D&D 5E Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft - A Grognard Finally Reads It (Review)

[Alzrius]

I'll take your word on that. I have the red box (which I think is the revised version from 2E), and its scale is 1 inch = 100 miles.
The map in that one shows the Sleeping Beast mountains as about 150 miles and Falkovnia being 350 miles across (hardly able to be crossed within a day).

The red boxed set was the second of Ravenloft's 2E incarnations (the first being the original Forbidden Lore boxed set, whereas Domains of Dread was the third). The poster maps in the red boxed set used different scales for the various islands of terror than they did for the Core. Har'Akir, surprisingly, looks like it was at its smallest in that set:

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm staying out of this one. VRGtR angries up the blood.

I found because I never got invested in it after that initial debate, I am finding it pretty easy to not have strong feelings one way or another. The old stuff is still available and I have it, and the new setting seems designed more for 5E's present audience. I do plan to get it at some point just because I would like to have the new maps and see what changes they ended up making.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'll take your word on that. I have the red box (which I think is the revised version from 2E), and its scale is 1 inch = 100 miles.
The map in that one shows the Sleeping Beast mountains as about 150 miles and Falkovnia being 350 miles across (hardly able to be crossed within a day).

I don't really have a strong opinion on what the most ideal size of a mountain range is in the setting (especially since they can vary considerably in the real world). The closest ranges to me are the white mountains and the Berkshires (I think those are about 100 miles in length, but they are also part of the larger Appalachian range). I couldn't find its width. Finding the width of ranges is proving difficult in google but I might just be tired this morning----and I am not much of a hiker or nature person. And just going by the topographic map, I can't tell where the sides of the range technically begin). But I did notice that the default for google maps when I type in Berkshire Mountains is 10 miles to an inch (maybe being from the Boston area 10 miles just feels right to me because things are a bit closer together than they are out west):

 

[Retreater]

I found because I never got invested in it after that initial debate, I am finding it pretty easy to not have strong feelings one way or another. The old stuff is still available and I have it, and the new setting seems designed more for 5E's present audience. I do plan to get it at some point just because I would like to have the new maps and see what changes they ended up making.

Yeah, and like I said in the first post, I got the book at a substantial discount (and likely wouldn't have purchased it otherwise). I don't feel like I got a bad value for what I spent - I would've just preferred a different take on the content.
Also, like I said, it comes down to preference for the map scale; I can easily change that. It will just take as long as makes narrative sense to get to a specific location. And if my Slumbering Beast Mountains in my campaign stretch farther than the eye can see, that's what it is.
Fan-created content like @dave2008 's Project Darklords (which looks fantastic, btw) will fill in the gaps that I perceive was left by VRGtR. The fear, horror, madness, sinkhole of evil, and other traits from the 2E red box setting, I can try to update to 5E.
It's not a useless book - I'm just not going to use a lot of it in play. I am viewing it more like a gazetteer introduction to the setting with the rest of the work being done by me or others.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, and like I said in the first post, I got the book at a substantial discount (and likely wouldn't have purchased it otherwise). I don't feel like I got a bad value for what I spent - I would've just preferred a different take on the content.
Also, like I said, it comes down to preference for the map scale; I can easily change that. It will just take as long as makes narrative sense to get to a specific location. And if my Slumbering Beast Mountains in my campaign stretch farther than the eye can see, that's what it is.
Fan-created content like @dave2008 's Project Darklords (which looks fantastic, btw) will fill in the gaps that I perceive was left by VRGtR. The fear, horror, madness, sinkhole of evil, and other traits from the 2E red box setting, I can try to update to 5E.
It's not a useless book - I'm just not going to use a lot of it in play. I am viewing it more like a gazetteer introduction to the setting with the rest of the work being done by me or others.

I find because I started on the black box, that has always been my baseline and any further changes tended to irk me a little (I was more open to changes as they came out in the 2E era, but some of the lore got too deep for me by the end: I just preferred that bare bones, fill in the blanks approach).

My impression from the design discussions was the new version is more multi-genre horror, which is fine, but for me the Ravenloft setting was always classic and gothic horror in tone (that is what set it apart from Vampire and many other horror RPGs at the time). But again, that is personal taste. I can understand that they have to consider appealing to a broader audience (and the films that to me were just classic grown up, always playing on TV, are now nearly 100 years old, and probably don't get as much airplay).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also this thread did prompt me to actually buy Van Richter's Guide to Ravenloft (it is only like 16 dollars on Amazon right now).

