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”.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Wasn't that much if a fan of those books in the 90s. Vampire one was interesting.

I liked Dragonlance briefly circa 1993-1997 until Dragons of Summer Flame.

Ravenloft didn't really like much probably not helped by crap DM. It's also really hard to make gothic horror work. At that age I had already seen movies like Aliens, horror movies were a joke and I had read books on the holocaust at school and middle school had then on the Atomic bombings of Japan with colour photos.

Also if you played Darksun Ravenloft was a joke or a cartoon vs scary. I've never figured out how to do it or seen it done well. It's not for me and just don't get it.

The setting covers a wider range of horror than just Gothic. You also have domains modelled off Aliens (Nosos), Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror (Bluetspur) , religious style horror (Pharazia would evoke images of ISIS and the Taliban now), Dark-sun style post-apocalyptic survivalist horror (Kalidnay) and many more. Problem is that WoTC has spent three editions rehashing Barovia.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't like Ravenloft as a whole conglomerate setting of horror. I've felt this way since the day the setting was launched back in 2e.
I've always felt that if they had to use Ravenloft as the masthead, then the adventures would've been best presented as an anthology. One shots, nothing connected. Instead? We got the whole demi-plane of dread crap, ongoing story, the idea that you could crisscross this weird continent of horror like traipsing around the FR, and a bunch of rules that literally scared people away from playing anything (including I6/I10 or the I6 remakes) with the RL logo as they didn't want their characters corrupted/driven insane/etc.

I'm 100% fine with the original module (I6) & I'm OK with re-visiting it every edition. You need to keep the best/most iconic stuff in circulation for the next generation of gamers.
And I like it's actual sequel - I10 House on Gyphon Hill - even though it's a slight mess & could use the additional polish I6 get's every few years....
I don't think that there's any good reason to make either one of these into a whole lv1-10(?) campaign though.

CoS? Well... It combines my distaste for RL as an overall setting by cramming ALL of the tropes into one tiny haunted valley AND my dislike for turning it into a complete campaign.

That's why I don't like CoS/or "Ravenloft" the campaign setting.

This. You can explain it better than me.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I don't like Ravenloft as a whole conglomerate setting of horror. I've felt this way since the day the setting was launched back in 2e.
I've always felt that if they had to use Ravenloft as the masthead, then the adventures would've been best presented as an anthology. One shots, nothing connected. Instead? We got the whole demi-plane of dread crap, ongoing story, the idea that you could crisscross this weird continent of horror like traipsing around the FR, and a bunch of rules that literally scared people away from playing anything (including I6/I10 or the I6 remakes) with the RL logo as they didn't want their characters corrupted/driven insane/etc.

I'm 100% fine with the original module (I6) & I'm OK with re-visiting it every edition. You need to keep the best/most iconic stuff in circulation for the next generation of gamers.
And I like it's actual sequel - I10 House on Gyphon Hill - even though it's a slight mess & could use the additional polish I6 get's every few years....
I don't think that there's any good reason to make either one of these into a whole lv1-10(?) campaign though.

CoS? Well... It combines my distaste for RL as an overall setting by cramming ALL of the tropes into one tiny haunted valley AND my dislike for turning it into a complete campaign.

That's why I don't like CoS/or "Ravenloft" the campaign setting.

Domains of Dread and the Arthaus releases helped steer the setting away from the cartoonish "why would you live here" elements but WotC has insisted on dragging it back for reasons that escape me, and yes, Barovia as presented in CoS is ridiculous.

 

[Zardnaar]

The setting covers a wider range of horror than just Gothic. You also have domains modelled off Aliens (Nosos), Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror (Bluetspur) , religious style horror (Pharazia would evoke images of ISIS and the Taliban now), Dark-sun style post-apocalyptic survivalist horror (Kalidnay) and many more. Problem is that WoTC has spent three editions rehashing Barovia.

A lot if that was just shoehorning bits of other settings into Ravenloft. Didn't like that either.

If that's your thing all good not telling you what to think or like. I'll probably get it as it's free but wouldn't buy it with real money.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think if you were in the story you might feel different.

Fear watching a TV program is different to fear for a character trapped in a cell with a person turning into a werewolf as your team mates look on helpless in other cells.

Comedy and horror are a great combination.

Nah, I know all the tropes so I know exactly what is going to happen. And so do my players. That's why it only works as comedy, or with people who don't know the tropes like back of their hands.

