D&D 5E Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft Table of Contents

As shared by DMs Guild brand manager Lysa Penrose.

D&D 5E - D&D Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft showing up in the wild!

Here's the first one I saw by the fantastic Lysa Penrose! Any others folks have seen?

www.enworld.org

 

[G R (grizzyGR)]

I was not initially interested in this book but I am beginning to feel like it might make a good 'dark fantasy" toolkit.

That is my thought as well; not initially interested but the more I learn the more my interest grows

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It sounds like it might have a human population that is being manipulated by the God Brain darklord to ignore all the unnatural cosmic elements rather than being a blasted wasteland and caves of mind-flayers below.

There are 2 pages of "adventures in Bluetspur", so there must be something to do there...

Harkon Lukas was always phrased as being different than other wolfweres so I could see him as Darklord being a unique critter.

I wonder if each of the main Darklords gets a statblock in their own section, since they don't get one in chapter 5.

 

[Faolyn]

Valachan was never one of my favorite domains, but its darklord had a suitably tragic backstory and was distinguishable enough from other major setting vampires that he didn't seem superfluous. No idea who Chakuna is or how the new character changes the 'role' of the domain.

Thought: Von Kharkov took a bride every year in an attempt to be human. Chakuna was one of them, and she took over as darklord one way or another.

 

[Superchunk77]

disappointed that the dark sun city "kalidnay" didnt make the cut.

No kidding. My only reason for potentially buying this book.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I can understand Kalidnay couldn't be published yet because Dark Sun as setting is not ready yet, but I don't like the return of G'Henna, the dread domain I most reject. Maybe you can tolerate some tropes in your game, but the ones from G'Henna have been used, and abused too many times.

Yagno Petrovna and the cult of Zakhata is possibly the most hateful one from the demiplane of the dread. If this returns, it needs a total reboot. I can accept the idea of a religion promoting fast as a way to learn self-control, but based in the intentional starving is ridiculous. How could they replace the previous religion with other so "unconfortable"?

 

[ChaosOS]

disappointed that the dark sun city "kalidnay" didnt make the cut.

Kalidnay was moved to the Gray in 4e (Dungeon 190), while many people don't like 4e DS it's possible that WotC wants to keep most of the info from the 4e era reasonably canonical.

 

[Faolyn]

Yagno Petrovna and the cult of Zakhata is possibly the most hateful one from the demiplane of the dread. If this returns, it needs a total reboot. I can accept the idea of a religion promoting fast as a way to learn self-control, but based in the intentional starving is ridiculous. How could the replace the previous religion?

One possibility is that the land is prone to drought, poor or diseased crops, locusts, etc., keeping the hunger aspect of the domain without making it into a forced starvation thing. Which I agree is stupid--at some point, your populace would simply be too weak to do anything to feed the demands of the god, even if the priesthood was really good at calculating caloric needs.

Another possibility is that the demand for food sacrifice has become a demand for human sacrifice. Which still could be by starvation, but that would only be for the individual sacrifices instead of for everyone.

 

[Tonguez]

I can understand Kalidnay couldn't be published yet because Dark Sun as setting is not ready yet, but I don't like the return of G'Henna, the dread domain I most reject. Maybe you can tolerate some tropes in your game, but the ones from G'Henna have been used, and abused too many times.

Yagno Petrovna and the cult of Zakhata is possibly the most hateful one from the demiplane of the dread. If this returns, it needs a total reboot. I can accept the idea of a religion promoting fast as a way to learn self-control, but based in the intentional starving is ridiculous. How could the replace the previous religion?

The Wicker man movie (Christopher Lee as Darklord) comes to mind as sharing similar themes - a pagan cult on an isolated island are facing famine and turn to human sacrifice (burning people and livestock), PCs sent to investigate.

The Ghenna module Circle of Darkness is an okay story too, where PCs get to make some meaningful choices.

 

[overgeeked]

I can understand Kalidnay couldn't be published yet because Dark Sun as setting is not ready yet, but I don't like the return of G'Henna, the dread domain I most reject. Maybe you can tolerate some tropes in your game, but the ones from G'Henna have been used, and abused too many times.

Yagno Petrovna and the cult of Zakhata is possibly the most hateful one from the demiplane of the dread. If this returns, it needs a total reboot. I can accept the idea of a religion promoting fast as a way to learn self-control, but based in the intentional starving is ridiculous. How could they replace the previous religion with other so "unconfortable"?

Sometimes religion is evil. If that’s not something you want in your game, exclude it or change it. It’s meant to be a horror setting. Sometimes religion is horrible.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

So no Lord Soth

Cool that they're including body snatchers in here... a little late for me as I just spent a bunch of time homebrewing off the bodythief monster from Pathfinder for a brief current arc that just started.