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

 

[JEB]

And what did it exactly achieve in terms of impacting D&D?

2E renamed devils and demons temporarily. Ooooh big win guys!

They also removed half-orcs and assassins from the core rules (the former being something I could see happening again in the near future; Tasha's conspicuously had zero half-orcs).

That said, I grew up in the 2E era as well, so I'm also pretty comfy with tanar'ri and baatezu and such. But I understand why 1E folks might have a different view.

Increased visibility and sales.

Did 2E sell better than 1E? I always thought 1E was only outshown by the current edition.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They also removed half-orcs and assassins from the core rules (the former being something I could see happening again in the near future; Tasha's conspicuously had zero half-orcs).

That said, I grew up in the 2E era as well, so I'm also pretty comfy with tanar'ri and baatezu and such. But I understand why 1E folks might have a different view.


Did 2E sell better than 1E? I always thought 1E was only outshown by the current edition.

Re: 1E vs 2E, my understanding was the that the big 1980s seller was D&D, not AD&D. That could be wrong.

I think Half-Orcs and Assassins kind of went out for other reasons than like MADD and stuff though. I think that was more straightforward "clean up product for mass market" stuff. I mean, we lost Barbarians and Cavaliers and Thief-Acrobats too. And then we got Barbarians back in a well-meaning but like definitely unintentionally racist book in later 2E of course and wished we hadn't.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

AD&D 2e adopted a kind of comics book code for depicting evil in adventures, evil could not triumph. Players were written as default good heroes in core materials and adventures, not mercenary adventurers.

You got a source for this? I ask because I can't see much difference between the 1E and 2E adventures I own on this, and it seems like the sort of thing players would believe into existence even if it didn't exist. But if you've got TSR people saying it, that's fascinating.

Within TSR AD&D 2e not only did not use the terms demons or devils for a few years, it had no outer planes stuff under any name for the first seven monster supplements, MC8 Outer planes appendix didn't come out until 1991.

The first seven supplements sounds like a big number until you remember 2E came out in 1989, so you had what, two years w/o 2E versions of that material, which if you cared about, you likely had the semi-compatible 1E versions of anyway.

The first setting for 2E was Taladas (in 1989), which an extremely shades-of-grey setting, which allowed people to play Minotaurs, Ogres, Goblins, and Lizardmen (they were encouraged to, even), had evil, vaguely rape-y high elf barbarian raiders (including not one, but two pictures of women being abducted), an area that basically amounted to "Elf South Africa" replete with apartheid enforced by the elves on the humans and half-elves of the region, dragons with non-fixed alignments, and so on. As an aside, it's totally amazing setting, and I'm only highlighting the scary stuff but this idea that that was "comics code" seems er... far-fetched. That's literally the first setting.

FRA comes out soon thereafter, and includes full rules and instructions for being priests of various death/evil gods which are certainly darker than any assassin (who I think mostly got cut for being rubbish - Half-Orcs did probably get cut for mass-market clean-up, I don't think the "they're all the children of rape" vibe was regarded as cool).

The biggest unfortunate impact I'd say was on kids who were playing D&D whose parents then forbid them from doing so and made them throw away/destroy their game books.

Yeah that's the real impact and that sucks for the people who had to deal with that.

Ironically my very un-religious and British parents did take away my first RPG book from me - The Riddling Reaver - but on the grounds that it appeared to be too scary for me, given I was what, 8 or something, and I also got banned from reading 2000AD when my mum read an issue lol (though she did like the art she said - she's an illustrator). However these bans were revoked less than a year later, and less than two years after that I was running Taladas...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You got a source for this? I ask because I can't see much difference between the 1E and 2E adventures I own on this, and it seems like the sort of thing players would believe into existence even if it didn't exist. But if you've got TSR people saying it, that's fascinating.

I think it was more of a trend, rather than anything written down. But there was move towards more plot driven good vs evil heroic fantasy adventures favoured by Ed Greenwood, and later the Hickmans, and away from the picaresque sword and sorcery mercenary adventures favoured by Gygax. Dragonlance was the most obvious example. This was the period when I left D&D for Traveller and other more SF RPGs though, so I'm not that good a source for 2nd edition. It might have happened anyway with Gygax getting the boot. This was a little before 1989, in the 1st edition/2nd edition transition period.

