D&D 5E Everything We Know About The Ravenloft Book

Here is a list of everything we know so far about the upcoming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Art by Paul Scott Canavan​

• May 18th, 256 pages
• 30 domains (with 30 villainous darklords)
• Barovia (Strahd), Dementlieu (twisted fairly tales), Lamordia (flesh golem), Falkovnia (zombies), Kalakeri (Indian folklore, dark rainforests), Valachan (hunting PCs for sport), Lamordia (mad science)
• NPCs include Esmerelda de’Avenir, Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, traveling detective Alanik Ray.
• Large section on setting safe boundaries.
• Dark Gifts are character traits with a cost.
• College of Spirits (bard storytellers who manipulate spirits of folklore) and Undead Patron (warlock) subclasses.
• Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood lineages.
• Cultural consultants used.
• Fresh take on Vistani.
• 40 pages of monsters. Also nautical monsters in Sea of Sorrows.
• 20 page adventure called The House of Lament - haunted house, spirits, seances.

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D&D 5E - Full Wraparound Cover Art For Ravenloft

We've seen the cover already, but here's a look at the full wraparound art by Anna Podedworna. https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-with-cover-the-d-d-book-is-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft.678411/ https://www.enworld.org/threads/heres-the-ravenloft-alternate-cover.678414/...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Here's the Ravenloft Alternate Cover!

As usual, there is an alternate hobby-store exclusive cover for the upcoming Ravenloft book. Here's a look at it! And here's the full wraparound art. https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-with-cover-the-d-d-book-is-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft.678411/...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - [Updated with cover!] The D&D Book Is.... Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft!

Yesterday's hints that a new D&D book would be announced today have born fruit -- we now have a product description and a title! It's a Ravenloft setting book, with tools and new rules for horror-themed games, and new horror-themed character options. I'll update this post with a product image as...

www.enworld.org

 

[Alzrius]

That’s odd to me, because to me Gothic Horror disregards distance and travel time as wholly irrelevant unless it serves the story. It’s Indiana Jones lines-on-a-map travel that takes you only very occasionally to places of seeming safety and light, but more often to the next scene of isolated terror and dread.

The issue there is that, if that's how you want it, then issues of distance - and the obstacles and impediments therein - don't matter anyway. You can hand-wave the travel time, regardless of how far out of their way the PCs have to go, if you don't want those things to be an issue. But if you do want travel to be an issue, and bring with it other things that can be made part of the story, it's harder to do that if the distance between points A and B are a straight line with nothing in the way. (It's shades of the same issue people complain about with regards to when teleportation spells become a routine way for the party to travel.)

 

[jasper]

WHO LEFT ATTIC WINDOW OPEN? Why are there ravens here? Who is going to muck out the attic floor?
Jasper eyes Ruin Explorer and Oofta to see which one looks guilty.

 

[Hutchimus Prime]

or 3) reboot and it never existed.

4) reboot and let some intrepid DMsGuild Designer handle the heavy lifting of fleshing it out.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, I’m a little concerned that these domains... Won’t feel like places anyone could live? Like, I don’t care about them having realistic infrastructure or anything - Ravenloft as written in CoS couldn’t realistically sustain its population, but I will gladly suspend disbelief about that kind of thing. What’s important to me is that it still had settlements, with characters living in them, that the PCs could interact with, and be sent on quests for. When I hear that one domain is a zombie apocalypse and another is hunger games, it makes me worry that they aren’t going to feel like places to adventure in. Like, if Falkovia has a major zombie infestation, but there are still walled-off settlements of relative safety, with trade between them, that sounds awesome. But if it’s The Walking Dead: D&D Edition, I can’t see it being able to sustain a D&D campaign for more than a few sessions. I just hope they feel like places adventures would actually have reason to go to.

 

[Estlor]

And thank you for that story idea!

For my playthrough of Curse of Strahd, I staged the adventure as the mid-point of the larger campaign set in a variation of Masque of the Red Death where 1890s Earth nations were replaced with Core Domains that saw the PCs are friends of Alanik Ray following the trail of his letters about an investigation into a growing madness throughout Gothic Earth. Instead of Death House, they started with a conversion of the 4e Keep on the Shadowfell that replaced all the Nintir Vale stuff with Lamordia, Mordenheim, and Adam. After that was finished, they got pointed to Barovia, so they bought tickets on the Orient Express. So, naturally I broke out the Call of Cthulhu adventure and ran it backwards. I had the antagonist be a cultist of an elder god whose ultimate goal was to complete a ritual releasing an Oblex on the train, where it could assimilate all the passengers, reproduce, and slip into Constantinople to slowly overrun the entire city. It was the first hint we were headed toward cosmic horror as the capstone.

 

[darjr]

Hollywood pitch: It's Horror Express meets Snowpiercer.


It's an awesome idea, but from experience railway carriages can be cramped for D&D combat.

Historical note: the first time I played D&D it was on a train.

Cramped for D&D combat? All you need is some dice and some paper and a pencil.....

 

[MGibster]

But if it’s The Walking Dead: D&D Edition, I can’t see it being able to sustain a D&D campaign for more than a few sessions. I just hope they feel like places adventures would actually have reason to go to.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to have some domains that are only suitable for a few sessions. Every domain doesn't need to be a place we want to spend six months of our lives campaigning in. You could probably do a lot of fun little adventures in places the characters aren't going to spend a lot of time in.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think it's perfectly acceptable to have some domains that are only suitable for a few sessions. Every domain doesn't need to be a place we want to spend six months of our lives campaigning in. You could probably do a lot of fun little adventures in places the characters aren't going to spend a lot of time in.

Yeah, for sure. Having a few domains like that would be fine. I’m just concerned it will be most domains.

 

[darjr]

I think AL has something big planned for this season. I wish I knew what it was. A bunch of adventures offering ways to visit the domains and explore them a bit would be my choice.

 

[delericho]

Sounds good. The worst thing about it is that I could have really used it about eighteen months ago.