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

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think I have laid out clearly what is being lost. If you are not persuaded by it you aren't. But I honestly can't imagine running ravenloft without a core. It really made a big difference. And the point so many of us are making is classic ravenloft had BOTH. You can do exactly what you are talking about in Ravenloft during the 90s using islands of terror, and you had the option of using the core as a domains connected together and formed into a kind of continent. If having the core works for so many people (like me and many other posters here) why would you make it all islands of terror?

And I think there is a substantial difference in a setting between lands that are physically connected and ones that are connected by waterways. That changes the flavor of the places themselves (because it is very different to be reliant on that kind of delayed communication and transport) and it changes the way the players interact with those settings.

What is lost about Barovia and other lands that you can't walk out of, is it makes it harder to have a real ongoing campaign where the players want to actually adventure in the setting. Nothing is really connected to anything else. They are just isolated places to explore. In the setting as presented in the black box, you can't just walk out of Barovia if Strahd doesn't want you to. But movement from Barovia to Gundarak, or to Borca, or another connected domain, is a possibility. That allows the players to hear about places, seek them out, get a sense of the overall shape of the land. It matters.

Again, I think I am as perplexed as some of the other posters about the antagonism toward this idea. I don't understand what folks think is so special about limiting Ravenloft to being isolated islands. Especially when isolated islands already exist in abundance in the setting alongside the core

You have not laid it out clearly at all man, every time I go to respond to you you have laid out another vague statement with a bunch of confusing or vague descriptors. I mean, I've been talking to you about a military dictatorship full of war, where it seems you really meant a land of torture, slavery and human experimentation. Those are wildly different contexts.

And I think... here is the bigger thing I guess. Each domain is unique, it has its own flavor, purpose, ect. Not as a cohesive whole, like say, the Five Kingdoms of Eberron, but each is designed to be the personal torment for one person.

So, if I wanted to run a campaign set in the ancient egypt domain, dealing with the threats and challenges of that location.... why would I want the party to hear about the dark forests of Barovia and try and go there? That has nothing to do with the campaign I'm trying to run. This is the same issue I have with "planar" campaigns. Unless I am very specifically running a "Gazeteer" style campaign where I am planning on us seeing a lot of different places, then going to so many different places with such different tones is jarring and upsets the game.

And if they are all the same land with the same culture just with different terrible people in them... then that doesn't feel like what is being billed to me with Ravenloft.

If you look at the entry in Domains of Dread, they are two separate domains

Okay, nothing about playing in that ever made that clear. That seems like a rather serious flaw if I can't tell if something is a single domain with multiple lords, or multiple domains with single lords.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Again, you can't just casually leave if the domain lord doesn't want you to. There is nothing stopping the GM from preventing the players from leaving by having the dark lord close the borders. Also the village and castle of Barovia still have a poisonous fog that, once breathed in by the players, mean they can't leave that area without Strahd's permission. So even with the core, you still have a clear device for entrapment at Strahd's doorstep. I really don't see how it creates problems if it still retains the ability to have players entrapped there if you need it, but also gives the players more of an ability to explore the domains and for the domains to create a sense of a real interconnected place.

Maybe this sounds meta to you and that is the problem, but if I saw the sign "welcome to Barovia" and I don't want to deal with Strahd and Barovia? Then I leave.

And Strahd can only close the borders to prevent that if A) He knows I am there and B) He cares enough to trap me. And then, I have a goal which is... go deal with Strahd so I can leave. Which means that it is all about the Dark Lord.

And that mist only applies if I get in deep enough to be affected by it.

This is what Paul was talking about. If I don't have a reason to go into Barovia, and I don't have a reason for Strahd to care about me, then Barovia might as well be any other countryside I pass by on the way to my destination.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You have not laid it out clearly at all man, every time I go to respond to you you have laid out another vague statement with a bunch of confusing or vague descriptors. I mean, I've been talking to you about a military dictatorship full of war, where it seems you really meant a land of torture, slavery and human experimentation. Those are wildly different contexts.

I have been responding to your posts clearly. My aim wasn't to provide you with a complete description of Falkovnia, it was to reply to your posts. Someone said it wasn't horrific, so I mentioned the undead armies returning from attacking Falkovnia. That is why I brought that up. I didn't bring it up to give an overview of the domain. Besides, I mentioned the torture and slavery elsewhere (and a number of posters gave very complete descriptions of falkovnia in the course of the discussion)

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ravenloft is like a lot of places that border each other with different languages being spoken. People in Europe managed it. I don't see why Ravenloft can't. Some of the domains were spawned by inhabitants of existing domains. For example Borca's dark lords families were from Barovia. The core fo Ravenloft has its own timeline that explains when and how each domain was created. Some domains came from the same campaign world. There are dark lords from grey hawk, from forgotten realms, from the dragon lance settings etc.

