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

 

[TwoSix]

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.

I like the way you think. That's creative.

Tying all progression and growth to story events also makes tempting the PCs a lot more viable. The Dark Powers offering you new abilities is a lot more tempting when you don't normally have any means of gaining them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

To be clear, I am not saying it can't be done with single domains and islands (obviously you can flesh out a single domain to have tons of things in it). I just prefer having the core as I find it makes it easier for doing long term campaigns (and as a GM it just gives me more cultural variety which I find important for adventures feeling more varied).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

That sounds exactly like 99.9% of D&D adventures, so I'm confused as to how you think you're making a point against that approach.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

you could certainly try that. It is actually kind of what I did when I made a horror game and wanted some of that Ravenloft feel (I just had characters never increase in health and have pretty low wounds, so monsters can easily kill them...and it worked). That is probably pretty involved surgery for D&D though

The black box, red box and Domains of Dread (as well as other books in the line do account for this a bit). It is still D&D, but Ravenloft had rules for changes to special abilities, spells, magic items. it was also meant to be a setting where things like magical items were not as prevalent. But more importantly, monsters were unique and highly customizable. There were many avenues for exploring this. But the dark lord is the model. Dark lords are simply the most extreme examples of people who have succumbed to evil, but other people are corrupted in similar ways, become monstrous and powerful, and simply don't achieve dark lord status. Such individuals make ideal threats for the players because powers checks can warp them into virtually anything, and give them powers of all kinds. Also specific types of monsters were similar. The van richten books really explore this, where you have tools for making monsters unique. The guide to the created for example had all kinds of tools for making individualized flesh golems with different abilities. The guide to vampires provided rules for vampires who gained powers as they aged, with lists of powers to choose from, and ways of making vampires have unique immunities. You often couldn't defeat such foes with brawn and magic alone: you needed to investigate and research them. This worked really well in my experience for still making the game scary with higher level characters (though obviously at a certain level in D&D things can still be tricky)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

it felt too much like the show the prisoner

The Prisoner is one of my favourite TV shows. Now I have to get my penny-farthing tee-shirt and re-watch my boxed set.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The Prisoner is one of my favourite TV shows. Now I have to get my penny-farthing tee-shirt and re-watch my boxed set.

Personally I liked Ravenloft having a prisoner feel (you and I just disagree on the scale: I like having them imprisoned in Ravenloft with a core, where you can move around). I am much more of a black boxed set person than a DoD person. But my point was to give DoD the credit it deserves because it is well written, well designed, and it provided something a lot of other Ravenloft fans really wanted. Also in terms of being detailed and comprehensive (but not being impossible to navigate walls of text) this book does it right. I prefer black box, but for ease of use, DoD is something I frequently would use at the table (you just have to be mindful because many of the key mechanics were changed from the black box to DoD, and it wouldn't make sense to mix them together)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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 )

I said walk away, not run away. Not the same thing at all. A PC who is running away is trapped - they have no choice but to keep running. You where arguing that PCs need to be free to choose - which might mean choosing to not engage with the monster at all.

Not all cages have physical barriers. You can have reasons why the PCs have to face the monster other than "you are trapped by the mists" but that makes no difference, you are still removing the players' freedom to choose.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I said walk away, not run away. Not the same thing at all. A PC who is running away is trapped - they have no choice but to keep running. You where arguing that PCs need to be free to choose - which might mean choosing to not engage with the monster at all.

Not all cages have physical barriers. You can have reasons why the PCs have to face the monster other than "you are trapped by the mists" but that makes no difference, you are still removing the players' freedom to choose.

I just don’t think trapping the players in a scenario all the time is the way to go. Too railroady for me

 

[Aldarc]

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.

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.

I like the way you think. That's creative.

Tying all progression and growth to story events also makes tempting the PCs a lot more viable. The Dark Powers offering you new abilities is a lot more tempting when you don't normally have any means of gaining them.

Oooooo... now this has me curious to see Ravenloft run with the Year Zero Engine (e.g., Alien, Forbidden Lands, Vaesen, etc.) or even something along the lines of Forged in the Dark.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you take away adjacent domains that are part of a core landmass, then you can't have the kinds of things that you saw in saw Falkovnia (where Drakov kept trying to invade Darkon but was always doomed to fail). You also don't have as rich of a horror environment to explore. Keep in mind in the original geography, Islands of Terror were floating in the mists, and those were very navigable (some people could do it, and the vistani seemed to be able to, but PCs stepping into the mists could end up anywhere, and dark lords wouldn't be able to consistently send shipments through them). In the black boxed set you had the best of both worlds because you had a core with connected domains (and that core shifted and evolved from time to time because the land is just a reflection of the dark lords), and you had individual islands or terror (and later you had clusters which were islands of terror that were connected to one another (usually just one or two domains). And some domains were really small, like the size of a house (and could show up anywhere in Ravenloft. Another thing: dark lords are not always the political leaders of domains. They have powerful ties to the land, can close the borders, and the realm is there to torment them, but they don't always hold political power.

Obviously tastes vary, and aesthetics change a lot. While CoS and new ravenloft didn't appeal to me, that probably has to do with me being 40+ and not really being that into 5E or D&D cosmology since 3rd edition. My tastes are a bit old. So if you like the new Ravenloft, that is great. If you like curse of strahd, that is great. I won't tell you shouldn't or that your tastes are worse than mine. But I see so much dismissal of the earlier material (sometimes by people who played it at the time and didn't like it, which I think is fair) but also by people who never even really gave it a chance or haven't read it. But there wouldn't be CoS if there wasn't an original Ravenloft module (and the new book wouldn't exist if there hadn't been a black boxed set and van richten books). So these things did something right. People saw enough value in them, and they were popular enough, that WOTC is willing to revisit them. I would definitely recommend reading the original Ravenloft Module, the black boxed set and possibly Feast of Goblyns and one or two Van Richten books (The created, the guide to werebeasts, the ancient dead, and the guide to liches were all good: the originals, not the compiled versions). At the very least, going back to the sources will help illuminate the newer books for you.

Maybe, but I think there are points you are missing.

For example, I don't really see invading another dread realm but being doomed to failure as particularly horrific. And part of that is that there are different types of horror, and the new book is looking to expand past the Gothic Horror it used, which sounds like a good thing, because it sounds like many of those previous realms fell flat.

But also, while I could go back and read the old stuff... It is also possible that that the newer stuff will inspire me like the old stuff inspired you. I've come to love Eberron, and I have never read any of the older material for that setting. The new material inspired me.

And, I don't see how the core landmass made the horror better, except in the idea that if the players had the chance to flee, then when they can't it is scarier. But, the islands can still give some of that feeling. Maybe worse, because it can also be the things in the Sea that can cause that issue, giving a choice. Face the elder horrors of the place between the realms, as they are active, or stay here and face the dread realm itself.

I think that element has value, compared to "you can leave whenever you want because this is simply a country with borders like everywhere else.