r/ravenloft

While researching banned or challenged children's books, I rediscovered one of the most frightening books I ever read when I was a child. Hell, it might be even more frightening to me as an adult. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. For those who have never or read this, here's the plot. And trust me, the book is a lot scarier then the title suggests.

Set in a world of sentient humanoid animals, our story is about a donkey foal named Sylvester who has a happy life with his mother and father, and has a strange hobby. He likes collecting pebbles. Then, one day, while collecting more pebbles, he finds something special. A pebble with the power to grant wishes to whoever holds it. With it, he wishes for a wart on his muzzle to go away and for the rain to stop. He brings it home, thinking it could also help his mother and father.

But on his way back, he encounters a lion with hostile intentions. Completely terrified and his ability to think clearly nullified, Sylvester wishes that he was a rock. While this saves him from the lion, he can't pick up the pebble and wish himself back. He can't even talk because he has no voice. He can still think and feel, but that's it. You read right, my friends. A kids book using the trope "And I Must Scream".

Naturally, his mother and father are very worried. They look everywhere, even recruiting friends, neighbors, and cops to find their son. But of course, they don't find him and soon believe he's gone forever. Even the narration even goes for a real gut punch that hurts me even more as an adult. "They tried their best to be happy, to go about their usual ways. But their usual ways included Sylvester and they were always reminded of him. They were miserable. Life had no meaning for them anymore."

Ouch!

Even worse, the book implies that Sylvester spends a WHOLE YEAR as a rock. And as he sinks more into depression, he enters whatever you could call sleep in his situation, the book even implies that if this continues for too long, he would have lost or given up his identity and psyche... FOREVER.

I dunno if that was the intent, but that sounds an awful lot like SUICIDE!

Fortunately, one day, the parents have a picnic to process their grief... and chose the rock that is their son to put their basket on. They even find the pebble and admire it's beauty... and lament their son would like it, and put it on the rock that's their son. Then, using the last of his identity, emotions, and psyche, Sylvester wishes himself back, and it's a happy ending. True, the ending was good, but that only because of sheer luck and a huge bullet dodge.

But what if something like this happened in a more mature story? What if something like this happened in Ravenloft? In my opinion, adapting this story for Ravenloft would make an excellent early level story. The donkey thing shouldn't be a problem, you can make Sylvester and his parents whatever race you want. I could also see the parents hiring Alanik Ray and Dr. Arthur Sedgewick to find their son. I could see them hiring the players as well. But, it would not be Ravenloft without a Dark Lord, and I could see the pebble being deliberately put there, as is whatever scares the kid enough to turn him into a rock.

But which Dark Lord is most likely to pull such a twisted Batman gambit? And why? Is it the boy they are after? Or was this some twisted sense of sadistic humor?

I've been working on Baron Urik von Kharkov for a while now—the darklord of Valachan from 2e. He's a tough nut to crack, for a variety of reasons. The two biggest problems that I faced were:

1. He doesn't really know who he is (panther, man, or vampire), which means he doesn't really know what he wants. That means it's hard to have the Dark Powers tempt him with something he wants but can never have.

2. His "Act of Ultimate Darkness" as described in his write-up in Darklords back in 2e is basically "20 years of being a vampire and being a dick to people. Also he was a jerk while he was alive." This is a really unsatisfying excuse to turn him into a darklord.

There are some other issues that crop up too, like the fact that he apparently spent a lot of time in Darkon but never suffered memory loss, or that his signature weakness (the cat of Felkovic) does not tie in any way to his unfulfilled desire (which, as noted above, is kinda poorly specified).

To rewrite von Kharkov for my campaign, I wanted to settle these bits of hash, while trying to keep some of the core elements of the character intact. Von Kharkov does have one awkward element that I left in place, which is that the whole "this is a beast pretending to be a man!" part is tied to one of the few Black characters in the early presentation of the setting, which is not a great look. I wanted to settle the other pieces, and I found some unlikely inspiration in doing so.

Von Kharkov is, as other posters have noted, mostly a victim in his original presentation. He's used as a weapon, a male version of My Fair Lady so that the wizard Morphayus ("sleep") can use him to fight his wizard nemesis Selene ("moon"). He's just a big cat who gets transformed, trained, set up for a romance, and then used to kill the woman he loved. It's a tragic backstory that does not deserve the attention of the Dark Powers, and a vague attestation that he was mean and nasty to people after escaping that is not sufficient to warrant making him a darklord. Plenty of people are mean and nasty and don't become darklords. He needed to do something poetically evil.

