Ravenloft: Castlevania or Gothic Horror?

So, am I really the only person who found Ravenloft in practice to be overly pretentious and nothing more than a cheap rip-off of all the obligatory Gothic Horror novels? Because, I must say, I found Super Castlevania to be more fun than most of TSR's adventures for Ravenloft.

...

I never really found it pretentious (pre 5E) but it did lack focus. The constant fiddling and rebooting didn’t help. Neither did trying to shoehorn in the other settings like Dragonlance. I would have preferred a straight gothic horror approach or, as you say, a Castlevania style action approach.

Talking about Ravenloft which is Veeky Forums.

I think at this point Innistrad is the new, improved Ravenloft, especially since it got a port over to 5e. It might still be "Classic Horror Tropes: The Setting", but at least it does it a little better.

Man have you seen what Garth Ennis turned into

It's like Ellis turned into Ennis and Ennis turned into a walking pile of burning crap

>Warren Ellis is a fucking stupid douchebag who never should have got his dumbshit mitts on the Castlevania setting
But that's already part of the Castlevania plot m8

No it's not. Dracula never just up and decided to be a nice guy for no reason. He fucked Lisa because he wanted to get laid, Lisa got burned because she was concubine to a demon. There wasn't this get-out-of-guilt-free card where everything was all hunky dory until the evil Catholics showed up.

I've been mind-building a World War 1 Castlevania Setting, if this is the right thread for it...
Basically uses established Castlevania Lore to create a sort of Gothic Weird War 1 setting, and sets up the stage for Youjo Senki style dogfights, minus the OP main character bullshit.

Sounds like a good era for shooting up zombies and bashing up skeletons.

>Lisa created medicine for those who suffered from the epidemic.[3] Due to the witch trials going during that time, Lisa was apprehended and executed. Dracula later found her body but arrived too late to save her.[4] Alucard was present shortly before Lisa's death, just like his father, being unable to stop the event. Lisa delivered the following words for Alucard to deliver to Dracula:
>"Do not hate humans. If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm, for theirs is already a hard lot." ...She also said that she would love you. For eternity.
>Upon learning about his wife's death, Dracula vowed revenge. In 1476 he began his war upon humanity.[5]
Literally on her page of the Wiki. Dracula threw away his humanity and cursed God, but he still haven't done any attacks on humanity before the Lisa incident

That's fucking retarded. He was Vlad THE IMPALER. His crimes were of such magnitude and ferocity that when he said "fuck God" he became a living conduit between the mortal realm and an infinite source of horror and suffering.

And we're supposed to belive he was just...chillin out before THE BIG EVIL POPE OH HOW DARE CATHOLICS HAVE HISTORY comes and "turns him bad".

I mean the "science" he gave to Lisa wasn't borne from years of Dracula pouring beakers into beakers and going "hmm", it was literally hidden knowledge from the creatures on the other side connected to Dracula who set events into motion BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY WILL RESULT IN HORROR

>Dracula is asshole because of meanie Catholic Church
>Dracula is from Wallachia, aka modern day Romania
>Romania is 98% Orthodox, and was at the time as well
What did they mean by this?

>He was Vlad THE IMPALER.
He wasn't. He was formerly Mathias Cronqvist, a medieval crusader, he only adopted the name of "Dracula Vlad Tepes" after becoming a vampire. Castlevania's Dracula has almost nothing to do with Bram Stoker nor the historical Dracula

So, what, they literally cut everything evil out of his background?

So how does he become, y'know, a living conduit of torment and suffering? I say "fuck God" every time I stub my toe and I've never developed the ability to spit fire and shit bats.

Ayup. The basic idea was Dracula managing to resurrect himself in the mid-late 1800's, and takes a good, long hard look at his existence, and realizes he's been beaten by the Belmont clan several times over the centuries.
He thinks to himself "Well, how can I stop THAT from happening again?"
So he figures, if humanity is so utterly wretched that it would kill my wife, an innocent, should that not be their own folly as well?
So he spends the next few centuries getting to work. He spends years anonymously distributing his alchemical and magical discoveries to the various governments of the world, particularly as they relate to military development.
Meanwhile, he's also playing the political game, finding loyal, or buying loyal humans that can help shape the political landscape and set it up for war.
Besides that, he's also giving humans he finds completely loyal powers and organizing them and a demonic army.
Finally, Archduke Ferdinand hits the ground, WWI hits, and nearly every country is armed to the teeth with vast alchemical and magical forces.
On top of that, suddenly Demonic forces led by what looks like vampiric spawn start attacking battlefields with guerrilla tactics, wiping out forces on both sides, or maybe only on one side, only to devastate the samw army they "helped" a few battles later.
The Orders know Dracula is alive, they just can't find him.
The party's job is to be spies and soldiers, along with the latest Belmont descendant(one of the party), and put a stop to Dracula amidst World War 1.

