D&D 5E New D&D Hardcover To Be Announced On The 23rd (Tomorrow)?

According to this page on Amazon.com, a new Dungeon & Dragons hardcover title for May will be announced tomorrow. Users in the US see the product below (those in the UK are seeing a Wizkids miniatures set instead).

So far signs look like Ravenloft, but we’ll know for sure tomorrow.

[Update -- also mentioned by Todd Kendrick, recently of D&D Beyond].

WotC has posted the below animation, which says “The Mist Beckons”.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Definitely 3e,

Sorry, not an attempt to debunk what you said. There just seemed to be an air of “nobody knows what hammer horror is!” in the thread, and I wanted to express that I think most fans of horror do in fact know what it is, and those who don’t... I don’t think it’s influence will harm their experience with the campaign.

Sure, sure but the last major Ravenloft setting edition was 2E, right? (Discounting the somewhat-altered White Wolf one for 3E). I have that, and basically the first thing that happens in it, is the author(s) launch into an accidentally hilarious hectoring rant about how modern horror sucks giant bowling balls and Gothic Horror which they basically define as Hammer Horror + 1800s horror novels was awesome and not dumb like this stuff kids today like. Basically starting the entire book out with a giant "GET OFF MY LAWN, KIDS!" about Gothic Horror.

And I think what Gothic Horror includes, now, in 2021, is a hell of a lot broader than what Gothic Horror included to the authors of the 2E Ravenloft. I honestly hope that whilst they might be consulted, they aren't the authors on this. At all. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that in 1990, it was reasonable to do what they did. Even a kid like me grew up with Hammer and similar constantly on TV (even into my late teens). But now we're looking at this much broader Gothic Horror oeuvre, which Japanese creators have really embraced, and maybe done a better job than Western creators with over the last couple of decades (I mean, I may be biased because last time I tried to read Thomas Ligotti I couldn't stop giggling), and rather than trying to keep harking back to that Hammer/Universal Horror era, which really a lot of Ravenloft springs out of, maybe we should y'known, have some new domains which aren't Hammer/Universal-derived but are maybe still Gothic Horror.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Sure, sure but the last major Ravenloft setting edition was 2E, right? (Discounting the somewhat-altered White Wolf one for 3E). I have that, and basically the first thing that happens in it, is the author(s) launch into an accidentally hilarious hectoring rant about how modern horror sucks giant bowling balls and Gothic Horror which they basically define as Hammer Horror + 1800s horror novels was awesome and not dumb like this stuff kids today like. Basically starting the entire book out with a giant "GET OFF MY LAWN, KIDS!" about Gothic Horror.

And I think what Gothic Horror includes, now, in 2021, is a hell of a lot broader than what Gothic Horror included to the authors of the 2E Ravenloft. I honestly hope that whilst they might be consulted, they aren't the authors on this. At all. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that in 1990, it was reasonable to do what they did. Even a kid like me grew up with Hammer and similar constantly on TV (even into my late teens). But now we're looking at this much broader Gothic Horror oeuvre, which Japanese creators have really embraced, and maybe done a better job than Western creators with over the last couple of decades (I mean, I may be biased because last time I tried to read Thomas Ligotti I couldn't stop giggling), and rather than trying to keep harking back to that Hammer/Universal Horror era, which really a lot of Ravenloft springs out of, maybe we should y'known, have some new domains which aren't Hammer/Universal-derived but are maybe still Gothic Horror.

can you define gothic horror as I keep forgetting what the exact definition is?

 

[silentdante]

i would define all witches as evil...



but then again i would define everyone as evil

 

[Ruin Explorer]

can you define gothic horror as I keep forgetting what the exact definition is?

HAHAHAHAHAHA. I think you are accidentally trolling me I know you mean it honestly though so I'll play along!

Gothic fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But that's just Gothic fiction, that's not even including all the ways Gothic Horror stuff manifests, like I notice it doesn't cover computer games at all, despite them frequently being Gothic - Bloodborne exists on a sort of weird Gothic Horror/Lovecraftian Horror/Splatterfest nexus point for example, and Dark Souls has massive Gothic influences, and Resident Evil, of all things, actually sticks pretty close to a lot of Gothic Horror stuff, despite being technically about "zombies". Certainly all the Resident Evil computer games fit better into the genre of Gothic Horror than the "Zombie" genre (including recently - hell, the upcoming one looks mega-Gothic).

In RPGs World of Darkness is the obvious Gothic Horror deal - at times it's called itself Gothicpunk or Gothic Punk, but it's just a slightly edgier take on the same thing. Ravenloft self-identifies as Gothic Horror and correctly so. Graveyards, raven, vampires, mists, castles, masks, carnivals, Europe, the South (in the US), and so on it's all Gothic stuff.

 

[tetrasodium]

can you define gothic horror as I keep forgetting what the exact definition is?

tvtropes does a great job of doing that without getting lost in the weeds like wikipedia's entry

 

[Ruin Explorer]

tvtropes does a great job of doing that without getting lost in the weeds like wikipedia's entry

Yeah I considered using their one but I kind of hate TVtropes these days because they've basically gutted the examples on most of the genuinely interesting tropes and yet let ridiculous tropes that barely exist have a trillion examples. Yes that is an axe I'm grinding, why do you ask?

