Modern Ravenloft Brainstorming

[raygun goth]

I've been on a wild weird mood lately, and got it in my head to imagine if Ravenloft were based on modern horror instead of Gothic horror - and occasionally dipped into SyFy Original Motion Picture territory. What sort of domains might crop up?

Some thoughts -

Hotel California - like the song obvs; ruled by a crazed writer who can't write himself out of the story

Spaceport Zero - this is where you can get stalked by robots controlled by the insane AI and also there are aliens; the AI is in a constant state of trying to remove humans it deems a threat while also protecting them

San Fabrica - a mad CEO runs a cyberpunk dystopia city on the verge of constant collapse; he is tormented by his inability to expand

Lucerne Peak - this strange mountain town always seems a little off, with quirky residents, odd lights in the woods, and rumors of abductions, skullduggery, and “something evil” lurking just across the river; it is ruled by a paranormal investigator who can never prove “the truth”

Anytown - everyone is cheerful and smiling and happy to see you and listening to sock hop, because if they don't, the Smiley Man makes them go away at night; the Smiley Man wants a perfect world, but he can never have it because he kills people to try to make it happen

The Great Smokey Swamp? - named for its fog, this rich backwoods country is filled with the salt of the Earth, not to mention gatormen, hellbillies, and lonely cabins hiding in the woods; ruled by a police chief who distrusts everyone, can never prevent himself from being killed, and tries to take it out on newcomers with nonsensical laws and demands

Windy Valley - a burning coal-mining town that eats your flaws?

_________________________

i also kinda wanna say that there are lesser forms of damnation that afflict residents of these domains without actually making them darklords. like a used car salesman who can't be released until he permanently sells the car that smells like a corpse no matter what people try.

Magical dekotora fanatics as the Vistani stand-in
pros: not married to pretendy-Romani stereotypes, wicked cool trucks, hair band culture is perfectly acceptable

Domains
Each Domain is a prison cell. When borders are closed, strange phenomena prevent access; anything from the shield systems of Spaceport Zero, the endless forests and mountains of Lucerne Peak, to the choking smog clouds of San Fabrica.

The Night and the Lost Highways
It's always night on the open road. Wrong turns, bad exit signs, and incorrect information dot the Lost Highways, making them impossible to navigate by any but the most knowledgeable. A Lost Highway can be found almost anywhere, with the victim stumbling out onto the road from a dark forest, or out of a window or door.

There are cursed travelers who wander the countryside, trapped in the early morning twilight- never again will they see the sun rise. If you encounter such a traveler while making your own way in the early morning, their loneliness will drive them to accompany you- perhaps asking you to guide them or saying that they're headed to the same destination.

When the sun rises, the traveler will disappear- and so will you, if you walk or ride alongside them. Of course, you won't perceive this- instead, you'll wonder where your companion could have gotten to, and perhaps be surprised that the sun hasn't yet risen.

[Bohandas]

I've always thought that Alpha Complex from the game Paranoia had the makings of a great Dread Domain

[Bryan]

You might be better served by a large ship crashing in the desert/mountains, a shadowy Area 51 style installation and small innocent communities of civilians more so than something as straightforward as a spaceport.

In addition there could be a domain where there could be a lake with a campground or compound that, by tradition, the area's youth is sent every summer starting at the age of 13 ☺ until the age of 21. So every summer is something of a crucible for the young people of the area. A cross between Friday the 13th and the Hunger Games.

[raygun goth]

That's not a bad idea (it would work with stuff like The Deadly Spawn, Bad Taste, Scanners, the Thing, They Live, and that family of conspiracy-horror), though I would like "claustrophobic science fiction horror" to have a place. The type of stuff that Alien brought us, along with It!, Saturn 3, Deep Star Six, Leviathan, Dark Star, Even Horizon, and so on.

A really cool domain might be one based on atomic horror - Blood Beast, The Blob, Them!, Not of This Earth!, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Day of the Triffids. It needs to be in a desert, obviously, and prominently feature the Vasquez rocks.

