How would you run a game set in the Castlevania universe?

Not him, but the shit Belmonts kill at first levels like they're nothing can decimate an entire town by itself

These guys get the fun parts of Castlevania.

Anyway, OP, you want to set this in the Castlevania Universe. I'd definitely go with higher level characters and low-level monsters until boss encounters. In terms of theme, start with Ravenloft monsters and depending on what Castlevania game you most want to emulate, go from there. The original has classic movie monsters, but later games add in more kitchen-sink mythology.

If you really want to emulate the games, reduce die-rolling, add in check points, lives, game overs, and magic items that open up areas of the castle. Of course, this goes against normal tabletop RPG mechanics and might not be what you want.

Elaborate some more, OP. I've played damn near every game to completion.

I like the explanation on the monsters that Dracula has some lazy ass demonic soulsmiths making them, so they base them on human mythology on purpose.

Tick-tock rock around the block
Knock-knock, who’s there?
It’s TREVOR BELMONT’S COCK

This, Also do not be afraid to give players grim deaths. The whole point of castlevania is the grim dark fact you could just end up dead.

Just do not be a dick about it.

Run ten adventures and then randomly retcon three of them

I've been waiting for this thread. Kinda been obsessed with this series for a long time

First of all, the Netflix cartoon is a great reference if you want make things just a bit more serious, plus it's the most narrative Castlevania media so that's good too.

So, first of all, here's what you have:

1.A gigantic bestiary of monsters to choose from
castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Bestiary

Here you can choose the list by game, but really, you can basically choose anything from any mythology or lore in the world and even put our favorite DnD baddies, and it would not be out of place.

2.Dracula's Castle is a great location, because it is a place of chaos where anything goes. Underground lakes of water and lava, Gardens of exotic flora. Clock towers with crazy machinery. I imagine letting your players explore it freely would be the most fun. BUT, eve if you don't wanna limit yourself to the castle, you can explore the gloomy Eastern European surroundings of the castle (2,3, Order of Ecclesia), find portals within the castle that lead into most diverse pocket dimensions (Portrait of Ruin) or fuck, how about an adventure across all Europe (Bloodlines)

3. I'd suggest allowing your players to take upon the roles that fit the setting:
I can tell you the kinds of hero characters the appeared in the series and you can do what you want with them, making them into class or whatever:

Vampire Hunter, Elemental Caster (Ice, Fire and Lighting), Pirate, Half-Vampire, Spirit Summoner, Swordsman, Knight, Wizard (Transformation, Elements, Summons), Werewolf, Gunslinger, Hell Smith (can create various demons)

Then you have Soma and Shanoa, who are kinda a special case but you could definitely made them into a class that's all about copying the powers of the enemies.

Ravenloft sucks

But what system would be the best for this?

RAVENLOFT

I MEAN, STRAHD IS LITERALLY VIDEOGAME DRACULA

What system would be best for emulating a video game?

4e.

And if we want something other than D&D?

>tfw got some heavy brass dice that would do just the trick

It's a dungeon crawl of fantasmagoria through the mysterious castle that appeared in your game world. Use actual game maps as dungeon maps

The game maps for the exploration ones are often very vertical, so they probably wouldn't really work that well for an RPG outside of basic inspiration on a room to room basis

Pick a system that will allow you to have flexible player builds and if it's well supported a stable Bestiary to pull from.

I'd use GURPS since I'm familiar with it but you could do it with any Generic system and even stuff like FATE if you want it to.

You could always use maps from the N64 ga--oh, wait.

Not OP, but I'm also thinking of doing a Castlevania game.

- Low crunch system. Castlevania is about badasses, so you need a system that will let the player be badass while still offering challenge. Making a character full of personality is more important than making a "survivable" build.

- On the other hand, I don't think FATE or other extremely rule-light systems would capture the feel of playing the old games. There's something fun in rolling a fistful of dice and saying MEDUSA I'LL MURDER YO ASS when you get a critical.

