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

 

[Davies]

What I'd seen in previews seemed like it extrapolated more from late-2E Hazlik, but it would certainly be nice if the work the Kargatane did was acknowledged!

Got my copy from Amazon this afternoon. It's not what was described in the first Gazeteer, but ...

During these feuds, there was one competitor Hazlik was unable to defeat: the Red Wizard Indreficus. Hazlik gradually came to fixate on Indreficus as his one true rival. Indreficus shared Hazlan's genius and arrogance, and they spent many seasons as vicious adversaries and passionate lovers. ... That ended when Hazlik learned that Indreficus had gained the attention of the land's ruling zulkirs and planned to betray Hazlik to garner their favor. Heartbroken and enraged, Hazlik captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that permanently transformed him into a pain-wracked living portal.

The final twist of the knife is that the zulkirs had started those rumors to break the two of them up. In this telling, his scars (which just mean 'traitor', rather than any gendered insults) are the result of passing through the aforementioned living portal, and he's been given Azalin's 'no more new spells for you' curse on top of everything else.

Edit: Also Eleni is specifically named as one of his apprentices, and I don't think that character existed before the Gazeteers. We don't learn much about her, here, but it's trivial to assume that her backstory is much the same.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

he's been given Azalin's 'no more new spells for you' curse on top of everything else.

It's not like Azalin is using it any more...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

it would certainly be nice if the work the Kargatane did was acknowledged!

I expect WotC's lawyers have advised them to avoid anything where the intellectual property rights aren't absolutely cut and dried.

But the "there is no canon" approach means you can use that stuff anyway if you like it.

 

[JEB]

Nightmare Logic: By the standards of what other worlds’ inhabitants consider true and sane, the Domains of Dread don’t make sense. The setting’s domains don’t neatly flow into one another, histories don’t record a collectively remembered past, fictions spawn terrible facts, and sheltered villagers remain stubbornly ignorant about the world beyond.

So between this and the fact that Darklords can never actually be destroyed... is there any way for player actions to permanently matter in 5E Ravenloft? If they save a town from a werewolf queen, does it stay saved, or could it be right back under that villain's domination as soon as they leave? If the heroes settle down and retire after a career of fighting evil, do they just get shuffled into the nightmare mix of Ravenloft's existence, fodder for the next passion play the Dark Powers decide to put on?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So between this and the fact that Darklords can never actually be destroyed... is there any way for player actions to permanently matter in 5E Ravenloft? If they save a town from a werewolf queen, does it stay saved, or could it be right back under that villain's domination as soon as they leave? If the heroes settle down and retire after a career of fighting evil, do they just get shuffled into the nightmare mix of Ravenloft's existence, fodder for the next passion play the Dark Powers decide to put on?

DM's call, but generally, no, it doesn't stay saved. It might be saved for a day, or a year, or a century, but eventually it resets.

I don't think retirement is really an option for Ravenloft characters.

 

[JEB]

DM's call, but generally, no, it doesn't stay saved. It might be saved for a day, or a year, or a century, but eventually it resets.

I don't think retirement is really an option for Ravenloft characters.

Interesting. Seems like 5E Ravenloft is secretly much bleaker than its predecessors...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Interesting. Seems like 5E Ravenloft is secretly much bleaker than its predecessors...

Well, Harkon Lukas has been retconned into a kardashian, which is pretty bleak...

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Dark lords can't be killed, but when the metaplot said it.

I was thinking about a thing I read, it would be a spoiler, but not about Ravenloft but from a Ghost Rider comic.

Lucifer tricked Johanny Blaze (the original Ghost Rider) into taking the demon with him while he was escaping from Hell. However, where Lucifer arrived on Earth, he split into 666 different fragments which possessed recently-deceased corpses. As one of the bodied died, the fragment of its strength would increase the power of the other fragments.

My theory, or idea for your games, is when certain characters die, "sparks" or fragments of their memories are sent to new souls. This wouldn't be a true reincarnation, but something closer to accidental doppel/clone like Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper". And someones of these "incarnated" may become nemesis (or a true pain in the neck) of dark lords.

I would bet we will see more sourcebooks, adding new domains.

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Hack/Slash Wiki

Welcome tothe Hack/Slash Wiki Recent Changes / Getting Started 130 articles since June 14, 2010 The Hack/Slash Wiki is an encyclopedia about everything related to Tim Seeley's comic book series Hack/Slash. The wiki format allows anyone to create or edit any article, so we can all work together...

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[Remathilis]

The problem was never that they needn't have a canon; it was they did have a more or less consistent canon for over 20 years, and then decided to radically change it. Forgotten Realms and Eberron are both much more consistent with previous versions, and I believe that if this had come out earlier in 5e's life cycle, it would have been more consistent as well.

I'm not so sure...

The big difference is spelled out in the DMG published in 2014.

Domains of Dread
In remote corners of the Shadowfell, it is easy to reach horrific demiplanes ruled over by accursed beings of terrible evil. The best known of these is the valley of Barovia, overlooked by the towering spires of Castle Ravenloft and ruled by Count Strahd von Zarovich, the first vampire. Beings of the Shadowfell called the Dark Powers created these domains as prisons these "darklords," and through cruelty or carelessness trapped innocent mortals in these domains as well.

If you go back further, 4e had four domains in Dragon magazine that fit a lot of the design of 5e's domains: isolated planes, heavier use of nonhumans and magic, etc. If you read the Tarokka cards, you'll have known the 2e setting redux was never in the cards.

That said, if it was 2016 and this project was replacing Curse of Strahd, I think some of the changes might not have occurred. The Vistani would have hewed closer to the classic magical g*psy trope. You might have seen more domains either acknowledge more of old Ravenloft lore or hew a little closer to it for good or ill. And some of the more inclusive elements might not have been a thought, like Alanik Ray's wheelchair or husband.

But I long suspected any 5e Ravenloft setting would have ended up looking a lot like this.

 

[Eubani]

A 30 odd year old product, 20 years since a full write up. Society has changed, the audience has changed, the writers have changed, the genre has changed, the game has changed, the industry has changed, morals have changed. There was never going to be any amount of yelling at clouds that would of gotten a person a version of Ravenloft similar to what was produced 20-30 years ago. Wanting products from 30+ years ago to be produced today is only going to land a whole heap of disappointment and a whole heap of "Ok Boomer" (or should I say Ok Grognard?).