[Bohandas]

the titular towns from Twin Peaks and Gravity Falls would make good dread domains

[Bohandas]

*An orwellian bureaucratic police state constantly at war with another domain which investigation will indicate does not seem to actually exist; its invading soldiers and artillery apparently just materialize out of the mists

*A domain in which the residents are being killed and replaced by robots or pod people which the dark lord deems more "perfect", but never quite perfect enough

*A forest menaced by a deranged woman who blames the proprietors of the local campground for the death of her son.

*A mental hospital whose director is either sadistic or has a monomaniacal obsession with some problem related to the mind or to the subject of a patient or patients' obsessions

[Eldan]

The aftermath of a great disaster. A city in ruins, streets flooded, hungry survivors camping on rooftops, disease rampant, packs of looters (inhuman looters?) roaming the streets. Start with hurrican aftermath and ramp up to taste, with something like ghouls. Ruled by either a corrupt mayor who uses disaster relief on himself for pointless luxury or a looter-gang warlord.

[Bohandas]

Something based on the old idea of Al-Qaeda operatives hiding out in a cave somewhere

[Bohandas]

Caraway Street - An crapsaccharine inner-city neighboorhood similar to a sinister version of Sesame Street where either 1.) Some of the "monsters" really are monsters and/or 2.) The Count stalks the night in search of blood

EDIT:
(BTW, did you all know that vampires being obsessed with counting things is actually a real thing from some traditional folkloric traditions)

[sktarq]

I always found that looking at a conflict is often a good place to start when building a dread domain. And building it out of the darklord is key. Not every adventure will touch the darklord but everything about the domain will be shaped by the nature of the prison that has been created for that darklord. So create places that spawn lots of adventures by the nature of the place created for the darklord.

Old Money/New Money - A city where people can build new identities, new business etc but the old families still control things behind the scenes. The Darklord is still scene as new money and not represented in spite of having far more money that anyone else. could well base this in a city (or part of a city-like a NY Borough-actually a group of Broroughs to make a NY like city could be very interesting)

Classic Culturalist vs New Power. - A place where a mostly historical culture still shapes a new and powerful culture/political group. The Darklord sees the culture he wants to promote turned into a farce and window dressing even as the city/nation he controls grows more powerful. In the US a Fracophile leader of New Orleans for example.

A farmer who is obsessed with growing the perfect crop - of beans, or cows, of kids. . . pity the rest of the town has to deal with the rejected inbred kids, chemically mutated walking plants, and the hyperagressive cows and hogzillas. . .but the great farms do make for a decent economy at least so people keep moving in.

Fox Mulder as a darklord. . . Sure he has the okay now as his own boss to search out "the truth" about the Aliens etc but the Distant Powers do not give up secrets easily and just create more and more complex twisted plots and new threats . . . Fox is sure he is close to discovering the truth meanwhile the domain is haunted by abduction teams, half breeds, etc. . .

A Hollywood actor who has the ability to doppelganger but no talent to act. Is thus trapped in cycle of usurping to next big thing in the acting scene and faking the death of star they were pretending to be before. . . But can't maintain the spotlight as their new movies/TV/etc fail since they can't act. Thus creating a city dominated by a Hollywood of tragic star deaths, an ever hungry maw of hope and talent. In the shadow of the search for fame thousands of crimes would flourish.

a darklord doctor who is trying to replace or reinvigorate the body of his withered love. But every drug treatment, bionic carapace, or neuro syth he creates corrupts the test subjects. . . problematically for the locals.

The darklord is actually an awakened mastiff who hops around the domain trying to deal with the endless monster infestations with his four companions. While he has some success those which he catches are almost all frauds - people wearing masks. Meanwhile the real monsters either disappear on the own or are caught by various other heroes in the domain.

A Casandra who can write horror story after horror story of the horrible things that happen in his domain. Pity that every time he dies during one of these stories he wakes up to a "reset" domain. The locals love his stories and have made hima bestseller. He adds much color to a boring fishing/tourist/lumber region as they never remember the events but non-locals do remember.

