THAT'S where the Mongrelfolk appear! That was a long time coming!
This is the first release in months and Elemental had a ton of new stuff. I'm very disappointed.
Ooo, a wereraven! 8D
We may still get a Curse of Strahd players companion, but I'm thinking that they released the introductory adventure instead of that.
What jumped out at me was the handouts. I've always loved physical items with adventures. I bought every 4E Essentials product for the stuff in the box, but I had nothing but the core books before that.
Handouts are great, and players love them. I hope WotC makes them available as a downloadable PDF so I don't have to scan in the pages from the physical book.
Well there's a page dedicated to "Strahd dies," so it seems the players will be able to defeat him in some way.
...So basically, they already released the literally only piece of character-building content in the entire book?
Well that sucks.
How does one run a Ravenloft module without campaign setting rules like Powers Checks, Horror and Madness rules, Modified spells, etc?
Sadly, this is yet another module that I won't buy. I was expecting to see a few pages about Ravenloft in general, but that appears to be absent. Of course, the same thing happened with the Realms. Everything is being released as a grand story without any regard for the essential and finer details of the setting.
IMO, if WotC would at least release a 5e primer on these campaign settings first, they'd at least appear to be a little more thoughtful.
The math's a little off--Castle Ravenloft gets 45 pages, of which 15 cover the dungeons and catacombs.
So from the looks of it.
No new mechanics to use as a DM unless those marks of power are that. Even then that seems really small for a setting with a COMPLETELY different feel than the standard.
No new player options.
No real look of Ravenloft in any real depth. Just possibly a brief intro to Strahd and Barovia.
Man. This is starting to look disappointing. I know I'm not the target audience, but still..
It is a remake of a 1e module, not a remake of a 2e campaign setting.
I don't think it's sales to be honest. If the upcoming AP is successful and the followed it up with a Domains of Dread book covering all of Ravenloft then it would sell extremely well. They are trying to keep all the focus on Forgotten Realms while using Ravenloft as a little side trek.That's a fair point. I still feel their's a lot of lost opportunities in that though. But at the end of the day the only thing that seems to sell is adventures... So I cant really blame Wizards for it.
People ran Ravenloft when it was just one module with about 30 pages. It it still considered one of the best adventures of all time.
If you look at the table of contents you can see that chapter two is all about the setting and each area that you explore has it's own details in the chapter dedicated to it.