Designer(s) Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman, Bruce Nesmith, Andria Hayday, William W.Publisher(s) TSR, Inc Wizards of the Coast Swords Sorcery Studios and Arthaus ( White Wolf Publishing imprints) Publication date 19832019 Genre(s) Gothic horror System(s) Advanced Dungeons Dragons 1st and 2nd Editions; Dungeons Dragons 3rd Ed.It is an alternate time-space existence known as a pocket dimension or demiplane, called the Demiplane of Dread, which consists of a collection of land pieces called domains, brought together by a mysterious force known only as the Dark Powers.
Each domain is tailored to and mystically ruled by a being called a Darklord who is forever trapped and surrounded by magical mists surrounding the domain. As originally established in the Ravenloft: Realm of Terror boxed set known as the Black Box released in 1990, The Ravenloft campaign setting was located in the Ethereal Plane. As a physical manifestation of that plane, lands, monsters and even people were created out of the mysterious mists, and the realm acted as a prison where one could enter or be transported, but means of escape were few. Other Ravenloft Domains and Darklords were eventually added in various ADD 2nd edition (and then later in 3rd edition) products establishing a core continent attached around Barovia which could be traveled to by others if their respective lords allowed entering or leaving their borders; while some Domains remained isolated in the mists and were referred to as Islands. Dungeon Masters are encouraged to use scenes that build apprehension and fear, culminating in the eventual face-to-face meeting with the nameless evil. Characters have a much greater significance attached to their acts, especially if they are morally impure, as they risk coming under the influence of the Dark Powers (through the game process called dark powers checks) and gradually transforming themselves into figures of evil. One exception is the phlogiston of the Spelljammer setting. The phlogiston blocks all planar travel, but the Ravenloft mists can appear in deep space inside crystal shells, according to the Complete Spacefarers Handbook. Their exact nature and number are deliberately kept vague, allowing for plot development in accordance with the Gothic tradition of storytelling where the heroes are frequently outclassed and outnumbered by unknowable evil forces beyond their control. Where the player characters are often tormented and opposed by the Darklords, the Darklords are themselves tormented and opposed by the Dark Powers. Of course, the difference lies in order of powerwhile many DD adventures focus on allowing a band of heroes to prevail over a Darklord (much as in the spirit of Bram Stokers novel Dracula ), no such victory over the Dark Powers seems possible, or even conceivable, for the Darklords. Vecna and Lord Soth escaped Ravenloft, but are the only two Darklords known to have done so; Vecna by attaining the status of Greater God (and thus becoming too powerful for the Dark Powers to contain) and Lord Soth by ignoring his domain and punishment, causing the Dark Powers to lose interest in imprisoning him, and agents of his former curse on the world of Krynn coming to collect him. Each time, for example, Strahds own actions may be partially culpable for his failure, and as such he may go through crippling self-recrimination, rather than cursing the gods solely and giving up. Most other Darklords have similar tales of frustration, kept all the more unbearable because the flicker of the possibility of success is never truly extinguished. Vlad Drakov, the Darklord of Falkovnia whose military expeditions are doomed to constant failure, seems even to be totally oblivious to any non-mortal factors in his repeated defeats. Although their machinations are often directly responsible for the misery of many of Ravenlofts inhabitants, they also appear to play a role as dispensers of justice. Some tales of innocents who have escaped Ravenloft for happier environs are attributed to the Dark Powers, who have judged a being worthy of reward and release from their misty domain. In a sense, the Dark Powers are intended to be eternal unknowns, an array of mercurial, unforeseeable, and inscrutable wills whose motives and actions the player characters cannot hope to understand. It was popular enough to spawn a 1986 sequel, Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill, and an Advanced Dungeons Dragons Adventure Gamebooks novel, Master of Ravenloft, the same year. Many of these early novels were by authors who would later receive wider fame as horrordark fantasy authors. These authors have included Elaine Bergstrom, P. N. Elrod, Christie Golden, and Laurell K. Hamilton. 9 10. Specific references to DD -specific deities were replaced with new names in the White Wolf Ravenloft settings (for example, Bane was changed to the Lawgiver).
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