You are unironically my favourite DnDtuber, for the fact you provide thematic framing, practical ways to implement it and great advice on how to hack apart an adventure for parts. TBH I don't think anyone else does quite what you do.
Thank you very, very much for saying so! I'm thrilled to hear this! Please feel free to recommend future video topics, as well as to post back after trying out some of these adventure ideas. I'm always curious to hear how they play out! Thanks very much, again, for watching and for such lovely, glowing praise! Best wishes, and cheers!
Whenever you drop one of these, "let's make an adventure in..." videos, I am floored by how much work you do. Thank you again for your dedication and imagination!
Thank you for watching! These are a genuine pleasure to make, although they do indeed take some effort, lol. It's wonderful to know they're appreciated! Any suggestions for future content? Thanks once again, and best wishes! Cheers!
So many awesome ideas in this vid! For my Nightmare Lands adventure, I plan on incorporating the "uncountable drifting spheres, each containing a stranger’s unending nightmare". Whenever a PC gets close, they get sucked inside. Each "sphere" contains its own pocket dimension, which houses the dreaming creature's nightmare. Each kinda works as a puzzle, where if the PC(s) can help the dreamer overcome their nightmare, then it ends, the dreamer wakes up, and the PCs are freed to continue their adventure in The Nightmare Lands. Some fun scenarios include: -a "floor is lava" type game in and endless room of beds. Touching the floor alerts the monsters hiding under each bed to attack. -a young dragon's nightmare where they are being attacked by rat swarms (after recently having their treasures stolen from adventurers) -a viking warrior fumbling in a death battle, while a valkyrie watches with disapproval. -a normal dog who is having a nightmare about its owner's vacuum cleaner (give it "Hellfire Engine" stats)
These are all excellent, rich ideas! I'd love to hear how they play out at your table. Yes, indeed I also love the idea of "dream-spheres" as they appear in the Nightmare Lands. They're almost like Domains-within-Domains-within-Ravenloft! How did your players enjoy it all? Best wishes, and cheers!
I'm excited to run this, I personally like to imagine Caroline's own trauma and fear, mixed with some kind of magic she possesses, but cannot control, is what created the Nightmare Court, and they continue to terrorize her, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that the party hopefully breaks.
I'm so glad you found it exciting! Sorry it took me a while to see this comment... Did you end up running it? If so, feel free to post back here to describe how it went! Best wishes, and cheers!
In my version of the nightmare court, I have Caroline as a woman who grew her psychic powers over her life. She started an asylum with the guise of helping the ill and sick, but really began making use of it to absorb the psychic energy of others to try and ascend to another state of being. One by one, her teacher, friends, and family confront her, only to become patients in her sanitarium and batteries for her growing psychic powers. But when her sister came to confront her, her psionic powers failed to work on her. Enraged, she brutally killed her, and the surrounding lands began getting swallowed by the mists. Though Caroline tried to fight the mists back with her powers, resisting the mists only seemed to hasten them. She was cornered into the heart of her asylum, sacrificing patient after patient to the mists, locking herself in an empty room and forcing herself into a deep sleep with her powers. In her dread domain, she is constantly asleep, the asylum now attended to by manifestations of her teacher, family, and friends. People in the town are fine, but the greater realm of dreams outside the domain is in danger. While Caroline sleeps, her splintered psyche and memories of the people she's wronged manifest as the Nightmare Court, each member working together and fighting amongst themselves for more psychic power. If she awakes, her powers return to her, but all of the patients and doctors in the asylum change to the form that shows what she did to them. Her ultimate goal always away from her while she sleeps, but the consequences of her actions every in view while awake.
Indeed! I was thinking that as well. Hopefully, the re-purposed maps of Slitherswamp, the Obstacle Course, and parts of the Netherdeep will mix it up a bit, so it doesn't feel like a *mere* boss rush! Thanks very much for watching and commenting! Best wishes, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers hey a boss rush can be fun too, but the dungeon crawling would be a nice way to give every type of player something. Thanks for expanding on the domains in the back of the book, you throw in so much flair and detail- it’s great
Great adventure! I made use of a few elements of the Nightmare Court when my group played Curse of Strahd. It's funny, but since I read the older module, I thought that the Nightmare Court could function as some sort of a twisted and nightmarish version of the Endless from Sandman (btw, the Netflix series was actually good!). Another reference that I really like about the module is the presence of the a group of people, inspired by the australian aboriginal people, who are capable of "Dreamwalking" during the Dreamtime. It could even be a source to Van Richten's ritual!
