Line #27 YMMV/Ravenloft


1	* BaseBreakingCharacter:
2	** Falkovnia is one of the biggest domains, being an important part of the Core, but is also one of the most contentious in the entire setting. The reason is its combination of HumansAreTheRealMonsters and Military Horror, which some fans find admirable -- emphasizing that one does not have to have dark powers to be a complete and utter ''bastard'' -- and other fans loathe. Haters of the domain derisively describe Falkovnia as a ham-fisted medieval-flavored land of [[CommieNazis totalitarian ideologies all mashed up together with medieval autocracy]] run by a one-dimensional UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler rip-off dusted with bits of 20th century evil dictators for spice. Fans appreciate the idea that all of Vlad's momentary pleasures oppressing and raping his people, figuratively and sometimes all too literally, are ultimately transitory and he'll forever be known not as the military genius he was in his homeworld but as a [[GeneralFailure laughably behind-the-times failure]], getting none of the respect he ''actually'' desires.
3	** Fifth edition attempts to amend this by theming the "military horror" of the domain after a zombie apocalypse, with the fascism being as much a result of the circumstances as Vladeska's own evil; how successful this was is ''also'' controversial, even setting aside the question of [[ReplacementScrappy it replacing something people liked]]. Critics argue that it not only creates a BrokenAesop, where the despicable deeds of the totalitarian military can be framed as "hard choices" in a no-win scenario, but that the solution Vladeska refuses to consider, [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere cutting and evacuating]], doesn't seem like it would work anyway. Fans insist that the whole situation is still Vladeska's fault on multiple levels and the ForeverWar makes for an even better IronicHell for a SociopathicSoldier than being seen as a loser backwater.
4	** The Vistani; some love them for their usefulness as convenient plot hooks and sources of things that the party needs at the moment, others dislike them for their perceived connection with Ravenloft's reputation for {{railroading}}, and others still loathe them for their perceived CreatorsPet stats. And then there's the ongoing cold war between those fans who defend the Vistani's existence because they are literally lifted wholesale from the "MagicalRomani" who featured repeatedly in the Universal Horror and Hammer Horror films that are the backbone of Ravenloft, and those fans who find the Vistani to be too on the nose as ethnic stereotypes.
5	** Many of the 5e "replacement" Darklords have gotten a mixed reception. Even setting aside the arguments between those who feel the changes are needless attempts at political correctness, those who like Gothic fiction but prefer the game to move on a bit past the century when it was written, and those who feel that a bunch of {{Gender Flip}}s and {{Race Lift}}s isn't doing much more than paying lip-service to the idea of progress, there is disagreement over whether or not the new Darklords are good ideas and their critics are just [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks resistant to change]], bad ideas that narrow and flatten complicated characters, or good ideas in their own right that are nonetheless [[ReplacementScrappy unnecessarily destroying and removing other perfectly good ideas when there was room enough in the world for both, and were always going to catch flak for replacing stuff people liked]].
6	* BrokenBase: It goes without saying that Ravenloft is both loved and hated amongst fans of TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons. Some love it for its attempt to be a Gothic Horror Fantasy setting, others loathe it and deride it for its reputation as the NintendoHard setting that encourages {{Railroading}}.
7	** Even within the fandom of Ravenloft, there is a split between those who prefer to run it as more of a VideoGame/{{Castlevania}} style "High Fantasy with Gothic Backdrop" setting and those who favor a more purist, fantasy-downplaying straight Gothic Horror setting.
8	** The various changes to spells in an attempt to establish the unusual character of the demiplane preserve the ability to offer mysteries and moral ambiguities (as well as to aid in {{railroading}}) are either loved or hated. This is especially the case for the entire categories of player character spellcaster that are rendered near-unplayable by these changes; summoning and conjuring spells either don't work or cause the summoned creature to become evil and plot the summoner's downfall or get pissed off at its inability to return and attack, divination spells largely don't work, necromancy ''works'' but will quickly provoke Powers Checks that will render a character unplayable, the list goes on.
