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Originally posted by Markustay

I actually thought Ravenloft was a perfect fit for the Shadowfel.

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Personally I consider the idea that Ravenloft and the Shadowfell are a perfect fit to be the same lazy thinking that led to things like "Gruumsh is Chaotic Evil and has one eye. Talos is Chaotic Evil and has one eye. Therefore they must be the same god!" In other words, people only look at the most superficial of elements without actually thinking about what it is that makes these settings what they are. Ravenloft and the Shadowfell are only superficially similar in that they're dark places with lots of undead who have areas called "Domains of Dread" ruled over by people called "Dark Lords." That's pretty much where the similarities end, though, as they're then outweighed by the large number of differences on why Ravenloft would not work in the Shadowfell, starting with the fact that there is no one Shadowfell as there is one Astral Sea and one Elemental Chaos. If a planar traveler from Krynn, or Faerun, or Oerth goes to the Astra Sea or the Elemental Chaos, they all go to the same one. They all have the chance of running into each other.

That's in contrast to the Feywild and Shadowfell, of which there are billions, if not more iterations of each, one for each planet. When those same planar travelers go to the Shadowfell, they don't go to a single Shadowfell which all worlds connect to as all worlds connect to a single Astral Sea and Elemental Chaos. They go to the Krynn Shadowfell, the Faerun Shadowfell, or the Oerth Shadowfell. Those Shadowfell's, much like the planets which they imitate, aren't connected in any way. So no matter how far those planar travelers travel, they'll never come across each other anymore than they would run into each other if they traveled across the length and breadth of their homeworlds, because they're all still on different worlds. And like the worlds which they imitate, the Shadowfell is also a "world." It's round and if you go in a straight line in one direction you'll eventually end up back where you started.

None of that is at all like Ravenloft. For one, it's not a reflection of any one world. You can't say "This is the Faerun Shadowfell", or "This is the Krynn Shadowfell", because it clearly isn't a copy of any world. Sure, there are elements of it which mirror existing worlds, but they're copies of countless worlds, not a single one the way the Shadowfell is. And you can easily travel between those areas. A planar traveler in the Faerun Shadowfell can walk in one direction his entire life, but he'll never get to the Krynn Shadowfell. Someone in Ravenloft, however, can walk a few miles from Hazlan, a Faerunian domain, and end up in Sithicus, a Krynnish domain. Nor is Ravenloft a world. If you travel one direction in a straight line you will never end up at the point you started from, because the world is flat and eventually you'll come to the edge of the world and will have to turn back.

Another element of Ravenloft which just cannot be reflected in the Shadowfell is the nature of the landscape. The Shadowfell is a reflection of the World, and the World is the World and never changes (unless you bitch slap it with a Spellplague, that is). The Shadowfell landscape is different from the World, but it's still there. The landscape in Ravenloft, though, changes all the time. New domains form, they disappear, and they even once rearranged themselves. Ravenloft is malleable, and it's that way because it's not an actual planet, but a demiplane.

But for all its weirdness and danger, Ravenloft still feels like a regular world. For the most part it doesn't have the pervasive sense of melancholy that the Shadowfell has. And where that exists it mostly isn't because the plane itself makes people feel horrible, but because they live in a horrible place, like Barovia. In other places people can lead pretty good lives and the sun shines for them.

Both share Domains of Dread, but Ravenloft is nothing but Domains of Dread, whereas the Shadowfell has a few scattered here and there with more general areas between. The problem with them, though, is that the Shadowfell treats those domains like video games. In order to exit the level you have to beat the boss. That's not what Ravenloft is about. You don't have to kill Strahd to leave Barovia and go adventure in Hazlan. A campaign can become about killing Darklords, but killing them isn't a requirement to continue the campaign or explore further.

Then there's the fact that the Raven Queen governs the Shadowfell. That's a far cry from the Dark Powers. There's simply no comparison between a god who governs over a realm where the dead pass on their way to the afterlife and the Dark Powers, who're ineffable beings of inscrutable power and purpose. Who they are, what they are, and what they want is something which should never be explained, and attaching them to the Shadowfell then begs the question what their relationship to the Raven Queen is. Do they serve her? Do they get along with her? What's going on? Speaking of which, Ravenloft isn't a place through which souls of the dead transition to on their way to the afterlife. Nor is it even a place where the gods can reach. It's certainly not a place where a bunch of gods are contesting rulership over.

The Shadowfell is also a place that planar travelers regularly go to, and which they can also exit from relatively easily (unless they end up in a Domain of Dread, but even then they can still leave if they just kill the Darklord). Ravenloft is A) a place NOBODY should EVER want to go to if they have a choice in the matter, B) a place people shouldn't be able to leave from short of a miracle, and C) a place that planar travelers shouldn't even be aware of (due to hardly anyone ever leaving). Planescape had the right idea when they mentioned it in passing as a demiplane hidden away far off which only a handful of people are aware of, and which is to be avoided. It's not somewhere to go if you want to plunder treasure.

So yeah, for those reasons and many more Ravenloft should not be in the Shadowfell. It should be as it was in 2E and 3E, a demiplane, just as Sigil was still a demiplane in 4E. Just because the Shadowfell had many of its elements lifted from Ravenloft, that doesn't mean that it's the same, and that one has to exist within the other. Just as it's okay to have two one-eyed chaotic evil gods and two goddesses of the moon, it's okay to have things which are similar to each other but which are still separate.

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WotC basically let Ravenloft die in 3e (though of course there's the third-party version)

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I'm actually glad things worked out as they did. I loved the Arthaus products for Ravenloft. I'd much rather have a third party produced Ravenloft which is good, as the Arthaus Ravenloft books were, than a WotC produced Ravenloft which destroys everything that was good about the setting, which is what I suspect would've happened had WotC gone ahead with their plans for a 4E Ravenloft.

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