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

 

[Paul Farquhar]

being able to move around in the world, doesn’t preclude horror happening.

It's not scary if I can walk away from it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There's no single answer to any of these questions, but most of them have been answered at various times over the years in the Ravenloft line.

Over the centuries, Strahd's obsession Tatyana has been reincarnated many many times. She's not aware of his interest or of her place in his punishment, but Strahd is cursed by the Dark Powers to fail to attain her. Maybe in some past lives she HAS escaped Barovia, and lived a full life outside in Mordent or somewhere, while Strahd raged impotently from Barovia. Maybe sometimes Strahd attempted to prevent her escape and she died trying to leave. The Dark Powers hold the whip hand in Ravenloft and they don't care what happens to Tatyana, as long as Strahd doesn't have her. She, through all her lives is nothing but an instrument of his punishment. Nobody ever said the Dark Powers were nice, or fair, after all!

But Strahd isn't onmiscient or omnipotent even in his own domain. He can only stop her leaving, or stop PCs leaving, or stop Van Richten entering, if he knows that they're actually trying to cross the borders. Closing the borders is all or nothing, They're completely closed, completely open to everyone (minus whatever spies etc Strahd might have on the roads or watching the Vistani). And of course when it comes to Tatyana his efforts are ultimately doomed to fail - even if he hampers her movement or keeps her in Barovia, she'll never love him. Because that's the curse the Dark Powers laid on him when he became a Darklord, and he can't use the powers of a Darklord to escape the destiny of a Darklord. From the outside Barovia might look like Strahd's dominion, but it's really his punishment.

And that's true with all the domain lords. They have vast powers in their domain, but their curse prevents them using those powers to achieve what they want the most. Could Strahd launch major wars etc, if he wanted to? Sure (though if he was invading another domain whose Darklord cared enough to defend it, he'd lose). But Strahd isn't really interested in conquest. He's only interested in Tatyana - if her newest incarnation appeared at a critical moment in his military operations, he'd drop everything to seek her out, and the Dark Powers would make sure he can't have her anyway. Some Darklords, like the pre-5e version of Vlad Drakov genuinely are driven by the desire to wage aggressive war - but Vlad's curse prevents him from ever being successful at it. Hell, part of Ankhtepot's curse is to watch the once-mighty kingdom he ruled wither into a scattering of ruins that ignorant foreigners plunder for treasure.

As for why Darklords EVER let their borders open - well, again, it depends how much they care. Darklords ONLY care about their curse, and the drives or desires that led them to be cursed in the first place. All else is secondary. Strahd only gives a damn about the borders insofar as they affect his quest to possess Tatyana. Why would he keep them closed, when perhaps her latest incarnation was born in another domain, or perhaps the secret to breaking his curse is held by some travelling wizard?

It's also worth remembering that, Strahd aside, many Darklords don't actually hold temporal political power in their domain. Sodo, Wilfred Godefroi, Adam, the Three Sisters of Tepet, etc - they probably don't actually care very much if their domain is invaded, and certainly aren't in a position to invade others even if they cared enough to want to.

So, a lot of this seems to indicate that, as far as the lore is concerned, having open borders is fairly meaningless. It does nothing for the punishment being inflicted. Especially if most of the Dark Lords don't care about what happens outside their domains. One or two might need foreigners to show up, but it seems that for the majority of the setting, whether you have a single landmass or an island chain doesn't matter at all.

 

[Remathilis]

Going back to the original I6 adventure, Strahd had complete control over his domain, and the PCs where only there because he had brought them there, so of course he knew about them.

Setting up a situation where the dark lord is oblivious to the PCs, who are involved in something unrelated, seems to moving away from the original concept. Not that that is a bad thing, and is perhaps something the 5e version can seek to expand on.

The Strahd problem (The Darklord knows all) limits the use of the domain to just darklord stories though. Strahd is all knowing, vastly powerful, and utterly malevolent: there isn't a lot you can do that doesn't ultimately end up with an invite to Castle Ravenloft for dinner. Once you times that by every domain lord, you end up with no place the heroes can regroup, rest, plan thier next move or even have a lasting victory in. You need neutral space for the heroes to have wins in, or else you're just on a hamster wheel waiting for Strahd to return and Barovia to return to as it was in the beginning. (Which is why escape was always the end goal of classic Ravenloft; if you can't make things better, the best thing you can do is leave before it consumed you too).