Your wife wasn't innocent, douchebag. She had you steal scientific knowledge from the Devil because she didn't want to suffer the long slow march of progress like every other scientist.

>castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Dracula
He used the Crimson Stone to absorb the souls of other vampires he used to hunt with his buddy Leon Belmont, that's also how he got Death as his lackey

Alchemy, motherfucker

Is that a flaw within Drac's line of thinking, or my own in terms of proper character motivation?
Also how's the setting Sound so far?

Man they really wiped their ass with the Dracula concept. How depressing that they literally threw away everything lurid about him as a character just because they wanted to use him as a protagonist in some dumb XXth sequel.

Pretty much all of that is from Lament of Innocence, where he is most certainly not the protagonist.

It's just an eye rolling copout from writers who want a sympathetic villain who also has monster dogs rip people's guts out.

But apparently Japanest Duruculu isn't actually a blood soaked mass murdering nightmare but just a poor misunderstood soul that we should all feel really bad for?

Lisa wasn't looking for knowledge because "whatever" she wanted to create medicine to help the good people of Wallachia during a epidemic

However you want to slice it and whoever's responsible for throwing a good concept down a toilet of mediocrity, this is a neutered version of Dracula. I don't want a Dracula that didn't impale a thousand Ottomans and ten thousand Bulgars.

Yes, of course, everybody deals with the Devil for all the right reasons.

She tried to pull knowledge out of a hole filled with bloody teeth and burning skulls and the screams of kids being vivisected, and she thought everything was going to be fine.

She's as dumb as her own writers.

In the game series, Dracula goes through cycles of being evil, getting better, going evil, getting better, going evil, being reincarnated as a prettyboy.

He met Lisa in one of his "eh, humanity doesn't have to die today" phases. He was more apathetic than good.

>But apparently Japanest Duruculu isn't actually a blood soaked mass murdering nightmare but just a poor misunderstood soul that we should all feel really bad for?
No, just because he has a tragic backstory doesn't mean he's a unforgivable monster. On all games you're supposed to beat the hell out of him without remorse, there's only Alucard's speech about Lisa's dying words in Symphony of the Night, but then again, that's a family moment

>Yes, of course, everybody deals with the Devil for all the right reasons.
No, but she did, right?

This guy has it. Dracula is a horrible, reprehensible monster and you are entirely justified in murdering him for the 20th time.

Watch the Castlevania series on Netflix that started this conversation. Apparently it was never Dracula's fault, it was all Catholicism's fault for not being enlightened enough to recognize the difference between magic and science from the Devil that they can't distinguish from magic.

Sure. Hitler just wanted to make things right after Versaille, Genghis Khan just wanted to be the bring order to the steppes, yadda yadda yadda, everybody's a hero in their own mind.

Lisa's willingness to deal with what should be OBVIOUSLY something malevolent ended up getting children eaten in their cribs.

>Watch the Castlevania series on Netflix that started this conversation.
I did, it was great
>it was all Catholicism's fault
It was that bishop's fault, after all those religious figures are also mortals and capable of wrong thinking and corruption. Doesn't mean the beliefs they stand for are wrong or evil, God and the church is still a benevolent force on the series

Most likely this Dracula still did that, during his attempts to be human, working with the King of Hungary and such. His absence would probably be in line with Vlad Tepes' imprisonment by Matthius I of Hungary.

It's during his imprisonment that stories of his evil are spread, leading to them imprisoning Lisa, because he's the son of the devil. He's finally freed in 1465, finds out about his wife's murder, and returns to Transylvania for Vlad's third rule.

This reign of darkness is so bad that the church goes to the scion of the exiled Belmont family for aid. This is Castlevania III, and the miniseries.

