scenarios.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 24, 2021, 11:49:45 AM
Jessica Price is working on the book
That's the most horrific thing I've heard all day - including the anonymous phone harrasser this afternoon. :o
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
In my experience, when shown that their characters are doomed without a glimmer of hope, then players are usually like "Whatever. Can we start a new campaign yet?" Character doom and death happens regularly in an RPG, so it's not actually horrific. I find that to get real horror flavor, there needs to be some actual hope -- and especially, there need to be things that the players care about.
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
The setting wasn't quite as grim and hopeless as a lot of fans would make it out to be (adventurers had things stacked against them, and villains often couldn't be brought down forever--but really, not much different from standard D&D settings for the ordinary person), but this was one of Tracy Hickman's big complaints about it, and so I was bemused when he was consulted on CoS and made it the
most dark and hopeless Barovia's ever been.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 24, 2021, 12:11:07 PM
I think everyone responds to settings differently. For me, Ravenloft just resonated massively and I had no trouble running it (it was literally pretty much all I ran in high school and for several years after). I had long, ongoing campaigns. The ones that were more successful, tended to be based on the monster hunt investigations you could build using tools from the Van Richten books (but that was definitely not the only kind of campaign). Mostly I ran it with the player characters as outsiders (not as a weekend in hell, but as a campaign where the premise is they are from another setting and get pulled in). Occasionally ran it with them as natives (I personally found this didn't work as well for me, but I think that was just personal preference, not a problem with the premise itself). Ravenloft did suffer from some of the usual 90s problems with RPGs. But on the whole, I found it a lot better than stuff coming from WOTC in the 2000s.
Absolutely experiences differ. And I'd be interested on how our experiences differ. One thing is that you expressed playing up the campiness and humor of imitating Hammer films when running the Ravenloft demi-plane, whereas in the short times that I played it, the DM didn't seem to be doing that.
For me running the original Ravenloft module, one of the big deals was getting all the players to make PCs who engaged with the Gothic horror aspect. For example, the summer before last I ran it using 5E for my family. All the players made a PC who had a strong Gothic horror connection - like a swindling sorcerer of gypsy descent, a Texan-like ranger (after Dracula), a Shadowfell-connected monk, and others.
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 02:14:08 PM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 24, 2021, 12:11:07 PM
I think everyone responds to settings differently. For me, Ravenloft just resonated massively and I had no trouble running it (it was literally pretty much all I ran in high school and for several years after). I had long, ongoing campaigns. The ones that were more successful, tended to be based on the monster hunt investigations you could build using tools from the Van Richten books (but that was definitely not the only kind of campaign). Mostly I ran it with the player characters as outsiders (not as a weekend in hell, but as a campaign where the premise is they are from another setting and get pulled in). Occasionally ran it with them as natives (I personally found this didn't work as well for me, but I think that was just personal preference, not a problem with the premise itself). Ravenloft did suffer from some of the usual 90s problems with RPGs. But on the whole, I found it a lot better than stuff coming from WOTC in the 2000s.
Absolutely experiences differ. And I'd be interested on how our experiences differ. One thing is that you expressed playing up the campiness and humor of imitating Hammer films when running the Ravenloft demi-plane, whereas in the short times that I played it, the DM didn't seem to be doing that.
For me running the original Ravenloft module, one of the big deals was getting all the players to make PCs who engaged with the Gothic horror aspect. For example, the summer before last I ran it using 5E for my family. All the players made a PC who had a strong Gothic horror connection - like a swindling sorcerer of gypsy descent, a Texan-like ranger (after Dracula), a Shadowfell-connected monk, and others.
I think because I was running long campaigns, the idea of always striving for pure horror, would have been difficult to achieve. Don't get me wrong, horror happened. And I used a lot of the advice for horror in the books. But I wasn't disappointed if a session was more cheetahs and jokes than anything else. I was more in Ravenloft for the long haul. And when I made bad guys, they were often quite hammy. I saw it more as running games set in a horror universe. One thing I didn't really do was expect players to engage with gothic horror stuff (like I didn't expect them to become like characters in a horror story----they were adventurers). Sometimes a couple might go down a corrupt path that led to powers checks, but for the most part they were out there to hunt monsters, escape from Ravenloft etc. I actively avoided having them play Vistani for example (even when that became an option). I think part of the horror of Ravenloft is not having privy to the knowledge and power of those kinds of groups in the setting.
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
In my experience, when shown that their characters are doomed without a glimmer of hope, then players are usually like "Whatever. Can we start a new campaign yet?" Character doom and death happens regularly in an RPG, so it's not actually horrific. I find that to get real horror flavor, there needs to be some actual hope -- and especially, there need to be things that the players care about.
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
It wasn't really that way in my experience. The doomed of Ravenloft are the dark lords. But the players don't have to go down that path unless they choose to do bad things (and all stuff was pretty codified in terms of what constituted a transgression). Plus the percentage chance on powers checks were generally low. The one area people sometimes got screwed was stuff like necromantic magic (which prompted checks)
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 24, 2021, 01:45:40 PM
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
The setting wasn't quite as grim and hopeless as a lot of fans would make it out to be (adventurers had things stacked against them, and villains often couldn't be brought down forever--but really, not much different from standard D&D settings for the ordinary person), but this was one of Tracy Hickman's big complaints about it, and so I was bemused when he was consulted on CoS and made it the most dark and hopeless Barovia's ever been.
Basically Ravenloft made you work a little harder to kill monsters like vampires. And killing lords was especially difficult, but I honestly never saw that as the point of adventures (maybe once in a while). The key was research. Again, that is why the van richten books are so important, they really emphasize that party's are expected to research their foes because they often have unexpected powers and their weaknesses are not usually the ones listed in the standard monster manual. If a GM doesn't make that clear, it can be frustrating for the players
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
In my experience, when shown that their characters are doomed without a glimmer of hope, then players are usually like "Whatever. Can we start a new campaign yet?" Character doom and death happens regularly in an RPG, so it's not actually horrific. I find that to get real horror flavor, there needs to be some actual hope -- and especially, there need to be things that the players care about.
