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.
The idea of vampires being "darkly and hauntingly beautiful, tragic creatures" is *very* modern, probably less than 40 years old. It was already a "thing" before Anne Rice set pen to paper to write Interview with a Vampire, which really made then entire subculture explode into real existence. It is also wildly inaccurate, as traditional vampires were anthropomorphic manifestations of walking disease, usually dating back to the time of the Black Death (even though the idea of immortal/blood-sucking creatures date back for millennia).
@brunardo I was around for the original I6 module--which was the best module available at the time (I wish I had never lost it but I moved after starting university)--and then for the boxed set which gave us the demi-plane of dread. The first "official" module for it was designed for 4th-level players and featured werewolves...only...you couldn't find any magic weapons during the course of the adventure you could use against them--the only option you had was to run. From every encounter. Or die. It wasn't planned very well, I assure you. Another module featured a 10th-level mage as the antagonist who had used Ghost Jar to put himself into a crown; anyone who picked up the crown would become "possessed" by the mage. Joy.
I read the first two Strahd novels and still have them. As I have said before, I knew P. N. Elrod in real life eons ago. She had a tremendous ego and if you didn't fawn over her and try to curry her favor then she had no use for you. The feeling was mutual--I had no use for her, either.
I am ashamed to admit that I am not up on my 'Strahd' lore.
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.
In the novel, Dracula's victims are always female, and he seduces them. It's about sex, rather than love, but in a repressed, Victorian fashion.
Personally, I would love to see a Ravenloft CRPG. It's the idea that it should try to be a "survival horror" game in the style of Silent Hill or all those generic "you are alone in a deserted mental hospital" games that I think is a bad one.
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 idea of vampires being "darkly and hauntingly beautiful, tragic creatures" is *very* modern, probably less than 40 years old. It was already a "thing" before Anne Rice set pen to paper to write Interview with a Vampire, which really made then entire subculture explode into real existence. It is also wildly inaccurate, as traditional vampires were anthropomorphic manifestations of walking disease, usually dating back to the time of the Black Death (even though the idea of immortal/blood-sucking creatures date back for millennia).
If you watch any of the old black and white (Christopher Lee etc..) Dracula movies (40's-50's) there is still the "Love interest" story line. It's been around a LOT longer than Anne Rice. I've always wondered why the deviation from the source material.
@Fardragon - maybe you and I read different versions of Dracula. In the book that I read, there was never even the remotest hint of sex, even in a repressed Victorian manner. In fact it is all told from the perspective of news paper clippings and journals such that you really couldn't include sex or allurement. And as for victims, all of the sailors on the ship were men. Quite a lot of the victims reported in the news papers were children. Even Lucy was not so much an erotic encounter (such as they always portray in the movies) but more an attack. She gets lured by a ghostly specter out into the night where she gets attacked. So I am not sure where you get the idea that it was all about sex. Again, maybe we read different versions of the book?
Again, not being a lorist of Strahd, it is apparent that the story was based loosely on Dracula. Or at least some version of Dracula. Maybe that is why they have that clandestine star crossed love story?
As an interesting note, the earliest stories of Vampires were not disease related. They came about largely when people went into comas and were thought to be dead. They would then recover sometime later, often times in the middle of the funeral, or more often times during/after the burial. These "Dead" people would literally claw themselves out of their own coffins and then get killed off by friends and family as 'The living dead'. Then there was obviously Vlad the Impaler, but that was more because of his ruthlessness than any disease.
I thought it came from Vlad but interesting history on the funeral coma's lol and love the reavers, never knew they were in ravenloft - so many good stuff from that campaign they can use - They can have multiple expansions after castle ravenloft for sure so much lore would be a waste not to use it...at a time ravenloft had so many modules, novels and campaigns it could all be brought back in the right way
The idea of vampires being "darkly and hauntingly beautiful, tragic creatures" is *very* modern, probably less than 40 years old. It was already a "thing" before Anne Rice set pen to paper to write Interview with a Vampire, which really made then entire subculture explode into real existence. It is also wildly inaccurate, as traditional vampires were anthropomorphic manifestations of walking disease, usually dating back to the time of the Black Death (even though the idea of immortal/blood-sucking creatures date back for millennia).