I'd like to see some more neutral space injected, either in the domains themselves or in the Shadowfell between them. Part of Ravenloft burnout comes from never having the quiet moments between the scares, and allowing the PCs to win meaningful victory once and a while.

 

[Aldarc]

So, a lot of this seems to indicate that, as far as the lore is concerned, having open borders is fairly meaningless. It does nothing for the punishment being inflicted. Especially if most of the Dark Lords don't care about what happens outside their domains. One or two might need foreigners to show up, but it seems that for the majority of the setting, whether you have a single landmass or an island chain doesn't matter at all.

It seems like having a Core would lend itself more towards a Theme Park Setting with the adventurers as tourists traveling to different areas of the Theme Park, which kinda undercuts the horror aspect, which I believe @Paul Farquhar has mentioned before.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Thus far I've played in one Ravenloft setting campaign (although we used FATE while doing so), while also running two Curse of Strahd campaigns. And the impression I've come away with having done this is that I feel there is one really important thing that should happen to have any 5E game really work in the setting...

...the PCs should never level up.

Yep, I said it. In my opinion the characters should arrive at 3rd level and exist at 3rd level, and never gain XP. At no point should the PCs just get more powerful through your bog-standard "adventuring" while trapped there. Because to me, all that does is give the players the impression that if they just wait a bit... attack and kill a few more werewolves or zombies... they're going to gain extra attacks, fireball spells, the ability to one-shot monsters with divine smite, wildshape into animals that'll overrun everything they go up against etc. etc. That's how we've programmed D&D players to think, and thus it is much harder to frighten them that way.

So we can't let them. Keep them forever stuck with 20 or so HP, ACs that barely ever get above 20, nary a magic weapon to get past resistance to be found. That is their curse. And they will always feel like they are under-powered to deal with what is going on around them, thereby making everything they do truly scary.

But then the question becomes "how do the PCs become more powerful to either escape the domain or try and take on its lords?" And to me, the answer is using "plot leveling" rather than XP. In Barovia in particular (for example)... the way the Icon of Ravenloft and the Sunsword are built and designed as magic weapons... they are what allow characters to have what it might take to take down Strahd. Even if you were only 3rd level, the power of those items gave PCs the ability to actually harm (if not outright kill) the vampire lord. The problem though... at least when I ran CoS... was that by the time they acquired all the necessary items, the party that took Strahd on were like 8th or 9th level and at that point had so many martial and spellcasting options at their disposal that the Icon and the Sunsword were almost superfluous. If I ran the game "as-is" using the standard D&D rules... the party really never needed to get any of the things divined to them from Madam Eva. They just needed to walk around Barovia and level up until they could take the vampire on through standard D&D.

To me... having now run these games the "normal" way... I've come to the conclusion that finding the Icon and the Sunsword should be ALL of the "leveling up" the players get when they are in Barovia. Two entirely story-based items that they have to acquire through whatever means they can while trying to survive. And only by getting those items do they gain the ability to actually have an effect on the land and the denizens within (IE have a chance to take out Strahd.)

Plot and story. Learning the domain and the curse of the Lord. Using those things to gain the slightest bit of upper hand while the PCs are trapped, as their "D&D abilities" never actually grow. THAT would make the Domain of Dread truly scary. And why it was rather genius of my GM to use FATE for our game there, rather than D&D. Because FATE is almost all story, and you don't gain much "mechanical power" over what you start with. So we never felt like we had what it took until we "solved the puzzle" of whatever domain we got trapped in.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Strahd problem (The Darklord knows all) limits the use of the domain to just darklord stories though. Strahd is all knowing, vastly powerful, and utterly malevolent: there isn't a lot you can do that doesn't ultimately end up with an invite to Castle Ravenloft for dinner.

That was part of the original design. I wasn't intened to be the basis of a whole campaign.

Once you times that by every domain lord, you end up with no place the heroes can regroup, rest, plan thier next move or even have a lasting victory in.

