D&D 4E Ravenloft is alive in 4e

[huank]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the Shadowfell, with its Domains of Dread and the Despair Deck is too much alike what Ravenloft was. Even vistani and Strahd von Zarovich have appeared already as part of the 4e mythology. So, I don't think we'll ever see a 4e version of our favorite horror DnD campign setting.

What do you think?

 

[Matt James]

Well, Ravenloft wasn't a settling at first. It was a location. You might have notice many of these completely separate settings have been condensed into the core multiverse. The same can be said for portions of Planscape, Spelljammer, and others.

 

[MrMyth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the Shadowfell, with its Domains of Dread and the Despair Deck is too much alike what Ravenloft was. Even vistani and Strahd von Zarovich have appeared already as part of the 4e mythology. So, I don't think we'll ever see a 4e version of our favorite horror DnD campign setting.

What do you think?

I wouldn't say never - WotC at least had started plans for such a thing, though it was cancelled. But it is true that the core setting features many of the familiar aspects of Ravenloft, removing some of the need to expand on it.

For myself, I'm running a Ravenloft 4E campaign, and found it pretty easy to use the classic setting while importing 4E mechanics, new Domains, etc.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Isn't it more accurate to say that Ravenloft is undead?

 

[Dice4Hire]

Isn't it more accurate to say that Ravenloft is undead?

Not until this thread is necromancied a year or so from now.

 

[SpydersWebbing]

Ravenloft is very much so... active... in 4th Edition. I plan on using the mists very soon myself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, Ravenloft seems far from dead in 4e to me. The Shadowfell is a perfect place for it, 4e canon unequivocally locates domains of dread in the Shadowfell, and really that's about all there is to say about it. They haven't released specific info for the location, but we do have stat blocks for Strahd and some other domains have been done up. Most of the material in Gloomwrought and HoS is certainly highly useful, we have a despair mechanism, a lot of info on conditions in the Shadowfell, etc.

I'd also note that WotC never said they were giving up on doing Ravenloft. They just said they had removed it from the schedule because they felt the design didn't meet their expectations and they weren't going to release it in the state it was in. They did say it could well be back on the schedule at a later date. Now that a LOT more Shadowfell stuff HAS been released it may be a more interesting project too, since it can piggyback off existing material and will need less new stuff of its own.

 

[SpydersWebbing]

Yeah, it sounds like you could run a Ravenloft in everything but name in a 4e game at this point, particularly with the Despair deck and the creative use of healing surge loss.

 

[Shemeska]

Probably more accurate to say that a few small bits of it were cut out from their 2e demiplane of dread framework and inserted into the 4e PoL cosmology. I wouldn't call it the same thing, just as how I wouldn't call the PoL use of Sigil to be 4e Planescape (the 4e version being radically different in so many flavor assumptions and tropes), but others might feel differently.

That said, given how it was inserted piecemeal into core 4e, and other bits of its history excised in the process, I really doubt that we'll see a 4e Ravenloft as its own campaign setting.

 

[SpydersWebbing]

Probably more accurate to say that a few small bits of it were cut out from their 2e demiplane of dread framework and inserted into the 4e PoL cosmology. I wouldn't call it the same thing, just as how I wouldn't call the PoL use of Sigil to be 4e Planescape (the 4e version being radically different in so many flavor assumptions and tropes), but others might feel differently.

That said, given how it was inserted piecemeal into core 4e, and other bits of its history excised in the process, I really doubt that we'll see a 4e Ravenloft as its own campaign setting.

But given how you can play Ravenloft in spirit without the name, is that even a bad thing?