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

Here is a list of everything we know so far about the upcoming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Art by Paul Scott Canavan​

• May 18th, 256 pages
• 30 domains (with 30 villainous darklords)
• Barovia (Strahd), Dementlieu (twisted fairly tales), Lamordia (flesh golem), Falkovnia (zombies), Kalakeri (Indian folklore, dark rainforests), Valachan (hunting PCs for sport), Lamordia (mad science)
• NPCs include Esmerelda de’Avenir, Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, traveling detective Alanik Ray.
• Large section on setting safe boundaries.
• Dark Gifts are character traits with a cost.
• College of Spirits (bard storytellers who manipulate spirits of folklore) and Undead Patron (warlock) subclasses.
• Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood lineages.
• Cultural consultants used.
• Fresh take on Vistani.
• 40 pages of monsters. Also nautical monsters in Sea of Sorrows.
• 20 page adventure called The House of Lament - haunted house, spirits, seances.

​

D&D 5E - Full Wraparound Cover Art For Ravenloft

We've seen the cover already, but here's a look at the full wraparound art by Anna Podedworna. https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-with-cover-the-d-d-book-is-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft.678411/ https://www.enworld.org/threads/heres-the-ravenloft-alternate-cover.678414/...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Here's the Ravenloft Alternate Cover!

As usual, there is an alternate hobby-store exclusive cover for the upcoming Ravenloft book. Here's a look at it! And here's the full wraparound art. https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-with-cover-the-d-d-book-is-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft.678411/...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - [Updated with cover!] The D&D Book Is.... Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft!

Yesterday's hints that a new D&D book would be announced today have born fruit -- we now have a product description and a title! It's a Ravenloft setting book, with tools and new rules for horror-themed games, and new horror-themed character options. I'll update this post with a product image as...

www.enworld.org

 

[overgeeked]

I think the issue is why the elemental cults are not a good fit for Ravenloft. I would say, it's because they aren't particularly disturbing.

So make them disturbing.

They are evil. So what?! D&D characters fight evil all the time. It's nice and simple, and they can kill it without worrying about the moral implications.

From what I’m reading in various Ravenloft threads on here, people don’t want moral implications. They want D&D in a Halloween costume, i.e. same old D&D with more explicitly horror-themed monsters.

If you want disturbing elementals, then you need the Invisible Stalker serial killer, who murders it's victims from the inside. Or the Djinn who twists wishes so that a person is destroyed by their own desires. (Okay, the Wishmaster films weren't very good, but the idea is there).

“Gu-ran...TED!”

Wishmaster wasn’t that bad. The sequels sucked.

What’s disturbing depends on the person. Something you’re terrified of might be passé to me, or vice versa.

I’d say a blood elemental summoned from the blood still inside a living person would be disturbing. A few seconds of blood bending a la Avatar before...pop.

 

[overgeeked]

I already said--the tone. That it's personal evil caused by the evildoer's psychological issues, not generic evil such as with the Elemental Evil. That, as Paul Farqhaur said, it's disturbing, not merely destructive.

Right. Like I said, a few times now, I disagree. So I’m not ignoring the most important part of Ravenloft, I don’t agree that matters as much as you think it does.

 

[Faolyn]

Right. Like I said, a few times now, I disagree. So I’m not ignoring the most important part of Ravenloft, I don’t agree that matters as much as you think it does.

See, I think it matters because the personal element is what keeps Ravenloft from just being grimdark all evil, all the time.

 

[overgeeked]

See, I think it matters because the personal element is what keeps Ravenloft from just being grimdark all evil, all the time.

Again, I disagree. What keeps it from being grimdark is including light. It has nothing to do with personal. Making it personal would make it even more grimdark, not less.

 

[Faolyn]

Again, I disagree. What keeps it from being grimdark is including light. It has nothing to do with personal. Making it personal would make it even more grimdark, not less.

And I disagree with that. Grimdark evil is usually just evil for the sake of evil and/or gaining power. The personal nature of Ravenloft's horror by nature prevents that, because it's so personal and emotional.

 

[overgeeked]

And I disagree with that. Grimdark evil is usually just evil for the sake of evil and/or gaining power. The personal nature of Ravenloft's horror by nature prevents that, because it's so personal and emotional.

