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

 

[Savage Wombat]

I've thought about how to do a 5E funnel before, but this might be just the ticket.

What do you mean by "funnel" in this context? A link to an article would be great.

 

[darjr]

Here is a good bite sized explanation.

A "funnel" is an adventure designed to take in a large number of 1st- or 0th-level characters and spit out just the survivors, if any. The metaphor is the shape of the PC pool: large at the entrance, small at the exit.
The term was coined by, and comes from the way character creation works in, Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: each player creates and plays four 0th-level PCs during the adventure. Due to the fragility of these starting characters and the relative deadliness of DCC RPG, many are expected to die. From the survivors you advance one to 1st level. The result is that your "starting" 1st-level character has a bit of a history, some stories to tell, and a connection to the other PCs that's forged in fire.

What is a "funnel"?

I often see the term "funnel" used in describing adventures or campaigns, but it's not clear to me what it actually means. An example of this kind of use is this blog post talking about p...

rpg.stackexchange.com

The funnels themselves are a blast as one shots, but even in a campaign they are super fun, and that sense of connection to the survivors is very cool.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I have seen the video, and I couldn't read very well, but I hope a retcon about the Zakhata cult. It is not only about me, but because today it is too politically incorrect a fictional religion that promotes anorexia. I would rather to focuse in the potential conflict between the mongrefolk and the Zakhata cult, as a fabule about as the oppresed can become the new oppresers (do you remember the planet of the apes?), this religion allowed its clergy to marry and even poligamy (why not?, Philip I, landgrave of Hesse, was allowed bigamy by Martin Luther himself).

This book looks like a delicious first dish, but this is not enough and we are too hungry. I guess we will see new novels, or some comic. I miss some domains and monsters.

I would bet we will see some future module about "the return of Azalin".

Tasha/Iggwliv's vampiress daughter, Drelzna, could be a dark lady.

 

[Parmandur]

Yea, especially since it solves the random component too, which really I just should have thought of. I LOVE the random component and so do many, but I've found that it's not loved by many.

Yeah, DCC is definitely a niche taste thing, but gosh I love it.

 

[darjr]

Loved by many but also not loved by many..... it’s probably good I don’t write for a living.

 

[tetrasodium]

What do you mean by "funnel" in this context? A link to an article would be great.

Link on your question there ^. Basically funnel is a term used by Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) where players start with a bunch of random 0th level characters & go through a meatgrinder type adventure built for mid or even high level players using whatever ingenuity they can come up with. These survivor characters are orders of magnitude more capable than the ones you start with in dcc but it doesn't need to be a meatgrinder. I've run level zero adventures in 5e that went great and mentioned it earlier when survivors came up.

Don't take it too seriously & lean into old school ingenuity planning/strategizing. These all seem to have 8 9 1011 12 13 attrib arrays though that leaves a lot of room for players to gain magic items & such as they progress to make things really interesting over a campaign once they start getting class levels.

The survivor talents sound like downtuned feats that can be built on to sub in for feats (if expanded upon as I'm sure someone will) once the players start getting class levels

 

[Parmandur]

What do you mean by "funnel" in this context? A link to an article would be great.

I don't have a good article to link to, but it's pretty straightforward. In the OSR-adjacent game Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games, level creation is a Session Zero one-shot where every player rolls four entirely random Level 0 characters. The DM then runs the random assortment of characters through a Dungeon meant to have a 66% mortality rate, and usually every player gets through the session with a surviving character who gets to Level 1.

 

[darjr]

One my very best funnels were where the players were "deciding" which character of theirs was going to live and actually role playing the others "figuring" this out. That was about an hour of fantastic hilarity.

Oh and none of those survived. There was a "stalker" that went after the laggards staying behind.

 

[Parmandur]

One my very best funnels were where the players were "deciding" which character of theirs was going to live and actually role playing the others "figuring" this out. That was about an hour of fantastic hilarity.

Oh and none of those survived. There was a "stalker" that went after the laggards staying behind.

My experience is of people competing to see who can have the most surviving characters. Good fun.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Number one I don’t think that is the message but number two ‘hey colonizing was bad, but if you resist it the wrong way, you're also bad!’ Isn’t a bad argument at all if ‘the wrong way’ means something losing your humanity and inflicting harm on innocent people. These moral grandstanding arguments around stupid gaming storylines are getting utterly rediculous

If you actually read the text, that is not the choice that is set for this Dark Lord... the "fall to darkness" is that the gold dragon she is learning from sees that she still wants revenge, and stops teaching her. That's the choice set; between "go for revenge," and "let go of the past." Which I find a perfectly normal choice in most revenge stories (trying to get revenge is often a pointless exercise that achieves nothing), but WotC chose to write the "going for revenge," as tied directly to "free homeland from the colonizers." It is a poor choice to do this, IMO.

And if you really think the complaints I make are "moral grandstanding" (I haven't read the full text, so it was really more of an initial reaction), you should probably go ahead and ignore my account, as this falls under the category of mild criticism for me. When I grandstand, I GRANDSTAND.