D&D 5E Everything We Know About The Ravenloft Book

Bedrockgames said:

I am pretty sure this isn't true, but it has been a long time since I've poured closely over the lore. I believe Barovia is a domain that was actually pulled from its original location. Again I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure the options are:

a copy of the place
a newly crafted place
the original place gets pulled into ravenloft

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You're correct on those three options, but a Prime Material Barovia continued to exist independent of the domain, and appeared in the Ravenloft adventure Roots of Evil.

Bedrockgames said:

I don't know. I think real world reactions to fear are reluctance to act, inability to act, or freaking out. Losing control of your character due to fear, I think is fair.

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Losing control of your character is bad gameplay. Anyone who has played a D&D videogame where your character fails a fear save and you can't do anything apart from watch them run around the screen with a skull icon floating over their head will tell you.

Player agency is absolutely central to the D&D experience. Take that way and they might as well be reading a novel or watching a movie.

Ravenloft has not to be 100% gothic horror but it can be horror with some pieces of drama/tragedy, murder investigation and action adventure, and even with enough space for dark comedy and some supernatural romance if you want. Players want to be Buffy vampire-slayer, not always hidding like a survival horror videogame.

If too many characters die the dramatic effect could be lost. The right thriller story need a balance between despair and hope. If you know everybody will die but the final girl then fear is lost.

Some DMs and authors wants the faith as key to the survival in their gothic horror stories, and other want the opposite. Here the RPG publishers need to be in a diplomatic ambiguity.

* It is a strange feeling. I miss the occultist/psicraft classes by Pathfinder for Ravenloft.

* The madness system about sanity points is not my cup of tea. I would rather something like the system by Unknown Armies, and even I tried to create a d20 version:

Sanity-Madness system as Unknown Armies.

I think a varrior can face better violence, and a pious soul with enough faith can face better supernatural menaces.

* One of my crazy ideas is sometimes there are a temporal plane into the material plane, when in certain dates a haunted place become a planar gate. It sounds cool but practically it's a trap. Let's imagine the PCs facing ghosts in a cursed castle for the anniversay of a deadpool and when the enter the portal they find a Lovecraftian cult trying a human sacrifice or a mad scientific with his half-golem bodyguard.





Sons of Midnight by Marvel Comics.

Voadam said:

I always disliked the save or roleplay act scared mechanics. Acting scared when you intellectually and emotionally don't feel it drains scenes of their atmosphere and can lead to eyerolling as the player loses agency over their character and increases emotional distance from how their character would be feeling. I always just worked to have the situation play out and try to effectuate actual tension and uncertainty for the players. I was doing this before Ravenloft in places like the Moathouse to good effect and I feel it works better with the desired Ravenloft play experience. If it does not always work it is ok for things to not always be scary even in Ravenloft.

I am generally more a fan of supernatural fear effects that instead impose more mechanical penalties like inducing minuses to hit or disadvantage on checks.

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I agree with this. If you have players who can act, then it can work, but when we did our trip to Vecna's realm some of the players were afflicted with despair and it was supposed to be a "secret". DM pulled them into a private chat, ect ect, no idea what exactly had happened to them.

Then they started droning on about how nothing matters and we were all going to die and that there is nothing worth living for while sighing loudly at the end of their sentences. It was so blatantly obvious what was going on that instead of being horrific it was just an annoyance, and trying to act like we had no idea what had happened was painful.

Paul Farquhar said:

Losing control of your character is bad gameplay. Anyone who has played a D&D videogame where your character fails a fear save and you can't do anything apart from watch them run around the screen with a skull icon floating over their head will tell you.

Player agency is absolutely central to the D&D experience. Take that way and they might as well be reading a novel or watching a movie.

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Mmmm, yes and no.

In general I've got no issue with fear affects in combat. In fact, in some games I've been in they created decent situations. But, in others, we have had combats where the character's fear prevented them from fighting in the combat. Like, one exmple coming to mind was a long combat we had where a mage kept casting Fear on the party, causing characters to spend their entire turn running away, finding cover then coming back. One guy literally made a single attack roll the entire combat (and I think he missed) because he kept getting smashed by fear.

So, that sucked, but at the same time it doesn't suck any more than the wizard who got dragonbreathed repeatedly (DM rolled 3 recharges in a row, legit) and wasn't able to participate in the fight, or the rogue getting hit with Hold Person and not being able to participate in the fight. It doesn't feel good, being knocked out of combat and just sitting there no playing isn't good, but that isn't a problem of emotional spells alone. And sometimes, if it works, things like Charm or Fear can really up the feel of what is going on, like the time a different party pissed of an Archdevil's avatar and she forced us all to supplicate before her. It really helped get across the feel that we were out of our league dealing with a deadly force.

Paul Farquhar said:

Losing control of your character is bad gameplay. Anyone who has played a D&D videogame where your character fails a fear save and you can't do anything apart from watch them run around the screen with a skull icon floating over their head will tell you.

