Just joined. Been running Ravenloft 3rd ed about ooo 1 session. Did lots in 2nd ed AD&D though, had some good campaigns that saw pc's fighting a cult that followed a black dragon, during which one pc nearly became a lich, one was a reincarnated co-forger of a magic sword that was destined to kill the black dragon.
Favourite group of npc's were a bunch of orc militia men, commisioned by Azalin to keep an eye on things in certain areas, and their trademark was getting soo drunk, they would strap themselves to the chairs in the inns.
i like to scare the players an make em laugh so they enjoy it, so thats a brief rundown of the type of guy/gm I am.
like some of the posts and may well post back any ideas i have for the good of the game ..
take it easy and keep playing.
ps. anyone going to excaliber this year?I may try and run house of strahd for a laugh/fright if anyone is interested, drop us a line.
-Eric Gorman
as for comic relief I think they are great between two adventure, you know during the day ravenloft should be happy and beautifull but during the night the worst thing should happen...
Nothing against giving the players a good laugh from time to time though. As easily accomplished with a group of moron town watchmen as with a group of moron orcs, though.
VNM
what if a group of orc accidently step in the mist...
Agreed, that could happen, but then there's previously mentioned issue about if Azalin would work with them. On the other hand I can't see it common for Orcs to be sucked into the mists with any regularity. The mists seem to go for a greater level of villiany than just mindless savages. The only Orcs I can picture arriving would be high level warlords and the like.
Originally posted by VNM
As a low-fantasy, low-magic setting - orcs have little to no place in Ravenloft, unless it's in Darkon which has always been the lame twink fantasy domain of Ravenloft. (I have issues with Greyhawk and related domains in general, all stemming back to the original, and quite retarded adventure "Castle Greyhawk". Though such a comparison would be an insult to all handicapped people)
Nothing against giving the players a good laugh from time to time though. As easily accomplished with a group of moron town watchmen as with a group of moron orcs, though.
VNM
For me its quite the contrary
I prefer high fantasy domain like darkon and sithicus to renaissance domain like lamordia. Maybe because I still consider ravenloft to be dnd but with an horror twist or maybe because I think dark ages are more frightening than renaissance.
Originally posted by mephistopheless
For me its quite the contrary
Maybe because I still consider ravenloft to be dnd but with an horror twist or maybe because I think dark ages are more frightening than renaissance.
No offense, but then why don't you just play Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, add in some horror elements, and save yourself the cash of buying the sourcebooks for yet another campaign world? I love Forgotten Realms, but I certainly don't want any part of its unique, high-fantasy feel polluting the delicious gothic darkness of Ravenloft. Gothic and high-fantasy are a very bad mix, if not a contradiction in terms.
The whole point of Ravenloft is that it's gothic, low-fantasy, low-magic. Darklords and hordes of undead do not define the setting, they are merely ingredients in the whole. In fact, undead are scarier when they appear in isolated circumstances. Think of how utterly horrifying a single, 1HD skeleton would be in the middle of a crowded peasant village. In my opinion, it should be more than a match for any of the local commoners. That's if they didn't all just run away or die from terror-induced heart-attacks. An army of zombies just strikes me as a little heavy-handed/over the top. But hey, some darklords must need undead armies in order to be effective, I guess....
Forget about fantasy entirely. Forget about Vampire the Masquerade, etc. etc. etc. Forget everything you think you know about Gothic, and read some Anne Radcliffe, or Umberto Eco.
Then again, to each their own.
VNM
Originally posted by VNM
No offense, but then why don't you just play Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, add in some horror elements, and save yourself the cash of buying the sourcebooks for yet another campaign world? I love Forgotten Realms, but I certainly don't want any part of its unique, high-fantasy feel polluting the delicious gothic darkness of Ravenloft. Gothic and high-fantasy are a very bad mix, if not a contradiction in terms.
Because I never bought the forgotten realm or greyhawk setting. Because greyhawk lack flavor and forgotten realm well...I hate this setting its feel like xena and hercules and there are to many uber strong npc and they are boring(come on elminster has level in every classes...).
I myself dont consider ravenloft "gothic" horror because gothic horror is simply goofy...Suspiria is more frightening than dracula same thing witht he horla and they are not "gothic"(not high fantasy either but...)
I dont make my game with a lot of fantastic vorpal sword +10 and a lot of uber-strong npc. Yes I put fantasy in ravenloft because fantasy is part of dnd and ravenloft is a dnd setting not an horror only game.
I also think ogre,orc and goblinoid can be frightening i mean come on lets say you are attacked in real life by a horde of goblin you would be frightened yes? And in LOTR Orc are considered true creatures of darkness.
Also I think demi-human(like dwarf,elves etc...) add to the flavor because most of the time when the players find refuge in a demihuman village they feel more the terror because they are with stranger you know, cretaure with a different totally alien mindset.
Ravenloft is not about the fantasy you put in it but more about the atmosphere.
And a 1HD undead could easilly be taken down by the milicia...
If Joe Schmoe wants orc's in his Raveloft game, that's up to him. Just because it's not in the books or is contridicted in the books, doesn't mean it can't be changed.
People seem to forget that RPG's are meant for fun. Rules are open to interpitation. The DM ultimately has the last call on what they want to or dont want to allow in their campaigns.
C'mon folks, we need some solidarity as DM's and GM's , not to sit about bickering about how you dont like what someone else has said they do. It's their game, let em run it their way.
Side note, personally I dont have orcs native to RL. But if I had an idea for a small band of them, I'd do it without a second thought. So long as the story and the campaign benefited from it, what's the harm?
Originally posted by TheMrBlack
If Joe Schmoe wants orc's in his Raveloft game, that's up to him. Just because it's not in the books or is contridicted in the books, doesn't mean it can't be changed.
Amen.
Comic relief can be a great thing. For me, the most successful use of it in Ravenloft was the introduction of Mason, the Lord Speaker of Har-Thelen mentioned in "Domains of Dread."
The character was built up as a powerful mage and a paragon of elven virtue, something that greatly appealed to a very snooty and elf-o-centric elf ranger/mage PC. When the party went to Har-Thelen and got an audience with Mason, they discovered he wasn't even a true Red Robe mage [I kept the Orders of High Sorcery in my campaign], but that he was a con-artist who cheated his way to power. Needless to say, the snooty elf was dissapointed. He was quite the wizard though, even if he focused his efforts on developing variants of "Knock" (Mason's Jar = opened those hard-to-open preserves, while the reversed form sealed them tightly... Mason's Open-all = undid all knots and buckles within range... and so on...)
He became a much-beloved character and when he met his end at the hands of one of Soth's skeletal warriors for standing up to him in defense of one of the PCs, one of the players was so furious with me that he stormed out of the game session.
Tossing a bit of humour and light touches into the doom and gloom can do wonders.
(Not that it matters, but Mason was actually a elf from Greyhawk who got drawn into Ravenloft and drifted into Sithicus.)