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
5e Ravenloft cleaves mostly to the original and drops 90% of the boxed set stuff. Its overall bleaker and harder. But still winnable in various ways. The PCs can escape. Whereas in the boxed set it feels like escape is just short of impossible.
Have not read the White Wolf version i a long time but from what I recalled it was even more bleak and hopeless than the boxed sets.
Quote from: Omega on February 24, 2021, 05:36:38 PM
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
In my experience, when shown that their characters are doomed without a glimmer of hope, then players are usually like "Whatever. Can we start a new campaign yet?" Character doom and death happens regularly in an RPG, so it's not actually horrific. I find that to get real horror flavor, there needs to be some actual hope -- and especially, there need to be things that the players care about.
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
5e Ravenloft cleaves mostly to the original and drops 90% of the boxed set stuff. Its overall bleaker and harder. But still winnable in various ways. The PCs can escape. Whereas in the boxed set it feels like escape is just short of impossible.
Have not read the White Wolf version i a long time but from what I recalled it was even more bleak and hopeless than the boxed sets.
I think the whole weekend in hell thing, where your player characters in a regular campaign get sucked into Ravenloft, tended to create frustration and resentment towards the setting. I never ran it this way. I usually told people we were doing a Ravenloft campaign, and they would make characters from other places that all came to Ravenloft shortly by the start of the campaign. I think that worked better than surprising players with Ravenloft when they are on some other adventure (and better than having them play as natives because they are still there as outsiders)
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 24, 2021, 05:30:05 PMThe one area people sometimes got screwed was stuff like necromantic magic (which prompted checks)
I love the fact that on the promotion material for the new book they list the opportunity of playing an
Undead Pact Warlock. A PC that draws his power
directly from an undead entity in RAVENLOFT.
That would be the fastest trip to chargen ever in previous iterations.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 24, 2021, 01:45:40 PM
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
The setting wasn't quite as grim and hopeless as a lot of fans would make it out to be (adventurers had things stacked against them, and villains often couldn't be brought down forever--but really, not much different from standard D&D settings for the ordinary person), but this was one of Tracy Hickman's big complaints about it, and so I was bemused when he was consulted on CoS and made it the most dark and hopeless Barovia's ever been.
He might have consulted and they then ignored everything. Happens all the time. Where was he voicing his complaints about Ravenloft?
Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 24, 2021, 06:47:44 PM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 24, 2021, 05:30:05 PMThe one area people sometimes got screwed was stuff like necromantic magic (which prompted checks)
I love the fact that on the promotion material for the new book they list the opportunity of playing an Undead Pact Warlock. A PC that draws his power directly from an undead entity in RAVENLOFT.
That would be the fastest trip to chargen ever in previous iterations.
They've stretched this pact thing beyond all recognition.
Quote from: horsesoldier on February 24, 2021, 06:54:45 PM
[He might have consulted and they then ignored everything. Happens all the time. Where was he voicing his complaints about Ravenloft?
Various online fora in the 90s, when Ravenloft was a going concern. The 'soulless Barovians' feels like Hickman--it reminds me of some elements of the War of Souls for Dragonlance. That could just be my own prejudices, though.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 24, 2021, 05:44:24 PM
I think the whole weekend in hell thing, where your player characters in a regular campaign get sucked into Ravenloft, tended to create frustration and resentment towards the setting. I never ran it this way. I usually told people we were doing a Ravenloft campaign, and they would make characters from other places that all came to Ravenloft shortly by the start of the campaign. I think that worked better than surprising players with Ravenloft when they are on some other adventure (and better than having them play as natives because they are still there as outsiders)
My favourite is to describe the gradually thickening mist building up around the characters.
Never fails to freak out the Players.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 24, 2021, 11:49:45 AM
Jessica Price is working on the book ...
They finally found a way to make it truly horrific.
I just remember the OLD Ravenloft, Barovia was a town in a valley, not a demi-plane. I liked it better that way I think, but I rolled with it when 2E changed things.
Quote from: horsesoldier on February 24, 2021, 06:55:37 PM
They've stretched this pact thing beyond all recognition.
Undead pacts? Not really. Those pop up in fiction fairly often and probably some legends even. Especially if by undead that includes things like gods of death, some of which are not inherintly evil. But powerful undead like a liche or spectre granting powers totally fits.
Stretch for me was weapon pacts. Artifact weapons so potent they act as patrons. That seems a little out there considering 99% if these weapons are still very limited in scope. And why just weapons? If the Sword of Kas can grant spells then why not the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O?
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 24, 2021, 11:49:45 AM
Jessica Price is working on the book and is trying to reassure people on Twitter that they're clearing out the 'problematic' bits.
So, I went to Twitter to see what she was saying. As usual, reading stuff on Twitter is its own punishment. After wading through a bunch of religious stuff, she and (I presume) other writers are happy that it will be "very queer".
I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to take away from that. Is this one of those "it's not for you" things and I'm not supposed to buy it if I don't meet their definition of queer? Or if I do buy it and don't play it the "right way", I'm in trouble?
Quote from: Almost_Useless on February 24, 2021, 11:04:33 PM
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 24, 2021, 11:49:45 AM
Jessica Price is working on the book and is trying to reassure people on Twitter that they're clearing out the 'problematic' bits.
So, I went to Twitter to see what she was saying. As usual, reading stuff on Twitter is its own punishment. After wading through a bunch of religious stuff, she and (I presume) other writers are happy that it will be "very queer".