I took a little of that unlikely inspiration from the 1972 film Blacula. This film is quite a bit better than its reputation might present, and the main character, Mamuwalde (William Marshall), is both charismatic and a genuinely upright and moral guy who gets turned into a vampire against his will and then has to deal with the curse of unlife. Mamuwalde's whole M.O. is that he's on a tour of Europe to find influential people willing to help him end the African slave trade, and he runs afoul of Dracula and gets transformed. He later wakes up in then-contemporary 70s disco era and tries to establish his own vampiric circle, but in the end a group of unlikely hunters kill his progeny, and he winds up destroying himself. Like von Kharkov, he's more of a victim than a villain, someone trying to deal pragmatically with the inhuman demands of vampirism!

So here we go...

[More in reply]

I feel like I’ve had 20 different ideas for what camping I should run, but I think this should be the most simple one given how it should work.

The basic idea is that the party is being sent to a different domain of dread for one or two sessions to defeat the domain’s dark lord. But the party has a time limit until they have to confront the lord.

During the time before the final fight, they can do certain activities to learn info on the dark lord and their weaknesses, cause events that can either weaken the dark lord during their fight or accidentally empower them, find items to make the party stronger, etc. After they defeat the dread lord, they return to a sort of main hub to level up, gain dark gifts, etc. Then the next session they do a different domain of dread and repeat the cycle

The structure takes inspiration from both Hitman with the whole concept of learning the boss’s weakness, and Persona with how each activity costs the party an amount of time.

Does this sound like something people would enjoy? And if so, what domains should I use? I’m looking for a handful that are distinct from each other.

The domains I’m looking towards using are Barovia (obviously), Har’Akir, Falkonia, Dementlieu, Innsmouth, Kartakass (I have a gimmick in mind where the first half of the time here is normal, then it turns night and the werebeasts emerge), and a bunch of others.

My table finished Curse of Strahd differently. Instead of the fight at the castle, Strahd sent an invitation to dinner, and over the meal he asked them for help-go to the Amber Temple, reach back four hundred years, and talk his younger self out of making the pact. (For those who already have The Horrors Within, this idea is also mentioned there on page 201.)

He isn't repentant. He has no capacity for remorse left and he can't imagine having been anyone else. He came to a fork in the road, took one path, and now wants to walk back and take the other. The four hundred years that lie along the path behind him doesn't enter into it.

Three things that came out of running it:

• He's tired, not theatrical. The organ doesn't play. When a player asked why: "I stopped playing some time ago. I grew to dislike the theater." Playing him exhausted made him far more frightening than playing him grand or mischievous. No illusions, no face in the clouds, definitely no zip-line.

• The parting gift is a test. After dinner he gives each character a sealed vial and a letter explaining that if they can't go through with it in good conscience, drinking it will carry them home through the Mists. It's acid. He'd genuinely prefer their help, but he's planned for the other outcome. There's an Insight check that tells you nothing about the contents but everything about the Count.

• The climax is a speech, not a fight. One character projects back and gets one attempt to change his mind. My player arrived with hers handwritten. She opened with "You sent me here" — which, given his ego, was the smartest possible way in. It worked, and the table still talks about it. I'm still talking about it.

I've written it up as a standalone appendix: the dinner, the Amber Temple, the intervention itself, and both endings — failure is a real outcome and it's written out in full, but not treated as a loss. All that means is that you now have an irate Strahd to deal with.

I'm after a few DMs who'd read it and tell me where it breaks. Specifically: does the dinner give you enough to improvise from, and does the one-shot speech read as exciting rather than punishing? Happy to send a PDF.

Send me a direct message with your email address and I'll send the files over.

So with a foreboding sense that my definition of the term will take over the comment section rather than the intended question, it's my belief that a Darklord is:

An individual (sometimes a closely knit pair of individuals) who willingly chooses to commit an act of tremendous evil (generally violating a major cultural taboo in the process), gains the attention of the Dark Powers, and is mystically trapped to rule over a Domain that is both a twisted mirror of their own great evil and a perpetual torment, generally a deeply ironic one in which the thing they most desire is always just out of reach as a result of their own natures.

I'm curious what the intelligent hyper-focused folks in this community think are particularly effective (s-Tier) Darklord/Torment combos, IN ANY EDITION, and if there are particularly bad (d- or f-Tier) ones that maybe don't "feel Ravenloft," what tweaks have you given them at your table?

Strahd's doomed obsession with Tatyana seems, to me, like a good example of the gold standard in torment/curse design. A fair number of the curses though seem to basically boil down to "sucks to be trapped in Ravenloft," which, no duh, but doesn't feel juicy and satisfying in a gothic, Twilight Zone-y way.