9	** By extension, the Powers Checks mechanics; some love them as being very thematic and a good way to reinforce the "descent into damnation" setting element, others think of them as a ScrappyMechanic that straightjackets roleplaying with an arbitrary and random "morality" meter.
10	** The 5th edition SoftReboot got this hard. Without getting into detail, there are those who think the changes were good, though not flawless, and did a good job at updating the setting to more modern sensibilities, and then you have the traditionalists who think the rewrites betray everything the setting stood for.
11	*** Older fans like to point out that this resurrected a very old conflict within Ravenloft fandom, between people who prefer Ravenloft as it was in late 2nd and 3rd Edition - an actual world in which the Domains are merely placed, allowing for full-Ravenloft campaigns from beginning to end - and those who prefer it as was in 1st and early 2nd Edition and is in 5th - a collection of loosely-connected, isolated Domains you can pick up to throw parties from other settings into an easy in-and-out "weekend in hell" scenario, without much worry about worldbuilding and continuity.
12	*** A passage in the book advised people to advance beyond stock characters from films and books. Detractors of the changes laughed that the entire setting was ripped wholesale from Universal and Hammer horror films.
13	* CompleteMonster: Contributes a whole lot of them, as this is basically a requirement for being a Darklord; see [[Monster/DungeonsAndDragons here]] for examples.
14	* CryForTheDevil: It would be wrong to show any sympathy for any of the darklords (if they were capable of redemption, they would not be darklords), but some did, indeed, have tragic pasts. A few notable examples:
15	** Hazlik was once a member of a tyrannical society of wizards, but was really no worse than the typical member. But when he was framed for rape by his rival, he was stripped of his position and all his possessions, forcibly marked with tattoos that only women wear, and exiled with a warning that they not only had the right, but a legal obligation, to kill him on sight if he ever showed his face. In revenge, he killed his rival by ambush, cut his heart out, fed it to the woman he had been accused of raping, and then murdered her as well, thus [[MoralEventHorizon crossing the line]] and causing him to be drawn into Ravenloft. The third edition version, retconned that Hazlik's ''rival'' was female and the apprentice he lusted after, and was subsequently framed as raping, was male, adding a level of him being an unjustified victim of homophobia as well, since the tattoos carved into his skin are effectively hate graffiti made by other Red Wizards.
16	** Esan the Mad of Vechor was a benign wizard who opposed evil, until he was taken prisoner by the cruel tyrant Iuz the Old. Esan told Iuz, to paraphrase, that EvilCannotComprehendGood. Iuz agreed, and in order to learn more, [[DemonicPossession bound a demonic spirit to Esan’s soul]]. How much Iuz learned from this is unknown, but Esan was slowly driven mad by the demon, and trying to find a cure by using technology and studying spirit magic only made it worse, driving him AxeCrazy and causing him to commit horrendous acts, eventually drawing him into Ravenloft.
17	** The best example may be Sir Tristen Hiregaard of Nova Vaasa. He never really did ''anything'' wrong his entire life. The curse that turns him into the murderous madman Malken was inherited from his cruel father. (Of course, technically, Malken is the ''true'' darklord of Nova Vaasa, not Hiregaard, and he is [[SplitPersonality a different entity entirely]]. [[spoiler:And killing Hiregaard would not kill Malken; if that happened, the curse would be passed to Hiregaard’s eldest son. Short of killing every male member of the family, WordOfGod mentions that Malken can be laid to rest if his current host was slain by a woman who truly loved him.]])
18	** Althea of Demise, a medusa who once wanted a child more than anything in the world, trapped in an horrible, abusive relationship to a maedar who wanted a maedar son, refusing to use his power to unpetrify any of their many human children, forcing her to watch them die over and over again, and harshly punishing her for trying, in desperation, to seduce a human so she could have a medusa child who would live. In the end, her sanity stretched to the limit by decades of his abuse, she murdered him, and found he'd left her SomeoneToRememberHimBy. Althea was ecstatic, at first, to finally, ''finally'' have the child she desperately wanted to love... and, cruelly, ''this'' time, she gave birth to a maedar. Seeing this, coupled with post-partum depression, shattered her sanity, since she could no longer meaningfully distinguish between her husband and all maedar, so she lashed out and tried to murder her own son, damning her for eternity. She now wanders an alien labrynth, gaslit and tortured by her abusive husband's shade, cursed to long forever for a child that she will never have.