I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to take away from that. Is this one of those "it's not for you" things and I'm not supposed to buy it if I don't meet their definition of queer? Or if I do buy it and don't play it the "right way", I'm in trouble?
a very queer ravenloft surely ratchets up the fear and horror factor...strahd may suck more than your blood and become an impaler of sorts.
The new slogan?
"Ravenloft...watch your cornhole, bud."
I am a bit obsessed with 5e's CoS, writing a guide about how to run it.
http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/search/label/Curse%20of%20Strahd
So. I might get the book, although I though I was done with 5e book for a while.
However...
I'd prefer other setting, since we already have CoS.
The whole thing, it seems, won't improve CoS much. On the contrary, having more domains and players who are, themselves, undead, vampires etc., might take away from the uniqueness of Strahd in the module.
"More dark gifts" are indeed a must for CoS, so that's good. "Expanded bestiary", nice.
Having tips on how to run a PG version oh Ravenloft is, well.. not for me, I guess.
EDIT: one small thing...
Having a "Viktora Mordenheim" character irritated me a little. Feels lazy and stupid. Why not "Mary Mordenheim" or "Shelley Mordenheim". If feels like they don't actually know the stuff they are writing about (yes, the original was Victor Mordenheim, so not any better; maybe there was a Viktora somewhere I do' nt know about).
Anything, it is a little inconsequential thing, and sits well with "Van Richten", I guess, although Van Richten at least is not Abraham Van Richten.
Quote from: Almost_Useless on February 24, 2021, 11:04:33 PM
I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to take away from that. Is this one of those "it's not for you" things and I'm not supposed to buy it if I don't meet their definition of queer? Or if I do buy it and don't play it the "right way", I'm in trouble?
Given that 'the negative consequences of transgressive sexual behavior' are a strong subtext in traditional Gothics, this could be a case of the source material approaching a head-on collision with the agenda. Then again, Ravenloft already mitigated the racial and anti-Catholic elements of the source material, although those got largely filtered out of the Gothic by the time it hit the stuff that the setting used for inspiration.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 25, 2021, 09:35:52 AM
Quote from: Almost_Useless on February 24, 2021, 11:04:33 PM
I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to take away from that. Is this one of those "it's not for you" things and I'm not supposed to buy it if I don't meet their definition of queer? Or if I do buy it and don't play it the "right way", I'm in trouble?
Given that 'the negative consequences of transgressive sexual behavior' are a strong subtext in traditional Gothics, this could be a case of the source material approaching a head-on collision with the agenda. Then again, Ravenloft already mitigated the racial and anti-Catholic elements of the source material, although those got largely filtered out of the Gothic by the time it hit the stuff that the setting used for inspiration.
I am not sure what she meant by queer in this case, but I do think it is fair to point out that there is definitely an argument to be made for that existing in books like Dracula, on a non-surface level, and much more on the surface in stuff like Carmilla (and since Hammer was clearly an influence, I would say the Vampire Lovers probably were as well). Definitely horror long has a transgressive quality to it. Ravenloft definitely always had sensuality under the surface and hinted at in the art and in descriptions (it wasn't Vampire for sure, but it was the 90s, and stuff like that was present I think: though in a much more Bride of Frankenstein kind of way---and Bride of Frankenstein itself is definitely an influence on the setting and certainly held up frequently as an example of queer cinema). I suspect she means something quite different by queer in this instance. But I do think Ravenloft was often a refuge for GMs who felt out of place in society in some way (and there are dark lords who leap to mind that I can definitely say felt queer). Also I do think it is worth pointing out, women writers had a big role in shaping Ravenloft. The first module was co-written by Laura Hickman. One of the biggest module writers, and one of the best, was Lisa Smedman (who wrote Castles Forlorn and a number of others). The black boxed set was co-written by Andria Heyday. Teeunym Woodruff wrote both the Created (one of the best Van Richten books) and the Guide to Fiends. Most of the novels were written by women if I recall. I think this gave it a slightly different feel than some of the other settings (though I wasn't too into those so maybe they had more female writers too).
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 25, 2021, 09:56:51 AM
I am not sure what she meant by queer in this case, but I do think it is fair to point out that there is definitely an argument to be made for that existing in books like Dracula, on a non-surface level, and much more on the surface in stuff like Carmilla (and since Hammer was clearly an influence, I would say the Vampire Lovers probably were as well). Definitely horror long has a transgressive quality to it. Ravenloft definitely always had sensuality under the surface and hinted at in the art and in descriptions
Sure; you can find genderfluid and S&M-practicing NPCs in the Black Box if you read between the lines. But in the old material and the traditional Gothic, you have to read between the lines and can often read it as cautionary, not the overt and celebratory dimension that it sounds like the new team is bringing to matters.
To put the difference in relief: Is the problem that gives rise to Ravenloft Strahd's lust for his brother's bride, or just the fact that the people involved weren't willing to share? ;)
QuoteAlso I do think it is worth pointing out, women writers had a big role in shaping Ravenloft. The first module was co-written by Laura Hickman. One of the biggest module writers, and one of the best, was Lisa Smedman (who wrote Castles Forlorn and a number of others). The black boxed set was co-written by Andria Heyday. Teeunym Woodruff wrote both the Created (one of the best Van Richten books) and the Guide to Fiends. Most of the novels were written by women if I recall. I think this gave it a slightly different feel than some of the other settings (though I wasn't too into those so maybe they had more female writers too).
