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.

​

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

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Really Ravenloft is not the monster of the weeks, nor a monster high for mature audences. The dark lords are prisoners and jailers simultanealy. The tragey, or macabre joke, is their curses could end if they would get the redemption, but the don't try it ever, but maybe one. They are more monstrous because they are rejecting the opportunity to save themselves. Maybe the curses are a traps to avoid their divine sparks awake up and they remember they were as deities in the past.

I don't like stories about conflicts religion vs science, faith vs reason, because they are a totally false dillema. You don't have to chose only one when you can both, for example Rene Descartes, the father of the rationalism was a believer, and George Lemaitre, the father of the theory of the big bang was a priest.

* Intercompany crossovers are rare, but they are good to promote no-so-famous franchises.

* My intention says the dark powers are "allowed" to cause troubles in a world with modern technology. The lore has to be altered by metagame reasons because Hasbro wants the franchise to be easier to be adapted into action-live production, for example something about teenages from XXI century being sent to Ravenloft academy, and they discover the urban legends about the place as haunted are true.

* Please, no a Batle Royal videogame based in Ravenloft.

* Now my temptation is a dark domain based in the movie "Doomsday" with tribal-punk orcs (with a light Celt touch) fightings against jerrens (evil halfling, very, very evil), wererats, fomorian giants and other mutans in a post-apocalypse zone (the hill has eyes).

* Why not a dread domain based in Jakandor? Necromancers vs zealots/bersekers.

* What if the dark powers abduct a creature, this is tainted/cursed/infected and sent to the original place, or other, to cause serious troubles? for example men-eater giants against populations of little humanoids.

* Tim Burton's Dark Shadows is a good example of how to mixture comedy and gothic horror.

* I guess the return of the Mask of the Red Death is possible, but this time will be not in the "Gothic Earth" but the world of Barovia in the prime material plane. Why? Because XIX century, the age of colonial empires, may be potentially pollitically incorrect, and because public domain places and characters could be used by others for "legal mockbusters". Fictional worlds allow more creative freedom, and adding inclusive elements, for example tropical kingdoms as Wakanda.

 

[Dimitri Mazieres]

(This is the fan in me speaking, so bear with me )

I'm quite disappointed. Yes, I know that I can just enjoy my 2e/3e sourcebooks and dismiss this release altogether. Yes, I know there's a lot of people that don't know the previous editions of the setting and maybe this makes it more approachable to them (I disagree, but that's another discussion altogether). And yes, I know that the book isn't out yet and it may be very well written and conceived.

But it's not Ravenloft. At least, not for me.

When 4e was released it was quite the shock for me because it was so far off from what I knew of D&D, but after a while I realized that it wasn't the mechanics that bothered me. Those you can get used to and some great concepts were born there. No, the thing that I couldn't reconcile was how 30+ years (at the time) of the game's lore was thrown out of the window just for change sake. And I see this as something alike. I don't doubt that the book will be well written, with great production values and that it will be well received. But it could have been all of that while remaining true to what had come before. And that makes me sad.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It doesn't make much sense, though. Why were the Mists only taking humans in the first place in so many areas?

The answer, I suggest, is Doyle-ian, that being that the people who wrote the Black Box version watched a ton of Hammer/Universal movies but eventually ran out of imagination when it came to coming up with domains and started getting lazy and just making it "basically all humans" which made zero sense, because the population of D&D settings typically wasn't that.

I don't think it requires an explanation (perhaps most fantasy worlds in the cosmology are populated by humans). The important thing is they wanted a setting that was populated mostly by humans (which I think fit horror more and felt more relatable as a real place). Just my opinion. If it didn't work for you, it didn't work for you. For me it worked great.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And that makes no sense for D&D or for the passionately stated purpose of Ravenloft. It made no sense in-setting for it to be the case, particularly. It made increasingly less sense as time went on, and the lore of Ravenloft was developed further, and remained at odds with the humanocentric dullness of a lot of the domains.

We just disagree on this. There were aspects of the setting that I questioned in terms of believability. But this definitely wasn't one of them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I obviously can't speak for people older than me, but I'm 42, and Hammer/Universal didn't have a huge impact or resonate particularly strongly. I could appreciate them, but they seemed outdated and anything but scary. I have no doubt it was popular - my suggestion is that had it started moving on from just being Hammer/Universal as the sole source sooner, then it would have been more successful.

Well the point was classic horror, so they were not trying to feel timely. Personally I am glad they went that direction. I think it is better sometimes to have an interesting vision for a setting and persuade people to it, than follow consumer trends. However, hammer and universal were not these things people didn't know about at the time. They were classic. I am 43, and hammer was a massive part of my upbringing (and that wasn't unusual). It may have been a regional thing, it may have been you and I watched different TV stations and went to different video stores. But I remember universal movies being on all the time. I remember me and my friends watching hammer studios movies (and seeing films like hammer's dracula or the mummy on tv). Universal horror films were still very influential. At the time that the black boxed came out, there were modern trends in horror and Ravenloft was not about those, it was about classic horror (like the universal films, like books like Dracula, like the hammer movies). If the black box reflected the horror movies of the time (which I also watched) it would have been things more like Chucky, Hellraiser, Puppet Master and the Serpent and the Rainbow. I think there was definitely interest in classic horror among fans and I think as a setting it worked. What mattered to me though, more, is it was a wonderful setting. And it worked great at the table. I think one of the strong suits of the 2E era are these amazing worlds and settings they put out (ten times better than anything I've seen under WOTC: which definitely pays closer attention to things like market research). That said though, obviously it had an impact. Otherwise they wouldn't be rebooting the setting.