19	** Ivana Boritsi, surprisingly, gets this with the 5th edition rewrite. While she's a fair bit prone to MurderIsTheBestSolution, it's hard to not sympathize with her anger at her father for completely passing over her in the line of succession, ignoring her extreme competence in favor of her incompetent (and blatantly insane) male cousin Ivan Dilisnya, and at the rest of Borcan society, who constantly dismisses her victories as the schemes of Ivan, since there is no way a young girl like Ivana could accomplish anything great without a man's help.
20	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
21	** [[KnightTemplar Elena]] [[FallenHero Faith-hold]] is ''very'' popular for a character who only really appeared in one book that was generally regarded as sub-par. She is seen as a well-written example of a different kind of evil than most other Darklords.
22	** King Crocodile and the Wildlands, a dark, Kipling-esque world of talking animals and jungle horror, are so popular that many later characters and even Darklords, fanmade and official, are from the location.
23	** Jander Sunstar, the tragic, tortured elven sun priest turned [[FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire semi-heroic vampire]] was a bit of a deep cut, but he was still so popular with the people who did know about him that outrage followed when he cameo'd in ''TabletopGame/BaldursGateDescentIntoAvernus'' in Hell, crucified and tortured for eternity, having been responsible for the {{Big Bad}}'s damnation due to a sudden act of total cowardice as rank as it is ill-explained, then committing SuicideBySunlight. The official setting update for that edition quickly retconned in an alternate explanation.
24	* IAmNotShazam: The ''product line'' is called "Ravenloft", but the ''place'' is called "the Land of Mists" by those of its inhabitants who actually call it something other than "the world". To them, "Ravenloft" is just a big old castle in Barovia. Those elsewhere in the multiverse that know anything about it call it the "Demiplane of Dread".
25	* LesYay: Nostalia Romaine is a FemaleMisogynist who hates all other women due to a recurring nightmare about the first woman she ever killed. Everyone except Ivana Boritsi, whom she's absolutely devoted to, to the point where she committed her first murder because Ivana asked her to. She only uses her KissOfDeath on men, not because of sexual preference, but rather because she has nightmares about the first and only time she used it on a woman, her first murder.
26	* MagnificentBastard: Has its own section [[MagnificentBastard/DungeonsAndDragons here]].
27	* MemeticMutation: Strahd the Incel[[labelnote:Explanation]]Incel ("Involuntary Celibate") is a rather infamous internet subculture consisting mostly of men who struggle with getting laid, and have developed an EntitledToHaveYou DoggedNiceGuy attitude towards women as a result. The description of a man who thinks that you only have to act a certain way and women will automatically fall for you because women aren't actually people fits remarkably well for Strahd von Zarovich, leading to a lot of jokes comparing him to an Incel[[/labelnote]]
28	* MoralEventHorizon: Notable Acts of Ultimate Darkness by the setting's dreaded Darklords include:
29	** Count Strahd Von Zarovich's DealWithTheDevil to become a vampire, and his murder of his brother Sergei over Tatyana, the woman both men loved, on their wedding day, leading to Tatyana throwing herself off the wall of Ravenloft as Strahd pursued her.
30	** Lord Soth committed several major acts that would qualify as Acts of Ultimate Darkness:
31	*** He and his first wife, Lady Korrine of Gladria, had been trying to produce a son to be his heir, and Korrine had consulted a witch about the problem, who had agreed to help them, but had warned her that the child would be a representation of Soth's soul. Unfortunately, Korrine didn't know about the bad shit that her husband had done, including ordering the murders of his half-brother and sister by his seneschal Caradoc, else she would have known what would eventually transpire of the birth and would be of a mind to curse the witch. When she gave birth to the son in question, it had a face similar to that of dragon-kin with two arms on one side and a leg on the other, with the last leg placed at the bottom of the buttocks as if it were a tail. To say that Soth was pissed about this was a massive understatement, and thinking that she had cheated on him with some kind of demon, Soth murdered both Korrine and the monstrous child.