If you watch any of the old black and white (Christopher Lee etc..) Dracula movies (40's-50's) there is still the "Love interest" story line. It's been around a LOT longer than Anne Rice. I've always wondered why the deviation from the source material.
@Fardragon - maybe you and I read different versions of Dracula. In the book that I read, there was never even the remotest hint of sex, even in a repressed Victorian manner. In fact it is all told from the perspective of news paper clippings and journals such that you really couldn't include sex or allurement. And as for victims, all of the sailors on the ship were men. Quite a lot of the victims reported in the news papers were children. Even Lucy was not so much an erotic encounter (such as they always portray in the movies) but more an attack. She gets lured by a ghostly specter out into the night where she gets attacked. So I am not sure where you get the idea that it was all about sex. Again, maybe we read different versions of the book?
Again, not being a lorist of Strahd, it is apparent that the story was based loosely on Dracula. Or at least some version of Dracula. Maybe that is why they have that clandestine star crossed love story?
As an interesting note, the earliest stories of Vampires were not disease related. They came about largely when people went into comas and were thought to be dead. They would then recover sometime later, often times in the middle of the funeral, or more often times during/after the burial. These "Dead" people would literally claw themselves out of their own coffins and then get killed off by friends and family as 'The living dead'. Then there was obviously Vlad the Impaler, but that was more because of his ruthlessness than any disease.
The vampire's "feeding" substitutes for sex, his mind control represents seduction. If you don't believe me, try the sparknotes: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/themes.html. Dracula doesn't feed on the sailors on the Carpathia, he just kills them. That is why they don't rise as vampires. The children are all victims of Lucy.
The doomed romance bit of Strahd's story seems to draw more on another Stoker novel, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, one of the original "mummy" stories.
The vampire's "feeding" substitutes for sex, his mind control represents seduction. If you don't believe me, try the sparknotes: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/themes.html. Dracula doesn't feed on the sailors on the Carpathia, he just kills them. That is why they don't rise as vampires. The children are all victims of Lucy.
The doomed romance bit of Strahd's story seems to draw more on another Stoker novel, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, one of the original "mummy" stories.
It is an interesting read. I don't know that I necessarily buy that interpretation of things, but then art is pretty much what you take away from it. For me, I didn't get any of that from reading the book. But others may have.
The vampire's "feeding" substitutes for sex, his mind control represents seduction. If you don't believe me, try the sparknotes: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/themes.html. Dracula doesn't feed on the sailors on the Carpathia, he just kills them. That is why they don't rise as vampires. The children are all victims of Lucy.
The doomed romance bit of Strahd's story seems to draw more on another Stoker novel, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, one of the original "mummy" stories.
It is an interesting read. I don't know that I necessarily buy that interpretation of things, but then art is pretty much what you take away from it. For me, I didn't get any of that from reading the book. But others may have.
SparkNotes is farely basic stuff for A level Literature students.
You tend to read stuff stuff differently if you've studied Literature though.
Stoker's background is quite interesting, and the whole history of the writing of Dracula.
I would never study literature for the same reason that I would never study art. I would prefer to interpret the art form (or literature) the way it strikes me rather than being lead by the nose by someone else who has to find meaning in everything.
To quote Douglas Adams: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
I study most things. I don't believe there is anything that is made more beautiful by ignorance.
Ignorance, I agree. Being lead by the nose without thinking for yourself is in my view worse than ignorance. When I said I don't "Study" I meant in the conventional sense of having to have someone else tell me the relevance of something. Not that I don't think about things and derive my own meaning.
Possibly, but that doesn't make it any less relevant here as it pertains to appreciating something for what it is without having to have a deeper meaning.
Ignorance, I agree. Being lead by the nose without thinking for yourself is in my view worse than ignorance. When I said I don't "Study" I meant in the conventional sense of having to have someone else tell me the relevance of something.
That's not what I mean by study. You confuse knowledge with learning (like so many politicians do). You study a subject in order to gain the tools to better undestand it yourself. (Although a bit of knowledge can also be useful, e.g. Stoker's background, his relationship with Henry Irving, other novels of the period, etc).
Rote learning what other people have said about something (usually in order to pass an exam) is everything I hate about what passes for modern "education".
Possibly, but that doesn't make it any less relevant here as it pertains to appreciating something for what it is without having to have a deeper meaning.
