D&D 5E (2024) Ravenloft: The Horrors Within preorder page lists the book's contents

Remathilis · 2026-04-16T20:51:25+0100

M.L. Martin said:
Fortunately, there are options aplenty out there that those of us who preferred the more purely Gothic flavor that 2E sometimes aspired to have alternatives to ~~paying homage to the Orthodox Church of Asmodeus~~ patronizing WotC

If I want to play pure Gothic, id play Stokerverse or CoC. If I want to play D&D wearing Gothic clothing, Ravenloft is fine.

My general rule when it comes to many of the 2e settings was they were embarrassed to be D&D. Especially settings wanting to be dark and edgy like Dark Sun and Ravenloft.

Remathilis · 2026-04-16T21:30:23+0100

Weiley31 said:
Im interested in how the Hexblood is gonna be in this book.

On a side tangent, I've never gotten a good visual on how the eldercross is supposed to look. The best I can get is a Laurel wreath but made of flesh or horn

Whizbang Dustyboots · 2026-04-16T22:07:17+0100

tetrasodium said:
To be fair though the early editions were so lethal that even those credibly presented as something that could be dangerous enough to warrant caution. It's not reasonable for an edition to swing the plausible lethality dial beneath zero & then lament that people are talking about fixing the result with things that gets called punitive.

For sure, but old school lethality is not the same as horror, which is what I was responding to.

Steading of the Hill Giant is deadly, but it's not a horror adventure.

tetrasodium · 2026-04-16T22:27:37+0100

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
For sure, but old school lethality is not the same as horror, which is what I was responding to.

Steading of the Hill Giant is deadly, but it's not a horror adventure.

Not the same sure I agree, but there's a pretty big difference between Tom and Jerry/Coyote & roadrunner trying to do horror while shrugging off mallets anvils explosions and so on compared to horror where the characters are at least capable of feeling risk more significant than mild inconvenience. Heck it was only a few posts back that people declared both "D&D is in service of the main character" and "The only “tool” you need in a GM toolbox is being a good storyteller" when confronted with the idea that approaching the game with an outlook of being The Main Character was toxic and that the gm should have system level tools supporting them in the gm toolbox

Whizbang Dustyboots · 2026-04-16T23:48:02+0100

tetrasodium said:
Not the same sure I agree, but there's a pretty big difference between Tom and Jerry/Coyote & roadrunner trying to do horror while shrugging off mallets anvils explosions and so on compared to horror where the characters are at least capable of feeling risk more significant than mild inconvenience. Heck it was only a few posts back that people declared both "D&D is in service of the main character" and "The only “tool” you need in a GM toolbox is being a good storyteller" when confronted with the idea that approaching the game with an outlook of being The Main Character was toxic and that the gm should have system level tools supporting them in the gm toolbox

I think we actually agree on the larger point.

If I want an actual horror game -- as opposed to D&D with horror theming -- there are other games I would pick. Horror theming is still fun, though, so long as no one expects they're getting a 10 Candles or Dread style experience out of it.

Remathilis · 2026-04-17T00:08:31+0100

tetrasodium said:
We are talking about a game with rules not your third place amusement park to hang out while someone writes your personal self insert fanfic for you. The gm runs the world and that means the gm requires tools that support them in doing so. The fact that you take issue with the mere concept of a gm toolbox shows that you view the world as something far beyond a mere 2 dimensional amusement park that exists only to serve the PCs, not every gm runs that "world" and you shouldn't expect them to any more than the rules should try to force them into doing so.

Two person games with a single gm serving a single player are very much not the norm. Look closely at the phb. You will find a line along the lines of "for 3-5 players" plural. You can not have 3-5 Main Characters side by side who are each treated as The Main Character without downgrading some of them to support sidekick or similar. If a player sits down at the table thinking "I am The Main Character" and can't dial that back to look across the table at their gm and fellow players in a way that moderates that to "we are playing a game to have fun", it's likely that there is something very toxic flowing across the table and it's not the gm lamenting the lack of tools in their gm toolbox and lack of support from the system. It's d&d with real people not mazes & monsters with poor poor Robbie Wheeling.