32	*** After marrying a second wife named Isolde, he set out on a quest to stop the Kingpriest from unleashing the Cataclysm upon Krynn by forcing the Rod of Omniscient Wisdom into his hands (according to Isolde's vision, it would take many tries, and each time he was killed, he'd rise with greater power) in return for redemption. When Soth and the thirteen knights with him found the Rod, he left his soul due to the curse on the coffer, and was now a type of {{Lich}}, with his soul residing in the coffer like a phylactery, astrally projecting into his body, and unaware of this new state. On his way to Istar, he came across three elf-maids who proceeded to poison his mind about Isolde, telling him lies about her infidelity and saying that she had sent him on this quest to die in order to get rid of him. Soth got pissed again, returned home and confronted his wife just as the Cataclysm began. A chandelier fell on Isolde and their newborn son, and she begged for him to save their son, but Soth stopped himself from doing so, just to prevent his own son from growing up as he himself had. With her final breath, Isolde cursed him to live the lifetime of every soul that he had caused to die on that day, and as Soth's keep burned down, Soth became a Death Knight, and his retainers became undead.
33	** Azalin Rex's execution of his own son after catching him freeing political prisoners.
34	** Lord Wilfred Godefroy beat his wife and daughter to death with his walking stick because his wife hadn't given him the son he wanted.
35	** Harkon Lukas abusing his position of the "Grandfather Wolf" in order to bring civilization to his homelands, driving out [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent his own people]] in the process. Interestingly, that Act wasn't enough to catapult him to Darklord-dom. Rather, it was using the colonists [[ImAHumanitarian as a food source]], which isn't normally a powers-check worthy act for wolfweres - it was the betrayal of trust that was the main reason for his fall.
36	** The original Darklord of Invidia, Baron Bakholis, became a werewolf after his lust for a young woman drove him to have her lover maimed and eaten right in front of her while several of his soldiers raped her, and when he personally killed her, she laid a DyingCurse on him that resulted in his lycanthropy. Both he and his domain was taken by the Mists soon after. Its current Darklord, Gabrielle Adarre, was taken by the Mists after willfully leaving her mother to be ripped apart by a werewolf, believing her mother's story about Vlad Drakov being her father to be a lie.
37	** Elena Faith-Hold turned upon those who did not worship her god Belenus in her domain of Nidala, and went to war against them, costing her her paladinhood. But she was too convinced of her own righteousness to take the hint that ''maybe'' murdering people for the "sin" of following anyone but Belenus was a ''really bad idea'', and after purging every non-Belenus worshipper from her lands, she then turned her wrath upon her allies and followers, seeking to purge everyone who wasn't a firm ally, and those who were not human. These pogroms got so bad that Nidala got taken into the Mists and Elena became the Darklord of the domain.
38	* MyRealDaddy: Malus Sceleris's original write-up was simultaneously a one-dimensional [[WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers Captain Planet-esque]] "pollution villain" with no real curse and an inferior rip-off of the Borca Darklords. Later writers are responsible for everything about him that makes him unique and compelling, including his backstory, his motivations, and his realm being larger than a single city with no reliable trading partners.
39	* ReplacementScrappy: In general, any Darklord either created by 5th edition to "take over" a pre-existing domain or very drastically retconned by 5th edition is hugely controversial amongst older fans. The general issue is that, on their own, the Domains and the Darklords are competently designed, but as "replacements" for already existing Darklords or Domains, they come across as "in name only" continuations of their previous lore, or outright treat the older material like it never existed. For specifics:
40	** Vladeska Drakov is generally liked on a conceptual level, as a female warlord trapped in a ForeverWar against a ZombieApocalypse that she privately recognizes as being made up of the victims of her own bloody campaigns of conquest is a pretty interesting character. The hate comes from her replacing Vlad Drakov, whose focus on the banal evils of totalitarian military dictatorships is an entirely different flavor of "WarIsHell".