Don't forget Cindi Rice, who handled line editing duties for the last phase of the TSR run. Even TSR was aware that the line had a stronger female audience than most D&D settings, according to the sales text in the 1994 catalog.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 25, 2021, 10:16:10 AM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 25, 2021, 09:56:51 AM
I am not sure what she meant by queer in this case, but I do think it is fair to point out that there is definitely an argument to be made for that existing in books like Dracula, on a non-surface level, and much more on the surface in stuff like Carmilla (and since Hammer was clearly an influence, I would say the Vampire Lovers probably were as well). Definitely horror long has a transgressive quality to it. Ravenloft definitely always had sensuality under the surface and hinted at in the art and in descriptions
Sure; you can find genderfluid and S&M-practicing NPCs in the Black Box if you read between the lines. But in the old material and the traditional Gothic, you have to read between the lines and can often read it as cautionary, not the overt and celebratory dimension that it sounds like the new team is bringing to matters.
To put the difference in relief: Is the problem that gives rise to Ravenloft Strahd's lust for his brother's bride, or just the fact that the people involved weren't willing to share? ;)
You did have to read between the lines, but in some cases, it was pretty obvious. I don't think it was meant as cautionary though. My reading of Ravenloft isn't that it was reinforcing traditional morality or sexuality. It certainly wasn't particularly current either in the way people think of these things now. But I do think a lot of people who were drawn to Ravenloft, were drawn to it because they felt out of place (whether that was sexually, socially, etc).
I think Strahd's whole thing was just meant to be about jealousy, fear of death and aging, and betrayal of his brother. I don't think they were even conscious of what you are suggesting
Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 24, 2021, 06:47:44 PMI love the fact that on the promotion material for the new book they list the opportunity of playing an Undead Pact Warlock. A PC that draws his power directly from an undead entity in RAVENLOFT.
That would be the fastest trip to chargen ever in previous iterations.
It seems to me that most darklords could have Warlocks. It might be interesting as well if they could have Warlocks but those Warlocks could pass into other domains.
Quote from: Lynn on February 25, 2021, 01:07:38 PM
It seems to me that most darklords could have Warlocks. It might be interesting as well if they could have Warlocks but those Warlocks could pass into other domains.
Yeah, and that lock would get a Dark Powers check every time he used any spells or class abilities.
Way to build a PC that is destined to be an NPC before he hits second level.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 24, 2021, 05:30:05 PM
Quote from: S'mon on February 24, 2021, 01:24:49 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 11:35:31 AM
In my experience, when shown that their characters are doomed without a glimmer of hope, then players are usually like "Whatever. Can we start a new campaign yet?" Character doom and death happens regularly in an RPG, so it's not actually horrific. I find that to get real horror flavor, there needs to be some actual hope -- and especially, there need to be things that the players care about.
I agree strongly with this, and the Demiplane/Doomed/Dark Powers thing is a big turn off for me. 5e Curse of Strahd actually seems worse than the 1e Ravenloft module in this regard.
It wasn't really that way in my experience. The doomed of Ravenloft are the dark lords. But the players don't have to go down that path unless they choose to do bad things (and all stuff was pretty codified in terms of what constituted a transgression). Plus the percentage chance on powers checks were generally low. The one area people sometimes got screwed was stuff like necromantic magic (which prompted checks)
Exactly. Your fresh faced PCs were the glimmers of hope in Ravenloft. The Dark Powers use such recurring Glimmers of Hope to Chastise and Torture the Dark Lords... Eternally. The question is up to the players if they are willing and able. It's the ultimate in a meaningful choice: beat them, join them, or die trying. ;)
Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 25, 2021, 09:13:05 AM
EDIT: one small thing...
Having a "Viktora Mordenheim" character irritated me a little. Feels lazy and stupid. Why not "Mary Mordenheim" or "Shelley Mordenheim". If feels like they don't actually know the stuff they are writing about (yes, the original was Victor Mordenheim, so not any better; maybe there was a Viktora somewhere I do' nt know about).
Anything, it is a little inconsequential thing, and sits well with "Van Richten", I guess, although Van Richten at least is not Abraham Van Richten.
In one of the Ravenloft Facebook pages, someone suggested that the gender-swap could be taken as the Dark Powers toying with them. I plan on getting this book, and this is what I plan to do with it.
Of course, since my group and I are not as woke as the current publishers want and still play 5e (or in my case, run Savage Worlds), we don't care if we aren't up to their standards.
Sounds like its going to be a mess no matter.
Regarding Mordenheim. I think a gender swap is perfectly viable if done right. For example its his sister, or its actually some creation or monster that has replaced him, or even something Mordenheim created to stand in and deal with things while he works undisturbed. Or even a reveal that he was HER creation and now shes done with something and stepping to the fore.
Unfortunately WOTC will likely do none of these things.
I checked out the link to the book and I'm actually looking forward to it. I tried to create my own "domains of dread" for a Ravenloft game, but it never got past session 2. Some quick comments/questions:
General take: Hickman comments in the premise to CoS that he saw the vampire in the monster manual and thought "What's that guy doing here?" My main problem with Ravenloft is I ask "What are elves and dwarves doing here?"
Wokeness: I'm surprised that they're putting this much energy into a trope that's basically a rapist (vampire) with reinforced stereotypes of women as weak victims. As Arcmchair Gamer points out, "source material approaching a head-on collision with the agenda." (noice!)
Warlock pacts: At first I recoiled when I heard this, but now I think it would make for some great intrigue.
Folkovnia: What was the problem here?
Vistani: I don't care if they are erased or sanitized. I already did that, since I found the drinking, thieving, fortune-telling stereotype boring. I guess that makes me Deplorable since I was supposed to find it offensive.
Viktora Mordenheim: I usually don't like erasures of established characters in comics (i.e. Lady Thor) but I don't know this character, so it doesn't bother me.
Queerness: I agree with Bedrock's long post that queerness has always been part of the vampire thing.
Weekend in hell: Yeah, that did suck. Uh-oh, I'm agreeing with Bedrock too much...
