These are political derailments of this thread. The Thing and Shark, this is your only warnings.

I guess you missed Anselyn's post where he dragged politics into this. here:

All right, I have officially changed my position on what I will do if I get one use of a time travel machine to change history.

Rather than go back to 1836 and arrange, somehow, for Karl Marx not to get expelled from the University of Bonn (thus preventing him from attending the University of Berlin where he would get involved with Feuerbach and the Young Hegelians, which led directly to the spawning of Marxism which has a direct causal root of all the atrocities of the 20th century), I will go back in time to 1963, when Star Trek is being developed, and persuade Gene Roddenberry to give Mr. Spock a wife as a key running character in the show. This will hopefully nip in the bud the entire phenomenon of K/S fanfic, from which I believe all this kind of sexual-reinvention character shenanigans first developed. (Seriously, when did genre fandom become convinced that any kind of close emotional relationship automatically read as a potentially sexual one?)

You need to add him to your warning.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 16, 2021, 09:30:13 PM
These are political derailments of this thread. The Thing and Shark, this is your only warnings.

Greetings!

Pundit, my sincere apologies.

It sounds like WOTC has totally ruined Ravenloft. So sad. The campaign setting, while never my favorite, had some excellent attributes, and certainly some good potential for a 5E version.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I echo the praise of Gothic Earth. I picked up the DM's Guild 5e Gothic Earth book, Masque of the Red Death Player's Guide. If you or your group likes or prefers 5e, this is a good addition to your library.

Quote from: The Thing on May 16, 2021, 06:08:12 PM

Oh, and marxism was an inevitable result of the horrific conditions the russian population was suffering under the czars. If you really wanted to prevent the marxist revolution which would have happened under a different name if you neutralized marx, you need to go back in time and adduct the czar, then show him what was going to happen to him and his family, including sadly poor Anastasia despite a lot of wishful thinking, and tell him to make real serious reforms in how the people were treated. Nothing else would have stopped a populist revolt in russia, period.

The Bolsheviks didn't overthrow Tsar Nicholas, they overthrew the Provisional Government, who took power in the February Revolution, and were promoting democratic reforms. It was the Provisional Government who overthrew the Tsar and took central power, though the socialists held the support of the lower classes, and ruled much of the countryside through the Soviets. But the socialists weren't Bolsheviks; they believed that Russia wasn't ready for socialism, and were also promoting things like more rights and freedoms. The only reason the Soviet Union emerged was because an extremist group (the Bolsheviks) took advantage of the fractures between the different sides, and violently seized power. If you want to stop all that, you just need to let the other factions know the Bolsheviks are backstabbing bastards. Or just kill Lenin while he's passing through Germany; they probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere without their leader.

I only played a few times in Ravenloft, during the 3e era. We had fun trying to identify which trope or Hammer movie a plot or NPC came from.  I think I got killed by a Banshee.

My first RL purchase was Curse of Strahd because I finally wanted to know what the fuss was about, and we played the Intro scenario which ended in a TPK when the players activated the Animated Armour dude. I could make it work, but only by enforcing the Hammer Horror vibe, not diluting it, and as a one-off short campaign with characters that have a stake in the setting; not tourists.

This new book? Nah, I'll vote with my wallet on this one, and go buy the new Soulblight Gravelords instead.

Quote from: The Thing on May 16, 2021, 09:39:01 PM
I guess you missed Anselyn's post where he dragged politics into this. here:

All right, I have officially changed my position on what I will do if I get one use of a time travel machine to change history.

You need to add him to your warning.

That was me, not Anselyn, but I will plead guilty to deserving the warning anyways.

Quote from: SHARK on May 16, 2021, 10:33:50 PMThe campaign setting, while never my favorite, had some excellent attributes, and certainly some good potential for a 5E version.

It might have potential but gothic horror is a genre that hasn't been culturally relevant in decades. I couldn't think of a worse genre to try and attract new, and therefore younger, players.

OTOH, the biggest thing in fantasy over that last couple years has been Demon Slayer which is pretty much just a take on vampire slaying. And it's even set in the same sort of pre-industrial tech level of the original Dracula and Frankenstein. A Vampire Hunter take on Ravenloft, with more of a focus on action, would have been a better sell if, as they claim, attracting new players was the goal. Of course, we all know that "inclusiveness" and "representation" have nothing to do with attracting a new audience.

