Gaming Stories, Video and Tabletop

[cliffc999]

There isn't a planar connection in the basement.

Click to shrink...

The odds of a good-aligned church surviving in Ravenloft for any length of time without exterior support are asymptotic zero so, again, your players are hardly being unreasonable in entirely blocking out the mental possibility that you created a good-aligned church for them to find. Because offhand, I cannot recall any of them actually existing in Ravenloft. Cripes, I remember back when the official sourcebook support for playing a PC paladin in Ravenloft boiled down 'You don't want to take this class, you radiate goodness everywhere and that's just a beacon for all the supernatural gribblies here to immediately run at you and kill you'. Their advice for good-aligned clerics wasn't much better.

So again, you are being very unfair to your players in not bothering to search for something that they already know can't viably exist in Ravenloft... because, again, if you are houseruling shit, you have to tell them.

Seriously, I recommended you just have a gorram divine omen or something else that's 100% unambiguous as a sign from their gods show up, because that is literally what it would take to get me to even start believing that I had found a good-aligned ally church in Ravenloft.

... and honestly, even then I'd roll to save versus illusion first.

tldr; Your first mistake was in DM'ing a Ravenloft game. Anybody who knows that setting is going to RP the most mistrusting, fatalistic motherfucker they possibly can, because doing anything else is an open invitation to get slaughtered like a baby bunny in a velociraptor cage before you make level 5.

(add) This is from my experience with 1e and 2e Ravenloft. 3e didn't really exist, and I'm not familiar with 4e and 5e. If 5e lightened things up, that's fine... but if they did, people only familiar with the earlier editions would not only not know that, they'd still be running on their original survival scripts.

 

[heralding_bubble]

today in The One Ring game as the group is almost at Rivendell:

60 year old Gildaen, mother of Aragorn: Well now, do I have the honour of meeting one of the... hobbots? What might I call you?

Hobbit: Ah, yes, I am Isengar Took, you can call me Isengar, or Izzy, or Hey You Over There. It's nice to meet you honoured ...Miss? ...Mistress?

Gildaen: My husband is dead.

Hobbit: ...Miss?

 

[Artalam]

So again, you are being very unfair to your players in not bothering to search for something that they already know can't viably exist in Ravenloft... because, again, if you are houseruling shit, you have to tell them.

Seriously, I recommended you just have a gorram divine omen or something else that's 100% unambiguous as a sign from their gods show up, because that is literally what it would take to get me to even start believing that I had found a good-aligned ally church in Ravenloft

Click to shrink...

…that's not what they're saying?

They're saying that the players are focused solely on finding a portal to hell, and not considering any other possibility (I.e vampires, undead, evil wizards, ext), and essentially ignoring any other clue as to what could be going on as they've married themselves to the idea that it must be a hell portal.

It's like you find a good aligned church and you start specifically searching for the evil dragon who must be behind it, ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

 

[shadowdice]

today in The One Ring game as the group is almost at Rivendell:

60 year old Gildaen, mother of Aragorn: Well now, do I have the honour of meeting one of the... hobbots? What might I call you?

Hobbit: Ah, yes, I am Isengar Took, you can call me Isengar, or Izzy, or Hey You Over There. It's nice to meet you honoured ...Miss? ...Mistress?

Gildaen: My husband is dead.

Hobbit: ...Miss?

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure how to take the answer she gave

…that's not what they're saying?

They're saying that the players are focused solely on finding a portal to hell, and not considering any other possibility (I.e vampires, undead, evil wizards, ext), and essentially ignoring any other clue as to what could be going on as they've married themselves to the idea that it must be a hell portal.

It's like you find a good aligned church and you start specifically searching for the evil dragon who must be behind it, ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

Click to shrink...

I tell them there are signs of the complex being made via stoneshape

They find a spellbook in an empty church to an arcane god

They find many books in magic and how to make magic animals

They find An Intelligent Familiar Cat that kills all the rats in the place

None of them go "maybe it was a wizard and we might find their ghost/lich/mummy/vampire at the bottom"

 

[heralding_bubble]

I'm not sure how to take the answer she gave

Click to shrink...

might be lost in translation since tl'd from finnish, he unsurely went between respectful address for a younger woman (Ms./miss-equivalent), and respectful address for an old/married(/higher-in-organisational(usually military)-rank) woman (Mrs./mistress-equivalent kind of)

 

[shadowdice]

might be lost in translation since tl'd from finnish, he unsurely went between respectful address for a younger woman (Ms./miss-equivalent), and respectful address for an old/married(/higher-in-organisational(usually military)-rank) woman (Mrs./mistress-equivalent kind of)

Click to shrink...

More that I was unsure why her response was "my husband is dead"

Most times where that comes up when someone is wondering what to call them, that statement is because they are saying they are available