Suggestion: Better Inns

[ASymphony]

You mention that your style of roleplay doesn't fit in Port but instead of making an effort to integrate, you want us to reshape the world and adapt it to your character.

I had something longer to type in response but I feel like this sort of goes beyond the topic and I don't want to derail it anymore then this, but I think the issue is that most people found themselves attracted to Ravenloft due to Barovia and many other domains, while only some find Dementlieu interesting. As such, they would feel no incentive to adapt their character to a place they just don't find very engaging. (there's a whole list of reasons I'll quite happily discuss, but again, wrong topic for this, I feel)

[Iridni Ren]

You mention that your style of roleplay doesn't fit in Port but instead of making an effort to integrate, you want us to reshape the world and adapt it to your character.

I had something longer to type in response but I feel like this sort of goes beyond the topic and I don't want to derail it anymore then this, but I think the issue is that most people found themselves attracted to Ravenloft due to Barovia and many other domains, while only some find Dementlieu interesting. As such, they would feel no incentive to adapt their character to a place they just don't find very engaging. (there's a whole list of reasons I'll quite happily discuss, but again, wrong topic for this, I feel)

I certainly don't expect the world to be reshaped to fit my individual style of RP. Rather, this is a change that many, many players have asked for many, many times.

ASymphony is quite right, moreover, that many players come to this server because of the setting and build our PCs around the startup area.

Finally, I will point out that (yet again) the Devs (many of whom never play IG themselves) reshaped the rules we were operating under in the teeth of what players had expressed as their preference, making the RP XP penalty worse when the majority of players wanted it eliminated.

If you would prefer players not express how they would like the world to be shaped and just let Devs create according to their own preferences in a bubble, then is there really any point in having a discussion forum at all?

[BraveSirRobin]

I think it is still worth the point that Barovia is heinously xenophobic. Even with some of the property being leased ICly now, it’s only offered to natives of the Core. The setting of Barovia itself just doesn’t benefit from that kind of thing. The only real excuse I can see for it, is if I had a native with a home, but even then ‘home’ is a very flexible term for a barovian peasant.

[BahamutZ3RO]

I think it is still worth the point that Barovia is heinously xenophobic. Even with some of the property being leased ICly now, it’s only offered to natives of the Core. The setting of Barovia itself just doesn’t benefit from that kind of thing. The only real excuse I can see for it, is if I had a native with a home, but even then ‘home’ is a very flexible term for a barovian peasant.

Heinously xenophobic or not, inns exist to give foreigners a place to stay temporarily while they're there. I imagine a Barovian doesn't care whether someone's from Dementlieu or Krynn; they're taking gold in exchange for lodgings.

If anything, I think that attitude could make for interesting mechanics if inn rooms are reworked. Have the cost be based off OCR or starting domains, for example, make it so Barovians could bribe innkeepers to get into an outlander's room, have different inns have a different attitude towards people (like how Tigan's Rest already does) etc.

[Netrial]

I think it is still worth the point that Barovia is heinously xenophobic. Even with some of the property being leased ICly now, it’s only offered to natives of the Core. The setting of Barovia itself just doesn’t benefit from that kind of thing. The only real excuse I can see for it, is if I had a native with a home, but even then ‘home’ is a very flexible term for a barovian peasant.

The only building that had the limitation of being rented out only to natives was the Wound, if I recall correctly.

[dark_majico]

Would long-term inn rooms in VoB create all that magic? I don't know, but they aren't going to hurt anything as far as splitting the player base. The very worst thing that could happen is, in fact, no one uses them.

Perhaps it's a design failure on our part, but the Village is not meant to be a welcoming place; no one in their right mind wants to stay there. Here's how it's described in canon, to give you an idea:

The Village of Barovia is arguably the realm's bleakest settlement. [...] The villagers who dwell here are horribly wretched even for Barovians, plodding through their daily rituals with the hollow look of prisoners. The whole town is wrapped in a palpable morbid aura, as if the fog was a funeral shroud and the citizens the walking dead. [...] The burgomaster, a cruel and restless widow by the name of Vanda Atanasius, loathes her duties in such a place and abuses the peasantry more out of spite than anything. Travelers along the Old Svalich Road typically pay their fee to the Vistani and hurry on about their business.

These are the most xenophobic, fearful, downtrodden Barovians. They wouldn't tolerate a lot of outlanders just loitering around their town. It'd be wholly artificial to install a hub there, it'd make no sense ICly at all.

I've been playing here for years on and off and I didn't realise that, I think given your description the village needs some more work to make it bleaker, maybe some more mist, darken the tilesets, give it some sort of dank green/grey colouring, and some more creepy sounds, making it a little more claustrophobic would help, because it's layout reminds me of Vallaki, you know that village that everybody thinks is a city.

On the subject of inns, yes I agree they do seem like an after thought, I don't like the idea of renting though, as I fear it might lead to wealthy characters renting them all and making them essentially player housing, it would be very bad if all the rooms got locked up because that's only going to make inns even less useful.

I think the real issue is that you can just sit down and rest or fall asleep almost anywhere in the module, which is extremely frustrating and immersion breaking for a lot of characters, and in my opinion pretty cheap and meta, especially if your involved in a DM event, or a well placed story arc between players, to just be able to take a few steps away from combat and refresh, rinse and repeat, is just uuugh, I can't even put it into words how much this winds me up. I think this is a bigger reason why inns are under used and almost unnecessary. A little tweak to the rest system would be more than welcome for me, make those in rooms more attractive, and bring a little more sense of dread and danger to the setting.

[Tycat]

I agree a lot with that, majico.

In general I woups love to see the horror tweaked up a bit more. I also have super conflicting feelings about getting a full heal from a quick rest in inns. It's very ooc to silently walk to an in calmly and without so much as a limp with a "near death" looming over head, to emerge less than a minute later fully healthy. I would rather Like to see a resting requirement out and about too, like you must actually make a camp in order to rest. There are already perks to resting with a fire, a meal, and without any armor on that are over looked and grossly underestimated, but it would make a better rp at rest time of everyone had to pull together and build a camp. But I digress, this is off topic.

The inn rooms would be great as brave sir Robin suggested, and we already have a precedent for the script in port. Simply lowering the rental time to be a single game hour or night perhaps.

[BraveSirRobin]

I think it is still worth the point that Barovia is heinously xenophobic. Even with some of the property being leased ICly now, it’s only offered to natives of the Core. The setting of Barovia itself just doesn’t benefit from that kind of thing. The only real excuse I can see for it, is if I had a native with a home, but even then ‘home’ is a very flexible term for a barovian peasant.

The only building that had the limitation of being rented out only to natives was the Wound, if I recall correctly.

These days the Vallaki Garda seem to be renting out various properties around the City to natives to the core, not just Barovia, with specific xenophobia to Outlanders.

[ASymphony]

Just to point out, anyone else not from barovia is an outlander too, barovians (at least NPCs) in general don't differentiate between core and other planes, same thing to them in that regard.

[Tycat]

Also to point out, as an Outlander Outlander, that is not necessarily how the rental properties are being handled, but this is off the topic.

Though I do agree. And I think if we made somewhere like the broken bell a weekly rental to see how it goes, it might have good results and bring more people to RP in that tavern, which biased as I am, is the best inn in vallaki.

I also think the standard exists to limit the rentals to a single game day or a few hours rather than a whole real life day just by editing the scripts used in Port to be a shorter duration.