The Domains of Dread: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:28, 20 September 2025

THERE IS A LAND that exists between the Known and the Unknown. Fear soaks a dying Man as he would slake on water in this land. Hesitation sits on his very brows. Repudiation aches his fingers. A land that must be wrought—if I may be so certain—from those men, those foolish men. Men who at once believed themselves gods. Men who at their hour of triumph looked out to what had become of this land, our land, and despaired.
This land is the Core.

It is home.

— Anonymous, Annals of the Unknown Arcanist

The Domains of Dread is a persistent world hosted on Neverwinter Nights that blends a custom ruleset from Dungeon and Dragons Third Edition and Pathfinder First Edition sources with a world inspired by Advanced Dungeon and Dragons’ original RAVENLOFT campaign setting.

It is expected to be announced in Q3 2026, with a full release intended for Q1 2027. Development began in Q1 2024.

Vision

Codified first in 1983 by Tracy and Laura Hickman, RAVENLOFT has endured as one of the most beloved TSR modules—and by 1990, campaign settings—for Advanced Dungeon and Dragons. This period, moreso than Sword and Sorcery’s Third Edition work or latter volumes such as Fifth Edition’s Curse of Strahd and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, owns most of the inspiration seen in The Domains of Dread.

The Domains of Dread seeks to provide cohesion between modern design principles as viewed through the lens of OSR, or Old School Renaissance. It may be conceived as an alternate or revised Third Edition created with the benefit of hindsight while taking on pains to ensure the original Gothic atmosphere is preserved even in a Persistent World chassis. It does not retell these old stories verbatim: rather, it expands on the good bones of what came before, seeing RAVENLOFT pushed to its most logical, coherent and well delivered conclusion.

It respects the intent of the setting while understanding that TSR’s version was created to be a framework for enumeration by Dungeon Masters, later writers and, today, The Domains of Dread designers. This effort to recondition story and character elements 40 years on may never be perfect and neither were those originals, but it will be ours and may also be yours.

Low-Medium Magic

In keeping with OSR principles, The Domains of Dread is best described as a low-medium magic server, whose level cap is 14. Barring ephemeral circumstances the largest Enhancement Bonus to expect on any weapon or armor is +3, wielded by characters who have earned them while already at the level cap, with +1 and +2 equipment considered good and excellent specimens respectively.

Consequence to this, soft attribute bonuses end at +10 and soft skill bonuses at +15. Equipment and class archetype features are designed with these boundaries in mind.

The Domains of Dread, as OSR before it, takes a hard stance on resurrection. The Mists have constricted the organs of consequence-free resurrection and regeneration found on Prime Material worlds, ensuring that they remain out of reach for player characters. In other words, The Domains of Dread is a permadeath server, though players may expect their characters to be lethally killed almost never in Character versus Environment activities, only maimed with critical injuries, and instead as a possible consequence of Character versus Character conflict.

Classes have been redesigned to be less reliant on magic items, as the quality of being a magic—Influenced—item carries specific drawbacks in The Domains of Dread in Tension, imperiling characters who use them recklessly. They are richer in features, especially what are owed to their class archetype, which may be described as a mandatory subclass chosen by all characters at the 3rd level in character creation. Multiclassing is disabled as it becomes redundant with the introduction of class archetypes.

Nevertheless it should be expected that power levels for the class archetypes are lower than other Neverwinter Nights servers who make use of high magic and deeper level caps. Yet the designers of The Domains of Dread have created a wealth of options within these class archetypes to use during roleplay and combat, hence a server which ultimately ends close to medium magic without compromising the Gothic atmosphere of RAVENLOFT.