Oh yes, that's a good point: the Endless from "Sandman"--and Dream in particular--is a ripe source of inspiration for this setting and its characters! (Heck, they even have a character named "Morpheus," and to your point about aboriginal metaphysics, "The Rainbow Serpent," too!) But absolutely, I think this adventure could easily benefit from a close and sensitive reading of those cultural ideas, and their incorporation into Ravenloft! Thanks for this comment, and for watching! Cheers!
I caught your excellent "Rime" Dark Sun series and this one jumped out to me to watch next in your series. I really did enjoy this more than I can say. One question: how does saving Caroline free the rest of the villagers from the Nightmare Court?
Hello! Thank you so much for watching and for your question! I think the easiest answer is that Van Richten's ritual makes it so. Think of the 80s classic "Ghostbusters," or even better the cartoon series, "The Real Ghostbusters." According those media's lore, a ghost becomes *vulnerable* as soon as it enters the beam of a *trap* designed by Ray and Egon. Being in the trap's beam makes ghosts vulnerable. I'm thinking that, when Van Richten casts his ritual, he's doing something similar. He's shining an arcane light on the sleeping subconscious of Caroline Dinwiddy--one that disables many powers of the Court that haunts her! This isn't the only solution, of course; I can think of several other, equally fun, approaches, now that you have raised the question! What do you think? Thanks for the view and the insightful question! Best wishes and cheers!
This is fantastic! I created a somewhat similar encounter with the Ghost Dancer using the stats of a Virtuoso Lich from Tomb of Beasts 2. The Theater Macabre is a great backdrop for an encounter in the Nightmare Lands.
Oh, excellent! Yes Kobold Press' "Tome of Beasts" series is really excellent, and a lot of the monsters in there are ideal for a surreal setting like the Nightmare Lands. Thanks for watching, and cheers!
Hello. Very cool ideas, maybe I will use part of them. I'm in the middle of a big custom Ravenloft campaign based on the second and third edition, but with a lot of change. The whole thing would be too long to explain, but I try to summarize it.Let's say that every player character has his own story arc, and one of them is seeking his parents. Both have disapeared 10 years ago. They were studiying obscure arcane lore about the planes and discovered the plane of dream and its connection with The Nightlare Lands. The Nightmare Courts start to chase them down , and they found refuge to the asylum of Dr Gregorian Ilhousen. But the Nightmare Court won at the end: the two parents of the pc were draged to the nightmare lands to be endelessely tortured, Dr Gregorian Ilhousen was betrayed by his right hand Dr Harold Tasker (now a Warlock of The Nightmare Court) and he send Ilhousen to Dr Dominiani island (a cerebral vampire). The pc and his allies will find clues leading to the journal of Dr Ilhousen, will need to free him from his emprisonnement on Dr Dominiani Island and probably fight Harold Tasker. Ilhousen will help them to reach both in their dreams first and then physically The Nightmare Lands to rescue the parents of the pc, and then try to escape this place of terror and madness. So yeah my campaign is more around the second edition stuff, but with modifications. They will end the campaign around level 13. I have plenty of other nasty things for them, all related to other pc story arcs: a serial killer being in fact an Oni (my inquisitive rogue player), a cursed familly tainted with demonic blood and controled in the shadow by the devil progenitor of the familly (my thiefling bard orphan player), an alhoon traped inside a mirror and posing as a mentor of one of my pc, using him to free him from his dimensional prison (my dwarf clerc player), and a race between two monks trying to find a book that could decide a lot of things (my elf monk player). You add to all that a big fight between the master of Dementlieu and The Brain (himself manipulated by a rogue Rakshasa/Moriarty like mastermind) with my players in the middle of a temporal mind fuck with two Falkovnia: future Falkovnia from 5E devasted by zombies because of bad experiment by a mad scientist (it has a direct connection with the general of the trapped alhoon) under the order of Vlad Drakov, and present Falkovnia trying to invade Dementlieu and other country around (the two falkovnia appearing and disappearing behind the mist, one replacing the other regulary). My players will have the opportunity to stop the mad scientist(think Resident Evil) and make vanish the "future Falkovnia". My players can count on Alanik Ray and Sedgewick, and maybe Ilhousen if they save him to help them. And of course, their is a lot of other things going on (hellraizer stuff) in Dementlieu (third edition), Lamordie, Paridon, (a cluster I have create) as the campaign is a big sandbox . We should play at least 70 sessions and we are actually at the 15th (my pcs are 4th level).