- On the third hand, Castlevania in a mix of action and horror, so be sure to put actual scary moments in it. Make it clear that there are things stronger than the players in the castle, and every room may be the last. There are things the chracters will have to outsmart or simply run from, like Trevor does in the series. Also, the fact the characters are strong doesn't mean the game can't be creepy. Mario 64 is about kicking bowser's ass but the FUCKING PIANO is still a good scare.

- The SNES/PS1 games have awesome soundtracks. Use them.

- If you're going to make a dungeon, don't design it as a straight dungeong crawl to Dracula. Put secrets, optional bosses and cool stuff hidden out of the beaten path. Castlevania is more about the, well, Castle, than about Dracula.

- I've been thinking Dread - The First Book of Pandemonium as system. If someone could link me to the pdf it would be great, since it doesn't seem to be in Da Archive. I found the very basics of the system and a couple supplements, but it would be nice to have the bestiaries and magic tables.

- Lamentations of the Flame Princess is not a good system for this game imo, but the setting fit perfectly in Castlevania.

DRACULA'S CASTLE IS BACK

THE BELMONT CLAN HAS BEEN LOST

ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO LEAD AN ASSAULT ON CASTLEVANIA AGAINST THE ODDS?

>- Low crunch system. Castlevania is about badasses, so you need a system that will let the player be badass while still offering challenge. Making a character full of personality is more important than making a "survivable" build.
To add to this: you probably want to have something that lets mooks die really quickly (so you can get through a bunch in a session) but also lets bosses be more drawn-out encounters (but not too drawn out - you don't want an entire session being nothing but a bossfight).
In that respect, the early (joke) suggestion of D&D 4E isn't entirely off the mark: the way it handles minions is pretty fitting, but the combat length for boss fights is probably a bit too much. Castlevania is less about combat than it is about exploration, IMHO.

At the same time, though, you want them to be a bit of a threat if they aren't dealt with - be it through overwhelming you through sheer numbers or just straight-up attrition, as each one chips you down a bit but then you can't find any wallchickens and you die a death of a thousand cuts.
I don't know how the hell you'd handle jumpy motherfuckers and make them as annoying as they are in the game, but they'd maybe be a good example to look at emulating.

Also, yeah, you definitely want some megadungeon design work put into Castlevania itself. Big, expansive, labyrinthine, lots of secrets and shortcuts. Nonlinear with a bunch of backtracking through rooms and corridors.
Make the players draw a map if you want to, I guess - you could include mapping-related challenges (the castle literally twists and turns and changes itself as you go through), but I don't know how well they'd work for the theme. It's easy for that to get frustrating.

Platforming is going to be really hard to capture in tabletop. You definitely don't want to be saying "A skeleton is throwing axes from across a large pit" every time you enter a room.

I've also been thinking about how you'd fit in exploring with new abilities, like when you finally get a dash or double jump that lets you access a room that was previously out of reach.

I think the thing to do is definitely give players spells or abilities that have uses in combat and during navigation, and then for platforming rooms give them a choice between using spells to handle the room safely or rolling to jump their way through.

So in the axe-throwing skeleton room you can spend some MP to fireball or holy water the skeleton, or you can roll to jump the pit while dodging axes (in which case you always make it over, but might take damage). This lets you handle most rooms with only basic enemies in just a few rolls but also makes you choose each time between spending resources or risking health.

Platforming and platforming abilities should probably be replaced by more horizontal whatsits. And you probably want to replace your metaphorical "keys" with something else, even if it's just literal keys or, hell, something like Alucard turning into mist.
Hell if I know what to do about that, but I definitely know that you can't just translate videogame mechanics 1:1 and expect them to work well in tabletop.

Personally I think you should probably aim for individual mooks being one roll to deal with, maybe two if the first one was particularly bad. Or no rolls if you spend hearts, perhaps.

Yeah I think we're on the same page. You definitely want the castle to be full of stuff, but that stuff should both present a meaningful choice and be quick to resolve. So having the option to spend magic/hearts to resolve the room immediately or making one or two rolls to resolve the room at the risk of health seems like the way to go.

So for the most part you're making decisions on a room by room basis and mooks are just part of a room description. They might determine which weapons or spells could be used to clear the room, but they're not treated as a combat encounter. Actually going into combat time would be reserved for bosses and other particularly notably enemies.