Technical Specifications

The game server is hosted locally by the Server Owner and Operator, located in upstate New York State. Roughly, the following ping ranges may be expected:

Eastern North America: 5-30ms
Eastern South America: 30-120ms
Midwest United States: 30-60ms
Western North America: 45-80ms
Western South America: 50-150ms
Western and Southern Europe: 70-140ms
Eastern Europe and the Middle East: 90-160ms
North and South Africa: 90-200ms
Asia and Oceania: 100-180ms

The alias of the game server will always be nwn.thedomainsofdread.com, which will resolve to the present IP. For the NWSync shard, this will be nwsync.thedomainsofdread.com. Overall, measures have been taken to ensure players may connect globally with minimal difficulties owed to geographic location.

In terms of hardware, the server is equipped with the latest Ryzen workstation-class CPU, enough RAM to distribute the game server, NWSync shard, testing repositories and backup solutions without any bottleneck to server performance.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-<blockquote>''THERE EXISTS a land between all that is Known and all that is Not Known. In this land fear, hesitation and repudiation soaks a dying man as would water. A land wrought—I am certain—from men, '''foolish''' men. Men who thought themselves gods. Men who in their hour of what they thought their triumph were made to look upon this land, our land, and despair.''
+<blockquote>''THERE IS A LAND that exists between the Known and the Unknown. Fear soaks a dying Man as he would slake on water in this land. Hesitation sits on his very brows. Repudiation aches his fingers. A land that must be wrought—if I may be so certain—from those men, those foolish men. Men who at once believed themselves gods. Men who at their hour of triumph looked out to what had become of this land, our land, and despaired.''
-''And it is our home.''</blockquote>— Anonymous, ''Annals of the Unknown Arcanist''
+''This land is the Core.''
-''The Domains of Dread'' is a persistent world hosted on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, blending a custom ruleset modified from Dungeon and Dragons Third Edition and Pathfinder First Edition sources with a storyline inspired by Advanced Dungeon and Dragons’ original Ravenloft campaign setting. It is a heavy roleplay server pursuant to Gothic horror themes, choices, and consequences.
+''It is home.''</blockquote>— Anonymous, ''Annals of the Unknown Arcanist''
-It is slated to be announced to the public in late 2025, with a full release intended for autumn 2026. Development began in early 2024.
+''The Domains of Dread'' is a persistent world hosted on Neverwinter Nights that blends a custom ruleset from Dungeon and Dragons Third Edition and Pathfinder First Edition sources with a world inspired by Advanced Dungeon and Dragons’ original ''RAVENLOFT'' campaign setting.
-== The Vision ==
+It is expected to be announced in Q3 2026, with a full release intended for Q1 2027. Development began in Q1 2024.
-First codified in 1983 by Tracy and Laura Hickman, Ravenloft has endured to this day as one of the most beloved TSR modules—by 1990, campaign settings—for Advanced Dungeon and Dragons. It is from this period that ''The Domains of Dread'' owes most of its inspiration, rather than Sword and Sorcery’s Third Edition or later edition work such as Fifth Edition’s ''Curse of Strahd'' and ''Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenlof''t.
-What ''The Domains of Dread'' seeks to provide is a cohesion of modern design principles both in gameplay and storytelling viewed through the lens of OSR, or Old School Renaissance. In many ways it is an “alternate” Third Edition, one created with the benefit of hindsight while not losing what makes Gothic fantasy so compelling even to an audience forty years removed from the blue book original. It is not a retelling, rather an expansion founded on the good bones of what came before, remaking and adding where necessary to push Ravenloft to its most logical, coherent and well delivered conclusion.
+== Vision ==
+Codified first in 1983 by Tracy and Laura Hickman, ''RAVENLOFT'' has endured as one of the most beloved TSR modules—and by 1990, campaign settings—for Advanced Dungeon and Dragons. This period, moreso than Sword and Sorcery’s Third Edition work or latter volumes such as Fifth Edition’s ''Curse of Strahd'' and ''Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft'', owns most of the inspiration seen in The Domains of Dread.
-It will never be perfect, of course, and neither were the originals, but it is ours and may well be yours.
