D&D 5E Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft Table of Contents

As shared by DMs Guild brand manager Lysa Penrose.

D&D 5E - D&D Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft showing up in the wild!

Here's the first one I saw by the fantastic Lysa Penrose! Any others folks have seen?

www.enworld.org

 

[JEB]

The 3E setting didn't exist as far as WotC is concerned, because it was a licensed work.

Previously, that wasn't clear, since Wizards includes the 3E material on DM Guild and had never explicitly contradicted it. But it's certainly starting to look that way now. (Again, I feel bad for the Kargatane, all that work down the drain.)

(This also has interesting implications for Dragonlance 3E, if that setting ever returns, since it's in the exact same situation.)

Just because we didn't get a mediocre series of novels out it doesn't mean there wasn't a Realms Shaking Event for Ravenloft.

3E Ravenloft multiple times hinted at the "Time of Unparalleled Darkness", which certainly sounds like it would fit the bill.

Even if 3E Ravenloft is now non-canon, there's still this bit from 2E's The Evil Eye (which looks to have inspired the ToUD):

Further, future TSR RAVENLOFT releases will continue to develop some of the seeds sewn in "The Evil Eye." The Dukkar and the mysterious Gentleman Caller are but the heralds of a time of terror that will make the Grand Conjunction look like a summer rainstorm.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I never really got into the distinctions between werewolves, wolfweres, and loup-garou in the D&D game. They are all just flavors of werewolf that can be summarized by one MM entry and perhaps a couple of statblocks.

Indeed.

When playing in French, Loup-Garou and Werewolves (literally Loup-Garou) are the same word!

Fun fact, in French, the ''were'' of all the werebeast is changed to Garou, so we have Rat-Garou, Tigre-Garou, Carpe-Garou etc

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

We assume it's being erased. All we have right now are theories about what happened to the older dark lords and why Azalin is wandering around. It's entirely possible that this book does follow 2E chronology for many or even all the domains, and stuff has happened in the ensuing decades. For one thing, the demiplane is inside the Plane of Shadows and has been broken into pieces, so something heavy duty happened, which could have all sorts of other consequences.

Just because we didn't get a mediocre series of novels out it doesn't mean there wasn't a Realms Shaking Event for Ravenloft.

From the previews and podcasts it sounds like they're completely reworking several domains and dark lords. And the main continent is no more
For better or worse it's a new setting inspired by the old

It's like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if they also stopped making comics

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I never really got into the distinctions between werewolves, wolfweres, and loup-garou in the D&D game. They are all just flavors of werewolf that can be summarized by one MM entry and perhaps a couple of statblocks.

Werewolves are born as humans, wolfweres are born as wolves, and when they die, that is the form they revert to. That is the main difference I know.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They're interesting if you consider them to be more like trickster spirits than just another type of werewolf. Wolfweres are never mindless, slavering beasts, aren't bound by the moon, don't spread lycanthropy, and can appear, AFAICT, in any number of human(oid) forms of any gender or appearance--Harkon canonically has a female form as well as his male form, although he seems to prefer the male form. The fact that they used to be vulnerable to iron instead of silver gives them a very fey heritage.

You have now put 200% more effort into them than TSR ever did.

I do agree that, with a name change, they would be welcome like that in a book of fey monsters.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Previously, that wasn't clear, since Wizards includes the 3E material on DM Guild and had never explicitly contradicted it. But it's certainly starting to look that way now. (Again, I feel bad for the Kargatane, all that work down the drain.)

This is rehashing old conversations, but it's best not get too emotionally attached to work for hire works (as a creator) or licensed works (as anyone).

That said, WotC is certainly aware of all the good work done with Ravenloft in the intervening years, and I think if there's anything they loved, they'll incorporate it in some fashion as, in the end, Ravenloft is theirs, including licensed and subsidiary works. (Look at how Marvel is now publishing even the Star Wars comics Dark Horse previously did, for instance.)

(This also has interesting implications for Dragonlance 3E, if that setting ever returns, since it's in the exact same situation.)

Given that some of the latter-day Dragonlance stuff was less enthusiastically embraced, a soft reset would probably be welcomed by many fans.

3E Ravenloft multiple times hinted at the "Time of Unparalleled Darkness", which certainly sounds like it would fit the bill.

Even if 3E Ravenloft is now non-canon, there's still this bit from 2E's The Evil Eye (which looks to have inspired the ToUD):

I shudder at the sewing-related horror we missed.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

From the previews and podcasts it sounds like they're completely reworking several domains and dark lords. And the main continent is no more
For better or worse it's a new setting inspired by the old

It's like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if they also stopped making comics

I appreciate you really leaning into your posting handle, but if there's a canonical explanation for the sweeping changes, it's no different than how the Forgotten Realms has changed over the years. And given that Ravenloft is meant to be malleable by definition, it feels a little illogical to want everything to stay the same.

 

[Kodiak3D]

Since there's no longer a big connected Core, I doubt there's going to be a detailed map for each domain.

Has this been confirmed? I know people were theorizing this was the case, but I hadn't seen anything official.

 

[Faolyn]

Has this been confirmed? I know people were theorizing this was the case, but I hadn't seen anything official.

I think they talked about it in one of the videos? I'm not entirely sure, though. So I guess I could be wrong.

 

[Parmandur]

So, Keith Baler has announced a new DMsGuild product about hat happened to Cyre...that is a Ravenloft/Eberron crossover.