Here’s a weird one.
If we can credit me with anything it’s that I can find the origin of heroes, story elements and event sentences apparently. So the question arises: is it possible for me to get stumped?
That answer is yes.
I’ve gone on a fair bit about Castlevania as a franchise and how I find it neat. It’s almost like a gothic horror version of the Raid: Redemption. I especially enjoy the Metroid inspired games for their use of RPG elements. And yet it never occurred to me… okay it totally occurred to me what that might be like as an RPG scenario.
But then I came across Ravenloft. Now to some of you Ravenloft is one of the Dungeons and Dragons worlds that gets mentioned a lot like Planescape or Forgotten Realms. Okay nothing gets mentioned as much as the Realms but you know what I mean.
The premise of Ravenloft is based around the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adventure module of the same name. In it you travel to the land of Barovia where you (and your friends) are lured there as part of an elaborate ruse. Your adversary is Lord Strahd a vampire that has gained power over time and controls the land with an iron fist. His castle, the eponymous Ravenloft is full of different monsters that Strahd has collected like zombies, ghouls, all inspired from different sources.
So obviously this rips off Castlevania! After all Castlevania came out in 1986 and the first Ravenloft module came out in 1983 so…
So…
Huh.
