Check Out This Early Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Artwork

As part of today's reveal of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, Wizards of the Coast also released several pieces of early preview artwork for the new book. You can check the artwork out in all its full glory below:

And here's the cover artwork (by Anna Podedworna) and alternate cover artwork (by Pam Wishbow):

Ravenloft: The Horrors Within was one of several products announced today. You can find a full rundown here.

​

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Pastiche is fine and often good. Campy crossover can be fun in small doses. Modern entertainment has blended all pop culture into bland, flavorless slop, and it’s terrible. I just want things to be unashamed to be themselves again. Be the best they can be at the thing that makes them unique, instead of trying to be exactly like everything else.

Pastiche is what D&D is at it's core. Doing pastiche is D&D being itself. It's when it tries not to be pastiche that it becomes a bland non-entity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Azathoth story wise is distant and more abstract.

I would drop Azathoth into Spelljammer.

Or Star Trek.

Kirk: "lets see how that thing likes a warp core detonation up it's backside!"
Spock: "Sir, my calculations indicate that if Azathoth is destroyed there is a 99.927% probability that the universe will cease to exist."
Kirk: "I like those odds! Stand by to detonate warp core."

 

[Charlaquin]

Pastiche is what D&D is at it's core. Doing pastiche is D&D being itself. It's when it tries not to be pastiche that it becomes a bland non-entity.

I have, in this conversation, repeatedly advocated for pastiche. By all means, bring on the Lovecraft Pastiche to Ravenloft, that would fit with Ravenloft’s core identity. Directly bringing actual factual Cthulhu into Ravenloft isn’t pastiche, it’s just crossover. As I said, the former is fine and often good. The latter can be fun in small doses.

 

[Charlaquin]

I would drop Azathoth into Spelljammer.

Or Star Trek.

Kirk: "lets see how that thing likes a warp core detonation up it's backside!"
Spock: "Sir, my calculations indicate that if Azathoth is destroyed there is a 99.927% probability that the universe will cease to exist."
Kirk: "I like those odds! Stand by to detonate warp core."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

isn’t pastiche, it’s just crossover

Yeah, it is. Punching actual Cthulhu is a lot funnier than punching a lookalike.

D&D is inherently silly. Lovecraft mythos is inherently silly. Just look at any movie version of either for evidence. They go together like jam and peanut butter.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, it is.

Putting Cthulhu in Ravenloft is pastiche? I think you need to double check what that word means.

Punching actual Cthulhu is a lot funnier than punching a lookalike.

Ok?

D&D is inherently silly. Lovecraft mythos is inherently silly. Just look at any movie version of either for evidence. They go together like jam and peanut butter.

D&D can be silly, but it is not inherently so. Lovecraft Mythos is horror, and what we find horrifying is highly context-dependent. The context in which Lovecraft was writing isn’t really relevant to most modern audiences, and the general consensus (which I agree with) is that by far the most effective use of his work now is to recontextualize the themes he was exploring, to deconstruct their racist underpinnings and build something new and better out of the good parts. But, yeah, played straight, his work looks pretty silly to us today.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Putting Cthulhu in Ravenloft is pastiche?

Putting anything into D&D from some other media - eg elves and hobbits - is pastiche.

yeah, played straight, his work looks pretty silly to us today.

Which was why Gygax put the whole Cthulhu menagerie into D&D in 1980. It’s not so you can do Lovecraft stories any more than the inclusion of Tolkien stuff is for retelling LotR and the Greek myth stuff is for retelling the Greek myths.

 

[Charlaquin]

Putting anything into D&D from some other media - eg elves and hobbits - is pastiche.

Pastiche means to imitate the style of. Putting Cthulhu in D&D isn’t imitating the style of HP Lovecraft, it’s just crossover.

Which was why Gygax put the whole Cthulhu menagerie into D&D in 1980. It’s not so you can do Lovecraft stories any more than the inclusion of Tolkien stuff is for retelling LotR and the Greek myth stuff is for retelling the Greek myths.

I really don’t care what Gygax did. I do think that Mythos threats in a D&D campaign - something akin to Cthulhu by Torchlight, which I have previously held up as an example of Mythos crossover in D&D done well, is fun and cool. I do not think Cthulhu works in Ravenloft unless you make him something that isn’t really Cthulhu anymore (at which point why call it Cthulhu?) or change Ravenloft to the point where it’s something else, à la Mask of the Red Death.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I do think that Mythos threats in a D&D campaign - something akin to Cthulhu by Torchlight, which I have previously held up as an example of Mythos crossover in D&D done well, is fun and cool

And if you want it taken seriously, then you do need to change the names, because if you mention Cthulhu by name the players will Deadpool him.

Tharizdun is the numbers filled off version, but even he is well enough known that the players might get meta on him.

unless you make him something that isn’t really Cthulhu anymore

In the same way that D&D Medusa isn’t the same as the Medusa from Greek mythology. It works fine. Like Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein.

How will this affect the game:

1) GOO warlocks who want to know where their patron lies sleeping have a better answer than in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on some obscure planet no one has heard of.

2) Players who want to punch Cthulhu now have a stat block to punch against.

If neither of these things is applies to you, then it has no effect. Things in D&D source books are there to use if you want or ignore if you prefer.

 

[Remathilis]

Putting anything into D&D from some other media - eg elves and hobbits - is pastiche..