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

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think if your defense is "WELL THAT WASN'T WHAT I MEANT!" even though it's a very obvious understanding of something, and hard to avoid, then maybe consider that you might have screwed up and rather than doubling down, add some nuance or clarity or change things up a bit?

There's a ton of stuff from the 1990s and before that wasn't "meant to be" racist, misogynist, or incredibly homophobic, but... it is.

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree here. Earlier in the thread, I explained my rationale (and it isn't what you seem to think it is). There are lots of reasons for artists to draw on different kinds of imagery. Sometimes it is quite personal. It isn't always a commentary. What is intended very much matters. Even in your own example, we grade Soul Man and Birth of a Nation very differently (because one is a clueless attempt at racial humor, the other is a racist diatribe). But my point is something can be in a book simply because it resonates with the writer Just declaring a trope bad without allowing for that context, I think is extremely misguided and regressive (and I think a bit puritanical to be honest). Like I said, people are taking a good idea: being kind, compassionate, and empathetic, and using it to read WAAAAY too much into content and always go for the most negative possible reading of a thing. Not saying there ins't cringey content in the past. But I do think a lot of this kind of thinking leads to very bland and uninteresting content. Obviously we disagree, which again is fine. I'm not saying you have to agree with me.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Criticism isn't hate.

When did I say criticism was hate? You said that anti-trans people cited stuff like Psycho and Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs as reasons to justify their hate (or possibly I misread your post). I was saying, you don't let people who are hateful and misunderstand art dictate what it means. I was responding to this:

And even with those movies, it's important to note that the elaborate disclaimers didn't work - that people with anti-trans opinions love to cite Lambs, or use imagery from it, even though the movie says "this isn't a trans person". Flying too close to the sun and all that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Criticism isn't hate. It's literally mindless and anti-discussion to suggest it is. And it's not a "misunderstanding" to say Soul Man is a racist film. It would be a misunderstanding to say "Soul Man was written to attack black people". If you can't see the difference, that's on you and it's a big problem.

I never said anything about Soul Man. I haven't seen Soul Man since it came out. I couldn't begin to talk about it intelligently (beyond the cluelessness I mentioned above). But I am not saying a movie can't be racist, even though it wasn't intended to be. What I have been talking about is the things people are criticizing in Ravenloft (tropes around some of the female domain lords, the Hazlik thing, etc). I am just saying uses of some of these tropes in Ravenloft don't automatically make them whatever -ist it is someone is assigning to them.

 

[tetrasodium]

My point is it is a mistake and an uncharitable reading to see that as the message (or as the only possible one). I don't think in 1991, when this was written, they were at all thinking about the things people say they were. They were making a character who lived in a society that valued masculinity and was shamed by that society by giving him tattoos only women wore in that culture. To me that sounds more like the experience of a man who grows up in say a culture where football and sports are valued, who isn't physically strong and is bullied and emasculated by his peers (it is just done with a lot more panache and style here). They do storylines like this because people can identify with them, and it gives a sense of justification to the tragic villainy and rage. And that could be read through a lens of gay rights or queer rights too, but I don't think the message was intending to say he was bad because he transgressed some line from masculine or feminine.

They didn't need to think about them at the time for the people to realize that just like certain aspects of gringotts* it was a mistake in hindsight. There is a ton of old literature that predates 1991 by huge timespans that contain elements that are just mildly or totally unacceptable today but were just the way things were a total nonissue then. Changing it doesn't say anything about the authors who wrote it decades ago. At the time it was written the problem that makes that whole tacked on bit of fluff problematic was so niche & private that the authors might not even be aware of the problems making it unacceptable today.

*Nobody even said anything until other statements were made years later & wotc doesn't need a similar albatross attached to haslik waiting for them to accidentally say something stupid one day

 

[Bedrockgames]

They didn't need to think about them at the time for the people to realize that just like certain aspects of gringotts* it was a mistake in hindsight. There is a ton of old literature that predates 1991 by huge timespans that contain elements that are just mildly or totally unacceptable today but were just the way things were a total nonissue then. Changing it doesn't say anything about the authors who wrote it decades ago. At the time it was written the problem that makes that whole tacked on bit of fluff problematic was so niche & private that the authors might not even be aware of the problems making it unacceptable today.

