Now I'm in the process of collecting the OOP stuff. What is the official Ravenloft canon? Is there a link to a list? Do the novels count?
I'd like to read everything I can so that I don't stray from it when I start writing net-fiction.
Anything I can do to help the Ravenloft community thrive, I will. I honestly believe there's nothing quite like it!
Ah, found a list in the Kargatane/Fraternity of Shadows FAQ:
The Enemy Within
Lord of the Necropolis
Desmond LaRouche from RLMCII
Other than that, the novels are canon, the modules are canon, the sourcebooks an campaign settings are canon. (Despite inconsistancies in Strahd's story and elsewhere). I don't know if any official decision was made on the video games and endless quest books.
I think it's shameful that, after writing in a shared setting, they decided to be nasty about it and retcon something that didn't have much bearing on their precious Krynn anyway (no, no I'm not a big fan of DL, thank you, to me, the best Kender are the ones found in Ravenloft...oh wait, they removed that too.)
- Yulian
"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a matter of fact, the absence of Soth is what has first confused me about Ravenloft canon in the first place!
I don't know who officially decides such things, but as far as I know the only thing most people regard as non-canon is Lord of the Necropolis, and only because it defines the dark powers.
How about the adventure "Circle of Darkness"?
In one of the potential endings, one of the Darklords gains a glimpse of the true nature of the Dark Powers.
It's actually kind of amusing, if you don't mind that sort of thing.
Who created Ravenloft?
Who stocked it with monsters and madmen?
Who controls everything that happens in the Domains?
That would be...us.
How about the adventure "Circle of Darkness"?
In one of the potential endings, one of the Darklords gains a glimpse of the true nature of the Dark Powers.
It's actually kind of amusing, if you don't mind that sort of thing.
Who created Ravenloft?
Who stocked it with monsters and madmen?
Who controls everything that happens in the Domains?
That would be...us.
Okay, now you have to explain this to me. Did they break the fourth wall or something? How did they do it? It's tough enough when comic book characters find stuff like that out (Grant Morrison's Animal Man got really weird when it did near the end of its run) but RPG characters? Come on, give over. :D
- Yulian
"The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy." - Alfred North Whitehead
Okay, now you have to explain this to me. Did they break the fourth wall or something? How did they do it? It's tough enough when comic book characters find stuff like that out (Grant Morrison's Animal Man got really weird when it did near the end of its run) but RPG characters? Come on, give over.
"As soon as the talisman touches the altar, it vanishes and whatever Malistroi's [a Nalfeshnee demon] next attack on Yagno [the Darklord] is has no effect. The high priest looks at the fiend, who keeps slicing at him with no effect, and then looks at the heroes, a glazed look entering his eyes. "None of this is real, is it? I've been living a fantasy...no, a nightmare for the last 30 years. Or has it been my whole life? Am even I real?"
When the hero placed the talisman on the altar, Yagno saw what no one-mortal or god-has ever seen before: for a brief moment he saw that which is known as the Dark Powers, and he saw the purpose behind that which is known as Ravenloft."
It doesn't come out and say that he realizes he's an RPG character, but it's strongly suggested.
"As soon as the talisman touches the altar, it vanishes and whatever Malistroi's [a Nalfeshnee demon] next attack on Yagno [the Darklord] is has no effect. The high priest looks at the fiend, who keeps slicing at him with no effect, and then looks at the heroes, a glazed look entering his eyes. "None of this is real, is it? I've been living a fantasy...no, a nightmare for the last 30 years. Or has it been my whole life? Am even I real?"
When the hero placed the talisman on the altar, Yagno saw what no one-mortal or god-has ever seen before: for a brief moment he saw that which is known as the Dark Powers, and he saw the purpose behind that which is known as Ravenloft."
It doesn't come out and say that he realizes he's an RPG character, but it's strongly suggested.
Okay, now I'm gonna get really metagame in my thkning. Hold on. I'd say realizing one was an RPG character is qualitatively different (and even more difficult) than realizing one is a comic book character.
My reasoning? Well, a comic book character usually has but one incarnation at any time. Their history may change, but everyone who reads that book sees the same things unfold. Again, Grant Morrison dealt with this very issue. But an RPG character, their 'story' is told in numerous different ways by many different people, meaning that they cannot, by definition, have a consistant timeline outside of big generalities. Yagno may have said one thing to one group, another group might have all been killed, all at the same time during the same event. As such, an RPG character is hard-pressed to have any sort of cohesiveness in the way say, a comic book character might.
