D&D 5E (2024) Ravenloft: The Horrors Within preorder page lists the book's contents

You can now pre-order preorder Ravenloft: The Horrors Within over on D&D Beyond--the ultimate bundle costs $149.99, while the book alone comes in at $59.00. There are pages for the new DM screen, map pack, and Tarokka cards as well. The pre-order page lists the book's contents.

• 16 Domains of Dread, including the new cosmic horror domain Innsmouth.
• 17 Darklords for your party to face or flee from, equipped with challenging stat blocks.
• 7 subclasses (including the new Reanimator and Hollow Warden), 4 species, 4 backgrounds, 2 Origin feats, and 9 Dark Gifts for building tortured protagonists.
• 10 genres of horror from gothic to dark fantasy.
• A bestiary of 41 monstrosities and 10 domain denizens for your party to encounter.
• 47 maps and 28 digital quickplay maps for Maps VTT.
• Digital Pre-order Bonus: the Mists of Ravenloft Digital Dice Set, Ravenloft Play-Along Pack, and D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure.

Tonight, your party’s greatest nightmare... is the one you create.

Bring fear to the table with the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Ultimate Bundle, the complete horror toolkit with everything you need to create a personalized horror campaign – and strike fear into the hearts of your players.

The Ultimate Bundle includes:

• Physical and digital versions of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, containing 16 Domains of Dread, 17 Darklords, 7 subclasses, 4 species, 4 backgrounds, 11 feats, 68 monsters and 47 maps including 28 digital quickplay maps for Maps VTT.
• Physical Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Tarokka Deck for weaving terrifying twists into your campaign with 54 fully illustrated cards.
• Physical Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Dungeon Master’s Screen for keeping your plans enshrouded in mystery.
• Physical and digital versions of the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Map Pack for plotting out eerie encounters for your party.
• Digital Pre-order Bonus: the Mists of Ravenloft Digital Dice Set, Ravenloft Play-Along Pack, and D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure.

 

[Stormonu]

And, sure enough, they just announced a new adventure that would fit perfectly into Mordent: The Body in the Mage Tower.


Not clear what level the adventure is for.

That actually sounds more like a Lamordia adventure, with the "mysterious figure" being an Adam/Frankenstein's monster murderer.
Mordent would either be a ghost story or "Dracula in London" type adventure.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That actually sounds more like a Lamordia adventure, with the "mysterious figure" being an Adam/Frankenstein's monster murderer.
Mordent would either be a ghost story or "Dracula in London" type adventure.

Thanks, got the two domains mixed up.

In any case, Midnight Tower quietly pumping out more Ravenloft-friendly adventures.

 

[Stormonu]

One of the things I want the most out of Ravenloft is a complete revision of Mordent and a damn good remake of Griffon Hill. It's got such great potential in its locations. The adventure's execution, though wasn't as polished or memorable as the original.

Unfortunately, Lord Godefroy is the Temu darklord of Ravenloft; the only reason he even has a domain is because when Strahd and Azalin split from the land, he was the only evil thing left the Dark Powers could stabilize the land around. His backstory needs a serious rewrite and purpose.

 

[plecostomus]

IGN Interviews Wes Schneider on Ravenloft

According to this interview, one of the goals of The Horrors Within was to have a new Ravenloft book that didn't require newcomers have the old one to use it. I'm curious why they insisted on this approach for Ravenloft but not the Eberron and Forgotten Realms follow-ups, which had mostly new material, and I hope it's not a sign that future releases will follow the remake trajectory.

Reading between the lines of the comment made about new juice, it sounds like they had a bunch of new hires, and a safe way to break in those new staff members is to let them do a revision on an existing gold-star property. Something that's hard to screw up, like a Ravenloft sourcebook as opposed to a new Curse of Strahd-length adventure (who would be the ideal Darklord for this?). Also some of the new hires, like the Art Director, wanted to apply some of their influences to horror/Ravenloft specifically. Some of the other discussions about this book talk about art influence from Neon Demon, Midsommar, etc., and a purposeful rejection of black-and-white gothic art so that new influences could be explored.

