Innsmouth added as new Ravenloft Domain of Dread, bringing Lovecraft to D&D

Innsmouth, the iconic home of several HP Lovecraft stories, is being incorporated into Ravenloft as a new Domain of Dread. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast revealed the contents of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, including the number of subclasses, ancestries, and new creature statblocks in the game. Wizards also revealed that 16 Domains of Dread will be profiled in the book, including the new domain Innsmouth. Assumably, its Darklord will be Cthulhu, who was previously confirmed to be in Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, complete with a statblock.

Cosmic horror has long had a place in Dungeons & Dragons lore, with Cthulhu originally appearing in early copies of Deities and Demigods. Due to a licensing dispute with Chaosium, TSR removed Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian creatures from later printings of the book. Cthulhu along with Lovecraft's other creations have since passed into the public domain, thus removing any restrictions on featuring the characters in a D&D book.

Of course, Innsmouth (at least in Lovecraft's work) is supposed to be a turn of the century New England coastal town, which doesn't exactly jive with the high fantasy trappings of Dungeons & Dragons. We'll have to see how much of Innsmouth is changed to line up with D&D when Ravenloft: The Horrors Within releases later this summer.

 

[TravDoc42]

We have confirmed Nightgaunts, Yithians, Elder Beings, big C himself... that I can recall

Ive read rumors about ChoCho, Shoggoths, Color out of Space, and the Cult of Cthonic **** (I forgot what the asterisk was)

As for Deep Ones, that is speculation based on Innsmouth being the domain

I saw reference to shoggoths in the Elder Thing's flavour text (D&D Beyond briefly allowed access to all the Play-Along pack content at once, before correcting it. I saw the Elder Thing info there before they fixed the issue).

 

[TravDoc42]

Here's the Elder Thing art, by the way!

 

[Selas]

Looks amazing. I had only seen a small version, so it was hard to appreciate.

 

[Remathilis]

We

We may yet see updated rules on fear and stress. Whether they're good or not remains to be seen. There was a lot of backlash at the lackluster rules in VGR, so maybe they learned the lesson...hopefully

The DMG has an even further watered down version and I assume they'll use that

 

[Selas]

The 5.5 DMG version was watered down in flavor, but was more punishing mechanically than the 2014 version (check madness, fear&horror). The lack of flavor in 5.5 was most likely for sensitivity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As for Deep Ones, that is speculation based on Innsmouth being the domain

Based on the art at the beginning, with the prominent dorsal fins, I think they will use Sahaugin, but add new variants, including 20ft tall ancients with high CR. There are already more powerful and specialised variants in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

shoggoths

I would be very surprised if they didn’t include shoggoths. Fungi from Yuggoth were in Deities and Demigods too.

I wonder were the Mountains of Madness are?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Even if the PCs are true monster-hunter munchkins the players can feel worry and fear when they have to protect their lower-level sidekicks. Let's imagine your sidekick is a Wechselkind(child-like construct) who seems a cute little girl like Diana from Pragmata(videogame). A merger of sidekick+survivor classes could work like the "grogs" from "Ars Margica".

Let's remember there was some modern technology in 1929, for example the radio or the fridge.

* There is enough room for Lovecraftian myths some more one player would rather the ghotic vibes.

* Lovecraftian game can't be only "we have to investigate the evil cult to stop it before the summoning ritual". Some players want more survival horror but others would rather a raid to terminate monsters, and both options are right.

* What if a dark domain was like the movie "Maximum Overdrive" or Stelphen King's short story "Trucks" where machines become self-controlled. This could be a good reason for the technophobia in Ravenloft.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Let's remember there was some modern technology in 1929, for example the radio or the fridge

You might think so, but both these things require an electricity supply. There are no power stations on the map. A small internal combustion generator requires petrochemical fuel, coal and wood aren’t energy dense enough to be practical at that scale. Hydroelectric systems were very expensive and usually used in the estates of the very rich. Solar cells are not invented.

Bottom line, a lot of 20th century technology requires 20th century infrastructure.

Lovecraftian game can't be only "we have to investigate the evil cult to stop it before the summoning ritual

That particular plotline is already very overused in D&D. A well designed domain should support a wide range of plots.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure, but they bring the things they learned from their fantasy world, such as fish people and hybrids are perfectly normal (some are even friendly), monsters are things to be fought and killed, not feared, and so on. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail (even if you take the hammer to a different world), to a fantasy hero every monster looks something to kill (and steal its stuff). There are other things they might find alien and frightening, from the early 20th C technology to the racist attitudes, but monsters are comfortably familiar.

And fantasy heroes is the whole point of D&D. If players wanted to play a game where they were weak commoners facing monsters they would play a different game. There are plenty available, and they all do it better than D&D ever can. Ravenloft was created so fantasy heroes could face off against Dracula. The 2nd edition boxed set made the mistake of trying to compete with CoC by copying it. That’s always an error, because the original is always better at being itself than any copy. D&D can best compete with horror games by focusing on being itself, a big bad hero game, not trying to be something else.

There is no point in creating something the same as something that already exists. “Innsmouth” already exists in CoC. The point of this “Innsmouth” is it is different to that one. It’s a D&D favoured one.

You have said nothing that so much as hints that you talking about what the world can influence from a perspective, all of your posts are about how a player can decide that unilaterally and why the player can simply choose to have their PC be unaffected by what 5e wotc has provided GM's.

In the case of a hypothetical gm with those amusement park style views the question of naked in rule & ability revisions is moot because they can just say "ignore that chapter and use the default core stuff with your PCs". As a result it doesn't deserve all of the effort into considering it that you r given it because you've not so much as hunted at a gm concern created by such a chapter & would need a pretty serious one given your demonstration of why the has no say in what the world is capable of.

It would be a major understatement to suggest such a player outlook was an extreme Gary Stu way of looking at things where the PCs bring everything about how magic works in the world how magic inside that world interacts with those who find themselves in it and any changes with how those function from world to world can be totally ignored by players of PCs who find themselves "transported to Ravenloft" because apparently those PCs bring all of their original world's norms to Ravenloft with the "things they learned". That's like playing a space traveling ttrpg and having PCs who go from a low gravity world to a high gravity world or vice versa should expect to carry their original world's gravity baseline mechanics with them.