It occurs to me that you could throw out the atmosphere and, well, pretty much everything else about Ravenloft except for the vague notion of adventure fantasy characters fighting creatures of horror. If the world was more of a sword and sorcery setting, and the monsters leaned even heavier in the Universal Monsters direction, I think that would be pretty cool in its own right. The jeweled thrones of the Earth might be sat upon by wolfmen, vampires, man-made monsters, and perhaps even an invisible person or two.
There is some inspiration for this sort of thing in Sword & Sorcery/pulp fiction. Howard wrote "Wolfshead" (which isn't S&S, but hey). Karl Edward Wagner has Kane take on a vampire ("Mirage") and a werewolf ("Reflections on the Winter of My Soul"). In the DC Comics' Warlord there is at least one vampire and two werewolves over its run. I'm sure there are others, but that's off the top of my head.
For my money, that would be a better use of Ravenloft setting than...well, than what it is.
ReplyDeleteNot bad. Not bad at all.
Nice! My first thought when I read 'sword & sorcery with Universal monsters' was 'Kane,' and you're right that would be really cool.
ReplyDeleteI like idea, but I just call that "D&D" ;).
ReplyDeleteRavenloft has been on my mind a lot recently. This is only adding more grist for the mill. Thanks!