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

 

[Remathilis]

The lord of Falkovnia is based on Vlad the Impaler. With any genre there is going to be blending of flavors, and there is definitely room for the kind of horror you found in Falkovnia. This kind of horror was like the opening to the 92 Dracula movie. That combined with the way it handled demi-humans, made it a great backdrop for all kinds of horror adventures. It was one of the most popular domains for a reason: it worked.

He really only shares a name and an afinity for impaling with Vlad Tepes. He's actually much more like this guy:

Y'all really can't see the pontential MINEFIELD associatate with a domain who's a mixture of Vlad Tepes (a controversial and brutal figure, but a still a hero to certain areas of the Slavic world) and Hitler, complete with racial discrimination, super-soldiers, and "branding"?

Seriously, World War Z is a far easier sell than Fascist Utopia. Esp for an "all ages" market they are attempting to reach.

 

[Voadam]

In 4e, yeah. She’s the Lawful Neutral* goddess of death, fate, and winter, and she’s very much about maintaining natural cycles. She hates undead and is pretty brutal in exterminating them, but trapping people in their own hell-dimensions definitely doesn’t seem like her thing.

*ok, technically Unaligned because 5e had a 5-alignment system instead of 9 and Lawful Neutral didn’t exist. But she would absolutely be LN in the 9-alignment system, and the table of Dawn War pantheon deities in the 5e DMG backs this up.


Yeah, so that’s the 5e reinterpretation of the Raven Queen. In 5e they rewrote her because her original lore was specific to 4e’s default setting and pretty incompatible with 5e’s sort of meta-cosmology. She isn’t Chaotic Neutral in 5e either though, she’s supposed to be inscrutable and to sit outside the alignment chart. Most 4e fans I know hate the 5e re-interpretation of the Raven Queen, as she’s kind of the opposite of her original incarnation. Instead of a neutral but ultimately necessary force actively working to preserve the natural order of life and death, choice and consequence, summer and winter, she’s become a mysterious interloper who meddles with the souls of the dead for some unspecified purpose.

I could just about see the 5e Raven Queen as a dark power, but I really hope they don’t go that route. The less of that awful rewrite we see published, the better.

Where is the Raven Queen described in 5e?

She sort of fits very well with the anti-undead raven theme from Ravenloft (holy symbol of Ravenkind, wereravens, Castle Ravenloft), except that the ravens and their themes are explicitly good in the setting history across editions and she is explicitly not good in 4e.

I could see her being tied in as an in-game deity either officially or as someone's campaign.

 

[tetrasodium]

Where is the Raven Queen described in 5e?

She sort of fits very well with the anti-undead raven theme from Ravenloft (holy symbol of Ravenkind, wereravens, Castle Ravenloft), except that the ravens and their themes are explicitly good in the setting history across editions and she is explicitly not good in 4e.

I could see her being tied in as an in-game deity either officially or as someone's campaign.

Ravenloft isn't really anti undead. Even compared to eberron where intelligent undead can be people its downright kind to them the Dark Powers use a lot of undead to highlight tragedy sure, but it's not really anti undead

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ruin explorer when I have time later I will respond to each post but please don’t accuse me of being unreasonable or contradictory without asking for clarification first. I am perfectly willing to admit if I contradicted an earlier point, or acknowledge my arguments haven’t convinced someone. But I have put a lot of effort into being accurate, bring clear, bring reasonable and trying to honestly convey my experience with Ravenloft. It feels like you are trying to paint my posts as unreasonable just to gain the upper hand or strengthen your own position. I haven’t accused you of being unreasonable. If you said something that seemed contradictory I would ask for clarification. In forum discussions it is easy to not fully explain a thought, it is also possible to be wrong or contradict oneself without realizing it. But the tone of your above post only provoked anger because it seems an unfair characterization, or at least an uncharitable one to me (which isn’t something I am interested in engaging in an rpG discussion). We are talking about our subjective opinions about horror games here

 

[Remathilis]

Where is the Raven Queen described in 5e?

There are two verisons, actually.

