zyanitevp wrote:Hotrod wrote:(snip)
Hotrod, great points, and exactly what I have down for a future LotD game! Scary!!
Hey, great minds and all that. Man, I wish I could make the play-times for the Rebuilt campaign.
Hendrik wrote:It is the 4 horsemen turned into regions.
There are some similarities, but the intent seems different. The Land of the Damned strikes me as more along the lines of the eternal punishments of Hades (as in Greek mythology, not the dimension), where the punishments are custom-fit to the crimes of the imprisoned servants of the Old Ones. The barriers around the regions aren't insurmountable, but because the denizens can't see past the crimes they continue to commit, they don't realize that they have effectively become their own wardens. By continuing to commit their crimes, they perpetuate their own prison. The undead of the Eternal Torment might have miserable lives, but they seem to have embraced their undeath and the evils that come with it. The Blasted Lands are chock full of factions who war with each other because war is what they do, and they can't turn away from conflict. The elves of the Darkest Heart cling to their comforts and leisure behind the safety of their walls, while the faerie folk bemoan the sad state of things without acting to improve it, and the werewolves embrace the darkest parts of their nature.
I'm just speculating on the other two regions, but I think the hierarchy of the Citadel is much the same; those with power aren't willing to give it up, even to escape The Bleakness, so they are bound to the Citadel. As for the minotaurs, they cling to their ancient nationalities even as they bemoan their own pasts.
My interpretation of the Land of the Damned includes a faint possibility of hope for those imprisoned there. The corruption of the Old Ones has held sway since shortly after the Alliance of Light created it, and the architects of the Land of the Damned likely planned for the inevitable defeat of the Garrison. However, I like to think that these architects might have seen some hope that the residents might rise above the misery and achieve some measure of redemption. That's why I see escape being more about character development than about the physical challenges and threats (though those shouldn't be ignored by any means).
The four horsemen, by contrast, seem like a more relatively straightforward external threat of annihilation that must be confronted and fought. The concerns with fighting them seem to be mostly practical problem-solving. The character development from that campaign is more about working out and implementing a war plan against the Horsemen, and any moments of character development are mostly incidental, not central to why they're there in the first place.
I occasionally wonder what it might be like to play a character who is an escapee of the Land of the Damned or Hades.