So while a comic character might realize (speaking purely in a hypothetical fashion) that their existence is for the entertainment of others, they have an advantage of a history agreed upon or present in only one fashion at any one time. Superman was a baby when rocketed from Krypton, then, for a while, he was a zygote in a "birthing matrix" with a stardrive. Now, he was a baby in the ship again. It changed, but at any one moment, it's retroactively consistant. An RPG character doesn't have that retroactive basis, since their experience changes every time someone plays. A comic character's history doesn't change every time someone reads because their history is constantly updated.
- Yulian
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
It doesn't come out and say that he realizes he's an RPG character, but it's strongly suggested.
That's not necessarily the way to interpret it.
You could just as easily say he understood he was but a magical lab-rat created by very powerful beings for whatever their twisted purpose is.
Anybody remember how the classic "Cereal Convention" storyline ended in the "Sandman" graphic novels? That's the kind of 'reality check' Yagno received.
Besides, this is *Yagno* we're talking about. The guy's a loon. Simply facing the fact that there's more to the cosmos than his own twisted, self-created religious fantasies might well cause him to question if ANYTHING's for real, *no matter what* had actually been revealed to him.
Anybody remember how the classic "Cereal Convention" storyline ended in the "Sandman" graphic novels? That's the kind of 'reality check' Yagno received.
Exactly.
It can be interpreted in almost any way.It says Yagno saw what the DP are.And then he rumbles..if it doesn't say what the DP are,then the meaning of these words could be anything.By the way,changing this adventure a bit (well quite a lot actually) is great for play.
The module suffers from trying to be too much to too many people, and Yagno's "pulling back of the curtain" is a weird attempt to resolve a clumsy battle between "wanting a module to be open-ended and non-directive" and "getting the characters back into the plot so I don't have to come up with even more content in case the heroes don't follow obvious choices".
The module really starts to lose structure as the heroes react to the battle for power between Yagno and Malestroi. The module tries to not only account for any possible choice the heroes make in reaction to to the conflict, but those options are sketchy and encompass all 4 corners of the entire domain...and, it still feels kind of forced to a DM with passages like, "The DM should be able to get the heroes back to Zhukar for the final conflict" or something like that. Then when you get back, the battle has funky outcomes based on who wins...and the weirdest is if the heroes correctly guess to put the Talisman on the altar (as indicated in previous posts), the easter egg "it was all a dream" solution occurs.
Sweet Pete, the "there is no land" ending is almost an antithetical opposite to Strahd's "I am the land" Barovia. I giggle to think that Strahd might even be ticked if that ever happened to Barovia.
I'm curious how "Lord of the Necropolis" defined the dark powers; what were they and what was the story behind them? If it didn't take the entire book to tell that is. And don't worry about spoilers for me as I don't intend the read the book anyway. Thanks for the help.
I'm going to keep this basic because I hate thinking about it. If I recall correctly, the DPs are, in fact, a group of intensely powerful entities who exist on the Negative Energy Plane. Ravenloft is a "stepping stone" from there to the Prime Material Plane. Now they're banned from going to the PM, but they figure, if they can get enough evil, powerful entities in one place, slowing building it out of stolen Prime Material lands, someone's either going to punch a hole through to the Prime that they can use, or, if it gets big enough, they can just sort of crash the whole thing through (that bit's vague).
[sarcasm]This, of course, explains why people like Vlad Drakov are in Ravenloft since, as we all know, he's a proficient planes-traveler and mighty wizard. [/sarcasm]
This also explains why there exists at least one semi-permenant gate out on the Isle of Agony in Lamordia that these beings don't use. This also explains why they punish the Darklords with a perfectly tailored ironic curse when the same stuff you get in say...the Abyss, would make anyone want to get the hells out of there just as badly. This also explains why only evil people are chosen as Darklords, as no good entity would want to struggle against some sort of imprisonment to get back to their nation/loved ones/whatever half as strongly (okay granted, evil beings will use any means to do so). This also explains why all of the deities have a "hands off" rule where Ravenloft is concerned since, you know, an attempted invasion of the Prime Material just isn't worth getting into a fight over.
(Note, that's all HEAVILY sarcastic up there, as well as the Drakov bit.)
I'm sure you see the myriad problems such an explanation creates.
- Yulian
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." - Issac Azimov
I figured it would be something like that. Ever since Ravenloft came out there was always this debate whether the dark powers would be pure chaos/evil or whether they would have some ultimate purpose, etc. I knew, when it was finally revealed, it would be the "ultimate purpose" idea and that's just not as interesting as far as I'm concerned. I've always designed my Ravenloft adventures with the chaos and evil theory in mind. But that's just me. ;)
Out of curiosity, did the book detail any of these "dark powers" or was it only a small part of the novel (like names, etc)? Thanks again.
- Yulian
"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." - Bobby Knight