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

 

[Remathilis]

Wasn't that half the point of the setting? Classic horror monsters in D&D
Feels like taking the dragons out of Dragonlance

Was there any land that wasn't completely revised and is more or less the same as it was in the past? Or did all of Ravenloft secretly suck?

There is a fine line between homage and rip-off. A couple of those Darklords were dancing on that line. It's a difference between "I want to explore a setting about a mad scientist creating golems and other abominations" and "I want to play though the latter half of Universal's Frankenstein".

As to your second question: depends on how radical you view the changes. Mordent feels pretty close to it's original. Darkon is a redo on post-Necropolis Darkon. Kartakass is very close once you swap the order of were and wolf around. Several of the minor one paragraph domains feel pretty close (Sea of Sorrows, Keening, Odaire, Tovag, and such) and Barovia is still CoS Barovia.

 

[Necrozius]

Honestly I get the impression that it will be easy to modify this new Ravenloft book to better suit your tastes. I'm appreciative of having a refreshing look at the setting, plus some information I'm lacking in my collection (I only own the Realm of Terror AD&D boxed set, plus a handful of Van Richten's Guide to X books).

If you can't be bothered, then stick to the older books, if you already own them. Or nab the PDFs, which I think are now available on DriveThruRPG, thankfully!

 

[Voadam]

Or nab the PDFs, which I think are now available on DriveThruRPG, thankfully!

A lot of the 2e Ravenloft PDFs are available, but unfortunately the OCR quality varies wildly. The 3e ones have the big core ones, but we are still waiting for WotC to put stuff like the Gazetteer series back up after Arthaus's license ended years ago and they were taken down then.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

There is a fine line between homage and rip-off. A couple of those Darklords were dancing on that line. It's a difference between "I want to explore a setting about a mad scientist creating golems and other abominations" and "I want to play though the latter half of Universal's Frankenstein".

As to your second question: depends on how radical you view the changes. Mordent feels pretty close to it's original. Darkon is a redo on post-Necropolis Darkon. Kartakass is very close once you swap the order of were and wolf around. Several of the minor one paragraph domains feel pretty close (Sea of Sorrows, Keening, Odaire, Tovag, and such) and Barovia is still CoS Barovia.

They couldn't change Barovia since it was already locked in

Of the domains in that book that are actually detailed, one is "pretty close" And two more are "very close" if you ignore one is collapsing rather than being the Necropolis or ruled by a resurrected Azalin and the other if you ignore they changed the central monster. Which feel like big changes
Like two-and-a-half. Of the fifteen
That's 16%. 83% of the setting was revised

Or 79% if you include Barovia, which they would have probably changed had it not already been detailed

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

I can't tell if you're misunderstanding what I wrote or are just being really obnoxious here...

1) The goal is to have fun, not to hurt the players. A careless DM, or a cruel one, can easily do the latter by trying to scare the player. I hope that you're not trying to hurt the players when you run a game.

Maybe who look at horror films or play horror rpg love to be scared. Vicariously scared, obviously.
A DM can set up the horror level to keep the fear funny.

2) Players and characters generally don't share the same fears. I like spiders. I may choose to play an arachnophobe. It would be really hard to scare me by throwing spiders at my character. But my arachnophobic character would be terrified.

Yes of course. There is no perfect overlap. Generally speaking a player is scared of what happens to the character, by means of identification with his/her PC. This is the foundation of emotions in role playing games.

It is for sure possible to avoid scaring players, but since all a DM can do is to describe what happens to a PC, the limit is not to touch the level of sensibility of the player with the facts described.

This is a rule that is common sense (if you play ravenloft with 6 years old children you do not do the same as with 50 years players), but this not means to avoid scaring players, this mean to mantain fear funny.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

@Disgruntled Hobbit is suggesting an alternate method of changing the Domains of Dread than how they think WotC did it. They are not saying villains can't be sex offenders or nazis, what they are suggesting is that if WotC doesn't want those things in the setting there are alternate ways to change them that don't change so much of the existing lore.

Thank you for clarification. I was aware of the meaning of what DH was writing. But it is the problem itself that make me shake my head.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

This has totally been a thing for me since playing WoD in the 90s and Dark Heresy in the 00s. That is, trying to frighten the characters and not necessarily the players. Part of the fun of playing WFRP 1e was the sardonic black humor at witnessing the miseries of our PCs.

This is a way to play. But it is not the only rule. If your player's want to be scared, if they, in other words, choose this kind of fruition, there is nothing wrong in it.
I find wrong the "scare the pc, not the player" thing, written as usual as "the right way horror rpg are meant to be played".

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

In what ways is the new leader of Falkovia NOT a horrible fascist dictator? They're still an oppressively leader that kills people by placing them on pikes
That hasn't changed. All they did was add zombies and flip the gender

ok.

 

[Remathilis]

They couldn't change Barovia since it was already locked in

Of the domains in that book that are actually detailed, one is "pretty close" And two more are "very close" if you ignore one is collapsing rather than being the Necropolis or ruled by a resurrected Azalin and the other if you ignore they changed the central monster. Which feel like big changes
Like two-and-a-half. Of the fifteen
That's 16%. 83% of the setting was revised

Or 79% if you include Barovia, which they would have probably changed had it not already been detailed

Please bare in mind I'm going off leaks and YouTube videos. I get you want to play gotcha, but the extent of some changes aren't known yet. It's not a reprinting of Domains of Dread, and I don't think they were ever really going to accept the changes the Kargatane made (such as Calibans or Hala or the circumstances of Azalin's return) even if 5e Ravenloft was a continuation of the old metaplot. Things were bound to change.

 

[Necrozius]

This is a way to play. But it is not the only rule. If your player's want to be scared, if they, in other words, choose this kind of fruition, there is nothing wrong in it.
I find wrong the "scare the pc, not the player" thing, written as usual as "the right way horror rpg are meant to be played".

I never said it was the only rule. I prefaced my post with FOR ME, in response to another post expressing skepticism that this style as a thing at all. I said it was, for me, since the mid-90s.

Scaring the players is a valid experience too, of course. I've genuinely creeped out my players before with horror themed modules inspired by things like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. They were very memorable (in a positive sense).