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.

 

[Planescape]

Would you expect to find any cars on a remote island of the New England coast in the 1920s?

Do they have many gas stations in the Forgotten Realms?

Doesn't the protagonist of the Shadow Over Innsmouth get there by bus?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Doesn't the protagonist of the Shadow Over Innsmouth get there by bus?

Innsmouth in the original story is on the mainland, this version is on an island.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Given that it's Elminster, all sorts of things could have been transmitted to the Realms.

Rumour has it Elminster was responsible for introducing a particular type of pipe weed to Earth.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If there were no-magic motors in D&D then war-chariots had replaced chilvary time ago, and chainsaws+drills would be used to destroy the doors of the castles during the sieges, or motors could be used to reload giant crossbows.

Automobiles are posible in Ravenloft but in the demiplane of the dread there may be good reasons for technophobia. Do you remember the demonic auto from "Urban Arcana"? Other example is the 1977 horror movie "the car" but I suppose the most famous cursed car is Stephen King's Christine.

Automobiles also could be possible in some domain style movie "Hill has eyes" with some touch of "Mad Max", "Escape from Absolom" and "Doomday"(2008). The oil? Some people could be polymorphed into treansts (or earth+wood elementals) against their will or because some curse or punishment and their blood/tree sap used as oil for the motors.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I was recently made aware that DCC, a gonzo high-fantasy game, has a variation which takes place in the 1920s in New England. Check out Crawl-thulhu; they even turned "The Dunwich Horror" into a 0-level funnel adventure. I feel like D&D has room for use in a contemporary Earth setting. I'm not going to pretend I think it's the best fit (I've been doing a thread on another forum about a list of Call of Cthulhu articles) but it can be made to work.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

A new Chulthu d20 is possible, even within D&D but I suspect this should be with a different list of classes, the survivors, designed not for power balance but faster creation and more focused into investigation and social interaction, not to be played with the rest of classes.

Other option could be the survivor classes working like a standard class level 0 and the backgrounds working with their own and independient leveling up. Do you imagine PCs earning "storytelling points" to unlock extra feats?

 

[RealAlHazred]

A new Chulthu d20 is possible, even within D&D but I suspect this should be with a different list of classes, the survivors, designed not for power balance but faster creation and more focused into investigation and social interaction, not to be played with the rest of classes.

Other option could be the survivor classes working like a standard class level 0 and the backgrounds working with their own and independient leveling up. Do you imagine PCs earning "storytelling points" to unlock extra feats?

You could probably do a reasonable 5E D&D Cthulhu campaign in the 1920s using the classes Masque of the Red Death Player's Guide by Jeremy Forbing, keeping in mind that's more to emulate Gothic Horror in Victorian times as opposed to Lovecraftian Horror in the Jazz Age.

 

[TravDoc42]

When we get the art for the mi-go, I plan on editing in a sombrero, to make it an "A-mi-go"!

 

[Autumnal]

Clearly you are a fun guy.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

To create a little list of survivor classes is relatively easy because the intention was a simple design for a faster creation of new PCs but if we need a different list of classes for a setting with firearms and modern technology then isn't D&D but a new game and WotC hasn't showed interest into a new d20 Modern.

I don't feel confortable with historical campaigns because the ideological neutrality isn't so easy. I would rather to use fictional worlds, for example an alternate timeline of New Cappena where some communities could survive thanks secret and underground vaults. This would be like mixing noir-punk and postapocalipse.

Certain new domains could work like a "backdoor pilot episode" where there were XX century firearms style "Castle Wolfestein" or (cancelled?) "Panzer 88", or the board game "Reich Busters".