41	** Saidra D'Honaire is a decent enough character as a kind of twisted "Cinderalla gone bad" character, giving her a degree of TragicVillain, but she isn't exactly overlapping with the original Dementlieu darklord, Dominic D'Honaire, who was a master manipulator who used PsychicPowers to serve as the ShadowDictator for his domain. Her revamped Dementlieu being reduced to a single city-state centered on the theme of everyone trying to desperately fake being wealthier and more powerful than they are is a fine idea for a Domain, but as a replacement feels unnecessary.
42	** Chakuna of Valachan is a perfectly competent Darklord concept, but tying her specifically to Valachan requires some very heavy-handed {{retcon}}s -- just to start with, Baron Kharkov never used to engage in HuntingTheMostDangerousGame, and certainly had no prejudice against a native population of werejaguars... in fact, his regime was supported by a SecretPolice made up of loyal werepanthers.
43	* TheScrappy:
44	** Tristen [=ApBlanc=] isn't too well regarded by fans, who regard him as one of the most ridiculous and stupidly complicated of the Darklords[[note]]He was born a vampire (well, a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampyre]]), but drinking his adopted druid mother's blood after she drank holy water turned him into a ''living'' vampire by day and a ghost by night. He's also bound to stay within 100 feet of the tree where his birth mother was murdered, though this somehow didn't stop him from getting rich and building three separate castles.[[/note]]. The fact that his domain is almost solely empty of everything besides goblyns and beasts (as well as being conveniently small and out-of-the-way) means most simply avoid Forlorn, in universe and out.
45	*** The Arthaus Gazetteer entry for Forlorn attempts to undo some of this by adding a modest population of humans -- many who are druids trying to undo the damage the goblyns do -- and a third faction of baddies (an evil druid circle of treants), as well as having possibly-desirable resources to harvest in the plants.
46	** The darklord Death's domain is nigh-unusable due to the fact it's surrounded by a barrier that ''kills'' and reanimates the victims into an undead monster under Death's control. In general, he is seen as an inferior spin-off villain to Azalin.
47	** Tsien Chiang, Darklord of I'Cath, is a bland, super-powerful villainess with no curse, no ability to seal her tiny three-building realm, and no reason for the [=PC=]s to remain once it becomes clear it's a dangerous place. Her backstory is weak, her motivations unexplained, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking her write-up requires a lot of supplementary books for Asian and Middle Eastern expansions to play]]. To wit, her Ravenloft-based writeups are almost entirely based on metaphor. For instance, her home tower is described as having been constructed 'from the broken promises of men', with very little clear historical information about her. The information from her TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms sources is little better, as she was a very minor bit player even there.
48	** Maligno makes most Ravenloft fans roll their eyes; his entire characterization can be summed up as "what if Pinocchio was evil?" and his name is literally Italian for "evil".[[note]]In fairness, he was originally called ''Figlio'', which is an actual Italian name, and he was redubbed Maligno by the parents of the village, but this doesn't help that much.[[/note]]
49	* ScrappyMechanic: Several prominent examples.
50	** The Arcanist kit for wizards in AD&D is a specialist wizard who can turn undead like a cleric, which is a very handy trick in Ravenloft. The problem? It only has decent access to two schools of magic, Divination and Necromancy, and both of those are effectively unusable in Ravenloft[[note]]the vast majority of Divination spells flat out ''don't work'' in Ravenloft, whilst casting ''any'' Necromancy spell provokes a Powers Check[[/note]]. Plus, it has to make increasingly difficult Powers Checks every time it gains a level. The result is a class with an awesome theme that is literally unplayable in its native setting.
