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

 

[Weiley31]

Yeah, with the Fey type about all you have to worry is them being subject to a few things like Magic Circle or an Ancients Paladin using Turn the Faithless. Those are more flavor than anything else. With Undead, first you have to package in enough racial traits to make them actually feel like an undead character, then you have to worry about all the spells and effects that explicitly work differently on undead. As people were quick to point out after the UA was released, there's a fair number of those.

Remember in 3e when Eberron had to jump through so many hoops to make Warforged into Constructs? They had to jimmy up Living Constructs as a type and create new Repair spells to heal them and everything. Now they're just humanoids in 5e because it's so much easier than way. I think the version of dhampir and reborn is the same compromise. They're the I Can't Believe It's Not Undead! of undead PC races. Similar but mechanically distinct.

Eh makes sense. I feel like they could modify aspects of the Revenant from the Gothic Heroes UA or even the Hollow One Supernatural Gift from Theros to work out those details.

 

[Kurotowa]

Eh makes sense. I feel like they could modify aspects of the Revenant from the Gothic Heroes UA or even the Hollow One Supernatural Gift from Theros to work out those details.

Well, that's in the player's hands, isn't it? Race isn't the only axis of character creation. There's class and feats and the Ravenloft book offers a set of Dark Gifts that are similar (though differently themed) to the Theros ones. So if you really want All The Spooky then roll a Reborn who's a Phantom Rogue with and has a Dark Gift that makes them extra haunted. I've roughed out a character concept for a Dhampir Swarmkeeper Ranger with the Touch of Death Dark Gift, so he can punch people with a life draining touch that also sets a swarm of shadowy rats and bats tearing at them.

 

[Faolyn]

Frankly, that whole 'false history' concept was a pain in the posterior when 2e/3e did it, and if they were going to reboot I wish it was one thing they entirely did away with. It's cheap and metagamey and clearly has its origin more in poorly coordinated writing back in the TSR days than any attempt to make a playable setting. Aside from making (for instance) History proficiency damn near meaningless, it centres the setting even more tightly around the darklords, which i think would be the last thing you'd want if you're writing a more general campaign setting than a one-off CoS type long adventure.

I disagree. First off, you can use the History proficiency to learn things that occurred in the false history. The fact that the DPs made it up before sticking it in the history books doesn't make it non-useful. because the Dark Powers also created the artifacts and ruins associated with that history. If you find the ancient sword Goblyn-Smacker created a thousand years ago and was used in the Y Wars between the goblyns and the vampyrs of 55 BC (Barovian Calender), then it honestly doesn't matter that there were no Y Wars. The DPs made the sword, along with the disturbingly well-preserved vampyr corpse you wrested it from, and invented the history to go with it.

Secondly, since each domain is centered on its Darklord more than anything else, it's OK if things that found in it center around it--although they don't have to. The false histories of the domains often don't have a huge amount to do with the actual Darklord. They're just the setup. Because of that, you can have Goblyn-Smacker show up in the crypt in Mordent, even if that makes no sense for the domain itself, because the false history declares that Goblyn-Smacker's owner retired there and was buried with the blade.

Thirdly, don't forget that Ravenloft is not a natural world. It's literally the creation of the Dark Powers for their own inscrutable purposes.

 

[Kurotowa]

Thirdly, don't forget that Ravenloft is not a natural world. It's literally the creation of the Dark Powers for their own inscrutable purposes.

My favorite new theory: Selection as a Darklord isn't a punishment, it's a trial. A test to see if they can overcome their personal flaws and negative karma when confronted with them made manifest. And the Darklords with permanent domains are the ones who hit the right balance point of refusing to give up but unable to proceed, so they're just stuck in an eternal purgatory.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I disagree. First off, you can use the History proficiency to learn things that occurred in the false history. The fact that the DPs made it up before sticking it in the history books doesn't make it non-useful. because the Dark Powers also created the artifacts and ruins associated with that history. If you find the ancient sword Goblyn-Smacker created a thousand years ago and was used in the Y Wars between the goblyns and the vampyrs of 55 BC (Barovian Calender), then it honestly doesn't matter that there were no Y Wars. The DPs made the sword, along with the disturbingly well-preserved vampyr corpse you wrested it from, and invented the history to go with it.

Secondly, since each domain is centered on its Darklord more than anything else, it's OK if things that found in it center around it--although they don't have to. The false histories of the domains often don't have a huge amount to do with the actual Darklord. They're just the setup. Because of that, you can have Goblyn-Smacker show up in the crypt in Mordent, even if that makes no sense for the domain itself, because the false history declares that Goblyn-Smacker's owner retired there and was buried with the blade.

Thirdly, don't forget that Ravenloft is not a natural world. It's literally the creation of the Dark Powers for their own inscrutable purposes.

I think this is one of those strange balancing acts with Ravenloft. It is a land where change is part of the setting's cosmology. And it is meant to be dreamy. This is why I really don't care about population arguments or arguments about it feeling too much like a movie set (in some ways I want that stagy feel because it creates a sense of heightened reality). On the other hand if it gets too amorphous all the time, it can be hard to connect to the setting or make it feel too ephemeral. With changes to characters like Mordenheim, it does feel weird if they are just having him in setting change into a woman (the world changes, the world warps characters in ways that fit their evil, but generally the dark lords have pretty stable personalities and situations). On the other hand, if Mordenheim had a daughter and that is why Mordenheim is a woman (and they were just advancing the timeline) it would feel more like a 'daughter of Frankenstein' type sequel than a total re-write of the character. Like I said before, the setting could use more variety, and more female characters. But just doing it for its own sake, feels blatantly woke to me. I think those changes can be good, but it has to be about the quality of the material, and if politics are driving all the story, and our measure of whether the story is good is how much it evades problematic things, and how much it matches the politics of its intended audience, to me that is a big fail (sometimes horror needs to be problematic, sometimes it needs to be challenging, and it always first and foremost needs to be about the horror and the quality of the story).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The own nature of the demiplane allows a revival and a total reboot being both possible simultanealy. Some changes are neccesary to allow more creative options or because the rules about politically correct have changed, again.