[Bohandas]

But what are these darklords' sins?

[lt_murgen]

It might be a good intellectual exercise to look at horror movies that exist, and extrapolate them into dread domains:

Silent Hill- might be as close to a fully formed dread domain as we can get.
Cabin in the Woods- normal world where some massive secret organization commits grisley murder to placate the elder gods.
The purge- another almost fully formed dread domain. Restrict it to a medium sized city in the mountains where the roads get closed by avalanches.
resident evil- might be too big, but a mad scientist/dread lord would work.

[Corneel]

Deranged African warlord (think Joseph Kony, Foday Sankoh or Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie) with a domain peopled by drugged to the eyeballs child soldiers and adults working their hands to the bone digging for diamonds or risk getting them cut off, but that might be too depressing.

[Bohandas]

Several repressively theocratic domains evocative of the modern middle-east, medieval europe, and ancient canaan warring over the correct interpretation of a deity whose corpse the player characters encountered floating through the astral plane prior to coming to the demiplane of dread

[sktarq]

But what are these darklords' sins?

Actually I'd say that is of far less importance. Unless you plan to have the players directly interact with the darklord it is mostly irrelevant. What is key is that the whole domain (the parts the players deal with) is shaped to be a prison that both holds out hope and tortures the psyche of that darklord.

So the personality and wants of the darklord matter more than their sin in general gameplay


Ravenloft is tragic and gothic not just bloody and death ridden.

[tantric]

interzone - based on William Burrough's Naked Lunch (horror theme - drug addiction that leads to mythos creepy)

darklord: dr. benway


interzone is a mythical version of Tangiers. two drugs are sold here: the meat of the giant brazilian centipede and mugwump juice.

[raygun goth]

These are pretty much all great - repeats definitely help narrow down what sorts of things players will be expecting and what domains will feature more prominently.

I would be lying if I said there wasn't a copy of Naked Lunch on the bookshelf next to my desktop >_>

[thorr-kan]

There used to be a guy on the WotC boards who was blogging running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in d20 Modern. It was set in the Balkans and part of a failed UN mission.

Alas, my Google-fu is weak, and I can't find it on the wayback machine.

[Bohandas]

There used to be a guy on the WotC boards who was blogging running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in d20 Modern. It was set in the Balkans and part of a failed UN mission.

Alas, my Google-fu is weak, and I can't find it on the wayback machine.

Check the archive linked to on this thread

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...rting-them-out

[sktarq]

Darklord: a ghost who created synths
The place is more based off Bladerunner or its off world colonies. Where synths are used, abused, and disposed of casually. Only a few besides the ghost know that the synths can have souls.



A ship that claims to be going to another star is burried deep underground. Is actually a breeding experiment for the creation of psychoportation powers. The controllers oof the experiment are just trapped by. Their multigenerational ties to the project. The powers that form seem. To bring outsiders as often as they show potential to created Astral travel. The controlled. Breeding started. By in the 50's/60's and the culture hasn't changed in the. Same way as aboveground. I see the ascension series

[Bohandas]

Darklord: a ghost who created synths
The place is more based off Bladerunner or its off world colonies. Where synths are used, abused, and disposed of casually. Only a few besides the ghost know that the synths can have souls.



A ship that claims to be going to another star is burried deep underground. Is actually a breeding experiment for the creation of psychoportation powers. The controllers oof the experiment are just trapped by. Their multigenerational ties to the project. The powers that form seem. To bring outsiders as often as they show potential to created Astral travel. The controlled. Breeding started. By in the 50's/60's and the culture hasn't changed in the. Same way as aboveground. I see the ascension series

What's with the punctuation?

[sktarq]

ah did that from my phone with a twitchy spacebar. . . tends to double space (leaving a period) oops

[Bohandas]

Ah.

It's usually adjacent letters with my phone.