For instance, in the original Har'Akir, Ankhtepot "now rules over a small mud village in the middle of a barren wasteland. It is a bitter end for a man who once ruled a great nation..." Meh. So he's not king anymore. Compare that to the new motivation and curse: a man who spent fortunes and countless lives in the selfish pursuit of immortality, and now that he has it, turns out being a mummy blows, but he's CURSED WITH THE VERY IMMORTALITY HE COMMITTED HIS CRIMES FOR. Good s#!t

Similarly, (and I don't wanna sound like a shill for WotC; I generally prefer the lore as laid out by S in 3e) the main improvement I saw to Tepest in the new edition was going from 3 teenaged sister Darklords doomed to eternal cannibalistic ugliness just for murdering a f*^#boi (yeah yeah, and six other dudes), to this twisted lonely Mother who betrayed Maiden and Crone and would devour the world entire to have a child, yet only creates abominations that soon die tragically. SO much more juicy.

Off the top of my head, others that confuse me are Tristan ApBlanc (what? WHAT?!!), the "inheriting" Darklords (Inza, Chakuna, to a lesser extent Gabrielle: how did what they DO change their domain, and how does it make them SUFFER?), and the super inhuman Darklords (The Hive Queen - what the heck did she do that was so bad? ;)... The God Brain - although I ADORE what the Quoth the Raven guys did there... Gwydion the Sorcerer-Fiend I always imagine is a Dark Power who pissed off the others).

How bout y'all?

Hello everyone, it is that time of the month once more, when we embark on incredible adventures and push back the borders of the domains of dread! The Randomiser of Doom must've enjoyed all the inspiration we found in an obscure domain in July because it has taken us, I would argue, even farther. This month we are exploring

Leederik's Tower!

Leederik's Tower is the lair of the deeply curious Darklord known as The Phantom Lover, who possesses one unique trait; in very particular circumstances, he can enter the material plane!

Use this information as you plan your adventure. It can be for any level, any edition, even any game. The rules are that it feels like an adventure involving Leederik's Tower or The Phantom Lover.

That you include [Adventure Jam] in your title and use the Haunted House flair. And No. Plagiarism! Plagiarists will be gaslit to death! It can happen!

You have until 23.59.59 BST on Sunday August 30th to submit your entry.

Best of luck!

Lupine origins

Lupine origins emerge from the curse of lycanthropy not fulling taking effect or other bestial magics or curses. The Lupine Origin Table offers suggestions for your Lupine origin

D6

1. You were attacked by a lycanthrope while they were transforming, ensuring the curse never fully took hold
2. You are the child of a lycanthrope and a non-lycanthrope
3. An old beggar asked you for help, you refused, the beggar then revealed themselves to be a fey mage and turned you into a lupine as punishment
4. You are the child of 2 lupine parents
5. You were turned into a lupine by a mad scientist experiment
6. You became a lupine due to a resurgent gene in your family

Lupines in the Domains of Dread

When creating a lupine, , consult with your DM to see if it's appropriate to to tie your origins to one of the following Domains of Dread

Barovia: While many fear the wolves and werewolves of the Svalich forest, many Lupine see the Svalich forest as a place of sanctuary and build hidden villages within these haunted woods where they hope against hope that Strahd and monster hunters won't find them.

Kartakass: With it's werewolf haunted woods and dangerous performances that often end in werewolf attacks, Kartakass has produced a large number of Lupine who make no effort to hide their identities. This makes them both a small case of honesty, and hated pariah's.

Tempest: While not as common as Lupine who became who they are with botched lycnthropy, some Lupine became monsters for upsetting fey creatures. From not giving them the proper respect, to being outright cruel, and even festivities gone wrong.

Thought of this when planning a new campaign and wanted to hear everyone's opinion.

So, what do you personally prefer? Denizen of a domain that wants to change things for the better or someone who just wants to return home? Do you do half and half? Maybe all from the domain at the start and new characters arrive from outside or viceversa. Does the answer change when the campaign spans across multiple domains?

I'm curious :)

So, I've been reading the new book and the Vistani are mentioned here and there, but are they ever really described anywhere? What's the issue this time?

Man they are doing a lot of updates!

B&G's Curse of Strahd Legendary Edition box set is getting a reprint for Halloween.

When Strahd became a DL he drew Barovia into Ravenloft and the dark powers, but what does that mean for the material plane? Is there now a crater where Barovia was or did it make a copy and pull all the inhabitants, or is the place where Barovia was just thick fog now? I'm asking about all domains, not just Barovia BTW.