Ultanya

For this year's Halloween game I'm doing something a little different with the original I6: Ravenloft. I've run it many times, and what I like most is how easily the basic story bends without losing what makes Ravenloft work. This time I'm moving Barovia forward into a sort of pseudo 1800s. The familiar locations and characters are still there, but the valley now has gas lamps, revolvers (silver bullets!), telegraphs and railroads. Industry has started creeping into the countryside too, with mills and factories vomiting soot over villages that were there long before any of it.

Strahd is also a railroad tycoon. This is not steampunk Ravenloft. That would change the setting too much for my taste. Barovia just kept developing while Strahd stayed exactly where he's always been. He already controls the land, the roads and who comes and goes, so when the railroad showed up, of course he ended up controlling that too.

Here are my current notes, roughly in the order the party would run into things.

• The hook. In I6 the characters are lured in by a forged letter from the Burgomaster. Now it's a telegram asking them to come help Ireena. Once they're in the valley they find the dead courier carrying Kolyan's real warning telling outsiders to stay away. I'm keeping the original trick because it works.

• The train into Barovia. The party arrives by train instead of road. Somewhere along the way the locomotive passes through the Mists and eventually reaches the old iron gates. The train goes through, and the gates close behind the last car. There are schedules posted at the station and tracks leading back the way they came, but no train is taking anyone out. I'm still not 100% sure how I want to stage the gates. Probably just a slam right as the last car clears.

• Village of Barovia. Still the miserable, frightened place from I6, except now it has a small station, a telegraph office and gas lamps on a few streets. Mills have gone up around the outskirts. Most of the old businesses are shuttered, and people still lock themselves in when it gets dark. Bildrath's Mercantile is an easy one: he already charges outrageous prices because nobody has anywhere else to shop, so it becomes a company store that takes Zarovich scrip.

• The Burgomaster's house. Barely changes. It's still barricaded and battered from repeated attacks, Kolyan is dead inside, and Ireena has been bitten twice. I'll add revolvers, empty cartridge boxes and a doctor's bag to show they tried the modern fixes first. Maybe a local doctor insists it's anemia or consumption. Everyone else in the house knows better.

• Donavich's church and cemetery. I want the church to look ancient next to everything changing around it. Gas lamps outside, Donavich inside with candles, praying all night. The midnight procession stays because it's one of my favorite creepy bits of the original: the dead rise and march for Castle Ravenloft. Now their route crosses the tracks, and I'd love to have a locomotive roar straight through them while they just keep walking.

• Madam Eva. Basically untouched. The wagons, the fire and the cards all work as they are. I might put the camp under a railway trestle so a train rumbles overhead mid-reading. She'll also smoke a small cigar, which Barovians would see as lower class and outside polite society. That suits her.

• The black carriage. Stays. Strahd's line ends at a small private station below the castle, and the carriage is waiting there to take the party up the mountain.

• Castle Ravenloft. The upper floors have picked up some modern improvements: gas fixtures, plumbing, maybe a telegraph room, and a proper office where Strahd runs his business interests. Railway maps, property deeds and payroll books get mixed in with everything else. The great dinner stays almost as written, with the chandeliers, silver, crystal and organ. He's still Count von Zarovich. He just owns the railroad now.

• Going deeper. The big room of gears and pulleys that drives the moving stone compartment becomes an old freight lift, something added later. The deeper the party goes, the less new stuff I want around. Gas fixtures give way to candles and torches, pipes and telegraph wires disappear, and eventually it's old Ravenloft again.

• The Sunsword, Holy Symbol and Tome of Strahd. Leaving these alone, especially the Tome. I like the idea of the party finding Strahd's handwritten confession in the same study as his railway ledgers. Freight records, land purchases and payroll on one desk, and nearby, the story of Sergei, Tatyana and what he did to them.

By the time they reach the crypts there shouldn't be anything 1800s left. Strahd's down there in a coffin full of dirt.

There's plenty of smaller stuff I still need to work out, but this is enough to start. Now I just have to finish the details and see how badly Strahd ruins everyone's evening.

