The Curse of Strahd
ShapiroKeatsDarkMage
Member Posts: 2,428
in Off-Topic
Ravenloft is back b****s!
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3162-CURSE-OF-STRAHD-Will-Be-Available-March-15th#.Vpr-ZzaJWJo
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3162-CURSE-OF-STRAHD-Will-Be-Available-March-15th#.Vpr-ZzaJWJo
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Comments
Back on topic, I'd love to see a CRPG based on Ravenloft as something akin to a D&D Survival horror mash-up. I think it would be a niche market, but it would be AWESOME I think. But then I've always thought that they could do something similar for Cthuhlu as well.
I don't think Ravenloft is really suited to "survival horror". It's really a hommage to Hammer and Universal, where as survival horror draws on the oriental and modern slasher traditions. Iit also tends to depend heavily on the use of first person perspective, which I don't think suits DnD rules.
In PnP, if I actually want to scare my players, I bring the horror into thier regular game-world. The "demi-plane of dread" is too disconnected to be really scary.
5th edition!? Baator yeah!
What makes the demiplane of dread so disconnected? I heard people comparing it to Silent Hill.
As for the first person perspective, Resident Evil did just fine without it for a LONG time. While you don't quite get the 'jump' effect on certain things, it is certainly not impossible to do. Far from it.
As for the Demi-plane being disconnected??? I guess I don't get where you are coming from. I'd do it like this:
"The party wakes up after a particularly restless night out in the woods, only to find the day overcast with a pall over the sun. As you cast around for your camping gear you notice that this is not where you set up camp last night. A road stretches off into the gloom and in the middle distance you see a castle."
Have "Someone" grab the group and whisk them away someplace where they can't simply turn around and walk home. The only way out is to find the secret at the heart of the castle and hope that the force that brought them there can send them home. Only at what cost?
Baldur's Gate becomes survival horror if you play solo, no save, no pause, with a weak, poorly equipped protagonist. However, the top down view gives you 360 vision, making it hard for monsters to startle.
The thing about Silent Hill is it is only one step removed from the real world, but it's terrors are strange and unfamiliar. Ravenloft is a fantasy world within a fantasy world, two steps detached from reality. However, it's inhabitants are familiar and everyone knows how to deal with them. No-one ventures forth without first tooling themselves up with holy symbols, holy water, stakes, garlic, wolfsbane and silver weapons.
They did do a couple of Ravenloft CRPGs back in the 90s, first person (on a fixed orthogonal grid) and party based. Fun, but scary, they where not.
Now add in the background from Planescape Torment and you have a more creepy and atmospheric background. Not quite what I would imagine that Barovia would look like, but still it proves the point that the actual background CAN have a significant impact on the atmosphere of the game play.
Now go back and play Resident Evil (not necessarily top down isometric, but absolutely not first person). I know when I played it for the first time, I was always jumping. Throw in limited save points, limited resources and some really creepy and atmospheric backdrops and sounds and you have very creepy and scary experience even in a CRPG.
I think there is absolutely a way that someone could meld these three concepts into a more than competent Horror experience, albeit with a Dungeons and Dragons play experience.
As far as the one or two steps removed? I think that is quite a lot in the mind of the game player. The fact that I am in a 'fantasy plane removed from a fantasy world' is almost no difference than being in a 'house outside of Raccoon City' or an asylum somewhere. It's all fantasy. If you ever played System Shock 3 or Doom 3 or any of the Sci-fi oriented Survival Horror games you'd get what I am saying.
The genre and back-drop are less important as the atmosphere and the story. A well written story with suitably creepy (and lethal) antagonists plus lots of twists and turns lend itself to almost any rule system including Dungeons and Dragons.
But your right, it's the writing that counts, and DnD can be scary (or not) in any setting. My point is, there is nothing about Ravenloft that makes it any better for telling a scary story than the Sword Coast. Indeed, the Hammer-Horror tropes are as likely to produce laughter as fear.
But as far as 'Got what it takes', ghouls, vampires, werewolves, wraiths and Demons? What else do you need? Beyond that it is all in the writing.
But enough on this topic. we can agree to disagree here I guess.