Players need to have something to care about: I'm no doubt botching what John Kim said way upthread, but it's spot on. The thing is it's almost impossible to get players to create characters who care about anything. Especially in D&D. In Hero, you have Dependent NPCs which reward you for points for caring, and it seems to be the 2nd least popular disadvantage. Phobias being the number one.
so if your character fails fear or horror checks against a gay strahd that thinks the pc is tatyana reborn (er..todd reborn in this case maybe?) does that make him a homophobe?
"take the undead weenus you bigot!"
guys i can't even; i liked ravenloft i always thought these types hated it enough to not bastardize it, guess not. nothing is sacred.
Quote from: Aglondir on February 26, 2021, 01:24:16 AM
Queerness: I agree with Bedrock's long post that queerness has always been part of the vampire thing.
Yeah but queerness back then was a lot different than queerness now. You don't have to go too far back to find "weird fetish" means hetero oral sex, masturbation, or even just a lady riding a horse non-side saddle. Everything has gotten so coarse now. If you don't support Bisexual Roadside Gas Station Meth Orgies you're a fucking bigot. "It's a normal part of human sexuality!"
I don't think Stoker ever envisaged Dracula packing fudge.
Quote from: KingCheops on February 26, 2021, 10:41:01 AM
Quote from: Aglondir on February 26, 2021, 01:24:16 AM
Queerness: I agree with Bedrock's long post that queerness has always been part of the vampire thing.
Yeah but queerness back then was a lot different than queerness now. You don't have to go too far back to find "weird fetish" means hetero oral sex, masturbation, or even just a lady riding a horse non-side saddle. Everything has gotten so coarse now. If you don't support Bisexual Roadside Gas Station Meth Orgies you're a fucking bigot. "It's a normal part of human sexuality!"
I don't think Stoker ever envisaged Dracula packing fudge.
Victorian people were more prudish in public life, and homosexuality was illegal at that time -- but that doesn't mean they were unaware of fetishes and homosexuality. Victorian pornography is full of all sorts of fetishes. For example, Teleny was a homosexual pornographic novel published four years before Dracula. I think there's a tendency to read Victorian classic literature and imagine that the past was full of polite, modest people who were all straight and vanilla -- but that's largely because of censorship at the time as well as suppression during the intervening century. The actual private lives of Victorian people are not well reflected in the surviving classical literature that people read today in libraries.
And yes, I think there is bisexual subtext in Dracula. Notably, this is from where Jonathan Harker is being preyed on by the wives,
QuoteAs my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of whitehot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back. It was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring in the room he said,
"How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me."
I think it's well established that vampiric feeding is a metaphor for sex, and it's clear that Dracula passionately feeds on Harker.
Nuts on both sides of the loony fence have been trying to "prove" dracula or vampires in general = sex or now = rape has been going on since probably the 90s and the last iteration of this stupid. The Moral Guardians want to "prove" it because they see porn in everything and everything must be burned. On the flip side you have both the extreme end homosexuals and fetishists trying to "prove" it because they see gay in everything and everything must be pink.
We've seen this over and over and over. No. Vampires do not represent gays or sex or anything else these loons hallucinate. It is no different from storygamers trying to "prove" that OD&D or reading a book is a really real storygame! And its started up in the OSR too.
Quote from: Omega on February 26, 2021, 12:00:59 PM
Nuts on both sides of the loony fence have been trying to "prove" dracula or vampires in general = sex or now = rape has been going on since probably the 90s and the last iteration of this stupid. The Moral Guardians want to "prove" it because they see porn in everything and everything must be burned. On the flip side you have both the extreme end homosexuals and fetishists trying to "prove" it because they see gay in everything and everything must be pink.
We've seen this over and over and over. No. Vampires do not represent gays or sex or anything else these loons hallucinate. It is no different from storygamers trying to "prove" that OD&D or reading a book is a really real storygame! And its started up in the OSR too.
Even if you think it's stupid, thinking that vampires are explicitly sensual is from a lot earlier than the 1990s. When he played Dracula in 1931, Bela Lugosi instantly went to being a Hollywood sex symbol. In the 1800s, Lord Ruthven and Varney the Vampire were romantic figures before Dracula. Bringing this back to RPGs, the main plot of the original Ravenloft was Strahd looking for his lost love Tatiana. The second Ravenloft module had a good Strahd and bad Strahd struggling over their love, and this was the cover:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2d/I10_House_on_Gryphon_Hill.jpg)
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 11:24:24 AM
I think it's well established that vampiric feeding is a metaphor for sex, and it's clear that Dracula passionately feeds on Harker.
The metaphorical nature of vampiric feeding can vary; Dracula, for example, is less seductive than some of his predecessors like Lord Ruthven or Carmilla. But I know the text of
Dracula well enough to say that it is
not at all 'clear' that Dracula feeds on Harker--indeed, unless there's been some major new discovery recently, the general assumption is that the Count didn't, but simply pumped Harker for information and then left him for the 'Brides.'
Might there be sexual subtext in
Dracula? Quite possibly; maybe even probably. Homosexual subtext? Considerably less likely.
Affirmation and celebration of 'queer' sexuality? Most certainly not if you're going to apply it to the vampires; Dracula is a physically and morally horrific monster who is driven out and destroyed, and the novel ends with a breaking of his power and an affirmation of upper-class family life.
Vampires as sexual goes back well before the 90s. Just watch the first hammer horror dracula and its pretty obvious there in 1957 that feeding is connected a kind of sexual energy (the actress was literally told to act as if she had just had the best sex in her life in the scene following the feeding). You can even see it universal dracula to a degree. People do project too much sexual reading onto things sometimes (and sometimes something that can be seen as a sexual metaphor isn't necessarily so, and can carry other meanings). Vampires and sex though kind of have been going together for a while. I would say even Dracula gets into it. And Carmilla (which was written before dracula) definitely had that subtext
Quote from: Omega on February 26, 2021, 12:00:59 PM
We've seen this over and over and over. No. Vampires do not represent gays or sex or anything else these loons hallucinate. It is no different from storygamers trying to "prove" that OD&D or reading a book is a really real storygame! And its started up in the OSR too.
