Wes Schneider Is the Product Lead for Ravenloft: The Horrors Within

Wes Schneider was confirmed to be the product lead for Ravenloft: The Horrors Within in a recent panel at Gary Con. Over the weekend, Wizards of the Coast hosted a panel discussion about the past and future of Dungeons & Dragons featuring much of the current game leadership and Luke Gygax. While discussing the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within rulebook, D&D game design director Justice Ramin Arman stated that Wes Schneider was the product lead for the book. Schneider notably was the product lead for the last Ravenloft book Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft notably updated the lore of Ravenloft, with different Domains of Dread shifting to focus on different genres of horror. While it's unclear whether that change is being reversed or fleshed out further, the new Ravenloft book will notably include statblocks for the various Darklords, something that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft curiously lacked.

Ravenloft: The Horrors Within will be released on June 16th.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Wasn't that the Tom Cruise movie?

It actually made me think of the mummy from Buffy, but she was Inca and I think it was life force not hearts.

 

[Stormonu]

Wasn't that the Tom Cruise movie?

A thousand plagues upon thine house for even metioning it!

...Actually I wouldn't know as I didn't dare watch that version.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A thousand plagues upon thine house for even metioning it!

...Actually I wouldn't know as I didn't dare watch that version.

It featured a female mummy and I think her name was Te-something.

 

[Artamo]

A thousand plagues upon thine house for even metioning it!

...Actually I wouldn't know as I didn't dare watch that version.

I watched it on HBO, and it was not the worst movie but there were two things going against it IMO:

1. Tom Cruise just seemed too big for this movie. As in, just his casting alone kind of drew away from it. Tough to put into words because it’s not that I dislike his movies in general.

2. The obviousness of the attempt to make it a franchise was also a distraction.

 

[nyvinter]

The mummy in Cruise Mummy was pretty neat. Russel Crowe's Jekyll was hammy fun. But Tom Cruise was super-miscast and the script didn't do the movie any favour — it was super-bland with big pacing issues and illogical jumps just because.

 

[Dire Bare]

The mummy in Cruise Mummy was pretty neat. Russel Crowe's Jekyll was hammy fun. But Tom Cruise was super-miscast and the script didn't do the movie any favour — it was super-bland with big pacing issues and illogical jumps just because.

Okay, now I want to see a movie called Cruise Mummy . . .

On a ocean cruise for egyptologists, an ancient evil tags along for revenge on those who have disturbed their tomb . . .

 

[nyvinter]

Surf Dracula. Cruise Mummy.

Frankenstein also need one now.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I don't think anyone views it this way? This sounds more like a 3.5 era complaint, where Ravenloft gave us the Archivist and all of that cheese.

I loved the Archivist, it was the Theologian to the Cleric's Village Priest and it is one of the Classes I'd most love to see returned.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The foremost thing is that a game of D&D must be fun for the players. If you set out to punish them, your campaign will die. Horror gaming is about sending a frisson of fear up your players' spine, not hitting their PCs with a big stick. And horror is not the same as grimdark. It's not uncommon in horror for the forces of good win. Dracula was the original inspiration for Ravenloft, and in Dracula, the title character is defeated, only one major character dies, and no one goes insane.

Part of being fun for the players is being on the same page about expectations from the get go, which is part of why Ravenloft as "gothic horror themed heroic fantasy" is a comfortable fit. Much of the time, folks sit down to play D&D to be fantasy heroes. Ravenloft gives you a new set of paints, but it wants you to still paint the same basic picture. And it's a picture where failure and helplessness and punishments are rare, and always something you can overcome. The OG Ravenloft adventure was "dungeon crawl, but make it Dracula." It was D&D, with gothic horror elements. It wasn't, importantly, an attempt to make your D&D games play like Bram Stoker's novel.

A darker, more grounded, less monstrous tone can also be fun at a table. One that is more gothic horror forward. One that reserves the monsters for being monsters -- villains, bad things, not character options. That can still be fun for the players. Failure and punishment and striving and failing can still be a good time. Games pitting supernatural monsters against a ragtag group of outmatched heroes are still good games.

But either way, the key is that everyone knows what they're getting into when they sit down at the table. Which is a good reason to keep official Ravenloft materials "Hard PG-13" and to lean into monstrous, cursed, and Halloween-themed PC's.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I loved the Archivist, it was the Theologian to the Cleric's Village Priest and it is one of the Classes I'd most love to see returned.

I've had a player do an archivist as a Wizard subclass that can use the Cleric spell list and could hand out a version of Bardic Inspiration to represent the Dark Knowledge. Worked pretty well!