And their isn't really room for that in Ravenloft, which is the demi-plane of Dread, not the Demi-Plane of R&R. And now it is part of the Shadowfell it makes no sense to have an R&R zone, since the whole plane is based on negative emotions.

It seems to me the only thing that works is the original design - you transport the PCs to Ravenloft - they have their horror adventure - then you transport them home again. Then contrive some reason why they have to go back to Ravenloft in series 2.

Or the other way around - transport part of Ravenloft into the PCs world.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To me... having now run these games the "normal" way... finding the Icon and the Sunsword should be ALL of the "leveling up" the players get when they are in Barovia. Two entirely story-based items that they have to acquire through whatever means they can while trying to survive. And only by getting those items do they gain the ability to actually have an effect on the land and the denizens within (IE have a chance to take out Strahd.)

Seems like you could achieve the same thing by making Strahd less of a chump, combat-wise.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Something worth pointing out here as well: the original Ravenloft line had a few schools of thought within it and it evolved. I have been largely advocating for the black boxed set (Realm of Terror). But Domains of Dread made Ravenloft more of a stable, complete setting with native characters (Steven Miller specifically says in the DoD intro that he felt one weakness of the line in its first four years was it felt too much like the show the prisoner and campaigns revolved around escape). Lots of people liked the approach the DoD book brought. And even those like me who cut their teeth on the black box, admired its overall crafting and completeness. Basically whether you are more of a black box GM or a DoD GM is going to depend on your style (for modern GMs one big appeal the DoD book might have is it does lend itself better to things like sandboxes as it is just easier to navigate the material as the players go from one place to another). Also for those who want a more natural world feel, Domains of Dread provides that. It also clarifies things when it comes to tech. In the black box, it was a lot less clear how tech worked (it felt like they were trying to still say this was medieval fantasy but the art and many other aspects seemed to suggest later periods, or at least the intrusion of later periods). Domains of Dread provides cultural levels for domains, and each one has a clearly identified cultural level (so you now know concretely that Lamordia is Renaissance, Borca is Chivalric, and Falkovnia is Medieval. This matters if you want to explore things like trade, politics, war, etc. We certainly might have quibbled over the assigned cultural levels, but they were there and now you had some foundation for understanding why Lamordia had technology that Barovia didn't. It still important to remember though, that while these lands are physically connected, 'spiritually' they are not, they are still reflections of their dark lord and that connections produces the nature of the domain (which is why a medieval domain still won't upgrade to the renaissance simply because it shares a border with a domain that is (though in fairness a GM could explore that as a thought experiment and figure out how far the dark powers would led technological change arise in the medieval domain). The book also has rules for native characters. I personally still liked running PCs as outsiders, but I knew plenty of people who liked the native character approach (and I did run games with the players as natives).

 

[Remathilis]

That was part of the original design. I wasn't intened to be the basis of a whole campaign.

And their isn't really room for that in Ravenloft, which is the demi-plane of Dread, not the Demi-Plane of R&R. And now it is part of the Shadowfell it makes no sense to have an R&R zone, since the whole plane is based on negative emotions.

It seems to me the only thing that works is the original design - you transport the PCs to Ravenloft - they have their horror adventure - then you transport them home again. Then contrive some reason why they have to go back to Ravenloft in series 2.

Or the other way around - transport part of Ravenloft into the PCs world.

Which to me ends up basically making Ravenloft a haunted attraction: you go in, they throw jump scares, fake blood, and people in prop make-up at you for 20 minutes and you walk though a door into the lobby and get cider and donuts.

You need the quiet to make the loud work. Otherwise it's noise. You can do that with both a core or with islands in the Mist.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's not scary if I can walk away from it.

Often it is more like running away, and you can't always. I would say the ability to flee a scenario, doesn't make that scenario less terrifying (especially if the players are in a campaign setting that provides enough foundation for them to have attachments, goals, stakes etc). In fact, if the players are running away in terror, you've probably done your job as a horror GM. They may not want to just get up and walk away (doing so may have consequences). I just think your position that it has to be entrapment in a domain, otherwise they are just whizzing around and no horror happens is far too black and white (and we all know Ravenloft is shades of gray )