You are missing the point I was making.

How do Dark Lords from Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance share a culture? Those three places are very difference from each other. How are they sharing a language (except that DnD has traditionally just made languages multiversal for ease of play)

Yeah, Europe managed it, but Europe wasn't made by people being transported to prison from across a near infinite multiverse.

How much control dark lords have over the land and domain itself is very individual. But generally their main power is an ability to close the borders. They often have other abilities that connect them to the land. It isn't usually anything like an ability to customize their prison though (and the domains are their prisons)

I think you understood my point though

 

[Bedrockgames]

And I think... here is the bigger thing I guess. Each domain is unique, it has its own flavor, purpose, ect. Not as a cohesive whole, like say, the Five Kingdoms of Eberron, but each is designed to be the personal torment for one person.

So, if I wanted to run a campaign set in the ancient egypt domain, dealing with the threats and challenges of that location.... why would I want the party to hear about the dark forests of Barovia and try and go there? That has nothing to do with the campaign I'm trying to run. This is the same issue I have with "planar" campaigns. Unless I am very specifically running a "Gazeteer" style campaign where I am planning on us seeing a lot of different places, then going to so many different places with such different tones is jarring and upsets the game.

First off, the egyptian domain isn't connected to the core. It is an island of terror and unlikely to come up unless you want it to (and vice versa). I don't know what kind of campaign you are trying to run. I know if you want a setting that players will take enough interest in to play in it for a long time, and you want horror, Ravenloft with a core works well, because players like having some amount of variety. If you are running very focused scenarios and the players are meant to completely buy in and play them, then you might be better off with islands of terror, than core domains. But if you want the players to have some sense of agency, or if you want adventures that can span across multiple domains (for example a harrowing journey transporting someone to safety from Darkon to Mordent because they are being targeted by the Kargat or some other nefarious group or person), having a core is very useful. It opens up more types of adventures.

All the questions you are asking here can be asked of any setting, whether it is horror or just simple fantasy. Personally I would much rather have a complete continent to adventure in that a series of disconnected islands. If you disagree that is fine. You are free to like what you like and I am free to like what I like. But I do think you should at least take a look at the original material because it sounds like you are going off completely second hand information and that you don't have a clear idea about what it was trying to do.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Isn't this an argument for a core? If you were on the core, and the GM wasn't railroady, you would have had more potential adventure hooks to pursue, more places to go.

No, this is an acknowledgement that my experiences with the Domains of Dread have involved two of the worst gaming experiences of my life.

Yes, I played in the, I guess two domains that Vecna and Kas had. And giving us more places to go wouldn't have helped, because the DM had no interest in giving us places to go. He literally had Vecna teleport in front of us, kill people we had saved, then tell us what to do for him if we wanted to ever leave this place.

Sure, maybe the core would have made him not base the entire side adventure on us trying to escape, but my point was far more that I was letting you know that my experience was not a good one, it was not seeming to tell me anything about the place, since it seems everything I knew about it was wrong.

And no amount of free range territory is going to stop railroading.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You are missing the point I was making.

How do Dark Lords from Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance share a culture? Those three places are very difference from each other. How are they sharing a language (except that DnD has traditionally just made languages multiversal for ease of play)

Yeah, Europe managed it, but Europe wasn't made by people being transported to prison from across a near infinite multiverse.

The domains have different cultures, but the cultures are close enough, in the way that a country in northern europe and a country in eastern Europe are close enough, for it to be close enough. Also these places are next to each other, and they have been next to each other for a while, and people can cross the borders. So there is exchange of information. And Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms, are all not that far from each other culturally. But importantly by the Domains fo Dread Book, Culture Level is quantified for each domain, so you have a clear mark of things like tech level. And those can vary. For example Falkovnia I believe is medieval, while Lamordia (which is pretty close to it) is Renaissance.

Also suspension of disbelief. If this is too much for you it is too much for you. This was never a problem for me.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No, this is an acknowledgement that my experiences with the Domains of Dread have involved two of the worst gaming experiences of my life.

Yes, I played in the, I guess two domains that Vecna and Kas had. And giving us more places to go wouldn't have helped, because the DM had no interest in giving us places to go. He literally had Vecna teleport in front of us, kill people we had saved, then tell us what to do for him if we wanted to ever leave this place.

Sure, maybe the core would have made him not base the entire side adventure on us trying to escape, but my point was far more that I was letting you know that my experience was not a good one, it was not seeming to tell me anything about the place, since it seems everything I knew about it was wrong.

And no amount of free range territory is going to stop railroading.

But that sounds like the problem is the GM. I mean you say the GM was hellbent on running it this way, and you guys were not enjoying it. Look, I think part of the issue is the gm. It is possible ravenloft isn't to your taste. But it is also likely the domains. I mean the burning peaks is one of my least favorite. Some people like it, so it is just my opinion. But I don't think I ever set an adventure there, because it just never clicked for me. I would much rather set a campaign in the kartakass-sithicus-forlorn-barovia region.