Interestingly, one of Vlad's allies (heck, near spiritual brothers) at this time was Stephen Bathory, the ancestor of Elizabeth Bathory (aka Elizabeth Bartley)

Yeah, I'll take false equivalency for 500. She didn't harm anyone on her objective, she only exposed herself to harm

>Lisa's willingness to deal with what should be OBVIOUSLY something malevolent ended up getting children eaten in their cribs.
No, that's because they burned her at the stake, if they didn't do that no child would be eaten

World War user here. I always saw it as part of Dracula's slow descent into inhumanity.
Elizabetha dies, and Vlad goes full /r9k/ on the world. Fuck love, fuck god, fuck humans, and fuck everything else.
Now, the problem is that he's fused his soul with the Demon Realm, and the Crimson Orb. He's basically infused himself with pure, unadulterated, objective evil. Front-end is still "woe is me" Cronqvist pining for his wife, back-end is "I am literally the avatar of pure evil."
Go a few centuries through reincarnation. Vlad meets Lisa. He's in a shaky spot right now, but hey, he's in love, and things look good, so maybe he can do that whole Redemption arc, maybe even give up the ghost and die along with Lisa, right?
Bam, Catholic church kills her, and now Drac has no reason not to withhold from being Edgelord, The First. Summons up a demonic army, starts attacking Europe, and proceeds to get his ass whipped(heh) by another Belmont.
Next century, no hesitation, fuck the world and everything in it, get beaten by a Belmont. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. He's basically a shell of a human being, inside of which is the literal avatar of evil.
My Drac, at this point, has no redeeming features beyond what you'd expect from The Count Dracula. Charismatic, Intelligent, Cunning, but completely, entirely ready to wipe humanity out by any means necessary.

Banpu

>muh ebul cathlicks
If we're talking about the Netflix series, then that is undeniably fake news. The corruption and evil in the series stems from the Bishop and his cronies. There are two easy to read examples of this.

When the bishop is being confronted by the demons in the church toward the end, the demon taunts the bishop. The bishop tries to play the God card, and the demon points out that God isn't in the building and thats why they have free reign. This scene is contrasted shortly thereafter when Belmont, who knows the bishop is fucked, asks for actual priests to bless water before the final battle. A couple of priests do come forward and the blessed water does to the demons exactly what you'd expect holy water to do to demons.

So, in the Netflix series at least, the point isn't that the church writ large is corrupt, but rather that there are both corrupt actors and holy actors within the church. A sub point would be that it seems that church hierarchy seems to be corrupt by the priests on the ground, serving communities and the like, are still doing the right thing and are therefor still holy.

Do people use the PS supplements? Whenever I try to bring them up in /5eg/ they get shat on or ignored.

>Castlevania: The D&D Setting
Sounds Good
>Obligatory Checklist of Gothic Horror stories
Do you mean Hammer Films the Tabletop RPG?

What would be the difference?

In Ravenloft we have Vlad Tepes split in two;
Strahd, which i don't really like, and a Dragonlance originated Dark Lord which is a straight fighter and is pretty much Vlad Tepes inspired. Can't remember his name.

These need to go or merge into a new interesting Vampire Villain

The whole Dracula character was 1)Brutal due to the circumstances, combating some overwhelming evil, prior to becoming undead should be kept 2) Evil and trapped in the curse of vampirism after

The Evil could be some
1) Army from another realm
2) Monster Army or horde
3) Disease or something like scientific research gone awry due to Vlad's obsession with "healing" or "helping" people.
4) other

Pick the most interesting elements;
1)From Ravenloft
2)From Castlevania
3)From the Historical Vlad
4)From Hammer Films and Gothic Horror in general

That's basically the plot of Castlevania Bloodlines but instead of Dracula it was Elizabeth Bartley, Dracula's Niece on the Castlevania world, who assassinated Ferdinand. Make sure to add a polearm acrobat like Eric Lecarde to the party

How was it the Bishop's fault? Was he supposed to be able to tell science from magic when it came from a hole filled with bloody teeth and burning skulls and the screams of kids being vivisected?

The Bishop, by all reasonable expectations, correctly identified a witch that was fucking a blood soaked demon.

They burned her at the stake because she was using technology too advanced for people to understand that she had her demon husband pull from a hole in reality filled with bloody teeth and burning skulls and the screams of kids being vivisected.

it seems a bit...much.
Like it's WoW bram stoker edition

>bloody teeth and burning skulls and the screams of kids being vivisected.
That wasn't happening tho. The only macabre thing on Dracula's castle were the rotting impaled bodys at the entrance, something the real world Vlad did all in name of God. All she did was visit that creepy castle on the wilderness no one dared to come close and met the weird guy who lived there and would never come out, at that time Dracula didn't do anything against humanity, returned with some medicine and cured some people which, by the way, didn't have their souls soaked out of their bodies for this so we can agree she made the fight idea and the Bishop went mad with his own ideas of God's will

It was CASTLEVANIA. It was the castle of a man who was damned by God *so hard* that he has genocide at his fingertips. How can you marry a person who is carrying the antithesis of decency in his pocket all day every day and not notice anything?

Lisa wasn't an idiot. She was a Faustian. She wanted everything to work out so badly because she wanted to accomplish something great and she needed POWER. She fell in love with Dracula because he had the power to grip a nation in his pale fingertips and squeeze it until everyone was dead.