51	** The Avenger kit for fighers in AD&D is built around the concept of a warrior driven by the need for vengeance against somebody who wronged them. So they gain bonuses to combatting and tracking ''that specific individual'' and nobody else. And pay for it by having to use the Paladin experience table, which means they are one of the slowest-levelling classes in the game. Whereas the Arcanist is unplayable in Ravenloft, the Avenger is basically just unplayable. In 3rd edition, it was changed into a Prestige Class and made a little less of a one-trick pony, but it's still considered pretty awful unless you're using it for a very focused narrative campaign.
52	** The Class Weaknesses mechanics introduced in the 3.5 Ravenloft Player's Handbook are such a strong example of this that they have universally been rendered FanonDiscontinuity. Except for a handful of classes[[note]]Barbarians are more vulnerable to Horror & Madness checks, especially if provoked by arcane magic; Bards have a 50% failure rate on healing spells that decreases as they level up[[/note]], all of these weaknesses revolve around an increased vulnerability to Powers Checks in some way -- Clerics and Paladins double their chances of failing Powers Checks; Druids, Fighters, Monks, Rangers and Rogues have a chance of automatically having to take a Powers Check whenever they level up, and Sorcerers & Wizards have to make Powers Checks whenever they learn a spell from the Enchantment, Evocation or Necromancy school. This is not only forced engagement with an already controversial mechanic but just plain ''boring''.
53	* SerialNumbersFiledOff:
54	** The Japanese and USA covers of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIISimonsQuest'' clearly [[http://www.castlevaniadungeon.net/games/cv2.html copied]] the original ''Ravenloft'' cover image in the background, only replacing Strahd's head. The background was removed entirely from the European cover, making it obvious that someone realized what was going on at some point.
55	** ''Many'' of the Darklords are blatantly ripped off from Gothic Horror novel characters. Dr. Mordenheim and Adam are Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster, Tristan Hiregaard and Malken are Jekyll and Hyde, Markov is Dr. Moreau, Dr. Dominiani is Dr. Caligari... Bluebeard is ''literally'' the same Bluebeard as in the fairy tale, and [[ExpyCoexistence coexists with a couple other Bluebeard-inspired Darklords to boot]].
56	* SpiritualLicensee: Ravenloft is sometimes compared to ''Franchise/SilentHill'', being a horror flavoured game set in a world full of mists where the characters get psychologically tortured for the sins they have committed. Of course, Ravenloft came out quite a while before ''VideoGame/SilentHill1'' hit the Playstation.
57	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: As with any edition war, but taken to a new level in 5e due to the drastic changes made, with several notable domains being so heavily edited they literally have nothing but a name in common with their original iterations. The lesser focus on the peculiar flavor of Ravenloft can also be disappointing. While these changes make the setting more accessible for players familiar with other D&D settings, they might annoy players who were really invested in Ravenloft's unique character and aesthetic.
58	** Previous editions noted there were no orcs in Ravenloft, feeling they just didn't fit with Gothic Horror aesthetic, and downplayed other non-human races. In [=5e=], not only are orcs and drow mentioned as things that exist to no particular noteworthiness, there's art of an orc in doublet, longcoat, high-collar shirt, slacks, and dress shoes, perhaps highlighting just how out of place an orc in Ravenloft looks.
59	** Previous editions established several different languages being spoken, some shared by a few Domains and others largely specific to one (High and Low Mordentish were pretty common, Balok, the language of Barovia, less so). [=5e=] Gives the option to have Domains have specific languages, but defaults to the assumption that Common is the common tongue in Ravenloft as it is in any other setting.
60	** Domains no longer have set "Cultural Levels," a handy detail to tell you roughly what period in real life Earth history the Domain reflects, and thus what level of technology (and often correspondingly, disbelief in magic) exists there. It's noted Domains have different cultures and levels of technology and magic, but this is left largely to the DM to decide specifically what is and is not common or available there.
61	** Finally, Ezra is the only religion given any detail, and not much of that, simply stating that she can be worshiped in many ways and provide different domains to her clerics based on the Domain she's worshiped in (it's appropriate in, say, Mordent to go full CrystalDragonJesus and have Ezra worship largely indistinguishable from Roman Catholicism). There's a note that gods from other settings might have worshipers in Ravenloft, and while deities from previous editions like the Morninglord and the Lawgiver were very clearly Lathander and Bane respectively with their SerialNumbersFiledOff, filing off those serial numbers still gave them some unique character and ways their worshipers might interact with the setting, which might be lost by straight importing them.