Personally, I find it a bit offensive to use a quote to support a position the person you are quoting would have been vehemently opposed too. Douglas Adams was extemely well educated, with a great deal of knowledge and understanding of many subjects. He would never have advocated not studying something.
The quote is explaining how he can be an athiest and still find beauty in the natural world (about which he knew a very great deal).
@Fardragon - So I can't help what you choose to be offended by. I personally find people who get offended "On behalf of someone else" to be far to narcissistic for my tastes. However, having met the man, I think that Douglas Adams would be quite comfortable with my usage.
The passage that I quoted actually had nothing what so ever to do with religion but was a commentary about Ford Prefect not understanding why Zaphod Beeblebrox needed to have the planet that they were in orbit around to be Magrathea. This was MUCH more akin to obsessions like needing to find Atlantis (a reference that Trillion makes in the same conversation) or aliens or some significance in a book or painting beyond the beauty of it and nothing at all about religion. While it does lend itself somewhat to that topic I suppose, he was in fact discussing exactly what we are discussing, finding beauty and meaning without there having to be some higher importance (like a lost city or planet). While it is true that he was a self proclaimed 'Radical Atheist', that does not mean that every single line or sentence he produced was to that end. He was a much more well rounded individual than that.
As for the rest, there is a significant difference between knowledge and information. You, in quite a lot of our discussions over the past few years have demonstrated a GREAT deal of information, to your absolute credit. However, in a lot of instances you seem to have missed the KNOWLEDGE inherent in that information and quote almost rote facts. Facts without meaning (or failing that, meaning that others have told you to think so that you don't have too) are fairly hollow. The absolute brilliance of Mr Adams is that his words have meanings that transcend the individual instance of their writing and often lend themselves to much wider contexts.
But this is so incredibly off topic that I see no reason to continue the discussion from my perspective. You have your facts and I am unlikely to convince you of their actual meaning, so I step down from this discussion.
You have your facts and I am unlikely to convince you of their actual meaning, so I step down from this discussion.
Which is why learning is useful. You can use it to demonstrate the validity of your interpretation, by, for example, citing other people who have similar interpretations. Without the learning to be able to cite evidence to support your position you have no choice but to withdraw, as always.
You have your facts and I am unlikely to convince you of their actual meaning, so I step down from this discussion.
Which is why learning is useful. You can use it to demonstrate the validity of your interpretation, by, for example, citing other people who have similar interpretations. Without the learning to be able to cite evidence to support your position you have no choice but to withdraw, as always.
You have your facts and I am unlikely to convince you of their actual meaning, so I step down from this discussion.
Which is why learning is useful. You can use it to demonstrate the validity of your interpretation, by, for example, citing other people who have similar interpretations. Without the learning to be able to cite evidence to support your position you have no choice but to withdraw, as always.
Yes, I was pretty sure you wouldn't see my point.
If someone doesn't see your point, it is a fair indication that you haven't argued it cognizantly.
It's been heavily hinted that Beamdog's next project is BG3 with 5th edition rules.
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.
How about something like the upcoming ''Vampyr'' game?
It's been heavily hinted that Beamdog's next project is BG3 with 5th edition rules.
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.
How about something like the upcoming ''Vampyr'' game?
Not familiar with it, I'll look it up. But I would tend to favour psychological horror over survival horror, which too often just means crank up the difficulty to 11 and have things jump out of dark corners.
Maybe start with the question "what terrifies Strahd von Zarovich?"
Cool! Just, wizards, be so kind as to not screw up Strahd. Also, I SINCERELY hope this is set in Ravenloft. Don't get me wrong, I love Strahd, and I love Faerun, but Strahd needs to be in a low power setting to work.
Cool! Just, wizards, be so kind as to not screw up Strahd. Also, I SINCERELY hope this is set in Ravenloft. Don't get me wrong, I love Strahd, and I love Faerun, but Strahd needs to be in a low power setting to work.
Cool! Just, wizards, be so kind as to not screw up Strahd. Also, I SINCERELY hope this is set in Ravenloft. Don't get me wrong, I love Strahd, and I love Faerun, but Strahd needs to be in a low power setting to work.
Its pretty obvious its going to be a remake of the I6 module which isn't in any particular setting and has a self contained plot.
yeah ravenloft should always be its own setting and different domains can offer challenges to different levels...the mists also connect to other settings so can pluck and return them at some point. I like faerun but not everything has to revolve around it.
