Thoughts on TSR's 90s settings
Jan. 10th, 2018 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
p_h_leeSo, I'm running a Ravenloft game, hopefully starting this weekend if I can kick this cold. I played a ton of Ravenloft as a kid and really enjoyed the setting, although, as I was fairly cut off from a lot of AD&D's traditions and history, I think I probably enjoyed it for different reasons than many people did (my favorite characters are often the ones who are side-notes in the book, etc, etc.)
My first question was: What D&D should I use to run this game with?
And therein lies a problem.
D&D after Third Edition is very well power-curved. Everything is a level-appropriate challenge. If you fight something several levels above you, you should expect to lose. If you fight something equal to or lower than your level, you should expect to win. A big part of the DM's job is gating the players towards level-appropriate challenges.
And this isn't just fights. This is also skill challenges, parleys, literally anything you could undertake, in D&D 3 or higher, is level-gated. If it's hard, come back in a few levels, or with a few bonuses, and then it's fine.
This, to me, totally kills the setting of Ravenloft.
Ravenloft needs a degree of incoherence for its power levels. It needs us to believe that a 0th level human who likes doing horrible "science experiments" grafting humans to animals is as scary, and as dangerous, as an 18th level lich king (both of these characters are Dark Lords of Ravenloft.) The horror in Ravenloft isn't "this is a powerful monster, I better gain some levels." It has to be horrifying on its own. If you are stripped naked and hunted by werewolves for sport, it has to be scary, not just because of your comparative levels with the werewolves, but because being hunted by werewolves is scary as hell.
Likewise, you should be able to, if you're clever and lucky, escape, even if the werewolves are 15th level and you're 3rd level.
D&D 3+ just doesn't have the capacity for that kind of thing, in either direction.
This feature -- which I think of as "incoherent power-levels" -- is something that I like in games and in settings. It reminds me of the old saying "even a cat can look at a king," and not just because an AD&D 2nd edition cat can absolutely murder a king if it comes to it. The idea is, here's this big messy world, sometimes, but not always, the weak beat the strong. Sometimes, but not always, the lucky beat the mighty. Sometimes, but not always, cleverness can get you out of a bad jam.
I have always thought that this sort of thing was very hard to take as a design goal. But it occurred to me today that actually both of my D&D-ish games -- deeds & doers and High-Quality Roleplaying -- have this as a feature as well.
(I cut out a passage about what I think is necessary for this mechanical feature because I'm not actually as sure as I was sounding. Still, I think it's worth studying.)
Anyway, that's just my thought about why some of the cool 90s-era TSR settings (Ravenloft, Masque of the Red Death, Planescape, Dark Sun) often fail to make the transition to 3+ editions of D&D, and maybe how to design towards that.
My first question was: What D&D should I use to run this game with?
And therein lies a problem.
D&D after Third Edition is very well power-curved. Everything is a level-appropriate challenge. If you fight something several levels above you, you should expect to lose. If you fight something equal to or lower than your level, you should expect to win. A big part of the DM's job is gating the players towards level-appropriate challenges.
And this isn't just fights. This is also skill challenges, parleys, literally anything you could undertake, in D&D 3 or higher, is level-gated. If it's hard, come back in a few levels, or with a few bonuses, and then it's fine.
This, to me, totally kills the setting of Ravenloft.
Ravenloft needs a degree of incoherence for its power levels. It needs us to believe that a 0th level human who likes doing horrible "science experiments" grafting humans to animals is as scary, and as dangerous, as an 18th level lich king (both of these characters are Dark Lords of Ravenloft.) The horror in Ravenloft isn't "this is a powerful monster, I better gain some levels." It has to be horrifying on its own. If you are stripped naked and hunted by werewolves for sport, it has to be scary, not just because of your comparative levels with the werewolves, but because being hunted by werewolves is scary as hell.
Likewise, you should be able to, if you're clever and lucky, escape, even if the werewolves are 15th level and you're 3rd level.
D&D 3+ just doesn't have the capacity for that kind of thing, in either direction.
This feature -- which I think of as "incoherent power-levels" -- is something that I like in games and in settings. It reminds me of the old saying "even a cat can look at a king," and not just because an AD&D 2nd edition cat can absolutely murder a king if it comes to it. The idea is, here's this big messy world, sometimes, but not always, the weak beat the strong. Sometimes, but not always, the lucky beat the mighty. Sometimes, but not always, cleverness can get you out of a bad jam.
I have always thought that this sort of thing was very hard to take as a design goal. But it occurred to me today that actually both of my D&D-ish games -- deeds & doers and High-Quality Roleplaying -- have this as a feature as well.
(I cut out a passage about what I think is necessary for this mechanical feature because I'm not actually as sure as I was sounding. Still, I think it's worth studying.)
Anyway, that's just my thought about why some of the cool 90s-era TSR settings (Ravenloft, Masque of the Red Death, Planescape, Dark Sun) often fail to make the transition to 3+ editions of D&D, and maybe how to design towards that.