The 4e-style dispassionate deity of death is in Explorer's Guide to Wildemont, (and appears on the Dawn War pantheon in the DMG). There is some slight variance from the 4e RQ and 5e Exandria versions, but they're fairly close.

The other is an enigmatic entity discussed in Modenkainen's Tome of Foes, who is an elven queen who achieved immortality at a terrible cost, and uses her minions the shadar-kai to collect memories, knowledge and the dead to her. She's not a deity, but something close to it. Honestly, this version could work in Ravenloft.

 

[Remathilis]

I cordially hate the idea of the Raven Queen in Ravenloft, but I'm kinda resigned we'll see it this time around. Best case IMHO would be to just have her as one of the setting's deities (have we heard anything about the gods of 5e Ravenloft yet? Is Ezra, Hala, the Morninglord, the Lawgiver, the Wolf God, the Divinity of Mankind still around? CoS was profoundly perfunctory when it came to in-world deities...) but we already have a death-focused faith in the Eternal Order. Is there room for two?

I kinda hope so, but to be fair, most of the Ravenloft "pantheon" is barely a pantheon. You have a few historical deities (the Egyptian deities in Hal-Akir, Belenus from the Celts, etc), interlopers from the other settings (Bane/the Lawgiver, the Morninglord/Jandar Sunstar, Nerull), some evil deities often centered on a single domain (the Wolf God, the Eternal Order, and Zhakata, all more or less reflections of the Dark Powers), plus one or two larger multi-domain faiths (Hala, which was a loosely based on Wicca and the Church of Erza, your Catholic church analogy). Honestly, the latter two don't sound like they'd be hard to put back into most domains, and the rest tended to be isolated to a single domain or two. (and even then, Erza only existed as a concept from 1997 on, Hala comes for the 3e Arthaus era. Both are relatively "new" the setting as is.

 

[Charlaquin]

Where is the Raven Queen described in 5e?

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, I think?

She sort of fits very well with the anti-undead raven theme from Ravenloft (holy symbol of Ravenkind, wereravens, Castle Ravenloft), except that the ravens and their themes are explicitly good in the setting history across editions and she is explicitly not good in 4e.

Well, not being good doesn’t mean the same thing in 4e as it does in a 9-alignment system. She’s unaligned, which doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t do good for the world, or that the good she does is balanced by evil. Corellon is also unaligned in 4e.

I could see her being tied in as an in-game deity either officially or as someone's campaign.

Yeah, in my take on Curse of Strahd, the Keepers of the Feather worship her.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ravenloft isn't really anti undead.

No, but its ravens are. Or, at least its wereravens are.

 

[Charlaquin]

There are two verisons, actually.

The 4e-style dispassionate deity of death is in Explorer's Guide to Wildemont, (and appears on the Dawn War pantheon in the DMG). There is some slight variance from the 4e RQ and 5e Exandria versions, but they're fairly close.

Yeah, Exandria’s pantheon is Matt Mercer’s take on the 4e pantheon, which takes some liberties, but is actually much closer to 4e canon than Mike Mearls’ version of Nentir Vale he used for Heroes of the Veil.

The other is an enigmatic entity discussed in Modenkainen's Tome of Foes, who is an elven queen who achieved immortality at a terrible cost, and uses her minions the shadar-kai to collect memories, knowledge and the dead to her. She's not a deity, but something close to it. Honestly, this version could work in Ravenloft.

It could, but dear lord I hope they don’t put her in. I feel like that would be upsetting to both Ravenloft fans and Nentir Vale fans, and possibly even Critical Role fans. She’s just the polar opposite of everything people like about the Raven Queen.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Y'all really can't see the pontential MINEFIELD associatate with a domain who's a mixture of Vlad Tepes (a controversial and brutal figure, but a still a hero to certain areas of the Slavic world) and Hitler, complete with racial discrimination, super-soldiers, and "branding"?

Seriously, World War Z is a far easier sell than Fascist Utopia. Esp for an "all ages" market they are attempting to reach.

when I have time, will provide lengthier response. But this is horror and is going to draw on dark history to resonate. People will have very different reactions to that. The character of Drakov evolved over the line. Strahd is based on Vlad the impaler too.