It really depends if you're talking about Classicvania or Igavania

Classicvania were hard-hard-HARDcore platformers, where the player characters had an intentionally gimpy moveset and your greatest threat was the stairs. In fact, NES Ninja Gaiden uses pretty much the same engine and mechanics. For these games, low level characters are fine, and even expected. This should be more laser focused on getting to Dracula, and a little more monster mash-y. I'd play this in WHFRP or Zweihander, because your characters will die. A lot.

Then there's Igavania, so called because of the massive shift in direction Igarashi spearheaded in Symphony of the Night. This is the version where mooks die quickly, and the focus should be on exploration of Castlevania and it's surrounding lands rather then making a bee-line to Big D. 4e or 5e D&D should work fine, although the Savage Worlds suggestion above ain't bad.

On the subject of exploration in vidya, and learning from it for tabletop:
jrients.blogspot.com/2016/12/just-out-of-reach.html
Still haven't lurked enough to know if linking to blog posts is a major faux pas, but it seemed vaguely relevant.

Castlevania 2 stole its box art from Ravenloft actually.

CoS would be a good inspiration if nothing else.

i love LOTFP but it wouldn't be good a combat heavy game like a Castlevania inspired one.

I'd recommend mini six instead

I know. I was talking more about the early modern/weird fantasy setting being good for inspiration.

Yeah! That feeling when you find a scroll or an item and immediately remember that place you need to go back to is definitely something you'd want to capture. Then just put the relevant upgrades behind boss fights to Castlevania it up.

Designing stuff like that for a party is a little trickier than in single player experiences, though, unless you don't mind creating situations that will split the party.

With a party is pretty easy, I think. You just have to lock the upgrades to a specific character. The big book that has a ritual that turns paintings into doorways can't be used by anyone except the magic user. The rune that opens magically sealed doors can't be used by anyone except the person who knows how to carve runes into their own body. The scroll with a secret technique to jump super high to get above the obstacle (And either carry everyone else up or remove it from the far side) is worthless to the wimpy non-martial types.

Now I have to play that game.

BESM could work

Holy fuck, this should not have made me laugh as hard as it did. well played user.

Uh...
This may be a stupid question, but is BESM a good system or is just a meme-grade garbage?

...All right, so. Not exactly a 'how would you run', but more a concept for a campaign I guess, and...anyway.

In the early half of the 1940s, the spectre of war spreads again over Europe. Axis armies march like a swarm of carnivorous ants into every country and nation, bringing violence and destruction in their wake. Disturbingly, there are reports from some shell-shocked frontliners returning from the fields of things most would consider impossible - great hulking abominations, men turning into feral animalistic beasts, even the dead rising to attack and consume the living.
In the country of Wallachia, a particular city has been under siege for some time, hounded and haunted by the unholy Nazi forces gathered outside. As an act of desperation, one of the leaders in the city makes a visit to the forbidden section of the dungeons, where it is said a supposedly immortal warlock who sold his soul to the devil is held.
Immortal or not, he finds a man, left alone to rot for countless years, who claims to have a way to save the city, in exchange for his freedom.
By cover of night, the warlock and several other men sneak out the city and past the blockade, making their way deep into the nearby forest. There, the warlock leads the men in a dark and profane ritual, calling up ancient and powerful forces. At the apex of the ritual, the very ground heaves and shakes, trees uprooting and stones cracking and breaking away, as a great and mighty structure tears its way upward towards the blood-red moon high in the sky.
"Behold, your salvation!" the warlock cackles, madness and triumph alike shining in his eyes. "Behold, the mighty Castle of He - the Scourge of the Hessian Mongrels, the Master of a Thousand Devils, the Nightmare of Wallachia!"

"Behold - CASTLEVANIA!!"

It runs on the d20 system, which should be your first warning sign.

Oh.
But did anyone actually use BESM?

/thread

It was a published d20 generic anime RPG, what do you think?

From what I've heard it's not terrible, at least?

Anybody have any good castle maps? I've got the obvious inspiration here, but the rest I found were all far too small for even the main areas of Castlevania.