Quote from: RandyB on May 16, 2021, 10:38:06 PM
I echo the praise of Gothic Earth. I picked up the DM's Guild 5e Gothic Earth book, Masque of the Red Death Player's Guide. If you or your group likes or prefers 5e, this is a good addition to your library.

Gothic Earth was very interesting. I ran it quite a few times. However it was harder to find regular players for (I mostly managed it as short campaigns or one shots). I also ran it as a sitcom once which worked surprisingly well. I think I liked the Masque of the Red Death boxed set a lot better than the supplementary material (I found the supplement book on Transylvania informative but incredibly, incredibly dry). The boxed set though really sparked my imagination and had some cool content. I remember really liking the firearm rules for some reason.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 17, 2021, 11:45:58 AMOTOH, the biggest thing in fantasy over that last couple years has been Demon Slayer which is pretty much just a take on vampire slaying. And it's even set in the same sort of pre-industrial tech level of the original Dracula and Frankenstein.

If this really is the biggest thing in fantasy in recent years, I must be even more out of touch than I thought. Is this a novel series? Comics? Anime? Manga? TV series from outside North America?

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on May 17, 2021, 02:55:38 PM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 17, 2021, 11:45:58 AMOTOH, the biggest thing in fantasy over that last couple years has been Demon Slayer which is pretty much just a take on vampire slaying. And it's even set in the same sort of pre-industrial tech level of the original Dracula and Frankenstein.

If this really is the biggest thing in fantasy in recent years, I must be even more out of touch than I thought. Is this a novel series? Comics? Anime? Manga? TV series from outside North America?

I assume he means https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9335498/ and if so I weep for the sorry state of fantasy in modern times.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on May 17, 2021, 02:55:38 PM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 17, 2021, 11:45:58 AMOTOH, the biggest thing in fantasy over that last couple years has been Demon Slayer which is pretty much just a take on vampire slaying. And it's even set in the same sort of pre-industrial tech level of the original Dracula and Frankenstein.

If this really is the biggest thing in fantasy in recent years, I must be even more out of touch than I thought. Is this a novel series? Comics? Anime? Manga? TV series from outside North America?

it's weebery, which kills the OSR man

Quote from: Pat on May 16, 2021, 11:15:37 PM

Quote from: The Thing on May 16, 2021, 06:08:12 PM

Oh, and marxism was an inevitable result of the horrific conditions the russian population was suffering under the czars. If you really wanted to prevent the marxist revolution which would have happened under a different name if you neutralized marx, you need to go back in time and adduct the czar, then show him what was going to happen to him and his family, including sadly poor Anastasia despite a lot of wishful thinking, and tell him to make real serious reforms in how the people were treated. Nothing else would have stopped a populist revolt in russia, period.

The Bolsheviks didn't overthrow Tsar Nicholas, they overthrew the Provisional Government, who took power in the February Revolution, and were promoting democratic reforms. It was the Provisional Government who overthrew the Tsar and took central power, though the socialists held the support of the lower classes, and ruled much of the countryside through the Soviets. But the socialists weren't Bolsheviks; they believed that Russia wasn't ready for socialism, and were also promoting things like more rights and freedoms. The only reason the Soviet Union emerged was because an extremist group (the Bolsheviks) took advantage of the fractures between the different sides, and violently seized power. If you want to stop all that, you just need to let the other factions know the Bolsheviks are backstabbing bastards. Or just kill Lenin while he's passing through Germany; they probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere without their leader.

Pat, I already gave a warning to two posters here for political posts. 

I NOW GIVE YOU AND EVERYONE A WARNING. FROM HERE ON, ANY OFF TOPIC POLITICAL POST ON THIS THREAD WILL BE MET WITH A PERMANENT BAN.

Pathfinder has a modules called "rule of fear" that might be a viable alternative for people who see the current ravenloft as too PC now.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 17, 2021, 05:50:02 PM

Pat, I already gave a warning to two posters here for political posts. 

I NOW GIVE YOU AND EVERYONE A WARNING. FROM HERE ON, ANY OFF TOPIC POLITICAL POST ON THIS THREAD WILL BE MET WITH A PERMANENT BAN.

That's fine, it's your forum. And I wouldn't have posted it if I saw your post before I hit submit. But I didn't bother to delete it, because I thought the political prohibition was about contemporary/culture war stuff. That's what your sticky thread seems to imply, with all the talk about political/cultural conflicts and the list of examples. There was none of that in my post. So it might be worth clarifying a bit.