That's a really awesome-sounding campaign; I'm jealous of your players, who are lucky enough to enjoy running PCs through it! I had not considered the idea that you could use the Nightmare Lands to tell a story arc for each PC, but that's a really excellent idea! It sounds especially fun, I think, for PCs that have well-established fears and joys. In running your adventure, are you using all of the optional mechanics for dream travel (or a 5e version of them)? I personally thought it would be a little limiting to cut off a PCs' physical stats and then run encounters with mental stats in their place, but I can't deny that it's an interesting proposal! How did this campaign wrap up, or if it's still going, how is it going? Best wishes, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers Hi Dr Bowers. No, I'm not using all the options for dream travel found in the second edition book. I find it a little bit too heavy mechanicaly. I prefer let the mechanics behind and play with stress mechanics. I juste consider that everything is a psychic damage, and nightmare court are especially weak against those kind of damage too. I also use skill challenge option to beat the dream scene. The more it goes, the more the skill challenge is difficult to beat. I use the third Nightmare on Elm Street Movie as an inspiration too: if the players know they are in a dream (and i try to blur the lign of demarcation between the awaken world and the dream world, but players are notoriously hard to deceit :D), they can try to influence the dream narratively, depending of what they do, I decide on the fly what mechanic to use with the skill challenges as a go to if I don't find anything else, but it's a lot of improvisation. The campaign is still going, we finished the 41th session last week (we play about three hours every wednesday) and they are currently level seven (the e d will be arou d level 10-11) I use the great ideas of your channel a lot adding my own twist and turn to it all. For exemple Risibilos was just a prime illusion used by Scaene master Lemot Sediam Juste wich have also blur the frontier of reality (is our adventures real or are we characters in a work of juste? ) and I will use your awesome adventure idea for Bluetspur to blur the frontier of reality a bit more. The purpose is to give a In the Mouth of Madness meet Nightmare on Elm Street vibe to the campaign. For now two of my players fight the nightmare court in their dreams. A lot of other things happened. I used official adventures Neither Man nor Beast to introduce the campaign and Hour of the Knife at one point. They have discovered that the killer is a Oni but used a magical painter palette to save his soul and clone himself in the case of his demise. They have also discovered that a mysterious being known as Zegthar is behing the rise of the falkovnian undead; a mad scientist using his power to fuel his alchimical inventions (Zegthar is a Death Tyrant dreamt by the Ilithid Alhoon trapped in the miror and his general) and many more things. Maybe I was a little bit too ambitious, because there is too much things going on between the narrative arcs of every players, and the things I planned at the same time and it can feal a little bit crowded with monsters everywhere ^^. I wanted to thank you for your great and thoughtfull content. It really helps. Ps: my mother tongue is french so my english is far from beeing perfect wich explain the numerous grammatical or spelling mistakes.
I'm finally prepping to run this one. I really like the idea of the dark zodiac, to help define the sorts of dreams that each of the Nightmare Court "rule" over. You already described the Rainbow Serpent and Hypnos pretty well, I think I'd relegate Morpheus to dreams of of twisting, transforming, impossible creatures; perhaps an almost Pan-like shepherd to these beasts. (Dali's Temptations of St Anthony or Swans Reflecting Elephants). Mullogna represents dreams of malevolent places, oppressive architecture, and overbearing urban settings. (streets and buildings twist like Inception or Dr. Strange) The Ghost Dancer meanwhile, based mostly on the name, would hold domain over dreams of being unrecognized or unseen no matter how accomplished your acts. Of non-existence in the minds of others as soon as you pass from immediate view or stop talking. A sort of sisyphean etherealness where you have to struggle constantly to hold space and exist. (The Silence from Dr. Who) I'll probably change that fight to reflect this, maybe swapping PCs into an ethereal realm that hurts them when it isn't their turn? Or shadow beasts that gnaw on them (like the sanity monsters in Don't Starve). I'm not entirely certain what I want yet. The Nightmare Man seems pretty well set to represent your deepest fears and insecurities, and I'd love to pull in the PCs own fears during the fight with him.
Oh absolutely; that campaign was written in a way that makes it perfect for a "journey into the mind"-style adventure! If you ever run this adventure, please feel free to post back here and say how it went! Thanks for watching, and cheers!
I know I said this before but I love this Ravenloft series you made XD I don't particularly have a favourite to request cuz it was already a video, the Valachan one lol. The next best ones I look forward to is Markovia, Barovia, Kartakass and many more tbh I like all the settings and this vids so seeing them all spun into adventures in this series XD Although when you do a vid on The Carnival one thought of inspiration could be Heckna (as it holds similar themes) also the movie Killer Klownz from Outer Space. For Dementlieu I think The Count of Monte Cristo and Among Us could be added to the inspiration material for explaining the setting and adventure ideas.
