D&D 5E Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft Art Preview

SageAdvice.eu has compiled a bunch of art shots from the upcoming Ravenloft setting book. I've featured a handful below, but click through to the link for the full set of nearly 30 pieces.

ART Van Richtens Guide to Ravenloft26

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www.sageadvice.eu

 

[Bedrockgames]

To be fair, you can easily make Bleutspur into a Geiger-esque domain. And Junji Ito has such a wide variety of horror styles (compare The Hanging Balloons, The Intersection Pretty Boy, The Long Dream, Tomie, Gyo, The Town Without Streets, and Uzumaki) that you can fit him in almost anywhere. Honestly, I think The Town Without Streets would make for an amazing, if small, domain.

It wouldn't surprise me if the alien world from the first Alien movie was part of the inspiration.

 

[Charlaquin]

They sure seem to be playing up the notion that "actual horror" is on the table. Considering they're talking about things like safety tools and genre guides and they're coding different domains as the gothic horror domain, the body horror domain, the cosmic horror domain. Wizards really seems to think they're putting out an "actual horror" book. You're probably right, but someone should tell their marketing department.

Safety tools are always valuable in RPGs, and it makes sense to include discussion of them in a product that contains material some portion of the audience is likely to find disturbing. Different people have different tolerance levels for horrific, or even just spooky content, so it makes sense to talk about how to insure everyone’s comfort at the gaming table. Also, given that different domains focusing on different horror subgenres is part of the core premise of Ravenloft, of course they’re going to talk that aspect up. But at the end of the day, if you expected it to be something other than D&D in a horror-themed setting, I don’t think it’s the fault of their marketing.

Yeah. I know. I'm running three Call of Cthulhu games. I also regularly run D&D horror games. It's not that hard to do, you just have to be willing to subvert some of the heroic fantasy expectations and your players have to be on board for that.

Right, and I imagine the book will probably have some discussion of subverting the heroism traditional of D&D, but I wouldn’t expect it to go beyond “you won’t be able to win every fight” or “consider using the Sanity mechanic from the DMG.” We’re talking about a first party D&D product here, it’s not going to stray that far from what D&D is known for.

Only the ones with horrible/spooky things happening or depicting scared characters. The rest are generic D&D fantasy art. I'm not knocking the art. It's all top notch. But most of it's barely identifiable as even Ravenloft art, to say nothing of whatever faux-horror they're pushing with the book.

I’m not sure what standard you’re using for “Ravenloft art.” It’s art that depicts spooky things in Ravenloft. Not sure what more one could reasonably expect than that.

Right. The kid in a mask with spots of ketchup for blood at Halloween version of horror. Again, if that's what you expect them to deliver, and that's what they intend to deliver, someone should tell their marketing department, because what they're suggesting the book will be and what you expect the book to be are wildly different beasts.

Dude, it’s a game sold by Hazbro. There’s no way they’d include art in it that isn’t appropriate for all ages. If you want to use it for “real horror” you can, but you kind of have to read the room in terms of what to expect them to present by default.

 

[Charlaquin]

To be fair, you can easily make Bleutspur into a Geiger-esque domain. And Junji Ito has such a wide variety of horror styles (compare The Hanging Balloons, The Intersection Pretty Boy, The Long Dream, Tomie, Gyo, The Town Without Streets, and Uzumaki) that you can fit him in almost anywhere. Honestly, I think The Town Without Streets would make for an amazing, if small, domain.

I was just talking about the art. Certainly I think the content of a campaign could easily get into that kind of territory.

 

[overgeeked]

Anyone else notice in that headless horseman image it looks like the horseman has two white spots on his stump of a neck? If I'm not mistaken, people only have one spine. Did that artist maybe use a severed arm as reference and forget the difference?

 

[Faolyn]

I was just talking about the art. Certainly I think the content of a campaign could easily get into that kind of territory.

My bad.

 

[Faolyn]

Anyone else notice in that headless horseman image it looks like the horseman has two white spots on his stump of a neck? If I'm not mistaken, people only have one spine. Did that artist maybe use a severed arm as reference and forget the difference?

Maybe it's part of a vertebra?

 

[Rabulias]

Anyone else notice in that headless horseman image it looks like the horseman has two white spots on his stump of a neck? If I'm not mistaken, people only have one spine. Did that artist maybe use a severed arm as reference and forget the difference?

I think it's more to represent the spine and the windpipe, but it is hard to tell.

 

[overgeeked]

Safety tools are always valuable in RPGs, and it makes sense to include discussion of them in a product that contains material some portion of the audience is likely to find disturbing. Different people have different tolerance levels for horrific, or even just spooky content, so it makes sense to talk about how to insure everyone’s comfort at the gaming table. Also, given that different domains focusing on different horror subgenres is part of the core premise of Ravenloft, of course they’re going to talk that aspect up. But at the end of the day, if you expected it to be something other than D&D in a horror-themed setting, I don’t think it’s the fault of their marketing.

Right, and I imagine the book will probably have some discussion of subverting the heroism traditional of D&D, but I wouldn’t expect it to go beyond “you won’t be able to win every fight” or “consider using the Sanity mechanic from the DMG.” We’re talking about a first party D&D product here, it’s not going to stray that far from what D&D is known for.

I’m not sure what standard you’re using for “Ravenloft art.” It’s art that depicts spooky things in Ravenloft. Not sure what more one could reasonably expect than that.

Dude, it’s a game sold by Hazbro. There’s no way they’d include art in it that isn’t appropriate for all ages. If you want to use it for “real horror” you can, but you kind of have to read the room in terms of what to expect them to present by default.

I expect they'd be marginally honest. There's two competing things happening. 1) They are branding this as a horror book; 2) they are apparently sanitizing it so much that it's not recognizable as horror. Like pick one. Don't talk up the horror if there's not going to be any horror. It's like Die Hard being a Christmas movie. Sure it takes place at Christmas, but that's literally the only connection it has to Christmas. So if the marketing department sold Die Hard as a Christmas movie, fans of Christmas movies would justifiably have a bone to pick. Maybe I'm weird in that I expect the art to match the theme of the book. To me, most of this art doesn't strike any kind of even mild "this is a horror book" vibe. Some of it does, sure, but at the absolute lowest possible level of what could be called horror.

 

[grimslade]

I think the art is pretty representative of Ravenloft. I would prefer more Fabian black and white for ambiance, but these will do.
We were never going to get edge-pushing fantasy horror art. Ravenloft is not that campaign setting. Ravenloft is spooky D&D. It still has heroic fantasy pumping in its veins. You can run NC-17 horror in Ravenloft but you have to change a lot of the game to get there. Sanity rules, gritty recovery, maybe a wound or injury mechanic.

 

[overgeeked]

Maybe it's part of a vertebra?

Maybe? Wouldn't there be a matching nub of the other side? The bones in the spine are fairly symmetrical.

I think it's more to represent the spine and the windpipe, but it is hard to tell.

Isn't the windpipe in front of the spine? This looks like one big chunk of a thing and a smaller thing off to one side. Could be, but they're both the same color...and look like they're meant to be fairly solid.