To be clear here, I don't think the original Ravenloft Module was intended to be about those things.
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 11:24:24 AMI think it's well established that vampiric feeding is a metaphor for sex, and it's clear that Dracula passionately feeds on Harker.
I also think it is something read into and assumed depending on the reader, like the many contemporary readers that assume that two male characters that are close are necessarily gay (Sherlock Holmes & Watson, Frodo & Sam, etc), no matter the context or point of view. In the quote you mention, I believe we see Dracula from Harker's point of view, and not Dracula's.
One thing that makes vampires interesting is that metaphors can be turned on or against themselves, or have multiple references, and you end up with many types of vampires.
Quote from: Lynn on February 26, 2021, 01:01:46 PM
One thing that makes vampires interesting is that metaphors can be turned on or against themselves, or have multiple references, and you end up with many types of vampires.
I agree, vampires and feeding are metaphors for lots of things. And most horror metaphors work well if they have a timeless quality that allows for flexibility in reading. But I do think if you look at Bram Stoker and read the book, it is particularly hard to ignore some of the arguments around sex and queerness in it. But these things need to be reimagined each generation. In the 80s and 90s, I think we were mostly seeing vampires through the lens of things like AIDs (and to be fair, syphilis was a similar concern in stokers time).
But my only point that I was really trying to make here is don't re-write what ravenloft was about in reaction to the present changes. I am not saying old ravenloft is what Jessica Price wants new ravenloft to be. But I also played that setting more than any other, read just about every book and it definitely had a lot of room for those kinds of readings, and it definitely resonated with a lot of people for that treason. Obviously the original design team and the writers who worked on it were pretty diverse in terms of world view, so it often depended on the module, supplement, etc. One of the things I liked about the old line was sensing these writers all had different schools of thought around what Ravenloft ought to be.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 26, 2021, 12:30:06 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 11:24:24 AM
I think it's well established that vampiric feeding is a metaphor for sex, and it's clear that Dracula passionately feeds on Harker.
The metaphorical nature of vampiric feeding can vary; Dracula, for example, is less seductive than some of his predecessors like Lord Ruthven or Carmilla. But I know the text of Dracula well enough to say that it is not at all 'clear' that Dracula feeds on Harker--indeed, unless there's been some major new discovery recently, the general assumption is that the Count didn't, but simply pumped Harker for information and then left him for the 'Brides.'
Might there be sexual subtext in Dracula? Quite possibly; maybe even probably. Homosexual subtext? Considerably less likely. Affirmation and celebration of 'queer' sexuality? Most certainly not if you're going to apply it to the vampires; Dracula is a physically and morally horrific monster who is driven out and destroyed, and the novel ends with a breaking of his power and an affirmation of upper-class family life.
I think a lot of the queer reading of Dracula centers more on what we know and speculate about Stoker. I think it is also fair to say these things are debatable. There should be room for subjective opinion on analysis of a book like this, and I am not saying you have to agree with this reading (personally I find the arguments persuasive, but I've only read Dracula once every 5-10 years, it would be very easy for me to misremember a detail or overemphasize something).
I do think though the stuff with the brides, the stuff with lucy and the transfusions, it can be hard to not see sexuality at play there (maybe that is me taking modern eyes to the book). I also don't think these things need clear answers. Clearly there is a lot of stuff at work making these things provoke strong reactions. It probably can't be reduced to just 1 or 2 things (and why the material resonates is going to change over time too).
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 26, 2021, 12:30:06 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 11:24:24 AM
I think it's well established that vampiric feeding is a metaphor for sex, and it's clear that Dracula passionately feeds on Harker.
The metaphorical nature of vampiric feeding can vary; Dracula, for example, is less seductive than some of his predecessors like Lord Ruthven or Carmilla. But I know the text of Dracula well enough to say that it is not at all 'clear' that Dracula feeds on Harker--indeed, unless there's been some major new discovery recently, the general assumption is that the Count didn't, but simply pumped Harker for information and then left him for the 'Brides.'
Might there be sexual subtext in Dracula? Quite possibly; maybe even probably. Homosexual subtext? Considerably less likely. Affirmation and celebration of 'queer' sexuality? Most certainly not if you're going to apply it to the vampires; Dracula is a physically and morally horrific monster who is driven out and destroyed, and the novel ends with a breaking of his power and an affirmation of upper-class family life.
I am absolutely not claiming any sort of affirmation and celebration of queer sexuality. Dracula is a monster who is not intended to be sympathetic.
Still, he is a seductive monster. Contrary to your claim, I don't think there's any doubt that there is sexual subtext in general. Dracula might be less blatantly seductive than Lord Ruthven or Carmilla, but he's still definitely darkly seductive. And this isn't disagreeing with you, but I want to emphasize that Carmilla and Lord Ruthven predate Dracula -- so the sexual component of vampires is definitely not something that just shows up in the 1990s.
Likewise, the original Strahd is definitely evil -- but he is still an evil figure portrayed as being motivated by his tragic romantic love for Tatiana.
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 01:51:30 PM
I am absolutely not claiming any sort of affirmation and celebration of queer sexuality. Dracula is a monster who is not intended to be sympathetic.
To clarify, I was pointing that out in light of the apparent goals of the folks working on the new Ravenloft, and how those are not something in the source material.
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 01:51:30 PM
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 26, 2021, 12:30:06 PM
Quote from: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 11:24:24 AM
I think it's well established that vampiric feeding is a metaphor for sex, and it's clear that Dracula passionately feeds on Harker.