Thank you so much for such glowing praise! And I'm glad you mentioned Heckna, too, in the context of Ravenloft's Carnival! As a matter of fact, I'm a backer for Heckna, and I'll definitely cover it as a Ravenloft Domain (or an interpretation of one) in the future! As for the other Domains of Dread, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised in the coming weeks! Thanks so much again for your engagement, and cheers!
So, re: your final question, viz. making Caroline the Darklord, I would suggest something like the following. Caroline's grandfather is not in fact villainous. Rather, Caroline, angry at her parents (who in fact were doing normal parenting, or perhaps inattentive like the parents in the book/movie "Caroline", but which she took to be intolerable cruelty), fled to a house with three women who were in fact a coven of witches. They comforted her and offered to be her "real" parents, if only she would do three favors: (a) invite two strangers into her home, (b) give her grandmother some new perfume, and (c) bake a cake for her favored older brother. She knows that there are supposed to "teach them all a lesson". She convinces herself the strangers will just "make a mess" in the house, the perfume will just be "smelly", and the cake will "give her brother a stomach ache". In fact, (a) allows murderous vampires to enter her home and kill her parents, (b) attracts hellish wasps or some other beast that leads to the grandmother's death, and (c) poisons and kills her brother. The grandfather figures out that the witches are somehow responsible (but does not want to confront what he suspects, i.e. that Caroline is involved), rushes over and slays them (in the sight of Caroline), and then tries (in vain) to console Caroline, but she knows she has caused the death of her family. If the PCs just defeat the Nightmare Court in combat, then the current assaults on the locals will be abated for a while, but will eventually return. What they need to do is convince the grandfather of Caroline's responsibility in the tragedies; he alone can assure her that she is still loved.
Ah, that is an interesting and fun take on the Domain, for sure! It definitely leans in to the genre of horror, which features evil children, and which shares a genre with tales of evil dolls and evil clowns, as they are all unions of the innocent and malevolent. (Check out my video on Odiare for a discussion of this!) Having given the Domain's entry a closer read, it appears I mis-read Caroline's age. I think she was a child in older source materials, but in VGR it describes "a clinic in which she [Caroline] once worked," which would make her an adult. That's a misreading on my part! But your suggestion about making Caroline more evil, and having her misdeeds revealed in the final act, coheres better with the idea of Caroline being the Darklord. Thanks very much for the comment, and Happy Halloween!
Check out the Friday the 13th: The Series episode The Quilt of Hathor, a cursed quilt lets you enter someone’s dreams and kill them, offing them in real life as well. Control over the dream is granted as well.
My sincerest apologies! I did not realize I was butchering Beksiński's name. I'll take more care next time. If you wouldn't mind me asking, what is the correct way to pronounce it? Thanks very much for reaching out to correct me, here! It's always good to receive feedback that helps me be more accurate in the future. Best wishes, and cheers!
Wasn't expecting anybody to ever mention mad god. I supported the KS campaign back then and was blown away. Is the movie the 3 shorts edited together, or is there some new stuff I haven't yet seen?
Ah, good to meet another "Mad God" fan! I have not actually seen the original shorts, but apparently they only make up the first three parts of the movie, which has several more; I only heard about the film once it was completed! It's certainly amazing, and blew me away as well. Amazing stuff, and surely a future classic in both horror and animation!
It scared me as a kid, too! That's actually why I remembered to include it on the list! Glad to hear someone else was similarly traumatized, lol. Did you end up seeing The Cell, or...? Thanks for watching, and cheers!
You may be pleased to see that Dementlieu is the new video! I didn't reach for Souragne, though; I think that Domain might be well applied for the new 5e version of Falkovnia? Cheers!
Added to the list! That's certainly a strange one, especially if you don't intend to treat it as a "hub" for other Domains! Thanks for the suggestion, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers An easy mistake to make offset by including the Cell, not enough people appreciate that film for it's capacity to create mindscapes and make Vincent D'Onofrio terrifying
Glad we agree! Yes, it's fun for some tables, but for many of us it's unnecessary bookkeeping. What are you running these days? Thanks for watching, and cheers!
![Chlöe - Shake (Feat. Jeremih) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aDs_1ufpfv8/mqdefault.jpg)
You are unironically my favourite DnDtuber, for the fact you provide thematic framing, practical ways to implement it and great advice on how to hack apart an adventure for parts. TBH I don't think anyone else does quite what you do.
Thank you very, very much for saying so! I'm thrilled to hear this! Please feel free to recommend future video topics, as well as to post back after trying out some of these adventure ideas. I'm always curious to hear how they play out!
Thanks very much, again, for watching and for such lovely, glowing praise! Best wishes, and cheers!