An awful lot of horror depends on genre-blindness and the protagonists acting stupidly.

And as a game there is the added factor that the DM cannot be unfair. Which means they cannot put you in a situation with no escape. If they do and your character dies, then the DM is cheating.

 

[TheSword]

Domains of Dread and the Arthaus releases helped steer the setting away from the cartoonish "why would you live here" elements but WotC has insisted on dragging it back for reasons that escape me, and yes, Barovia as presented in CoS is ridiculous.

Can I ask in what way is it ridiculous?

 

[TheSword]

Nah, I know all the tropes so I know exactly what is going to happen. And so do my players. That's why it only works as comedy, or with people who don't know the tropes like back of their hands.

Well subverting tropes is always fun. However sometimes classic tropes done well work.

I remember my characters in CoS crossing a bridge when they are met with farmers coming the other way. The farmers greeted the party warily, warning them that the roads were dangerous and there were wolves who walked as men abroad. They asked the party if they had any silver weapons (the players recognized this as advice on how to kill werewolves, and were put at ease, but the characters didn’t) when the party said no, the farmers said “good”, changed into werewolves and attacked.

The scene worked because while the players were expecting werewolves, the wary advice lulled them into a false sense of security.

The players knowledge of vampires works against them, because when Strahd appears when they’re level 4 they realize what deep doo-doo they’re in. The fact that you know Strahd can’t enter the building you’re in makes you feel safe until the zombies start attacking and pulling the house down around you.

Anyway, it’s not for me to persuade you to like Horror. Just that it works well for other people and is the most popular published 5e campaign to date.

 

[tetrasodium]

A lot if that was just shoehorning bits of other settings into Ravenloft. Didn't like that either.

If that's your thing all good not telling you what to think or like. I'll probably get it as it's free but wouldn't buy it with real money.

To be fair, the fact that The Mists can grab anyone or anything from anywhere including entire towns is pretty central to the core of ravenloft. Of course they would logically result in sometimes pulling in identifyayble bits of other settings .

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I disagree that we have more than enough information to declare that. That subset of history is not particularly well "settled" in the research on that topic.

We know it was regarded as evil in some places during that time frame.

For example, The laws of King Æthelstan (924–40), corresponsive with the early French laws, punished any person casting a spell which resulted in death by extracting the extreme penalty. Among the laws attributed to the Pictish King Cináed mac Ailpin (ruled 843 to 858), is an important statute which enacts that all sorcerers and witches, and such as invoke spirits, "and use to seek upon them for helpe, let them be burned to death". Even then this was obviously no new penalty, but the statutory confirmation of a long-established punishment. So the witches of Forres who attempted the life of King Duffus in the year 968 by the old bane of slowly melting a wax image, when discovered, were according to the law burned at the stake.

We really don't have a good handle on how well accepted it was prior to the mid-middle ages and I am not sure why you think think that entire period of history is somehow settled in anthropological and archaeological debate but it surely isn't.

It's extremely well-established as a general point, and the fact that the odd king temporarily made a law making certain behaviours illegal is the not the same thing as everyone who was later regarded as "a witch" (which included essentially anyone practicing any kind of folk-religion or folk-healthcare or the like) as being regarded as "automatically evil", which was the specific point. Generally casting evil spells on people is regarded as evil, but that's not the same thing as "being a witch".

I notice there's a total lack of sources for your claims, too - you've put in links, but not to the actual sources. Normally when someone is making very specific claims like these (which are extremely specific) and not giving the source, presumably a book in your case, it's because that source itself is controversial or dubious. Maybe you have a great source but I'm curious why you don't mention it. One of your lines is really out-of-place and looks like a quote, too - "Even then this was obviously no new penalty, but the statutory confirmation of a long-established punishment." - that makes zero sense being in the middle of what you've written, so what are you lifting that paragraph from?

If we want more nuance, we could say that fairly reliably in Britain at least, up until the later middle ages, people make some kind of distinction between "evil magic" and "good or neutral magic". This tends to be true in antiquity as well, where we have sources. What changes later on is that all magic becomes regarded as evil. That's what I'm calling an aberration. It's rarely the case in human history that that approach is taken.

 

[Zardnaar]

To be fair, the fact that The Mists can grab anyone or anything from anywhere including entire towns is pretty central to the core of ravenloft. Of course they would logically result in sometimes pulling in identifyayble bits of other settings .

Yeah it's also a reason fans if those settings may not like Ravenloft. Or Planescape as well.