Namely, on the brutal ruler/yawning social divide/harsh geography/overt monster threat in the domain.
Seriously, what is it?
There's no central government, even. The place is filled with music and the worst thing mentioned as inhabiting the woods are big wolves and nothing else horrible.
It's a freaking paradise compared with the rest of the Core, if not the rest of the entire plane.
Help?
The brutal ruler of the domain is actually well-loved. He's only a brutal git when no-one can see him. Well, no-one who's going to live long, anyway. Harkon Lucas is a bard - the master bard of the domain. There's no central government, that is correct. They're unified by culture, not a political system. Each small town is pretty much independant, and is ruled by a burgomaster*, but they all like being part of Kartakass, so they stay as such.
The threat? Wolves. Wolves and wolfweres. If you're not thinking that's too bad, then consider you - VirgilCaine - a normal person in a heavily-forested realm filled with bloody huge, intelligent wolves that regard you as prey. And some of them are smart enough to disguise themselves as humans, so as to lure you out. That's what most people have to deal with there. Even for higher-level characters, remember that wolfweres can gain class levels too.
* I can't remember what the local term in Kartakass would be for this post.
Morrigan
Adventurers can deal with wolves and wolfweres. On the whole, they just don't seem as much of a problem as what other domains have. It's more on the scale of a usual D&D campaign threat and not something almost too big to ever deal with.
Meistersinger is what they call a burgomaster, IIRC.
Thanks for the info.
Wolfs and wolfweres don't compare? I disagree. Comparing it to Verbrek, as an example. In Verbrek, you have to deal with werewolves. Cursed humans who become wolves and hunger for flesh. Nasty, but at least they were once human - there's a point of similarity there you can understand, at some level. Wolfweres were never human. They're really smart wolves. They don't (mostly) even think like humans, Harkon being the exception. To them, you are prey, not kin. But they're smart enough to hide this, and can pretend to be your best friend until the time is right. They can also shapchange into any humanoid race or gender. They can be anyone.
Add to this the fact that the populace of Kortakass is aware of the legend of wolves walking like men, and while they are happy with their music, they are very, very paranoid about strangers. And if you make them suspicious, you can't stay in town anymore. Which brings us back to the points about intelligent dire wolves and worg, for when you're trying to get a good nights sleep.
True, this could be applied to any dnd settings, but so could anything in Ravenloft. Darkon, Falkovnia, etc. All could be any dnd world. It's how you use the elements, about making them into more than "the wolfwere jumps out and attacks you" that makes it into Ravenloft.
Morrigan
The Meistersinger is the bossman of Kartakass, as far as they have one, not just the ruler of each town. Lukas himself holds the post, I think.
Wolfs and wolfweres don't compare? I disagree. Comparing it to Verbrek, as an example. In Verbrek, you have to deal with werewolves. Cursed humans who become wolves and hunger for flesh. Nasty, but at least they were once human - there's a point of similarity there you can understand, at some level. Wolfweres were never human. They're really smart wolves. They don't (mostly) even think like humans, Harkon being the exception. To them, you are prey, not kin. But they're smart enough to hide this, and can pretend to be your best friend until the time is right. They can also shapchange into any humanoid race or gender. They can be anyone.
Add to this the fact that the populace of Kortakass is aware of the legend of wolves walking like men, and while they are happy with their music, they are very, very paranoid about strangers. And if you make them suspicious, you can't stay in town anymore. Which brings us back to the points about intelligent dire wolves and worg, for when you're trying to get a good nights sleep.
True, this could be applied to any dnd settings, but so could anything in Ravenloft. Darkon, Falkovnia, etc. All could be any dnd world. It's how you use the elements, about making them into more than "the wolfwere jumps out and attacks you" that makes it into Ravenloft.
Morrigan
My point was, if you look at the other domains, they have big, obvious threats and dangers or problems. You can point it out immediately. Kartakass doesn't have much in the way of these kinds of problems.
Compared to, say, Darkon's problems with Necropolis or G'Henna or Saragoss or the threat of Falcovnia against the western Core, Kartakass is a paradise. It has it's own problems, but they just aren't as large in scope as other domains.
I don't really see how wolfweres and werewolves are so different threat-wise. Werewolves might be harder to detect, since they are able to fake human behavior more naturally. A wolfwere's behavior might allow a Sense Motive check to notice little weird things about the way they sit or talk or look at things, maybe.
Yes, they are dangerous, yes.
Such as the threat that a wolf is going to put on a human skin, get you drunk and take you outside and eat the flesh from your bones.
Morrigan
So you're saying that it's not suitable because you can't walk into it and go "Aha!
There's the big bad! It's a land of poisoners/fascists/werewolves/undead!"
Unsuitable? No! I'm saying Kartakass is different--very, very different from the rest of the core. That's all. I'm sure it can be very scary, but it's a different kind of scary than other domains have. It's somewhat different type of threat than the other domains have.
Check out the Feast of Goblyns adventure available for free download on the wizards website. It will show you how living as a sheep among wolves can be scary...
My PCs will...I'm planning to run it as an interlude in my homebrew campaign (which should happen in about a year I think).
Let your player believe that Kartakass is a paradise. It will make it easier for the wolfweres to eat them.
You could get it here:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=Feast+of+Goblyns
Alternatively, you can download it for free, here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads
And you're forgetting one other aspect of Kartakass, that makes it dangerous: there's no one to turn to for help. Little villages full of song don't have walls to keep the wolfweres from chasing you right into your room at the inn, or high-level clerics who can heal your wounds when they tear you up, or educated experts to consult about how you can kill a monster you-the-PC have never even heard of before. (Wolfweres' weaknesses are far less well-known than those of werewolves.) In Kartakass, the PCs are likely to be the highest-level characters within a hundred miles ... at least, they're the highest-level ones who aren't wolfweres!
So it's not just a question of "Can we fight off this specific wolfwere attack?". It's a matter of: "Can we fight off this attack, and the next one, and the one after that, and so on, with only our own limited resources as a PC party to draw upon, until we can get the heck *out* of this hick domain and back to civilization?" Even a dungeon where none of the encounters exceed your party's CR can be lethal, if those low-power encounters just keep coming and coming, and you never get a chance to rest up in safety.