Things You Learn...

Quite a few people seem to spend more than a little time savaging 3rd Ed./3.5 D&D, I generally don't (saving my bile for 2nd Ed...), as I spent several years playing it and, overall, had a great time. The fact that I've grown disillusioned with it does not destroy its worth.

One of the things that I started doing in Third that I've carried on with is the rule I started calling "It's on the table". The origins of this were due to some of my Third players being far better at mechanical jiggery-poky than I am. So, in an effort to save my sanity and keep the game being fun, I told them that they could use anything their black little hearts desired... but that I could, and would, use whatever horrific monstrosity they came up with against them at some later point, they had, as I put it, "placed it on the table" and it was fair game. Conversely, I said, whatever I use as an NPC is also on the table.

So far, in my current Ravenloft 1st Ed mash-up the oddest a player wanted to start with has been a half-orc, even though I stated that I am open to whatever they'd like to play. (I wouldn't necessarily let it be powerful, but it would be at least on par with the PHB assortment of races.) This being the case, all of the oddball races (and classes) have been NPCs (now, this is, at least sort of, Ravenloft, so all of the races have been at least human-seeming, but...) and now there is a small selection of potentially interesting options.

At present, on the table are:

necromancer (my own version of such a class)
mad scientist (a class of my own creation, a sub-class of magic-user)
half-ogre
weirdling (all of the semi-humans, such as the tiefling, but exact bloodlines may vary)
drow
Gamma World mutant

And that's about it... oddly when I started the post I would have said there were more, but I've checked and it's not so... (though weirdling is pretty open-ended now that I think of it).

Lords in Darkness, Re-Examining the Ravenloft Setting

I rather like the idea of the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, even as I doubt its usefulness as an AD&D campaign world, gothic horror and AD&D make a poor match in my mind. However, the setting as presented is riddled with inconsistencies and there's a terrible feeling of being trapped on a Hammer movie set sometimes. That might be OK if it were just the players who saw past the curtain, but as presented it's often the characters doing so. Oh, it's deadly and you lose a lot, mainly due to stacked decks and curses, but it's not so much horrific as it is perilous, a sort of 'Grimtooth's Traps' with a story-line, if you will.

One of the things I wanted to do with my currently on-going Ravenloft game was to re-work the world into something that made internal sense, while still allowing the chance that the PCs could find out they were trapped in a malicious demi-plane. In accordance with that desire, I decided to work out the rules I wanted my Ravenloft to function by. These started simply, I didn't want every domain lord to be able to seal their domains, I've never liked anyone but Strahd being able to do this and it always seemed too focused on the PCs (sure the lord could be after someone else, but really?), so I ditched that ability. Then I started jotting some more things down.

Political boundaries might be congruent with domain boundaries, but they might not...
Domain lords were trapped in their own stories and highly unlikely to notice anyone outside of their tormented circle.
Domain lords had to be scary, they don't need to be more powerful, just able to inspire dread.
The world as a whole had to make sense, the characters living there shouldn't realize they're living in a patchwork demi-plane.
There always had to be a path to success. This contradicts aspects of the gothic horror feel, but this is a game of AD&D, not the 'Fall of the House of Usher'.

More on this later...

A Haunted Mish-Mash...

The Ravenloft Campaign Setting, as published, seems to have a large amount of gaping holes and more than a few terribly boring domains and domain lords (Hazlik, anyone?). So, as I prepared to run my currently on-going First Edition AD&D Ravenloft campaign, I sat down and reviewed the published work (and several fan sites), before tearing it apart and re-building it.

Several domains were axed completely (such as Forlorn, Arak, and Bluetspur, amongst others...), mainly because I found them dull (others were axed as I found them lacking in the spirit of the setting, such as Sithicus... Lord Soth doesn't work in Ravenloft, he's too passive...). Oddly, Hazlik made the cut, but not as written. Because, as written, he's completely boring and utterly unfit to being the kind of grand villain that the lord of a Ravenloft domain should be. I mean, he's a Red Wizard of Thay, yeah, they're evil, but there's nothing there that singles him out, there's no grand passion that drives him, oh, sure, he wants revenge on his enemies... so does Szass Tam, and he's far more interesting and driven... So, one of the first things I did was re-work Hazlik and his domain (no longer called Hazlan... for reasons of avoiding yawns).

And so, I present...

The Ossian Waste

The Lord and the Law: The cannibal wizard Hazlik the Tattooed rules this land from the grim fortress of Yenathar, sending out his gnoll slaves to pillage the surrounding lands and bring back victims for his larder. Hazlik has the dubious distinction of being the only lord of Ravenloft to not be drawn in to the demi-plane by the Mists, or to be a native of the place to begin with. He was exiled to this place by his fellow Red Wizards who grew tired of him abducting and devouring their favoured slaves... An obese mountain of a man, Hazlik's brutal exterior disguises his brilliant mind and his mastery of arcane lore is impressive, even though bent towards the satisfaction of his repulsive hungers.

The Land: A stark and windswept wasteland, the Ossian Waste lies south of the Duchy of Ruithenia, east of Kartakass and Morchessa, and north of the mighty Principality of Nova Vaasa. The Waste has no permanent settlements apart from Yenathar and various gnoll encampments, though there are a few nomadic camps of escaped slaves.

Closing the Borders: Like most of the lords of Ravenloft, Hazlik has no way to seal his domain, apart from his magic and vicious gnoll minions...

The Folk: The inhabitants of the Ossian Waste are gnolls, who gleefully serve the gluttonous lord, escaped slaves, who are mostly mad and either unable or unwilling to return home, and slaves awaiting their ultimate fate, that of becoming part of a grand meal...

Encounters: Apart from the gnolls and escaped slaves, the only creatures dwelling in the Waste are those fit for desert living (scorpions, scarabs, serpents, and the occasional result of some twisted magical experiment).