Re: 1E vs 2E, my understanding was the that the big 1980s seller was D&D, not AD&D. That could be wrong.

It was very difficult to buy anything other than the Red Box basic set outside of a few very specialist retailers in shady allys in the UK at this time. Toy shops didn't sell books, book shops didn't sell games.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I think 2021 may be the year of a new wave of satanic panic, but this time D&D shouldn't worry too much, because the target will be others, Hollywood productions, videogames with violence, World of Darkness RPG, comics, etc. Even Ravenloft can be enough family-friendly and so relatively innocent as R.L.Stine's Goosebumps books.

I try to understand all those efforts to be politically correct, but sometimes these become really annoying when I suspect a double standar.

* Mongrefolk as a softer version of the mutants "broken ones" and PC race replacing the half-orc?

* Orcs and half-orcs can appear as "tainted humanoids", something like the goblyns from Forlorn.

* Sifters (lycantouched) PC race from Eberron could, should, appear in Ravenloft.

* Mutants by magical polution may be possible in Ravenloft, allowing humanoids with "strange faces".

* Tyrion Lannister is a good example of how a gnome PC can be a fabulous character in Ravenloft. The little ugly duckling who becomes the ultimate survivor.

* Do you remember story arc by marvel Runaways (Vol 2 #28) with the sinners, the street arabs and the Upward Parth (Vol? It showed a past century but with a lot of "exotic elements". I mean the Ravenloft from 2021 will be not like the one from the 90's but a lot of new things will be added or changed.

* If Hazlik doesn't want those (no-magical) tatoos, couldn't he use magic to change, cross out or erasure them?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But there was move towards more plot driven good vs evil heroic fantasy adventures favoured by Ed Greenwood, and later the Hickmans, and away from the picaresque sword and sorcery mercenary adventures favoured by Gygax. Dragonlance was the most obvious example. This was the period when I left D&D for Traveller and other more SF RPGs though, so I'm not that good a source for 2nd edition. It might have happened anyway with Gygax getting the boot.

Yeah but presumably that was because that stuff sold better, and it was a trend that impacted the entire industry and indeed continued and intensified into 3E with Adventure Paths. It's easy to see why too - we ran a lot of 1E adventures back in the day, and whilst they often briefly featured some spectacularly cool ideas and wild fantasy in them, they never explored either in any depth, and then you were in some fairly generic/dull area, and with little/no plot to uncover or progress, they were not inherently emotionally involving. Whereas the 2E adventures which actually had a plot tended to sort of drag you along - even if you didn't like the NPCs involved, they usually at least made you mad! I think especially for people new to DMing or RPGs the plot-based structure was particularly helpful. It also felt to me a lot easier to justify spending money on a plot-based adventure, not just for D&D but other games as well.

It was very difficult to buy anything other than the Red Box basic set outside of a few very specialist retailers in shady allys in the UK at this time. Toy shops didn't sell books, book shops didn't sell games.

I lived in central London (Hackney) and started in 1989-ish so it was a bit easier where/when I was - if you went down to the Oxford Street general area (reasonable bus ride), you had Orc's Nest, Forbidden Planet, Virgin Megastore - which had a surprisingly huge RPG section - indeed all Virgin stores I saw in the late '80s and early '90s did, including in Oxford and Scotland - and Games Workshop, which at that time, still carried RPG stuff - I bought all my initial AD&D 2E books from the Games Workshop in the Plaza, which is, amazingly, still there to this day (or was last year). I think they stopped carrying them soon thereafter though. I think that period was probably actually the peak of in-store/high-street availability of RPGs in the UK - I bought Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Traveller:TNE, Rifts etc. all at Virgin stores. But yeah GW stopped, and then at some point in the '90s Virgin did too, and Forbidden Planet was always a bit hopeless selection-wise

True re: bookshops, I remember being surprised in the early '00s when I started seeing 3E books on the shelves at big bookstores (not long before those bookstores started vanishing of course). And of course in the US you also had the Wizards of the Coast stores for a while. Everywhere I've been in the US though seemed to have a decent RPG store not too far away. A vivid memory is being in woodsy rural part of Massachusetts in the early '90s and we came across a store which had a huge RPG section in the basement.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

the upcoming Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft contains rules for creating D&D horror landscapes