The metaphorical nature of vampiric feeding can vary; Dracula, for example, is less seductive than some of his predecessors like Lord Ruthven or Carmilla. But I know the text of Dracula well enough to say that it is not at all 'clear' that Dracula feeds on Harker--indeed, unless there's been some major new discovery recently, the general assumption is that the Count didn't, but simply pumped Harker for information and then left him for the 'Brides.'
Might there be sexual subtext in Dracula? Quite possibly; maybe even probably. Homosexual subtext? Considerably less likely. Affirmation and celebration of 'queer' sexuality? Most certainly not if you're going to apply it to the vampires; Dracula is a physically and morally horrific monster who is driven out and destroyed, and the novel ends with a breaking of his power and an affirmation of upper-class family life.
I am absolutely not claiming any sort of affirmation and celebration of queer sexuality. Dracula is a monster who is not intended to be sympathetic.
Still, he is a seductive monster. Contrary to your claim, I don't think there's any doubt that there is sexual subtext in general. Dracula might be less blatantly seductive than Lord Ruthven or Carmilla, but he's still definitely darkly seductive. And this isn't disagreeing with you, but I want to emphasize that Carmilla and Lord Ruthven predate Dracula -- so the sexual component of vampires is definitely not something that just shows up in the 1990s.
Likewise, the original Strahd is definitely evil -- but he is still an evil figure portrayed as being motivated by his tragic romantic love for Tatiana.
I am rushing to get some work done so this post may sound curt, but is not meant to be. I think one thing that often gets missed by a lot of people today, is things don't have to be super black and white. like it doesn't have to be a celebration or condemnation, or a moral lesson. Sometimes it just needs to resonate and impact you, and people are going to react to things in different ways. When it comes to tragic and sympathetic villains (which is definitely what Ravenloft was going for), I think that line gets even more blurry. A villain can be monstrous and commit horrendous deeds, but there might be something sympathetic about them that the viewer can identify with or understand, that helps the situation feel more tragic. A good example would be Phantom of the Opera. You are not meant to come away from that thinking that it is a good idea to stalk women from the shadows or to think that having bad luck in life and love justifies anything he does, but the tragedy of a person who has a serious facial deformity and have been rejected their entire lives because of it, and driven to commit terrible deeds because of their lonliness, that is something will resonate with people for different reasons (you don't need a literal facial deformity or to be rejected by society to understand his feelings because you've probably at least tasted some of). I think with Strahd it is the same way, you can understand his feelings of vanity and pining for his lost youth (that is why the backstory is structured so that he basically gives up youth, which his brother still possesses, to be a great military leader). His love for Tatyana comes from that, fear of death, etc. It is all very relatable even if his actions are horrible. And that is what makes it a compelling character. Most good villains are both compelling and repugnant at the same time.
Also when it comes to queerness, it doesn't necessarily have to be about sex. Bride of Frankenstein gets read through the subtext of Pretorius and Frankenstein making a creature together. But the queer reading is also about the characterization of Pretorius (how he completely rejects conventional morality), the aesthetics, the campiness (particularly around the humonculi). To me a lot of that stuff fits in right with Ravenloft which was why I made the comment initially.
Quote from: Omega on February 26, 2021, 12:00:59 PMVampires do not represent gays or sex or anything else these loons hallucinate.
They don't
necessarily represent those things to the exclusion of anything else, but they've certainly
been used to do so often enough that that association is now established in the Western pop culture
zeitgeist. Whether one agrees with that association or not, recognizing that a product meant for popular consumption is going to be seen that way by large parts of the audience is only basic acknowledgement of reality at that point.
Now that said, if one wants vampirism ultimately to be something that is itself the source of the story's horror, or of part of it at least, then the trope's original negative associations of disease, predation, and an unnatural disruption of the normal life-death cycle have to be present as well, and whatever sympathetic associations the writer wants to bring in as well can't trump those negative associations completely. The sympathetic associations have to point up the horror by contrast, not to negate it: the point of tragedy is that it's all about the clashing reactions -- we can all sympathize with Strahd in that we have all loved someone we cannot have, but the horror that desire becomes in Strahd, a force that turns him into a monster, his land into a hellhole and regularly kills his love herself over and over again, should rightly repel us.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 26, 2021, 01:08:03 PM
I agree, vampires and feeding are metaphors for lots of things. And most horror metaphors work well if they have a timeless quality that allows for flexibility in reading. But I do think if you look at Bram Stoker and read the book, it is particularly hard to ignore some of the arguments around sex and queerness in it. But these things need to be reimagined each generation. In the 80s and 90s, I think we were mostly seeing vampires through the lens of things like AIDs (and to be fair, syphilis was a similar concern in stokers time).
I have read Dracula. I am not arguing that there isn't imagery there (esp in Harker's recall of small details) that is suggestive, but that there is a strong tendency to read more in. The general public knows multiple iterations of Dracula in media, and that can color interpretation further.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on February 26, 2021, 02:29:56 PM
The sympathetic associations have to point up the horror by contrast, not to negate it: the point of tragedy is that it's all about the clashing reactions -- we can all sympathize with Strahd in that we have all loved someone we cannot have, but the horror that desire becomes in Strahd, a force that turns him into a monster, his land into a hellhole and regularly kills his love herself over and over again, should rightly repel us.
Definitely think ravenloft was about the tragedy and leaned into having more sympathetic villains. That can go too far, to the point that they become not scary (which happened in a lot of 90s horror). But it is also a don't throw the baby out with the bath water thing because a good villain, at least in my opinion, should be both compelling and repugnant (you should feel drawn to them while also wanting to recoil). I always liked Strahd's backstory in that respect. He was still quite scary and evil, but you could understand his motives, you could sympathize with some of his suffering to a degree, but you knew his cruelty could easily be directed at you and backed up by considerable power
Whenever I DM Ravenloft, I lick my lips at the players and wink a lot. It helps underscore the sexual tension that vampires are supposed to represent.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 28, 2021, 10:00:25 PM
Whenever I DM Ravenloft, I lick my lips at the players and wink a lot. It helps underscore the sexual tension that vampires are supposed to represent.