 

[Retreater]

Also this thread did prompt me to actually buy Van Richter's Guide to Ravenloft (it is only like 16 dollars on Amazon right now).

That's what got me, honestly.

My impression from the design discussions was the new version is more multi-genre horror, which is fine, but for me the Ravenloft setting was always classic and gothic horror in tone (that is what set it apart from Vampire and many other horror RPGs at the time). But again, that is personal taste. I can understand that they have to consider appealing to a broader audience (and the films that to me were just classic grown up, always playing on TV, are now nearly 100 years old, and probably don't get as much airplay).

Our Ravenloft campaigns back in the day had a variety of inspirations as well. I think this was largely because of the module design.
Strahd was more Hammer-film, Hour of the Knife was a Victorian slasher film, Adams Wrath was closer to Mary Shelley's novel than the Universal movie. Then we adapted legends and folklore to make original domains (one based off the Pine Barrens going after the Jersey Devil was memorable as was medieval Prague going after the original Golem).
It was some of the peak creativity in my development as a D&D player. And even though (as mentioned in an earlier post) the unique settings divided the player base and may have lost money, it provided a richness and diversity to the hobby that helped it grow into a lifelong passion spanning decades. I never got that from from the "back to the dungeon" design of 3e to the current "one size fits most" mass appeal era of 5e.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That's what got me, honestly.


Our Ravenloft campaigns back in the day had a variety of inspirations as well. I think this was largely because of the module design.
Strahd was more Hammer-film, Hour of the Knife was a Victorian slasher film, Adams Wrath was closer to Mary Shelley's novel than the Universal movie. Then we adapted legends and folklore to make original domains (one based off the Pine Barrens going after the Jersey Devil was memorable as was medieval Prague going after the original Golem).
It was some of the peak creativity in my development as a D&D player. And even though (as mentioned in an earlier post) the unique settings divided the player base and may have lost money, it provided a richness and diversity to the hobby that helped it grow into a lifelong passion spanning decades. I never got that from from the "back to the dungeon" design of 3e to the current "one size fits most" mass appeal era of 5e.

I've had a lot of trouble making Ravenloft work with 3E and later editions. I tried running the d20 version for years and it was fine but it never felt like my old sessions. The moment I ran it using the 2E material that old atmosphere I had enjoyed came back. So I think Ravenloft is a setting where system can have a considerable impact on how it feels. And it is also a setting that people often approached in very different ways over the course of its development.

 

[Voadam]

IIRC, Duke Gundar was both older and younger than Strahd at the same time, due to wacky aging magic (I could be remembering a different vampire, though). Ankhtepot is powered not by time but by designer fiat. He's as powerful as he needs to be.

Gundar was an older vampire and a bit more powerful, but not as smart and effective and not a spellcaster. Strahd had to work on dealing with his more powerful neighbor. "Duke Gundar, a vampire lord, rules Gundarak. He is older than Strahd but weaker in spirit."

I think you are thinking of Lyssa Von Zarovich, a descendant of the brother Strahd murdered who eventually became a vampire herself a century ago. In Thoughts of Darkness it is revealed she cheesed the interaction of rules on vampire aging categories and ghost aging attacks.

"Ironically, Lyssa shares some of Strahd's own fate: In order to better oppose him, she struck her own dark pact and murdered her fiance to honor it. In addition, Lyssa tormented her former lover's ghost by seducing his incorporeal spirit and laughing sadistically when he bemoaned his inability to kiss or hold her. In frustration, he attacked her repeatedly with his aging touch, thus aging her over 200 years in the course of a night, before she wholly obliterated him from existence. As a result, Lyssa has achieved Very Old status (300-399) in terms of her vampiric powers, even though she has been a vampire for only a century. Her gaming statistics reflect this artificial enhancement."

I hated that official rules exploit so much.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Gundar was an older vampire and a bit more powerful, but not as smart and effective and not a spellcaster. Strahd had to work on dealing with his more powerful neighbor. "Duke Gundar, a vampire lord, rules Gundarak. He is older than Strahd but weaker in spirit."

Gundar was also barely developed in the early days of Ravenloft. There just wasn't a huge amount of information on Gundar or Gundarak (I remember him briefly appearing I think in Knight of the Black Rose, and in Feast of Goblyns he got a little bit of detail). So when he came up in campaigns I remember mostly inventing everything whole cloth save for a few details mentioned in passing about him in different books.