-source

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah but presumably that was because that stuff sold better, and it was a trend that impacted the entire industry and indeed continued and intensified into 3E with Adventure Paths. It's easy to see why too - we ran a lot of 1E adventures back in the day, and whilst they often briefly featured some spectacularly cool ideas and wild fantasy in them, they never explored either in any depth, and then you were in some fairly generic/dull area, and with little/no plot to uncover or progress, they were not inherently emotionally involving. Whereas the 2E adventures which actually had a plot tended to sort of drag you along - even if you didn't like the NPCs involved, they usually at least made you mad! I think especially for people new to DMing or RPGs the plot-based structure was particularly helpful. It also felt to me a lot easier to justify spending money on a plot-based adventure, not just for D&D but other games as well.

I lived in central London (Hackney) and started in 1989-ish so it was a bit easier where/when I was - if you went down to the Oxford Street general area (reasonable bus ride), you had Orc's Nest, Forbidden Planet, Virgin Megastore - which had a surprisingly huge RPG section - indeed all Virgin stores I saw in the late '80s and early '90s did, including in Oxford and Scotland - and Games Workshop, which at that time, still carried RPG stuff - I bought all my initial AD&D 2E books from the Games Workshop in the Plaza, which is, amazingly, still there to this day (or was last year). I think they stopped carrying them soon thereafter though. I think that period was probably actually the peak of in-store/high-street availability of RPGs in the UK - I bought Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Traveller:TNE, Rifts etc. all at Virgin stores. But yeah GW stopped, and then at some point in the '90s Virgin did too, and Forbidden Planet was always a bit hopeless selection-wise

True re: bookshops, I remember being surprised in the early '00s when I started seeing 3E books on the shelves at big bookstores (not long before those bookstores started vanishing of course). And of course in the US you also had the Wizards of the Coast stores for a while. Everywhere I've been in the US though seemed to have a decent RPG store not too far away. A vivid memory is being in woodsy rural part of Massachusetts in the early '90s and we came across a store which had a huge RPG section in the basement.

One interesting point, I think the last TSR adventures Gygax wrote where Dungeonland/Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, which where a departure for him, and can be lumped with I6 Ravenloft - adventures based on classic novels.

London was very different to the rest of the country in terms of RPG availability during the 80s (more shady allys). I was at boarding school in Devon during most of the 80s, and in Lancashire the rest of the time.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It was very difficult to buy anything other than the Red Box basic set outside of a few very specialist retailers in shady allys in the UK at this time. Toy shops didn't sell books, book shops didn't sell games.

I don't know what the sales number were, but in both California and Massachusetts (the two places I lived during the time) pretty much everyone I knew played AD&D. My first D&D game used the basic rules. After that all I saw for the most part was AD&D. By 2E, AD&D was all I saw. We all had the red box, and most people bought it when they first started to understand the game, but almost all the Dungeons and Dragons campaigns I was in were using AD&D. I was in one campaign where the GM preferred D&D rules cyclopedia, which was the only non-AD&D campaign I remember being in. And I do remember being in one game where someone was using the expert book to run things (but it was only one session using a module).

In terms of availability, here the whole TSR catalog was readily available. When I started you could buy any D&D book in most hobby shops. Sometime around 1990 I noticed book stores had all the TSR books (both the novels and the game books). Both AD&D and D&D were available. The various 2E worlds. All the novels. All the supplements. I don't think I ever had to order anything from a catalog unless it wasn't D&D.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You got a source for this? I ask because I can't see much difference between the 1E and 2E adventures I own on this, and it seems like the sort of thing players would believe into existence even if it didn't exist. But if you've got TSR people saying it, that's fascinating.

There was definitely something like that at the time. You see a drastic shift between 1E and 2E. Some of it is cultural (fantasy was getting more homogenous) but there was a definite code in order to avoid flack. I am almost positive that is what led to the assassin taking out (to the point that RA Salvatore was initially told to take Artemis Entreri out of the Icewind Dale books until he replied that Artemis wasn't an assassin at all but a multi class (think he said fighter/thief or something---which wasn't the case but that is how he kept him in the books according to Salvatore).

I loved 2E so I am not saying they didn't make great stuff under that constraint (I mean great things were made under the comic code and in the old hollywood system too). But I think the point is it isn't a good reason to restrict content.