You win the thread (and the creepiest GM award!)
To be clear I am more leaning the general and legendary depictions of vampires. These were things that fed on the living and cause them to waste away. There was nothing sexual about it.
From Dracula onwards that has ping-ponged back and fourth. But theres in general been a push to sexualize it. That is irrelevant to the initial point. Theres been pushes to sexualize zombies. That does not mean zombie = sex. And back near the start of this stupid there were some early claims that zombies represent gays. Hell. Theres been tries to sexualize freaking Mind Flayers.
There is also a bit of luscious imagery that is explicitly favored by the author's GM advice in boxed sets' text (off the top of my head: Domain of Dread, Realms of Terror, Masque of the Red Death). Recommendations of calling up contrasts of beautiful against the horrific extoll GMs to not have the world wallow in endless mud and suffering. Moonlit vistas against breathtaking mountains and verdant glades suffesed in peaceful idyll... the call for romanticized language is very much a part of Ravenloft's suggested best practices.
Now, it is hard for me to say how romanticized language can be 'sexless', but I guess it could exist. Maybe because the word 'romance' is so closely associated with passion and lush imagination I have the trouble. But yeah, this current crop of scholastic dissembling and 'corrective reconstruction' seems forced, which is the exact opposite of allure. A pity because it is like putting the cart before the horse.
Horror is all that delightful messiness we don't want to think about, we don't want to let escape. Placing any agenda-based quota denatures that seduction of romantic contrast. Too systematic, inorganic, forced, unconsensual... and deeply ironic from the desired objective. (Heh, I just realized the core of the word unconsensual, 'sensual', and its relation to sex. I guess it is hard to separate. 8) Giggity)
Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 28, 2021, 10:00:25 PM
Whenever I DM Ravenloft, I lick my lips at the players and wink a lot. It helps underscore the sexual tension that vampires are supposed to represent.
To be clear here, I am not suggesting that Ravenloft was like the book of erotic fantasy or R rated, or that the GM was meant to use sexual undertones to make players uncomfortable. Ravenloft was specifically, and very clearly stated as, a return to more old fashioned, subtle horror (it deliberately contrasts itself with the modern horror sensibilities of the time in the RoT boxed set, and makes a very strong case against things like slashers and some of the gorier movies: I like slashers but I get the argument they were making and that boxed set was my bible for running horror in the 90s). It was all about the slow build of dread, and the final horrific reveal: horror and terror (I think it phrased it more as fear and horror, but the idea was the same). So I saw it more as influenced by old fashioned movies like the classic universal films, the hammer films. But those still had some of the queer and sexual stuff (hammer especially later on, but even early it was there). They were often just more subtle about it, and it was under the surface. But what I am saying in terms of game content is stuff like art, characters, etc. So there are a lot of sensual depiction of vampires in the black and white fabian art (the brides in the RoT box, the vampire queen in the guide to Vampires, etc). I am also saying characters like Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein were right at home in Ravenloft (Bride of Frankenstein is an old movie and it isn't like there is anything overt about that character that makes him clearly gay, but people often read him as such). And characters like Carmilla from the story, but more likely the movie Vampire Lovers, would have also been right at home (there may even be one based on her I am forgetting). I seem to recall a female character named Nostalgia Romaine associated with Ivana Boritsi, who wasn't a vampire or anything but had a highly suggestive relationship with the dark lord (and Ivana Boritsi is driven in part by a hatred of men). Think she was an emordenung or something. But it wasn't the kind of game where the GM is meant to get pervy on the players or build sexual tension between strahd and the party. I am just saying there are these kinds of elements present in the setting and the art (and it is often very subtle but I think still there). So something like a gay character for example, wouldn't be out of place at all, as there were plenty who we all assumed were gay.
And to be more clear: I am saying don't throw the baby out with the bathwater (something I am finding myself saying a lot about Ravenloft lately to people, often for very different reasons). I am not saying Ravenloft was all about modern political progressive issues. I am saying, just because someone makes a statement about placing that stuff in the forefront, people shouldn't react by recasting Ravenloft in the opposite light when I think there is a fair argument to be made that stuff like that was present in subtle ways that people were smart enough to pick up on.
My whole thing with new ravneloft is I think they should really be respecting the original material. I am not a big fan of many of the changes I have been hearing about, often because they sound like flipping things around for the sake of it (though it does depend on the specifics in the end). My biggest issue though is it sounds like Ravenloft might not even have a core landmass anymore, and might just be all islands of terror. For me that is too radical a break from the setting presented in the black boxed set, red boxed set and DoD books. Maybe they have no choice, as expectations have been created in the new edition and in the new material like CoS (and they worry about losing old fans). I just can't imagine running Ravenloft without a core (especially for long term campaigns which was my preference).
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 28, 2021, 09:55:20 PM...a good villain, at least in my opinion, should be both compelling and repugnant (you should feel drawn to them while also wanting to recoil).
That's a really good point and worth repeating. It would be interesting to see how many other of the Ravenloft darklords met this criterion.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on March 01, 2021, 10:46:13 AM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on February 28, 2021, 09:55:20 PM...a good villain, at least in my opinion, should be both compelling and repugnant (you should feel drawn to them while also wanting to recoil).
That's a really good point and worth repeating. It would be interesting to see how many other of the Ravenloft darklords met this criterion.
Just going by memory, I think most did a good job of this. They are going to land differently with everyone of course. But the main ones presented in the boxed set were good in terms of being both repugnant and compelling for me. Ones I wasn't as drawn to was often more a matter of personal taste than anything else