Good writing can make a squrrel scary. Probably more easily than a vampire, since everyone knows how to deal with a vampire, but who knows how to stop a mutant dire squirrel?
Kick it in the nuts.
If you play resident evil with the most powerful weapon and unlimited amo from the very beginning, it isn't very scary. Even knowing how to defeat each opponent is only useful IF you have the appropriate equipment in abundance.
Stick a party of characters in a room with a vampire and no silver or magic weapons, "KNOWING" that you need magic or silver (and not having it) isn't going to add to your confidence or ability in taking one out.
Party leader: "Get Back you foul undead monster. I know that silver will utterly destroy you!"
Vampire Lord: "And where pray is this silver?"
Party leader: Er... um.....?
Vampire lord lunchs the would be party members one at a time.
So in the set-up of the adventure you strip the party of anything that could potentially be used as a weapon against a vampire or other undead and then VERY SLOWLY give it back to them. I'd even go so far as to reduce the effectiveness of Clerics and Paladins 'Because you were in the demon dimension'.
And Strahd himself is something more than simply a master vampire. Within the confines of the game, the developers could make very special situations indeed whereby he has to be defeated. If you were trapped in a house/castle/town facing an enemy that could rip you to shreds, but that you simply did not have the ABILITY to harm would make for a very scary scenario. Obviously there would have to be a way to GET what you needed, but therein lies the story.
DM: "You are surrounded by a strange mist. Soon, the land starts to look unfamiliar."
Player 1: "I find some wood and start to sharpen some stakes".
Player 2: "I use my herbalism skill: is there any wolfsbane or wild garlic around?"
To actually scare the players you need to use unfamiliar monsters.
If I were making this (hypothetical) game, the players might know that it was Barovia and that there were vampires around, but it would be very far from clear who the vampires were and who were 'Friendlies'. Further, there would be no ready mechanic to simply start off crafting stakes, because although the player may know, the characters wouldn't. Plus, if you don't know who is who and simply start staking people, the general public would turn against the players. A well written survival horror adventure would be a mystery to unravel, not a brute force assault on "Known" enemies. Add to that the suggestion above about vampiric suggestion (which I really liked) and the ability to influence the party members in subtle ways and there is loads to panic about even knowing what you are facing.
It is all down to the writing and how well it is executed. But to say that the environment doesn't lend itself to survival horror (within D&D) is simply not considering how creative or inventive a developer might be. I personally can see endless possibilities. Admittedly, it could be badly executed. As with anything there is the possibility of failure. But to simply blanketly write it off as not possible is to miss opportunities that I think abound in the idea.
On the other hand, I see no reason to try and convince anyone who dismisses the idea as I have no investment other than it seems like a really cool idea. So I opt out of attempting to convince anyone any further.
Embrace the Hammer tropes and have fun with them is what I say.
As for how to scare players, I find stoking their already high levels of paranoia effective. After they "accidently" burned down an abandoned witch's cottage, strange wooden effergies keep appearing. Nothing else has happened (yet).
On the other hand, when I created a side quest in a haunted orphanage for halloween, the players determinedly refused to go anywhere near it.
NB Caliban already has a race. He is a hagspawn, that is spelled out in the play.
The thing to remember with Ravenloft is that "scary" isn't the goal; "creepy" is. Not "creepy" as in "do you want to take a look at my collection in the basement?" but "the hair stands up on the back of your neck as you realize you no longer hear any noises while you trek through the woods--all the animals have gone completely silent. Some clouds pass in front of the Sun, and although the light doesn't dim all that much the shadows in the woods grow deeper and darker, and seem to be reaching for you..... A cold sweat runs down your spine and you have the vague notion that you are being followed. No...not followed...*hunted*."
But, it is interesting (to me if no one else) that the original 'Dracula' story written by Brahm Stoker did not have any sort of love interest for the Vampire. As that is 'The Definitive' Vampire story and usually the one modeled after for these types of things I always find it interesting when they have the whole 'Star crossed lovers' being the 'Cure' for the vampire curse (or at least his downfall). Even later versions in cinema TV and other media all focus on this 'Love story' that just doesn't exist in although not the 'Source' for all vampire lore certainly one of the best known (or known but not understood apparently) references.