Comments
@brunardo I was around for the original I6 module--which was the best module available at the time (I wish I had never lost it but I moved after starting university)--and then for the boxed set which gave us the demi-plane of dread. The first "official" module for it was designed for 4th-level players and featured werewolves...only...you couldn't find any magic weapons during the course of the adventure you could use against them--the only option you had was to run. From every encounter. Or die. It wasn't planned very well, I assure you. Another module featured a 10th-level mage as the antagonist who had used Ghost Jar to put himself into a crown; anyone who picked up the crown would become "possessed" by the mage. Joy.
I read the first two Strahd novels and still have them. As I have said before, I knew P. N. Elrod in real life eons ago. She had a tremendous ego and if you didn't fawn over her and try to curry her favor then she had no use for you. The feeling was mutual--I had no use for her, either.
@Fardragon - maybe you and I read different versions of Dracula. In the book that I read, there was never even the remotest hint of sex, even in a repressed Victorian manner. In fact it is all told from the perspective of news paper clippings and journals such that you really couldn't include sex or allurement. And as for victims, all of the sailors on the ship were men. Quite a lot of the victims reported in the news papers were children. Even Lucy was not so much an erotic encounter (such as they always portray in the movies) but more an attack. She gets lured by a ghostly specter out into the night where she gets attacked. So I am not sure where you get the idea that it was all about sex. Again, maybe we read different versions of the book?
Again, not being a lorist of Strahd, it is apparent that the story was based loosely on Dracula. Or at least some version of Dracula. Maybe that is why they have that clandestine star crossed love story?
As an interesting note, the earliest stories of Vampires were not disease related. They came about largely when people went into comas and were thought to be dead. They would then recover sometime later, often times in the middle of the funeral, or more often times during/after the burial. These "Dead" people would literally claw themselves out of their own coffins and then get killed off by friends and family as 'The living dead'. Then there was obviously Vlad the Impaler, but that was more because of his ruthlessness than any disease.
The doomed romance bit of Strahd's story seems to draw more on another Stoker novel, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, one of the original "mummy" stories.
You tend to read stuff stuff differently if you've studied Literature though.
Stoker's background is quite interesting, and the whole history of the writing of Dracula.
To quote Douglas Adams: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
[NB that Douglas Adams quote is about religion.]
Rote learning what other people have said about something (usually in order to pass an exam) is everything I hate about what passes for modern "education". Personally, I find it a bit offensive to use a quote to support a position the person you are quoting would have been vehemently opposed too. Douglas Adams was extemely well educated, with a great deal of knowledge and understanding of many subjects. He would never have advocated not studying something.
The quote is explaining how he can be an athiest and still find beauty in the natural world (about which he knew a very great deal).
The passage that I quoted actually had nothing what so ever to do with religion but was a commentary about Ford Prefect not understanding why Zaphod Beeblebrox needed to have the planet that they were in orbit around to be Magrathea. This was MUCH more akin to obsessions like needing to find Atlantis (a reference that Trillion makes in the same conversation) or aliens or some significance in a book or painting beyond the beauty of it and nothing at all about religion. While it does lend itself somewhat to that topic I suppose, he was in fact discussing exactly what we are discussing, finding beauty and meaning without there having to be some higher importance (like a lost city or planet). While it is true that he was a self proclaimed 'Radical Atheist', that does not mean that every single line or sentence he produced was to that end. He was a much more well rounded individual than that.
As for the rest, there is a significant difference between knowledge and information. You, in quite a lot of our discussions over the past few years have demonstrated a GREAT deal of information, to your absolute credit. However, in a lot of instances you seem to have missed the KNOWLEDGE inherent in that information and quote almost rote facts. Facts without meaning (or failing that, meaning that others have told you to think so that you don't have too) are fairly hollow. The absolute brilliance of Mr Adams is that his words have meanings that transcend the individual instance of their writing and often lend themselves to much wider contexts.
But this is so incredibly off topic that I see no reason to continue the discussion from my perspective. You have your facts and I am unlikely to convince you of their actual meaning, so I step down from this discussion.
Maybe start with the question "what terrifies Strahd von Zarovich?"
The Ravenloft campaign setting itself wasn't created until several years later.