Good. We completely disagree about almost everything Ravenloft related. We done yet?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, for starters, I've never played in a game that used anything other than rolled stats, or even considered not using rolled stats: the randomization of character traits is an assumed part of the game in my experience. In years of playing 3.x, there was a single, solitary session when we decided we needed to represent what was going on with a grid and mini stand-ins: every other session was Theatre if the Mind. 4E tying the rules so hard into grid play, which was in 3.x but never used by us, was jarring. 5E's assumptions about TotM match my 3.x experience to a Tee, while online I got the impression that everyone was doing stat point buy and using minis. Other things, really, but those stand out.

I'd definitely say the impression that most people are using arrays or point-buy is correct. I haven't seen a survey in years and years (maybe a decade or more) which didn't put those as the majority, and I think 5E is carefully designed to support those and doesn't actually support rolled stats well - it's more unbalanced than previous editions using rolled stats (imho - though that is a somewhat boring subject!).

On the other hand I agree re: TtoM. Reading online accounts or watching people play or w/e most people seems to say/show they're using minis (though surveys say something different), but 5E was clearly designed to support TtoM where neither 3E nor 4E were (3E was easier to do TtoM but not but as much as people often claim, having played both both ways, and both were clearly primarily aimed at grid combat, unlike 5E).

Again, I disagree. What keeps it from being grimdark is including light. It has nothing to do with personal. Making it personal would make it even more grimdark, not less.

And I disagree with that. Grimdark evil is usually just evil for the sake of evil and/or gaining power. The personal nature of Ravenloft's horror by nature prevents that, because it's so personal and emotional.

I know nobody asked, but I gotta go with @overgeeked on this one. Grimdark is more or less defined by the absence of light. "In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only war." being the origin phrase, and the entire point being "there is only war" - i.e. there's nothing else, no hope, no life, just war. And that was something that 40K, from 3rd edition onwards particularly, really dug into (it wasn't entirely true in Rogue Trader or even really 2E, but 3E, holy naughty word, that was full grimdark). You can have grimdark which is intensely personal too - a good illustration of this is the works of the author Joe Abercrombie, not all of his stuff is grimdark, but the original First Law trilogy and some of the other books, particularly the monumentally grimdark Best Served Cold, absolutely are. Best Served Cold couldn't be more personal, and couldn't be more grimdark. It got to the point by the end that I was hoping the "baddie" would win because at least he was less twisted and nihilistic and joyless than the "hero".

It's definitely wrong to say grimdark is defined by evil for the sake of evil or for the sake of gaining power. A lot of grimdark stuff involves people doing evil for highly personal but no less despicable reasons, or even doing horrific evil for "good" reasons. Hell, part of what makes Warhammer 40K (which again, is where grimdark comes from) so particularly grimdark is that it stars the Imperium of Man, who will casually as hell wipe out literally billions or tens of billions of people rather than take a risk on them or make any effort to evacuate them or the like (it's notable that despite the endless warships the Imperium possesses, they have basically no evacuation ships - human lives are essentially meaningless to them).

Whereas I'm reading a sci-fi novel right now about an Imperium-esque empire, motivated by similar ideas (purity, purges, etc.) but it's very differently structured and whilst being pretty grim, there is a spark of hope, a sense that there might be a way out - not "only war".

 

[darjr]

 

[Ruin Explorer]

View attachment 136536

Watched over by, huh? Seems more like he's being pranked to me

 

[Parmandur]

I'd definitely say the impression that most people are using arrays or point-buy is correct. I haven't seen a survey in years and years (maybe a decade or more) which didn't put those as the majority, and I think 5E is carefully designed to support those and doesn't actually support rolled stats well - it's more unbalanced than previous editions using rolled stats (imho - though that is a somewhat boring subject!).

On the other hand I agree re: TtoM. Reading online accounts or watching people play or w/e most people seems to say/show they're using minis (though surveys say something different), but 5E was clearly designed to support TtoM where neither 3E nor 4E were (3E was easier to do TtoM but not but as much as people often claim, having played both both ways, and both were clearly primarily aimed at grid combat, unlike 5E).

I'd say for both cases (minis vs. TotM, rolled vs. array) that both ways to play are pretty common in the aggregate, but per WotC they found out during their extensive research during the 5E playtest that rolled stats and TotM are far more common. The genius of 5E is that they set it up to accommodate multiple styles of play: if you whiff your rolls in 5E, it really isn't a make or break to playing the game, and it is quite possible to play with or without minis as desired.

We found 3Eplayable with TotM, but I think it was partly force of will and in hindsight my friends importing 2E-isms from their Middle School experience to make it flow properly. Based on the RAW of 3E, the mini-centric approach of 4E was a pretty logical extension but boy did it clash with our style.