Really? No dark brooking mysterious figures in gothic horror? If gothic horror isn't dark and brooding and mysterious, please enlighten us as to what it is.
Look at The Modern Prometheus (Frankenstein to you and me), a world known classic example of the genre. At no point in that book does the main character grab a hood and a cloak, and stand near to his pub leaning on the wall and watching people come and go. He was trying to piece his life back together and live normally, and cover up his mistakes.
The Monster itself does something similar to brooding, but when it is doing this it is out of sight and hiding, not openly standing around looking cool.
I don't expect that we'll ever get a genuine PnP-like Ravenloft atmosphere simply because a large percentage of players fit into a category of either not knowing, not caring, or not wanting. It's unavoidable and doing anything to counter it seems to upset people anyway.
The gothic horror element in the Barovian area is due to the night. In day, it's actually a fairly picturesque land. But you get hints at something being amiss due to the shut down and xenophobic nature of most the natives. And when night comes, the horror rears its ugly head, and the place has turned from a nice pleasant land into one that wants you dead and is fully capable of making you so, if not worse.
Considering that, those of you who have PnP experience, imagine your DM telling you that as the sun begins to head towards the west and the sky begins to darken, with everyone quickly seeming to disappear behind heavy doors, with faint sounds of bolts being shot and locks being turned, having recieved warning earlier that you should do the same, having a character state 'Hmm. I ignore their advice, they're simple paranoid peasants. I shouldn't be afraid of the night, it should be afraid of me.' or some similar line.
That characters life expectancy can be measured in seconds.
Which is why in a Ravenloft, and indeed in any Gothic Horror setting, dark brooding figures are not regulars.
Tying loosely back into the topic, with any of the things the 'elitist / hardcore' crowd have been supporting (Lower level caps, harsher consequences for death, less widely availabel healing, less demigod PC's, less freely available healing), there'd be less of such stuff, and more fear of the night.
To further this rambling rant with an old favourite of mine: Ravenloft is a rise and fall. It makes heroes. People go from Neutral, couldn't-give-a-damn nobodies and rise up in this world. They rise until the Dark Powers whack them on the head, like a rising whack-a-mole. Then they decline. They fade out, become targets of the Dark Powers, realise there is too much to fight and that it is too strong, or they die. They lose something important. They realise how far they strayed from their Gods teachings. Etc.
By the time they finish the campaign, the PC's will be shadows of their former shelves. That change, is the horror.
And at no point will they have taken up brooding.
/rant.
tl;dr, Leaning on things and trying to look cool is not Goth Horror, it's Fantasy Coolness which is perfectly fine in Forgotten Realms, not so much Ravenloft.
I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, nor that my words are Gospel to anyone but my opinionated self, but I also like to think I know a thing or two about what Ravenloft is and is not, having DM'd for a campaign of it part-time. The only mildly brooding figure I remember in my campaign (when I wasn't running it) was an 11th level Fallen Paladin of Tyr, who generally spent his time in a bar drowning his sorrows, having lost his Paladinhood after abandoning his friends to retreat. The PC's were sent to him after deciding to look for someone from their world who had experience adventuring. They went expecting a knight in shining armour, to find that the armour was rusting in a chest and the knight was shamed.
Mental note:
Buy my assassin a frilly white dress.
+6 to Bluff and Disguise when at a wedding.
Heh, my beef is not with Assassins wearing black and hoods. Just combined with the 'Trying to look badass' arms fold and brood, it results in silly.