When did a backstory become a warranty? It establishes your character’s past, but some players expect it to secure their future too. Their "heroic destiny" becomes something the DM is supposed to deliver. If keeping you alive until you get a satisfying ending is part of the deal, I call it plot armor.

A campaign arc gives the group a shared goal. It doesn’t guarantee any individual character’s destiny. I want us to have something worth pursuing, with our decisions determining whether we get there and what it costs us. Having a stake in the outcome doesn’t mean my character is entitled to survive it.

Expectations also change how players approach danger, which is where combat as sport comes in. It’s probably my biggest issue with modern D&D. Once players assume every fight is suitable for their characters, “should we fight?” starts giving way to “how do we win?” They’re choosing tactics instead of deciding whether those monsters are worth tangling with. That changes the whole game before anyone rolls initiative.

A fight designed to be winnable doesn’t automatically mean the DM will prevent you from losing. But pair that expectation of suitable fights with a heroic destiny the DM is supposed to protect, and how dangerous is this adventure supposed to be? It’s Avengers with swords. Everyone gets to be a superhero, and the DM gets the job of making sure it works out.

When the dice or the players’ decisions threaten that promised future, the DM steps in with a deus ex machina. Someone arrives just in time, and everyone lives to fulfill their destiny. Keep doing that, and players learn that getting in over their heads is the DM’s problem to solve. Sure, plot armor has always existed, but I object to being expected to provide it.

I want a traditional fantasy adventure with actual stakes. If you guarantee everyone survives to fulfill their “heroic destiny,” then you’re playing a cozy story game with dice. Putting a dungeon or a dragon in it doesn’t make it dangerous.

I wasn't planning to write about Deathbringer. Then I started reading the reactions to it.

I honestly couldn't believe what I was reading.

Apparently fantasy has beautiful women now, and this requires a symposium.

Several months ago I wrote a post called Frazetta Armor. It had absolutely nothing to do with Deathbringer. Truth be told, I'd been making the same joke on social media for years. While working on my Hyborian themed Shadowdark campaign, I finally turned it into a blog post.

The joke was simple. The less armor the hero wore, the harder they were to kill.

Everybody got it.

Because that's been part of fantasy for as long as I can remember.

I grew up on painted paperback covers. Every bookstore had a fantasy shelf full of warriors with impossible muscles, forgotten temples, giant snakes, skulls, sorcerers, and yes, beautiful women. Nobody stood there wondering whether the armor met OSHA PPE regulations. You picked up the book because the cover promised adventure.

That's what fantasy looked like. That's still what fantasy looks like to me.

So when I see people calling Deathbringer embarrassing because it has attractive women wearing revealing clothing, I honestly wonder where they've been. This isn't some shocking new direction. This is one of the oldest visual traditions the genre has.

I've seen people say the women are too attractive.

Too attractive? I didn't realize fantasy was supposed to stop celebrating beauty.

Then there's the clothing. Really?

We're talking about a genre where Conan wandered around in a hardly there loincloth, where Red Sonja became one of fantasy's most recognizable characters, where every other wizard somehow owns a robe with sleeves long enough to trip over. Fantasy has never dressed its characters for practicality. It dresses them to create an image you'll remember.

That's the whole point.

The criticism that really puzzles me is the claim that this somehow makes Deathbringer shallow.

Why? Because it has beautiful women?

Fantasy has always dealt in ideals. Bigger monsters. Greater heroes. Darker villains. The artwork isn't trying to convince you this is real life. It's trying to convince you this world is worth visiting.

There's a difference.

Look, you don't have to like the art. Maybe it isn't your thing. Maybe you think you've seen it all before. Fair enough.

What I don't understand is acting like this aesthetic is somehow foreign to fantasy.

It isn't.

It's one of the reasons a lot of us fell in love with fantasy in the first place.

When I look at Deathbringer, I see a game that's perfectly happy to admit where it came from.

Apparently a lot of other people were looking for exactly that.

Judging by the BackerKit numbers, I'd say they found it.