Anyway, I think we'll be getting a lot of good new material to work with very soon

...hmm, how about a domain modeled after Atlantic City in some way, perhaps with perpetual hurricane and recession damage

[sktarq]

Another NYC borough style location.
Centred on a UN knockoff that is a cesspool of corruption, petty bickering, and political/beuracratic maneuvering that leads the forces of freedom and unity to be tool of oppression. Outside dozens of immigrant groups live in Little-Nation neighborhoods. But in deep competition and riven by gangs, but all under a "peaceful" alderman council.

[Bohandas]

*a cold war era soviet puppet state (both those of the standard eastern european type and also Eastern Germany [especially East Berlin])
*something similar to Haiti under Papa Doc Duvalier, except the secret police are really do have the unnatural powers Duvalier's Tonton Macoute enforcers were rumored to have (possibly they are also actual literal bogeymen, instead of merely being named after a legendary bogeyman)
*Something based on the Philippines and Rodrigo Duterte's demented anti-drug campaign consisting of sending his enforcers to gun down suspected dealers without trial. Perhaps in Ravenloft the amount of drugs available on the streets increases the harder he cracks down (and conversely decreases when he recalls forces to find a new angle of attack for the next crackdown, but when the crackdown comes things just get worse once more)
*Jonestown
*the Branch-Davidian compound
*a small neighborhood with the domineering manager of a popular local store or restaurant as the darklord

[Bohandas]

A Sovereign Citizen-like movement consisting primarily of fiends trapped in the demiplane (fiends, if you recall, are surrounded by a sort of mobile mini-domain called a reality wrinkle (at least in 3e Ravenloft, I don't know about other editions) which overrides the control of any area's normal darklord)

[Bohandas]

the premise of Big Trouble In Little China could form the basis of a domain. David Lo Pan has all the traits of a Ravenloft darklord; evil, magic powers, wields great influence over an area but is trapped there, object of his desire perpetually just out of his grasp

Lo Pan: My problem is this place. This place is my tomb. I'm buried here. A young man, a king, a warrior, is entombed in this old man's crippled body. And all I need is a woman, Mr Burton, a special kind of woman with dragon-green eyes, to make me whole and young again, so that I may rule the universe from beyond the grave.
Wang: Ch'ing-ti. The God of the East.
Jack: Who, him? This guy?
Lo Pan: No, not me, Mr Burton. My demon. The god I must appease in order to regain my heart, my blood. A girl with green eyes to satisfy Ch'ing-ti, a girl brave enough to embrace the naked blade. When I find her, I will marry her.
Wang: Never!
Lo Pan: Ch'ing-ti will be happy and my curse lifted.
Jack: You can rule the universe from beyond the grave.
Lo Pan: Indeed!
Jack: Or check into a psycho ward, whichever comes first...What? I'm supposed to buy this ****? 2,000 years and he can't find a broad to fit the bill? Come on, Dave, you must be doin' somethin' seriously wrong.
Lo Pan: There have been others, to be sure. There are always others, are there not? You seem to be one who knows the difficulties between men and women, how seldom it works out. And yet we all keep trying, like fools.

[thorr-kan]

the premise of Big Trouble In Little China could form the basis of a domain. David Lo Pan has all the traits of a Ravenloft darklord; evil, magic powers, wields great influence over an area but is trapped there, object of his desire perpetually just out of his grasp

That's...not the Ravenloft you're looking for! Where's the existential dread, the horror, the dark and brooding angst?

And yet, you are right. It scans successfully. Huh. Ravenloft as action-comedy. I'm a little stunned here.

[tantric]

has anyone mentioned Chernobyl? gotta have your mutants.....

something cronenberg = videodrome with existenz?

how about ghostbusters? ;-)

[sktarq]

A city dedicated to research and the furthering of humanity but is more Almas 16 than silicon Valley. What they study are earth ending weapons, viruses, torture methods, mind control, etc. Being so dangerous these things are classified and as much effort is spent looking over one's shoulder for spies as goes into the research itself. The scientists are in a gilded cage as they can never leave once they have learned the secrets of the place. The ghost of the founding endowment giver (think Mr Smithson of the Smithsonian) or founder rails against the paranoia, secretiveness, and general harm while still being enthralled by the scientific