+The Domains of Dread seeks to provide cohesion between modern design principles as viewed through the lens of OSR, or Old School Renaissance. It may be conceived as an alternate or revised Third Edition created with the benefit of hindsight while taking on pains to ensure the original Gothic atmosphere is preserved even in a Persistent World chassis. It does not retell these old stories verbatim: rather, it expands on the good bones of what came before, seeing ''RAVENLOFT'' pushed to its most logical, coherent and well delivered conclusion.
+It respects the intent of the setting while understanding that TSR’s version was created to be a framework for enumeration by Dungeon Masters, later writers and, today, ''The Domains of Dread'' designers. This effort to recondition story and character elements 40 years on may never be perfect and neither were those originals, but it will be ours and may also be yours.
 == Low-Medium Magic ==
-In keeping with OSR principles, ''The Domains of Dread'' may be generically described as a “low-medium magic” server, with a level cap of <code>14</code>. Barring ephemeral circumstances the largest Enhancement Bonus to expect on any weapon or armor is <code>+3</code>, wielded by characters who have earned them while already at the maximum level, with <code>+1</code> and <code>+2</code> equipment considered good and excellent specimens respectively.
+In keeping with OSR principles, ''The Domains of Dread'' is best described as a low-medium magic server, whose level cap is <code>14</code>. Barring ephemeral circumstances the largest Enhancement Bonus to expect on any [[Weapons|weapon]] or [[armor]] is <code>+3</code>, wielded by characters who have earned them while already at the level cap, with <code>+1</code> and <code>+2</code> equipment considered good and excellent specimens respectively.
+Consequence to this, soft [[Attributes|attribute]] bonuses end at <code>+10</code> and soft skill bonuses at <code>+15</code>. Equipment and [[Classes and Archetypes|class]] archetype features are designed with these boundaries in mind.
-Consequently, soft [[Attributes|attribute]] bonuses are capped at <code>+10</code> and soft skill bonuses at <code>+15</code>. Equipment and class features are designed with these limits in mind.
+''The Domains of Dread'', as OSR before it, takes a hard stance on resurrection. The Mists have constricted the organs of consequence-free resurrection and regeneration found on Prime Material worlds, ensuring that they remain out of reach for player characters. In other words, ''The Domains of Dread'' is a permadeath server, though players may expect their characters to be lethally killed almost never in Character versus Environment activities, only [[Death, Dying and Maiming|maimed]] with critical injuries, and instead as a possible consequence of Character versus Character conflict.
-[[Classes and Archetypes|Classes]] have been redesigned to be less reliant on magic items, as the quantity of being a magic—[[Modifiers|Influenced]], in server terms—item carries specific drawbacks in The Domains of Dread, imperiling those who use them recklessly. This means classes are richer in features, especially those owed to their archetype, which may be conceived as a mandatory subclass chosen by all characters within their class. Multiclassing is disabled to account for greater class expression within archetypes.
+Classes have been redesigned to be less reliant on magic items, as the quality of being a magic—[[Modifiers|Influenced]]—item carries specific drawbacks in ''The Domains of Dread'' in [[Tension]], imperiling characters who use them recklessly. They are richer in features, especially what are owed to their class archetype, which may be described as a mandatory subclass chosen by all characters at the <code>3rd level</code> in character creation. Multiclassing is disabled as it becomes redundant with the introduction of class archetypes.
-Still, it should be expected that a class’s total possible power will be lower than other servers which are higher magic, such as those from the Forgotten Realms. It is the intent of our design to ensure that even if “depowered”, every class archetype—including martials—will have a wealth of options to use during roleplay and combat, hence the need for a server that is higher magic than low magic without compromising the tone of Ravenloft.
+Nevertheless it should be expected that power levels for the class archetypes are lower than other Neverwinter Nights servers who make use of high magic and deeper level caps. Yet the designers of ''The Domains of Dread'' have created a wealth of options within these class archetypes to use during roleplay and combat, hence a server which ultimately ends close to medium magic without compromising the Gothic atmosphere of ''RAVENLOFT''.
 == Technical Specifications ==