Also I hard-disagree (and so does Wikipedia) that the genre died out in the 1950s. Like, what the hell is Anne Rice, guys? And Southern Gothic is a SUBSET of Gothic Horror, not an entirely different thing (something TVtropes, of all people, should understand!).

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure, sure but the last major Ravenloft setting edition was 2E, right? (Discounting the somewhat-altered White Wolf one for 3E). I have that, and basically the first thing that happens in it, is the author(s) launch into an accidentally hilarious hectoring rant about how modern horror sucks giant bowling balls and Gothic Horror which they basically define as Hammer Horror + 1800s horror novels was awesome and not dumb like this stuff kids today like. Basically starting the entire book out with a giant "GET OFF MY LAWN, KIDS!" about Gothic Horror.

And I think what Gothic Horror includes, now, in 2021, is a hell of a lot broader than what Gothic Horror included to the authors of the 2E Ravenloft. I honestly hope that whilst they might be consulted, they aren't the authors on this. At all. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that in 1990, it was reasonable to do what they did. Even a kid like me grew up with Hammer and similar constantly on TV (even into my late teens). But now we're looking at this much broader Gothic Horror oeuvre, which Japanese creators have really embraced, and maybe done a better job than Western creators with over the last couple of decades (I mean, I may be biased because last time I tried to read Thomas Ligotti I couldn't stop giggling), and rather than trying to keep harking back to that Hammer/Universal Horror era, which really a lot of Ravenloft springs out of, maybe we should y'known, have some new domains which aren't Hammer/Universal-derived but are maybe still Gothic Horror.

Ahh, I see what you’re saying. Yes, I agree.

 

[Charlaquin]

In RPGs World of Darkness is the obvious Gothic Horror deal - at times it's called itself Gothicpunk or Gothic Punk, but it's just a slightly edgier take on the same thing.

I’d say classic World of Darkness was gothic punk (not sure what the modern revival is, I stopped following it after several snaffus with nuWhiteWolf), whereas the IP-formerly-known-as-“new”-World-of-Darkness was more gothic horror, with heavy American Gothic influence.

 

[see]

the famous King James Bible quote is a mistranslation - possibly intentional, to tap into the zeitgeist - replacing poisoner with witch).

Um, no, it isn't. Translating it as "poisoner" is tendentious at best.

It is true that the Koine Greek word pharmakeia used in the Septuagint translation of Exodus could potentially support a translation of "poisoner" into English, and Reginald Scott favored that translation in his 1584 polemic The Discoverie of Witchcraft. But it could also be translated as magician, herbalist, or even doctor. The Koine Greek word was really, really broad, reflecting that there was no clear conceptual distinction by the speakers of that language between magic and medicine, nor between making someone sick by a curse or by giving them something bad to consume.

Going back to the original Hebrew mekhashepha, the consensus opinion, both long before and long after the European Witch Craze, was a meaning roughly of "mutterer", implying the muttering of curses or the invocation of demons. And the context for the same word over in Duteronomy 18:10-11 is a list with various forms of magical practices.

 

[Remathilis]

Sure, sure but the last major Ravenloft setting edition was 2E, right? (Discounting the somewhat-altered White Wolf one for 3E). I have that, and basically the first thing that happens in it, is the author(s) launch into an accidentally hilarious hectoring rant about how modern horror sucks giant bowling balls and Gothic Horror which they basically define as Hammer Horror + 1800s horror novels was awesome and not dumb like this stuff kids today like. Basically starting the entire book out with a giant "GET OFF MY LAWN, KIDS!" about Gothic Horror.

And I think what Gothic Horror includes, now, in 2021, is a hell of a lot broader than what Gothic Horror included to the authors of the 2E Ravenloft. I honestly hope that whilst they might be consulted, they aren't the authors on this. At all. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that in 1990, it was reasonable to do what they did. Even a kid like me grew up with Hammer and similar constantly on TV (even into my late teens). But now we're looking at this much broader Gothic Horror oeuvre, which Japanese creators have really embraced, and maybe done a better job than Western creators with over the last couple of decades (I mean, I may be biased because last time I tried to read Thomas Ligotti I couldn't stop giggling), and rather than trying to keep harking back to that Hammer/Universal Horror era, which really a lot of Ravenloft springs out of, maybe we should y'known, have some new domains which aren't Hammer/Universal-derived but are maybe still Gothic Horror.

Part of Ravenloft's general problem is that most of the Domains fall into three categories.

• Thinly veiled expy versions of the classic horror monsters and people: Strahd as Dracula, Mordenheim as Frankenstein, Hiregard/Malken as Jeckyl and Hyde, etc.
• Dark versions of other D&D settings which rely heavily on knowledge of that setting. Sithicus and Soth are the classic example, but by Domains of Dread, every D&D setting had a representative Darklord.

" One trick pony Domains that are all about thier darklord, leaving little room for anything else. They work good as one adventure settings, but Ravenloft is full of large domains that nothing but the Darklord. Forlorn might be a good example of this.

What I hope any new Ravenloft product does is make the Domains more than just thier darklord. Focus on telling stories in Ravenloft that doesn't need Strahd or Adam as the main antagonist. Tone down the obvious "this domain is Dracula/the Mummy/Dragonlance" stuff and give us new ideas or suggestions.