I got a little excited when the link said IGN. This is actually Polygon doing the interview.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I'm fine with then doing a distinctly D&D flavoured take on Lovecraft's horror, this was not the way to do that, its just extremely poorly done and ironically is a the worst of the domains and extremely boring.

There are alot of ways they could have done a very original, D&D dark fantasy take on Innsmouth domain that stayed true to Lovecraftian horror.

Scanning through mine on DDB. Pretty bummed with what they've done to "Innsmouth" - any resemblance to Lovecraft's cursed town is incidental at best. But the monsters are super cool and there's a lot of good stuff in the book. This was the Dread Domain I was most looking forward to, though. A huge miss.

I personally prefer the Domain to doing an adaptation of the town. It feels more D&D and better for adventuring. It’s a nod and I am personally glad it’s not the same thing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One of the things I want the most out of Ravenloft is a complete revision of Mordent and a damn good remake of Griffon Hill. It's got such great potential in its locations. The adventure's execution, though wasn't as polished or memorable as the original.

Unfortunately, Lord Godefroy is the Temu darklord of Ravenloft; the only reason he even has a domain is because when Strahd and Azalin split from the land, he was the only evil thing left the Dark Powers could stabilize the land around. His backstory needs a serious rewrite and purpose.

I would also like a remake of Gryphon Hill, but I think not having a dark lord involved (because they were not invented at the time of writing) is a major strength. It allows there to be a concealed (and indeed randomised) antagonist. I do think it rather kills a lot of Ravenloft adventures when the players already know who, and what, their antagonist is. When I run a Ravenloft adventure, dark lords at most make cameos, and are not involved in the main plot the PCs are dealing with.

Aside from that, I think Godefroy stands as a strong metaphor for a geriatric, ineffectual and impotent ruling class. Compare why some people might prefer a truly terrible ruler like Strahd ("but he is so strong!") to a weak one like Godefroy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

who would be the ideal Darklord for this

You don’t need to use a dark lord as antagonist. If you use someone who isn’t, they have a lot more freedom to do things like travel between domains. They don’t have some curse limiting their power.

 

[Remathilis]

You don’t need to use a dark lord as antagonist. If you use someone who isn’t, they have a lot more freedom to do things like travel between domains. They don’t have some curse limiting their power.

Depends on the adventure/story your telling. My last Ravenloft game rarely dealt with canonical dark lords (a few cameos, a non-fatal encounter with Strahd, and a backburner mystery of what happened to Azalin after Hour of Ascension.) but I also ran as a procedural with a group of ghost and relic hunters, so fluidity was important. But I think a campaign or adventure set to flesh out one or two domains (ala CoS) absolutely needs to feature that dark lord. I couldn't imagine running 6+ levels in any one domain and not having it feature the dark lord in some capacity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Depends on the adventure/story your telling. My last Ravenloft game rarely dealt with canonical dark lords (a few cameos, a non-fatal encounter with Strahd, and a backburner mystery of what happened to Azalin after Hour of Ascension.) but I also ran as a procedural with a group of ghost and relic hunters, so fluidity was important. But I think a campaign or adventure set to flesh out one or two domains (ala CoS) absolutely needs to feature that dark lord. I couldn't imagine running 6+ levels in any one domain and not having it feature the dark lord in some capacity.

I wouldn’t - a book length adventure I would take the action across multiple domains.

A Gryphon Hill remake I wouldn’t make that long, or possibly expand the action beyond Mordent. Godefroy works fine as a minor character.

When it comes to Mordent, it works fine as the 1800s rural England setting. Forget ghosts, you could do Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

 

[Stormonu]

I personally prefer the Domain to doing an adaptation of the town. It feels more D&D and better for adventuring. It’s a nod and I am personally glad it’s not the same thing.

Obviously, they went with Innsmouth (& Cthulhu) because of name recognition, when they had all of Bluetspur they could have worked with for Cosmic Horror.

I honestly wish they'd done the latter. Revise the mountains of Bluetspur along the lines of Mountains of Madness, add extra land so you can have a coastal town modeled after Innsmouth (and an off-coast equivalent of the portal to Ry'leth) and a cozy little valley area for some Dunwich Horror, Color Out of Space, Dreams in the Witch House and other tales.