Whenever you drop one of these, "let's make an adventure in..." videos, I am floored by how much work you do. Thank you again for your dedication and imagination!
Thank you for watching! These are a genuine pleasure to make, although they do indeed take some effort, lol. It's wonderful to know they're appreciated! Any suggestions for future content? Thanks once again, and best wishes! Cheers!
So many awesome ideas in this vid!
For my Nightmare Lands adventure, I plan on incorporating the "uncountable drifting spheres, each containing a stranger’s unending nightmare".
Whenever a PC gets close, they get sucked inside. Each "sphere" contains its own pocket dimension, which houses the dreaming creature's nightmare. Each kinda works as a puzzle, where if the PC(s) can help the dreamer overcome their nightmare, then it ends, the dreamer wakes up, and the PCs are freed to continue their adventure in The Nightmare Lands.
Some fun scenarios include:
-a "floor is lava" type game in and endless room of beds. Touching the floor alerts the monsters hiding under each bed to attack.
-a young dragon's nightmare where they are being attacked by rat swarms (after recently having their treasures stolen from adventurers)
-a viking warrior fumbling in a death battle, while a valkyrie watches with disapproval.
-a normal dog who is having a nightmare about its owner's vacuum cleaner (give it "Hellfire Engine" stats)
These are all excellent, rich ideas! I'd love to hear how they play out at your table. Yes, indeed I also love the idea of "dream-spheres" as they appear in the Nightmare Lands. They're almost like Domains-within-Domains-within-Ravenloft!
How did your players enjoy it all? Best wishes, and cheers!
I'm excited to run this, I personally like to imagine Caroline's own trauma and fear, mixed with some kind of magic she possesses, but cannot control, is what created the Nightmare Court, and they continue to terrorize her, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that the party hopefully breaks.
I'm so glad you found it exciting! Sorry it took me a while to see this comment... Did you end up running it? If so, feel free to post back here to describe how it went! Best wishes, and cheers!
In my version of the nightmare court, I have Caroline as a woman who grew her psychic powers over her life. She started an asylum with the guise of helping the ill and sick, but really began making use of it to absorb the psychic energy of others to try and ascend to another state of being. One by one, her teacher, friends, and family confront her, only to become patients in her sanitarium and batteries for her growing psychic powers. But when her sister came to confront her, her psionic powers failed to work on her. Enraged, she brutally killed her, and the surrounding lands began getting swallowed by the mists. Though Caroline tried to fight the mists back with her powers, resisting the mists only seemed to hasten them. She was cornered into the heart of her asylum, sacrificing patient after patient to the mists, locking herself in an empty room and forcing herself into a deep sleep with her powers. In her dread domain, she is constantly asleep, the asylum now attended to by manifestations of her teacher, family, and friends. People in the town are fine, but the greater realm of dreams outside the domain is in danger. While Caroline sleeps, her splintered psyche and memories of the people she's wronged manifest as the Nightmare Court, each member working together and fighting amongst themselves for more psychic power. If she awakes, her powers return to her, but all of the patients and doctors in the asylum change to the form that shows what she did to them. Her ultimate goal always away from her while she sleeps, but the consequences of her actions every in view while awake.
Yet another great one. This kinda feels a bit like a boss rush!
Indeed! I was thinking that as well. Hopefully, the re-purposed maps of Slitherswamp, the Obstacle Course, and parts of the Netherdeep will mix it up a bit, so it doesn't feel like a *mere* boss rush!
Thanks very much for watching and commenting! Best wishes, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers hey a boss rush can be fun too, but the dungeon crawling would be a nice way to give every type of player something. Thanks for expanding on the domains in the back of the book, you throw in so much flair and detail- it’s great
Great adventure! I made use of a few elements of the Nightmare Court when my group played Curse of Strahd.
It's funny, but since I read the older module, I thought that the Nightmare Court could function as some sort of a twisted and nightmarish version of the Endless from Sandman (btw, the Netflix series was actually good!).
Another reference that I really like about the module is the presence of the a group of people, inspired by the australian aboriginal people, who are capable of "Dreamwalking" during the Dreamtime. It could even be a source to Van Richten's ritual!
Oh yes, that's a good point: the Endless from "Sandman"--and Dream in particular--is a ripe source of inspiration for this setting and its characters! (Heck, they even have a character named "Morpheus," and to your point about aboriginal metaphysics, "The Rainbow Serpent," too!) But absolutely, I think this adventure could easily benefit from a close and sensitive reading of those cultural ideas, and their incorporation into Ravenloft! Thanks for this comment, and for watching! Cheers!