Player agency is absolutely central to the D&D experience. Take that way and they might as well be reading a novel or watching a movie.

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I disagree very strongly on this point. This is entirely a subjective opinion.You not liking it, doesn't make it bad design or bad game play. It isn't bad game play at all IMO. In fact, as a player who generally values agency a lot, this is one area where I think a little loss of control to reflect fear immerses me more and is more effective. That said, I was never a big fan of the parts of fear checks and horror checks that force actions like running away. On the other hand, the part that inhibits action, that is great, and feels a lot like real world fear to me.

Paul Farquhar said:

Losing control of your character is bad gameplay. Anyone who has played a D&D videogame where your character fails a fear save and you can't do anything apart from watch them run around the screen with a skull icon floating over their head will tell you.

Player agency is absolutely central to the D&D experience. Take that way and they might as well be reading a novel or watching a movie.

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Agreed, within reason. I tend now to use certain checks (typically NPC Charisma checks) as guidelines for PC actions, not the action itself (which is up to the player). For example, an NPC who rolled high on a persuade check "appears sincere and candid in his statement", but it's up to the PC to determine what that means to thier PC.

I would treat fear and horror similarly; the biggest problem with how 2e used them were as detrimental effects that were everywhere and often times ruined the flow of the game by causing everyone to bug out and spend hours (real time) trying to overcome the penalties so they could continue.

The 5e DMG have some barebones rules for FHM, I suspect that they might give some meat to those rules, but no new systems as elaborate as the 2e ones.

overgeeked said:

Right. That’s CoS, and you’re at 50/50 on taking out the Dark Lord of the Domain. So, what can you do in the rest of the setting? At that point nothing but bringing Dark Lords is a challenge. So what is there to be worried about that’s not Dark Lord smiting? Basically nothing. Nothing else in the setting that wouldn’t also give Strahd himself a run for his money is a challenge for your group. I don’t see how anything else would be a challenge. That’s not horror anymore. That’s not even gothic horror. It’s superheroes painted in black, white, and red. I want my Ravenloft games to be horror. So a low level cap.

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That is . . . an incorrect extrapolation of what I wrote. First, I specifically do not give us even 50/50 odds while being loaded up with two specific anti-this darklord artefacts. We have been repeatedly close to TPK with half the party making death saves multiple times against not the darklord. There was the Temple, The Thing in the Water, The not top-tier Witches, a secondary Vampire and his minions that turned very south despite the advantages we had.

Plus there is a difference between terror and horror as the original black box put it. Being in fear of dying is terror. Finding out the bad stuff going on generally is the horror.

It’s been a really interesting thread to read. Lots of different view points. Here are some of mine.

@doctorbadwolf Curse of Strahd provides several events that can occur following Strahds death. It’s isn’t all doom an gloom. The return is also definitely not within a specific time. It suggests months but it isn’t set in stone. Other rulers, other vampires gaining power etc its all possible. Not to mention the fact that most players need never know that Strahd will eventually return. You do the story as you want. Incidentally a years respite from hell still provides hope. It gives proof that there can be future respite.

In my campaign the players will be descendants or protégés of those who defeated Strahd the first time round, who will very much be NPCs. They will be trying to find their way in setting visiting other realms. At some point Strahd will return. Possibly brought about by a secret society manipulating the original PCs (Similar to the Mummy or Lord Voldemort). Or perhaps they’ll be able to prevent it.

Comedy absolutely can be effective in horror. It diffuses tension and prevents continual alertness meaning when the action does happen it is all the more effective.

Trying to force players to act scared is a bad idea as is forced insanity. Much better to take the player to one side and ask how they want things to manifest. Offer them inspiration if they play it well. However I do like the corruption mechanic from WFRP that carries penalties, which can be reduced in exchange for PCs willingly performing dark deeds.

Ravenloft borders should depend entirely on if the players catch the eye of the Dark Lord/The Mists. Which they absolutely should. Just because farmer bob can take his cart across the border doesn’t mean the PCs should.

Lastly. Agency is not a binary issue. There are degrees of loss. When a character gets knocked to 0 hp they lose agency but that is acceptable to us. Being dominated, charmed, paralyzed, scared all involve temporary loss of a characters abilities... so does a anti magic field though. They key is to use these sparingly. Better get, make sure your players lean into the style. A player who gets Ravenloft and wants to play in it, should relish the opportunity to be scared, charmed, replaced by a doppelgänger or a little unhinged. If these things bother them, perhaps just play it as a regular gothic adventure setting. Don’t force round pegs into square holes.

To run Ravenloft as I envision it, I just need players to create characters that are able to be scared and have something to lose.

TheSword said:

To run Ravenloft as I envision it, I just need players to create characters that are able to be scared and have something to lose.

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This is true for every setting, IMHO. The players should buy in to the central concept of the game. Eberron relies on Pulp/noir, Dark Sun on brutal survivalism, Theros on the influence of the Gods, Ravenloft on horror. Making a PC to subvert the theme can work, but a character who ignores it often times ruins the fun for everyone.