As "sandbox" it is too small to be a "Jurasic Park" for monsters from Hammer movies and gothic horror, and some player would like to can create stories of supernatural conspirancies with international secret societies. We are talking about cities where somebody is killed by a supernatural creature every week, but most of the citizens don't notice.

* I would like to know more about "Vladantilan", the world ruled by the vampyres and where Vladimir Ludzig comes from. I imagine the metaplot about this would be humans from this land who rebeld against these tyrants would summon the dark powers, or some dark lord, to cause some apoycalyptic event, and with this the fall of the regime, and some years of terror and anarchy would be a lesser evil than the perpetual distopia. And this place would be perfect for monster PCs.

Other idea is something happen in the world of Jackandor, and then the both factions have to explore the rest of the planet, that have suffered some apocalypse, with lot of monsters appearing.

* I suspects we will know some new things about Ravenloft after the event of Innistrad with the vampires and werewolves. Later or sooner both will be linked in some way, allowing some potential crossover, at least an opened door for the players who liked this idea.

* The vegepygmies are perfect for the subgenre of little monsters, with a touch of the fungus/plant monsters from Residevent Evil VII and VIII. And somebody could use their regenerative traits as renewable food source.

* If reborns would enjoy poison inmunity this could break the power balance. And some players hoped mindless undeads wouldn't attack reborns because they aren't life-force to be eaten.

* Is it possible an extra-company crossover with Ravenloft?

Evil Dead Wiki

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Grimm Wiki

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Horror Film Wiki

Horror Film Wiki is a database that anyone can edit about Michael Myers, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Child's Play and all horror movies.

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Junji Ito Wiki

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[darjr]

Was this one already posted?

 

[AmerginLiath]

I feel like "horrifying mechanics" are sometimes an underrated part of the horror experience in RPGs. If you hit the PLAYERS where it hurts by permanently damaging but not killing their characters (esp. if there's no way for some irritating Cleric to trivialize it by curing it next downtime) that tends to create an extra level of horror which some games just don't engage with. Killing them usually upsets them less than level-drain in my experience. I've never seen anyone ragequit D&D because their character died. I've even seen people cheer for that because they got to make a new one. I have seen it happen because of multi-level level-drain (I mean, he came back eventually but wow).

The problem is that sort of mechanic probably needs to be specific to "Horror D&D", rather than generalized.

EDIT - Also an important part of this working to cause horror/fear is that they know about it. If some monster touches them and level-drains them and they had no idea, it just feels like a "DM dick move", even though it probably isn't, and there's no drama or horror just annoyance, for that player anyway. If the PCs know they're chasing something that level-drains (or being chased by it), and that they need to be careful to avoid it, the drama and horror potential is huge. I guess it's like jump-scare vs proper horror even.

I find an interesting way to deal with level-drain or stat-drain is to tie it to locations or events/situations (something that should be especially easy to design in Ravenloft). So, don’t say that they’ve permanently lost that level or attribute point, say that they need to solve a particular condition or get out of where they are before they can fix it how they normally would. That way, the challenge that they’re in ratchets up in terms of personal stakes but a player isn’t having permanent damage to a character from what might be a random event or encounter.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I think this is one of those strange balancing acts with Ravenloft. It is a land where change is part of the setting's cosmology. And it is meant to be dreamy. This is why I really don't care about population arguments or arguments about it feeling too much like a movie set (in some ways I want that stagy feel because it creates a sense of heightened reality). On the other hand if it gets too amorphous all the time, it can be hard to connect to the setting or make it feel too ephemeral. With changes to characters like Mordenheim, it does feel weird if they are just having him in setting change into a woman (the world changes, the world warps characters in ways that fit their evil, but generally the dark lords have pretty stable personalities and situations). On the other hand, if Mordenheim had a daughter and that is why Mordenheim is a woman (and they were just advancing the timeline) it would feel more like a 'daughter of Frankenstein' type sequel than a total re-write of the character. Like I said before, the setting could use more variety, and more female characters. But just doing it for its own sake, feels blatantly woke to me. I think those changes can be good, but it has to be about the quality of the material, and if politics are driving all the story, and our measure of whether the story is good is how much it evades problematic things, and how much it matches the politics of its intended audience, to me that is a big fail (sometimes horror needs to be problematic, sometimes it needs to be challenging, and it always first and foremost needs to be about the horror and the quality of the story).

Having a more diverse cast of characters in a setting isn't "politics driving the story," it's just having the world to reflect the diversity that exists in the real-world.

Reminds me of this Star Wars meme I saw the other day;

Anyway, it is well-established in Curse of Strahd that even when key characters are killed, they are often reborn in new bodies, with entirely new families and names (Tatyan/Ilyana being the best example). I see no reason why many of these Dark Lords aren't reincarnations of themselves after being killed by a previous group of adventurers (like in the classic modules). Being born as a new gender or race to me matters little if the internal conflict is quite similar.

 

[Faolyn]

* Is it possible an extra-company crossover with Ravenloft?

You can always make a fan domain (and release it for free), but it's highly unlikely WotC is going to work out actual agreements with the copyright holders of those IPs.