I caught your excellent "Rime" Dark Sun series and this one jumped out to me to watch next in your series. I really did enjoy this more than I can say.
One question: how does saving Caroline free the rest of the villagers from the Nightmare Court?
Hello! Thank you so much for watching and for your question!
I think the easiest answer is that Van Richten's ritual makes it so.
Think of the 80s classic "Ghostbusters," or even better the cartoon series, "The Real Ghostbusters." According those media's lore, a ghost becomes *vulnerable* as soon as it enters the beam of a *trap* designed by Ray and Egon. Being in the trap's beam makes ghosts vulnerable.
I'm thinking that, when Van Richten casts his ritual, he's doing something similar. He's shining an arcane light on the sleeping subconscious of Caroline Dinwiddy--one that disables many powers of the Court that haunts her!
This isn't the only solution, of course; I can think of several other, equally fun, approaches, now that you have raised the question! What do you think?
Thanks for the view and the insightful question! Best wishes and cheers!
This is fantastic! I created a somewhat similar encounter with the Ghost Dancer using the stats of a Virtuoso Lich from Tomb of Beasts 2. The Theater Macabre is a great backdrop for an encounter in the Nightmare Lands.
Oh, excellent! Yes Kobold Press' "Tome of Beasts" series is really excellent, and a lot of the monsters in there are ideal for a surreal setting like the Nightmare Lands. Thanks for watching, and cheers!
Your references and media are always spot on. Some of the stuff I didn't know about gave me goosebumps just from the stills you showed.
Hello. Very cool ideas, maybe I will use part of them. I'm in the middle of a big custom Ravenloft campaign based on the second and third edition, but with a lot of change. The whole thing would be too long to explain, but I try to summarize it.Let's say that every player character has his own story arc, and one of them is seeking his parents. Both have disapeared 10 years ago. They were studiying obscure arcane lore about the planes and discovered the plane of dream and its connection with The Nightlare Lands. The Nightmare Courts start to chase them down , and they found refuge to the asylum of Dr Gregorian Ilhousen. But the Nightmare Court won at the end: the two parents of the pc were draged to the nightmare lands to be endelessely tortured, Dr Gregorian Ilhousen was betrayed by his right hand Dr Harold Tasker (now a Warlock of The Nightmare Court) and he send Ilhousen to Dr Dominiani island (a cerebral vampire). The pc and his allies will find clues leading to the journal of Dr Ilhousen, will need to free him from his emprisonnement on Dr Dominiani Island and probably fight Harold Tasker. Ilhousen will help them to reach both in their dreams first and then physically The Nightmare Lands to rescue the parents of the pc, and then try to escape this place of terror and madness. So yeah my campaign is more around the second edition stuff, but with modifications. They will end the campaign around level 13. I have plenty of other nasty things for them, all related to other pc story arcs: a serial killer being in fact an Oni (my inquisitive rogue player), a cursed familly tainted with demonic blood and controled in the shadow by the devil progenitor of the familly (my thiefling bard orphan player), an alhoon traped inside a mirror and posing as a mentor of one of my pc, using him to free him from his dimensional prison (my dwarf clerc player), and a race between two monks trying to find a book that could decide a lot of things (my elf monk player). You add to all that a big fight between the master of Dementlieu and The Brain (himself manipulated by a rogue Rakshasa/Moriarty like mastermind) with my players in the middle of a temporal mind fuck with two Falkovnia: future Falkovnia from 5E devasted by zombies because of bad experiment by a mad scientist (it has a direct connection with the general of the trapped alhoon) under the order of Vlad Drakov, and present Falkovnia trying to invade Dementlieu and other country around (the two falkovnia appearing and disappearing behind the mist, one replacing the other regulary). My players will have the opportunity to stop the mad scientist(think Resident Evil) and make vanish the "future Falkovnia". My players can count on Alanik Ray and Sedgewick, and maybe Ilhousen if they save him to help them. And of course, their is a lot of other things going on (hellraizer stuff) in Dementlieu (third edition), Lamordie, Paridon, (a cluster I have create) as the campaign is a big sandbox . We should play at least 70 sessions and we are actually at the 15th (my pcs are 4th level).
That's a really awesome-sounding campaign; I'm jealous of your players, who are lucky enough to enjoy running PCs through it! I had not considered the idea that you could use the Nightmare Lands to tell a story arc for each PC, but that's a really excellent idea! It sounds especially fun, I think, for PCs that have well-established fears and joys.
In running your adventure, are you using all of the optional mechanics for dream travel (or a 5e version of them)? I personally thought it would be a little limiting to cut off a PCs' physical stats and then run encounters with mental stats in their place, but I can't deny that it's an interesting proposal!