This avatar of innocence bullshit and all these excuses just suck the depth out of a story so classic it's literally centuries old.

>that he has genocide at his fingertips.
But he wouldn't do it

>Lisa wasn't an idiot. She was a Faustian. She wanted everything to work out so badly because she wanted to accomplish something great and she needed POWER. She fell in love with Dracula because he had the power to grip a nation in his pale fingertips and squeeze it until everyone was dead.
Ok, now this is getting ridiculous. What is this fan fiction you're spouting about? In the Castlevania lore Lisa wanted to cure people with the help of Dracula, that's IT, there's no depth about it, she's only mentioned on 2 games for fuck sake, you're not suppossed to feel bad for Dracula

>This avatar of innocence bullshit and all these excuses just suck the depth out of a story so classic it's literally centuries old.
m80 it's fucking Count Dracula, pic related is what most normies picture when they hear this name

>Castlevania's Dracula has almost nothing to do with Bram Stoker nor the historical Dracula
Bram Stoker's Dracula is canon to Castlevania, or at least some version of the events therein are.
Or did you think the names of the protagonists of Bloodlines and Portrait of Ruins was mere coincidence?

>Castlevania: Bloodlines attempted to make a connection with the novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker in 1897, and does this by writing one of the characters — Quincy Morris — into the continuity of the Castlevania series and claiming that he was a Belmont descendant. This leads many people to assume that the novel is part of the official timeline, which in some instances would cause severe inconsistencies, though in reality this is not the case. The book itself was never included in any of the official timelines, and only an (as of yet) unchronicled event involving the character.
From the Castlevania Bloodlines page on the wiki. No, the names are just references

Which is more fun, as you could then do a game based on Dracula in the Castlevania universe.

Basically, the problem with Ravenloft as it actually is handled is that it tries too hard to be Just Like A Gothic Horror Novel. It's low-powered, it's railroady, and generally it suffers the Planescape problem of tending to be more fun to read about than to play in.

This is the setting that not only introduced the Powers Check that ultimately turns your PC into a monster under the DM's control, but also gave us rules like "every time you gain a level in Fighter, or learn an Enchantment/Evocation/Necromancy spell, make a Powers Check".

Ravenloft as "Castlevania the D&D Setting" would be more supportive of the fact that, mechanically, your PCs are going to be able to kick ass and take names, not trying to keep them weak, scared and unsure of waht to do.

Vlad Drakov, the would-be conquerer cursed to never conquer anything and whose entire character can be summed up as "the worst traits of Vlad Tepes, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin combined in one person with no redeeming qualities whatsoever".

Alright, I'm sorry for yelling. Let me explain it to you like Ian Malcom explained it to me in the book Jurrassic Park. Scientists, in general, are men who stand on the shoulders of giants. A kung fu master knows how to kill and dominate, but because he had to spend a lifetime of discipline to reach that point, he's shaped himself into a person that wouldn't do that. Scientists, however, just open the books of the scientists before and have their knowledge. In essence, they stand on the shoulders of men who lived those disciplined lives, and absorb the fruits of their discipline without absorbing the discipline itself.

Lisa live in a time when that fruit was meager. She was still three centuries off from the Enlightenment, and things were just so bad. The Renaissance was too far away to help the people she needed to help.

She doesn't have the time to discipline herself into a scientist that can explain their own work in a way that others understand. Instead she used a CURSED SOULLESS MONSTER to leapfrog Da Vinci and create positive outcomes that not even SHE could explain.

It helped some people. It scared a great many more.

Even today, if the Green Mile man was discovered by the government, he would be dragged into a dark hole beneath a hundred locked doors and vivisected. You can't just perform actual miracles in a world that is, literally, just two decades away from Columbus finding the New World.

They Simply used the name Dracula because it would make their conduit of all evil look all evil and stylish, and they certainly accomplished that.
>I mean, look at this guy, that was back in a time where Villians had style, he may have had a background back then, just didn't feel the need to cry to you about it.

Same thing happened with Neo genesis evanglion, the team straigth out stated that they used foreign words and sysmbols to "give the show an exotic feel" that's director speak for "shit looked cool". Which has also lead to the belive that NGE has some deep symbolism about religion and humanity, while it's just a shout about a show about shinji finding self-worth and meaning in life and getting in the fucking robot

Castlevania doesn't share a lot with Novel Dracula anyway, or i missed the point where he turned into a 12feet jetblack demon who mostly relies on fire magic.