62	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: For some people, the more they read about the setting, the more they wish for some Demon Horde or OmnicidalManiac to just come in and end everyone's misery. It's truly one of the biggest {{Crapsack World}}s in all fiction.
63	* ValuesDissonance: Some of Ravenloft's backstory and thematic elements are... problematic in the modern age.
64	** One could argue that the underlying Gothic Horror morality the setting depends on is a case of this, as many of its defining elements and moral rules now fall under this trope, as what was acceptable (and encouraged) in Gothic Horror's heyday is ''not'' acceptable now.
65	** The Vistani are heavily stereotypical UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} straight out of black and white horror film. They're enigmatic, mysterious, mystical beings who hold truck with dark powers and are connected to supernatural forces beyond the comprehension of outsiders, who have a reputation as thieves, kidnappers and willing agents of evil. Add in that being half-Vistani is treated as being as inhuman as being, say, a half-elf, complete with traits like going mad on nights of the full moon, and they are just ''full'' of problematic elements. To their credit, Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast have realized this and are taking steps to avoid it in the future by hiring Romani consultants (in 5E, they are a slightly weird but entirely normal and scrupulously honest ProudMerchantRace who simply are good at Mist navigation and are clued in to the existence of darklords, and Vistani characters are built as straight human, unless they are a Vistani who also happens to be non-human, like the halfling Mother Luba).
66	** By extension, the existence of a "Gypsy kit" for thieves was very swiftly dropped and has been staunchly ignored since third edition.
67	** Baron Kharkov, the most prominent "African" Darklord, is basically "What if Film/{{Blacula}} was also a were-panther?" He's a panther who was turned into a man by an evil wizard that used him to assassinate a woman. Through a long string of events, he wound up as a panther who turns into a man, who is also a vampire, who constantly seeks human brides, but invariably murders them out of paranoia that they've figured out he's not human. To say nothing of how his domain of Valachan is made up of vaguely African-looking people who are physically proficient and experienced woodsfolk who [[BookDumb proudly scorn higher education as useless and morally degrading]], whilst being kept in line by a secret police called "The Black Leopards"... who are made up entirely of werepanthers. (5e effectively unseats Baron Kharkov, who's [[spoiler:killed by the new Darklord of Valachan]].)
68	** Hazlik is a non-heterosexual man who was framed for raping another man, punished with stigmatic tattoos that denounce him as effeminate, and is plotting to avoid being caught in his spell that will commit genocide on his own race by switching bodies with his ''female'' apprentice. The writers were wise enough to make sure that his depravity and his homosexuality aren't connected, being forcibly tattooed was meant to be a hate-crime by his fellow Red Wizards and [[CryForTheDevil a terrible injustice that Hazlik did not deserve, regardless of his own sins]], and he's a rare inversion of the TransEqualsGay trope, but still, a lot of people find him rather uncomfortable. In 5e, the rape, tattoos, and bodyswap are all retconned - he's still gay, but he explicitly betrayed his lover and subjected him to a FateWorseThanDeath, and that's what condemned him; the tattoos simply mark him as a traitor and kinslayer.
69	* TheWoobie: Althea, good lord. As a medusa, she accidentally kills all her children, even though all she really wants is to have a child to love and to love her back, and her abusive monster of a husband, the only one who can undo the petrifying variant of her sight, refuses to do it out of FantasticRacism and, again, because he's the most abusive monster this side of fiction. Every attempt she makes at having a child that won't be petrified (wearing a blindfold, blinding the child, etc.) fails miserably, and when she finally had a child that wouldn't be petrified, it turned out to be a Maedar, like her husband, and she was so traumatized by his abuse that she tried to kill it. Worse, players that encounter her will most likely not think twice about killing her, since all they'll know about her is that she's a medusa, and she tried to kill her child.

Context YMMV / Ravenloft