All I know about Ravenloft is I read Knight of the Black Rose and was super intrigued about the setting. I loved the tone and the classic horror feel. I devoured the black boxed set, and pretty much everything in it registered with me. From that point on, I was running campaign after campaign. A lot of people and that experience (not everyone of course, and for some, the setting didn't click: which is true of any setting). Prior to that, I was not as successful with other settings as a GM. Something about Ravenloft made sense to me.I get that it has its critics. And everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I feel like you are stating your opinions as if they are objective facts. Again just my opinion, but I think the original black boxed set is a masterpiece. When you combine that with some of the ideas laid out in Feast of Goblyns, it really takes the original Ravenloft module and creates something sustainable out of its core concepts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Darkon is the largest domain, both in area and in population, and has the same demographics as your average D&D realm in Greyhawk etc. (Course I'm sure it's been "reimagined" as a place full of demons or something for the new book.) Sithicus was of course, pure elves. The Wildlands is full of talking animals.

But the people being tormented in the Domains of Dread are not is population (at least in the classic setting) but the darklord. Barovia is not there to torment Barovians, its to torment Strahd.

Sure. And I generally avoided Darkon because it felt too much like a standard fantasy region to me (sometimes it was unavoidable though due to its size). I did think Sithicus worked better though

I think it was there to torment the dark lords, but the effect was it was certainly horrifying to the residents. This is a setting plagued by monsters and often times the peoples are the dark lords victims (Drakov branded all his residents, and treated the deminhuman residents as his slaves)

Also the dark powers were very mysterious by design. Their full purpose was not known

 

[Bedrockgames]

Really Ravenloft is not the monster of the weeks, nor a monster high for mature audences.

Ravenloft worked great as monster of the week (the Van Richten books were essentially tools for that). The domain lords were largely background: you were not meant to confront domain lords all the time, you were meant to have adventures featuring other monsters (which could all be domain-lord like, because of how the dark powers shaped things and warped people).

It wasn't mature like say Vampire, which I think was a good thing. But it also wasn't scooby doo or ghost busters. There were strong hints of mature topics, but nothing was overt (you see this clearly in the art work). And it was meant to be dark. It is basically meant to be scary and a little hammy at the same time IMO. I used to tell people, that if you read the Black Box in the voice of Vincent Price, it really starts to make sense.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If you didn't realise this was the direction they were going to take the setting after Curse of Strahd you weren't paying attention!

Barovia in Black Box/Red Box/Domains of Dread/Arthaus = Creepy slavic-ish domain where the locals are superstitious and believe there are monsters in the forest, but never see them. Their ruler is Strahd XXV, who they think is cruel but entirely human.

Barovia in CoS = Funhouse domain stuffed with every horror trope under the sun, half of its citizens don't even have souls, they would get eaten if they ever left their village, and they know they are being ruled by a bloodsucking vampire.

I would quibble and say the people in Barovia were still on the menu, and there is no reason to think that the inhabitants of Ravenloft weren't victims of the monsters stalking the land (their caution and their reluctance to adventure, probably shielded them a lot from those horrors though). Definitely though the Black Box emphasized hinting at horror a lot so I do think the world as presented wasn't say survival horror or anything like that (my take was more, if someone disappeared they left well enough alone most of the time). But I do have to say, while I understand lots of people liked the Curse of Strahd, as an old Ravenloft fan, I just couldn't get into it (I bought it, and read through it, but for me the classic Ravenloft stuff hits the spot better).

 

[Weiley31]

What is the point of these comments? Is it to belittle people who in the past have had negative stereotypes perpetuated about them in D&D material? Is it to denigrate any company that tries to be more inclusive? I just don't get it.

Also please don't reply with "iT's JuSt A jOkE".

It's probably just a vampire.

 

[tetrasodium]

corruption in the church & corrupt church officials no doubt exist in ravenloft (maybe even one of the dark lords to boot*), but it's really more of an eberron thing where that setting thrusts a spotlight on it with distant gods & uncertain shades of grey morality atop one of the major faiths putting it front & center

Spoiler

Ravenloft has a completely different set of screws it likes to turn when embracing the faithful Ravenloft has a special kind of embrace for the faithful

Spoiler

It's the unmoored embrace of being lost and alone in a crisis of faith over why the god of their faith has abandoned them while wondering who or what is answering instead.

* I don't remember if one of the dark lords fits there or not & am not going digging to check, just not ruling it out

edit: Ravenloft loves when the most faithful slowly walk that crisis of faith right up to the very edge of a despair event horizon where one can look down over that cliff & find their own strength, find a new strength, or or perhaps get ejected back to where they came for a bit before they can take one final boring leap over the edge.