>Forgot the guy

>She doesn't have the time to discipline herself into a scientist that can explain their own work in a way that others understand. Instead she used a CURSED SOULLESS MONSTER to leapfrog Da Vinci and create positive outcomes that not even SHE could explain.
Who said she didn't understand what she was doing? Again, the role of Lisa as a character is really undeveloped until the Netflix series, where it made the impression she studied medicine with Dracula, he didn't just gave her the cure, they've spent time together developing the cure. We don't even know what illness she was treating, it could simply be nothing a good cup of herb tea wouldn't make better, something that many other cultures were already using and the reason why many europeans that used a old family recipe to cure they fever were burned at the stake. It was fairly a time when the church acted really stupid to say the least

>Even today, if the Green Mile man was discovered by the government, he would be dragged into a dark hole beneath a hundred locked doors and vivisected.
And that would be based on research, not out of fear of witchcraft

Well Satan, Curse of Strahd would be relatively easy to turn into Curse of Dracula.

I mean Strahd becomes Dracula, the Vistani become regular gypsies (or the Speakers from the netflix show) and the map still works, with just the placenames needing updating. For example:

>Region of Barovia - Wallachia
>Village of Barovia - Aljiba or Jova
>Svalich Woods - Veros Woods
>Old Svalich Road - Lower Road
>Balinok Mountains - Tymeo Mountains
>Lake Zarovich - Yuba Lake
>River Ivlis - Dead River
>Vallaki - Jova or Aljiba
>Argynvostholt - Belmont Manor
>Castle Ravenloft - Castlevania

It was 1475. This idea that somehow she just happens upon a cure that's COINCIDENTAL to her husbando's awesome dark powers is just so...contrived.

If that's the answer, it's even worse than if it isn't. You should hope for something better.

Also this idea that the Church should be the faceless bad guy with no rationality behind it is sickening because basically you are blaming...the victims. You remember the bloody crib? Did that baby deserve to die because HE was supposed to get rid of Catholicisim? Put on a little tiny baby helmet and get a tiny baby halberd and go run it through the Pope? It's a ridiculous copout to give Dracula this logical loophole justification for KILLING AS MANY PEOPLE AS HE COULD AS HORRIBLY AS HE COULD because somehow you want to preserve him as the good guy.

The narrative that makes sense and is compelling is right in your grasp, but you'd rather tear it to pieces and rearrange it in a way that's retarded.

>If that's the answer, it's even worse than if it isn't. You should hope for something better.
Sorry, what?

>Also this idea that the Church should be the faceless bad guy
It's not, the Church and God are still benevolent forces, priests helped Trevor and and God had probably long abadoned that one Bishop's cathedral way before the events of the show. He's a mad man that happened to be a Bishop, religious villains were already a thing on classical literature, it doesn't automatically equate "Fuck the Church"

>because somehow you want to preserve him as the good guy.
For the last time, Dracula's not the bad guy. Trevor is on his way to kill him, you're supposed to kill him on all games

>The narrative that makes sense and is compelling is right in your grasp, but you'd rather tear it to pieces and rearrange it in a way that's retarded.
Yo, I didn't write the Castlevania plot m8

>Yo, I didn't write the Castlevania plot m8
Yet when I keep telling you about how retarded it is you somehow want to say it's not.

You can call it retarded if you want. I just corrected what you said wrong about the series, which is basically everything senpai

Oh, you mean where I pointed out line by line how there was a great potential for a compelling horror tale but hamfisted antihero handwringing threw it all out the window to blame everything on the Pope?

Cuz I hate to break it to you, but I hit that nail on the head over and over again, and it bothered you so much each time you had to try and wiggle out of it, which you just...can't.

It just sucks.

I’ve used them a few times. I think the major problem though is that most of the PS supplements have been only for the most recent MtG blocks, which frankly have pretty dull worlds. I like how there’s a “Curse of Innistrad” conversion built into that one though.

>Game is in Romania
>Protagonist is British
>Catholic Church(???)

This doesn't make any sense dammit!

>Vampires in Romania
>Crosses are boomerangs
>Whips smash stone blocks(???)

This doesn't make any sense dammit!

>Whips smash stone blocks(???)
Are you seriously saying you wouldn’t like to live in a world where an entire pork chop could be hidden in the walls, waiting for you to find?

Yes, but specially everything else you said like Lisa wanting to date Dracula "because he's powerful lol" on your fanfiction and Dracula being vampire Hitler on the Castlevania setting before the burning of his wife. But I'm also pretty sure I said that the church is not an evil establishment and it's the fault of a single bishop and his followers many times on this thread. You don't like Castlevania? That's great m8

Vlad Tepes was a Christian hero though, he was given permission by God's emissary to do what he did.