When you say domains of dread what do you mean? I am asking because there seems to be confusion around the term. To me it just means the Domains of Dread book for 2nd edition (which did contain the burning peaks domain). But just asking for clarity as it seems to have other meanings in post 4E cosmology.

 

[Faolyn]

But that wilderness is exactly what the jackalwere wants right? It is created to his specifications? And he is the one who can close the border to Farelle, just like Strahd, right?

For the most part, the Dark Powers create domains that fit the Darklord because, for the most part, the true curse doesn't lie in what the domain's climate and terrain is like. And when the shape of the domain is important, it's usually in the sense of "this Darklord wants a lot of power, but instead gets a tiny realm or a big realm that has very few people in it." Not "this Darklord likes warm weather, so we'll give them an arctic tundra."

And, I guess, if Dementileu, Mordent, Richemulot, Lamordia, Borca, Barovia, Kartakass, Valachan, Hazlan and Nova Vaasa are all so similiar... how does that fit with these Dark Lords being taken from across the multiverse?

You had Soth from DL, a jackalwere in the forest, an egyptian kingdom ruled by a mummy. I mean, I thought some of those were big name places, the mummy one wasn't part of the Core? And how did these dozen or so darklords all come from basically the same place? That seems... odd.

There were clusters like The Amber Wastes and Zherisia. And not every Darklord is taken from elsewhere, and some of those who enter RL become Darklords much later. Gabrielle Aderre (Invidia) is a Vistani. Dominic d'Honaire (Dementlieu) is from Mordent. Ivan Dilisnya and Ivana Boritsi (Borca) are from Barovia and Borca, respectively. Markov (Markovia) is from Barovia. Alfred Timothy (Verbrek) is from Arkandale, which was a domain of its own that was absorbed into Verbrek. For most of these people (except for folks like Aderre, who killed the former Darklord and took his place), they were enveloped by the Mists, and when the Mists cleared, they were in their new home.

And, well, most D&D settings are very similar. Those that aren't produce very different places, such as with Kalidnay, the Dark Sun domain.

Unfortunately, while the Core has had a thorough examination (in the Gazetteers), there's been very little done with the Clusters or Islands.

Sure, but like I said in a few other responses, them having to actively close the border is too... overt. It is literally setting up that conflict where you have to deal with the Dark Lord, which sort of undercuts the other answer, which is there are other threats.

The goal is to use the border closings sparingly--when the PCs have actively done something to threaten the Dark Lord. For the most part, there's very little a PC can do that will actively harm or annoy a Dark Lord. Many of them can't even been killed.

Sure there are other threats, but you don't play something like Ravenloft for Generic Vampire #56, you play for Strahd, for Soth, for these big dramatic figures. And if they can send minions overland, then they can send them on whatever sea route you take as well.

Maybe you don't, but I do. Aside from Curse of Strahd, I've never included a Darklord (and we've barely seen him so far in that). Heck, I can barely even use vampires. There's far too many other interesting monsters in the setting, and that's not even including the humans.

I find the little horrors work better. My favorite example--well, I ran this in GURPS, but if it were D&D, the players would have been somewhere between 6th and 8th level and the single actual monster involved would have maybe been CR 1/8, but the PCs ran screaming.

See, and that is part of the problem I realized while responding to Bedrock, they aren't describing what is there in a way that makes sense to me. "The Third Reich" is a very different aesthetic than "Military Dictatorship". Yeah, if that is the point of the domain, then the horror is there. Experimentation is always a huge driver of horror.

It's actually both. The main thing, though, is that Drakov's curse is that he can never win another major battle. He will never be able to successfully invade another country and gain any new territory. He always fails. So the Third Reich aspects are seriously curtailed in that matter, which means we're left with him taking out his frustrations on his own population.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Maybe this sounds meta to you and that is the problem, but if I saw the sign "welcome to Barovia" and I don't want to deal with Strahd and Barovia? Then I leave.

And Strahd can only close the borders to prevent that if A) He knows I am there and B) He cares enough to trap me. And then, I have a goal which is... go deal with Strahd so I can leave. Which means that it is all about the Dark Lord.

And that mist only applies if I get in deep enough to be affected by it.

This is what Paul was talking about. If I don't have a reason to go into Barovia, and I don't have a reason for Strahd to care about me, then Barovia might as well be any other countryside I pass by on the way to my destination.

I don't see this as a problem. I mean if you don't want to go on the adventure, I am happy not to make you go. My job as a GM is to give you a compelling reason to venture into Barovia. I might also, occasionally use entrapment as a tool. But I honestly much prefer that to flow naturally from the choices players make ("If we hadn't gone into the castle to rescue Van Richten, we wouldn't be trapped here !")