How did this campaign wrap up, or if it's still going, how is it going? Best wishes, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers Hi Dr Bowers. No, I'm not using all the options for dream travel found in the second edition book. I find it a little bit too heavy mechanicaly. I prefer let the mechanics behind and play with stress mechanics. I juste consider that everything is a psychic damage, and nightmare court are especially weak against those kind of damage too. I also use skill challenge option to beat the dream scene. The more it goes, the more the skill challenge is difficult to beat. I use the third Nightmare on Elm Street Movie as an inspiration too: if the players know they are in a dream (and i try to blur the lign of demarcation between the awaken world and the dream world, but players are notoriously hard to deceit :D), they can try to influence the dream narratively, depending of what they do, I decide on the fly what mechanic to use with the skill challenges as a go to if I don't find anything else, but it's a lot of improvisation. The campaign is still going, we finished the 41th session last week (we play about three hours every wednesday) and they are currently level seven (the e d will be arou d level 10-11)
I use the great ideas of your channel a lot adding my own twist and turn to it all. For exemple Risibilos was just a prime illusion used by Scaene master Lemot Sediam Juste wich have also blur the frontier of reality (is our adventures real or are we characters in a work of juste? ) and I will use your awesome adventure idea for Bluetspur to blur the frontier of reality a bit more. The purpose is to give a In the Mouth of Madness meet Nightmare on Elm Street vibe to the campaign. For now two of my players fight the nightmare court in their dreams.
A lot of other things happened. I used official adventures Neither Man nor Beast to introduce the campaign and Hour of the Knife at one point. They have discovered that the killer is a Oni but used a magical painter palette to save his soul and clone himself in the case of his demise. They have also discovered that a mysterious being known as Zegthar is behing the rise of the falkovnian undead; a mad scientist using his power to fuel his alchimical inventions (Zegthar is a Death Tyrant dreamt by the Ilithid Alhoon trapped in the miror and his general) and many more things.
Maybe I was a little bit too ambitious, because there is too much things going on between the narrative arcs of every players, and the things I planned at the same time and it can feal a little bit crowded with monsters everywhere ^^.
I wanted to thank you for your great and thoughtfull content. It really helps.
Ps: my mother tongue is french so my english is far from beeing perfect wich explain the numerous grammatical or spelling mistakes.
I'm finally prepping to run this one. I really like the idea of the dark zodiac, to help define the sorts of dreams that each of the Nightmare Court "rule" over. You already described the Rainbow Serpent and Hypnos pretty well, I think I'd relegate Morpheus to dreams of of twisting, transforming, impossible creatures; perhaps an almost Pan-like shepherd to these beasts. (Dali's Temptations of St Anthony or Swans Reflecting Elephants). Mullogna represents dreams of malevolent places, oppressive architecture, and overbearing urban settings. (streets and buildings twist like Inception or Dr. Strange) The Ghost Dancer meanwhile, based mostly on the name, would hold domain over dreams of being unrecognized or unseen no matter how accomplished your acts. Of non-existence in the minds of others as soon as you pass from immediate view or stop talking. A sort of sisyphean etherealness where you have to struggle constantly to hold space and exist. (The Silence from Dr. Who) I'll probably change that fight to reflect this, maybe swapping PCs into an ethereal realm that hurts them when it isn't their turn? Or shadow beasts that gnaw on them (like the sanity monsters in Don't Starve). I'm not entirely certain what I want yet. The Nightmare Man seems pretty well set to represent your deepest fears and insecurities, and I'd love to pull in the PCs own fears during the fight with him.
You're really getting the most out of Call of the Netherdeep. This sounds like so much fun to run.
Oh absolutely; that campaign was written in a way that makes it perfect for a "journey into the mind"-style adventure! If you ever run this adventure, please feel free to post back here and say how it went! Thanks for watching, and cheers!
I know I said this before but I love this Ravenloft series you made XD
I don't particularly have a favourite to request cuz it was already a video, the Valachan one lol.
The next best ones I look forward to is Markovia, Barovia, Kartakass and many more tbh I like all the settings and this vids so seeing them all spun into adventures in this series XD
Although when you do a vid on The Carnival one thought of inspiration could be Heckna (as it holds similar themes) also the movie Killer Klownz from Outer Space. For Dementlieu I think The Count of Monte Cristo and Among Us could be added to the inspiration material for explaining the setting and adventure ideas.
Thank you so much for such glowing praise! And I'm glad you mentioned Heckna, too, in the context of Ravenloft's Carnival! As a matter of fact, I'm a backer for Heckna, and I'll definitely cover it as a Ravenloft Domain (or an interpretation of one) in the future!