I've thought about this. I'd have sessions set as "stages" with a pseudolinear progression- dungeons with some limited open world aspect but clear sense of progression. The goal would be to have stages take no more than 1 or two nights of play. Prehaps using accelerated combat rules to ease it along and keep flavor. Finally, I'd cumulate in the Big bad's castle, which is a metroidvania megadungeon

S1: forest ruins (big bad was imprisoned here)
S2: razed village (dynamic is the area is composed of below-ground basements full of traps, with some surviving fire damaged structures above
S3: Flooded Catacombs (combination of waterfall and catacomb levels, classic CV motifs)
S4: Ocean of gods (bunch of petrified giant sky-gods in the ocean that have become an sland chain. Big bad threw them out of the sky to make way for his dominion
S5: Sky castle (metroidvania megadungeon, big bad lives in a castle made of clouds in the sky)

That was my take. CV4 has really good atmosphere and the interesting dynamic of making levels triparte in scenery

You'll have to make your own, I think, if only because Castlevania is so seldom JUST a castle. It's very big and has a whole bunch of shit beneath it. You'll want to have maps with dungeons and a courtyard at the very least.

Unfortunately you're not going to get many good maps from RPGs for this purpose: megadungeons have fallen out of favor, and even something like the original Ravenloft (which has a bigger map than your one, I think?) is still way too small for Castlevania.

Hero System.

what do you guys think about making platforming part of the game? It's so obviously castlevania that It should be incorporated, but I can see player frusturation with this being handled as skills checks

The big question with platforming is, well, how the hell would you handle it in a way that's actually fun in play and serves a real purpose?

I'm not convinced that it's actually possible, so I'd recommend slaughtering that sacred cow. Some things just cannot survive an adaptation, and trying to force things will just make the game worse.

I can see it being incorporated into combat in conjunction with momentum rules. Floating bosses, environmental hazards with a monster threat, general means of ascent in dungeons?

Well, there are *some* that can be looked at. Though, the Megadungeons we have are more about going down than up - Stonehell, Dwimmermount, and the Mad Archmage's castle are strictly about going further down into the dungeon, rather than feeling like they're odd areas grafted on to a mega-castle. (Though they might have unique enough 'areas' to steal.) Barrowmaze is all one big floor, rather than different levels, but it's fairly tomb-centric, from what I remember. The Maze of the Blue Medusa seems a bit too interlocked to take anything piecemeal, or to survive a reskinning, though I could be wrong. And I think the ASE dudes did like one floor and called it a day.
Goodman Games made Castle Whiterock (I think?), but I've never looked, so know nothing.
I know there's one that's about a castle made for giants that gets generated randomly as you play it, but I can't remember the name. Might be helpful.
All of these, of course, can be found in the usual places.
Of course, it also occurs to me that, if you define what you want your various areas to be, you can search around for separate modules and maps about that specifically, and find something useful.

When and why did megadungeons fall out of favor?

When the first published adventures were tournament modules like Tomb of Horrors, which were meant to be cleared within a four-hour session or so.
Since short-form dungeons were the only thing published, that's naturally what groups emulated.

Also, megadungeons by design are "unclearable" and thus they're horrible for making money. TSR in particular wanted to keep selling products, rather than having people just buy a single product and then nothing else.

Oh, and the general playstyle went away from the more rogueish style common to earliest D&D to a more heroic, story-focused playstyle. People no longer wanted to delve deep into an infinite dungeon, they wanted to be the Fellowship of the Ring and whatnot.

>Though, the Megadungeons we have are more about going down than up - Stonehell, Dwimmermount, and the Mad Archmage's castle are strictly about going further down into the dungeon, rather than feeling like they're odd areas grafted on to a mega-castle.
Castle Triskelion is a bit closer, I guess?

It's really easy to get lost?

As a massive megadungeon using the Savage Worlds.

I've used BESM for a decent length campaign, it's a light, smooth functioning generic system. Think of it as GURPS without the obsessive pedantry. The second edition is anyway, third would wind up going full pedant.

That said, like every point-buy system, it has balance problems.

There was a D20 variant. BESM is a 2d6 roll under system.

I've already played and run curse of Strahd tho.