But I am saying it wasn't even meant as a trans thing when it was written. If they have a trans character who was some really negative stereotype, that would be one thing. But we're talking about a domain lord who is male who was emasculated ritually by being tattooed. I think later incarnations of the character made him gay (could be wrong on that). Whether that was a good choice or not I don't know. But I think again the bar seems a little bit low for me if that is where we are. I get that this kind of analysis makes intuitive sense to people who do it, because they've been trained to look at media a certain way (I took media studies courses in college so I remember encountering these things). But I think this is flawed lens. In part because it requires knowledge of the lens to even see the problem. That is getting rather priest class for me (if you need specialized knowledge to understand that something is causing an issue, then you are going to end up in a situation where writers, artists and designers are constantly second guessing themselves and always uncomfortable when expressing themselves creatively). I just don't find this way of looking at media very useful personally (not saying I don't agree with a lot of folks about the underlying political issues, but I don't think taking the battle to the media landscape is at all helpful)

 

[Voadam]

So I did not listen to the podcast, is Hazlik's tattoo backstory no longer about his rivals humiliating him by capturing and tattooing him with magically unerasable women's tattoos?

Are they going with the late 3.5 Gazetteer only thing of trans/gay issues for him or with the 2e Realms of Terror/Revised Campaign Setting/Domains of Dread/3.0 Ravenloft/3.5 Ravenloft PH set up where that was not a stated thing for him?

 

[Faolyn]

And that could be read through a lens of gay rights or queer rights too, but I don't think the message was intending to say he was bad because he transgressed some line from masculine or feminine.

Since you have said you prefer the black box, you might not be aware that in later versions of Hazlik's story, they specifically made him gay (the apprentice he slept with was male) and wanting to hijack Elani's body because she's female.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I never said anything about Soul Man. I haven't seen Soul Man since it came out. I couldn't begin to talk about it intelligently (beyond the cluelessness I mentioned above). But I am not saying a movie can't be racist, even though it wasn't intended to be. What I have been talking about is the things people are criticizing in Ravenloft (tropes around some of the female domain lords, the Hazlik thing, etc). I am just saying uses of some of these tropes in Ravenloft don't automatically make them whatever -ist it is someone is assigning to them.

But this is like the Soul Man scenario.

A character isn't designed to be misogynist, the writer wasn't thinking "I HATE WOMEN!!!" but they play off misogynist tropes, and so the actual depiction is misogynist.

Part of how you prevent this being a problem is to have counter-examples. A female character who is despicably evil, but doesn't hit any major misogynist tropes.

It's similar with Hazlik, if he was one queer character in four or five say, and he had his dubious backstory, it might raise some eyebrows, but no-one would think the setting was queerphobic.

But I think this is flawed lens. In part because it requires knowledge of the lens to even see the problem.

See, the problem you're facing is that the lens is now inherently part of the camera system possessed by many/most younger people, just as older people (i.e. 40+) possess a lens that allows them to see racist-as-hell stuff where some older-still people (60+ or 70+) might have some difficulty seeing how stuff that is obviously racist to you is "racist". A good example would be the Black & White Minstrel show (which in the UK ran waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long because old people). To someone my parents age (70), that's obviously and shockingly racist. To someone my grandad's age (who would be like 100 now), it wasn't obviously racist, and people his age would have said "BUT I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE!".

So when you're dismissing this because you think people "require knowledge of the lens", maybe think on how people might have that lens built in, and just because you didn't, doesn't mean they don't.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A character isn't designed to be misogynist, the writer wasn't thinking "I HATE WOMEN!!!" but they play off misogynist tropes, and so the actual depiction is misogynist.

I am saying I don't think it is. I think people are reading that into it. Soul Man is a movie where I think you could definitely say it is racially insensitive without intending to be so (and most reasonable people can watch the movie and see that now----again it has been a long time since I've seen it, so possible I am wrong but this seems reasonable based on memory). I don't think that is what is going on with Hazlik (or with characters like Tristessa: with the latter especially it is going to matter a great deal what the writer was intending, when figuring out what they were trying to say)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Since you have said you prefer the black box, you might not be aware that in later versions of Hazlik's story, they specifically made him gay (the apprentice he slept with was male) and wanting to hijack Elani's body because she's female.

On that one I can't really comment since I vaguely remember the Sword and Sorcery stuff but really didn't like it (and felt a lot of it was too gothy rather than gothic for Ravenloft). Still I think what I am saying likely applies: that we shouldn't just leap to the conclusion that its bad because you can formulate a negative reading of it (again I don't know what the writers of that one had in mind, and I never particularly liked where they took a lot of the domains and lords)