As for the other Domains of Dread, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised in the coming weeks!
Thanks so much again for your engagement, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers funny you mentioned that, I'm a backer too XD
So, re: your final question, viz. making Caroline the Darklord, I would suggest something like the following. Caroline's grandfather is not in fact villainous. Rather, Caroline, angry at her parents (who in fact were doing normal parenting, or perhaps inattentive like the parents in the book/movie "Caroline", but which she took to be intolerable cruelty), fled to a house with three women who were in fact a coven of witches. They comforted her and offered to be her "real" parents, if only she would do three favors: (a) invite two strangers into her home, (b) give her grandmother some new perfume, and (c) bake a cake for her favored older brother. She knows that there are supposed to "teach them all a lesson". She convinces herself the strangers will just "make a mess" in the house, the perfume will just be "smelly", and the cake will "give her brother a stomach ache". In fact, (a) allows murderous vampires to enter her home and kill her parents, (b) attracts hellish wasps or some other beast that leads to the grandmother's death, and (c) poisons and kills her brother. The grandfather figures out that the witches are somehow responsible (but does not want to confront what he suspects, i.e. that Caroline is involved), rushes over and slays them (in the sight of Caroline), and then tries (in vain) to console Caroline, but she knows she has caused the death of her family. If the PCs just defeat the Nightmare Court in combat, then the current assaults on the locals will be abated for a while, but will eventually return. What they need to do is convince the grandfather of Caroline's responsibility in the tragedies; he alone can assure her that she is still loved.
Ah, that is an interesting and fun take on the Domain, for sure! It definitely leans in to the genre of horror, which features evil children, and which shares a genre with tales of evil dolls and evil clowns, as they are all unions of the innocent and malevolent. (Check out my video on Odiare for a discussion of this!)
Having given the Domain's entry a closer read, it appears I mis-read Caroline's age. I think she was a child in older source materials, but in VGR it describes "a clinic in which she [Caroline] once worked," which would make her an adult. That's a misreading on my part! But your suggestion about making Caroline more evil, and having her misdeeds revealed in the final act, coheres better with the idea of Caroline being the Darklord.
Thanks very much for the comment, and Happy Halloween!
Check out the Friday the 13th: The Series episode The Quilt of Hathor, a cursed quilt lets you enter someone’s dreams and kill them, offing them in real life as well. Control over the dream is granted as well.
7:54 - It's always funny to heat how people from other countries try to say our names XD
My sincerest apologies! I did not realize I was butchering Beksiński's name. I'll take more care next time. If you wouldn't mind me asking, what is the correct way to pronounce it?
Thanks very much for reaching out to correct me, here! It's always good to receive feedback that helps me be more accurate in the future.
Best wishes, and cheers!
Wasn't expecting anybody to ever mention mad god. I supported the KS campaign back then and was blown away. Is the movie the 3 shorts edited together, or is there some new stuff I haven't yet seen?
Ah, good to meet another "Mad God" fan! I have not actually seen the original shorts, but apparently they only make up the first three parts of the movie, which has several more; I only heard about the film once it was completed! It's certainly amazing, and blew me away as well. Amazing stuff, and surely a future classic in both horror and animation!
@@phdnd-drbowers I gotta check out the rest of it!
I actually liked Dreamscape. Scared the crap out of me as a kid.
It scared me as a kid, too! That's actually why I remembered to include it on the list! Glad to hear someone else was similarly traumatized, lol. Did you end up seeing The Cell, or...?
Thanks for watching, and cheers!
Do Dementlieu next! But combine it with Souragne!
You may be pleased to see that Dementlieu is the new video! I didn't reach for Souragne, though; I think that Domain might be well applied for the new 5e version of Falkovnia? Cheers!
Very nice video, indeed! Hope a video that talk about VHAGE AGENCY in the future!
Added to the list! That's certainly a strange one, especially if you don't intend to treat it as a "hub" for other Domains!
Thanks for the suggestion, and cheers!
Amazing!
Thanks very much! And thanks for chatting! Cheers!
Points deducted for the absence of Psyconauts in the bibliography
Ah! Good point! I shouldn't have overlooked that one. Good catch! Thanks very much for the feedback, and cheers!
@@phdnd-drbowers An easy mistake to make offset by including the Cell, not enough people appreciate that film for it's capacity to create mindscapes and make Vincent D'Onofrio terrifying
I love that you don’t use xp
Glad we agree! Yes, it's fun for some tables, but for many of us it's unnecessary bookkeeping. What are you running these days? Thanks for watching, and cheers!