I believe that I completely answered this earlier and you aren't phrasing it in a way that changes the question enough to add anything so I'll quote what I said earlier about it: Just like Darksun & Eberron, Ravenloft needs rules that apply a different set of baselines for PCs than forgotten realms because the genre's themes and tones require players to play their PCs in a way that said PC is aware of a different set of things to consider in risk calculations reward paths and concerns.

5e has one single setting. Omniman Saitama Kal-El Wolverine and Doctor Manhattan. Deviate from that and it quickly runs into problems because the power level is too high, the risk is too low, the stakes are too low for the PCs, and the PCs are starfish aliens without needs who don't need to exist within the world.

Your experience with 5e is so different from reality that I'm not convinced your the startfish alien.

tetrasodium · 2026-04-17T00:45:18+0100

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
For sure, but old school lethality is not the same as horror, which is what I was responding to.

Steading of the Hill Giant is deadly, but it's not a horror adventure.

Agreed, I think that the broader discussion about gameplay in ravenloft keeps getting clobbered by the idea a few posters keep pushing about the game of d&d being just a vehicle for storytelliing rather than a game where a story can develop with a hyper specific definition of "horror" being presented as the first last and only thing ravenloft does. In past editions ravenloft allowed a wide range of gameplay they was viscerally different from forgotten realms & a lot of that was because it changed quite a few baselines within the rules while modifying pc abilities in conflict with the setting.

With 5e so much has been stacked in favor of tom and Jerry/Coyote and roadrunner levels of risk for every other setting that "horror" bullet point is all that ravenloft can still support. That's a problem because the resulting horror looks a lot more like scary movie than anything else and that is comedy not horror

Holy Heck there are six of them
SCARY MOVIE 6 Official Trailer (2026)

M.L. Martin · 2026-04-17T03:00:25+0100

Remathilis said:
My general rule when it comes to many of the 2e settings was they were embarrassed to be D&D. Especially settings wanting to be dark and edgy like Dark Sun and Ravenloft.

I think it was more that D&D had a much broader vision of itself in the 2E days, as opposed to being D&D for D&D's sake and a distinctive fantasy Brand and experience.

Remathilis · 2026-04-17T03:24:10+0100

M.L. Martin said:
I think it was more that D&D had a much broader vision of itself in the 2E days, as opposed to being D&D for D&D's sake and a distinctive fantasy Brand and experience.

If by broader, you mean a disjointed one that tried to run away from its core premise chasing fads and trying to be GURPs, I might agree. Even in my 2e days, it bothered me how nearly every setting insisted on arbitrary limitations and widely fluctuating power levels, often at the expense of any coherent notion of play. And as I have grown older and played more games with tighter play loops and integrated rules, the more I have grown to despise how every setting in 2e was a walled garden incompatible with each other and with the core rules except at the most basic level. I want D&D to be D&D and I'll find other games if I want wildly different experiences.

TheSword · 2026-04-17T03:36:55+0100

Remathilis said:
If by broader, you mean a disjointed one that tried to run away from its core premise chasing fads and trying to be GURPs, I might agree. Even in my 2e days, it bothered me how nearly every setting insisted on arbitrary limitations and widely fluctuating power levels, often at the expense of any coherent notion of play. And as I have grown older and played more games with tighter play loops and integrated rules, the more I have grown to despise how every setting in 2e was a walled garden incompatible with each other and with the core rules except at the most basic level. I want D&D to be D&D and I'll find other games if I want wildly different experiences.

Fair enough. But I prefer to think of D&D as a series of dials and switches, that a DM can manipulate.

Turn Magic items up a bit, turn Ability Scores down, turn Monster challenge up, toggle Multiclass off. Move the healing length slider down.

It can always be broken by a player that seeks to do so, but I think you can get a lot of mileage and variability in D&D games that way. Including horror.

I also think that theme is more than just a camouflage. A theme that both players and DM buys into is extremely powerful. In my opinion much more powerful a change than any game system.