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

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

These days I’m not so big on sanity systems, but a good stress and trauma system like Darkest Dungeon has would be awesome.

I really want to use this book to see how much I can replicate a Darkest Dungeon vibe in D&D, although I'll never have as great of a character voice as the Narrator does.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Except instead of there being a Realms Shaking event that tied the 4th Ed Realms to the old Realms the new book is just pretending the old setting never existed

The 3E setting didn't exist as far as WotC is concerned, because it was a licensed work.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

The 3E setting didn't exist as far as WotC is concerned, because it was a licensed work.

But the 2nd Ed did, and that's being erased as well

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But the 2nd Ed did, and that's being erased as well

We assume it's being erased. All we have right now are theories about what happened to the older dark lords and why Azalin is wandering around. It's entirely possible that this book does follow 2E chronology for many or even all the domains, and stuff has happened in the ensuing decades. For one thing, the demiplane is inside the Plane of Shadows and has been broken into pieces, so something heavy duty happened, which could have all sorts of other consequences.

Just because we didn't get a mediocre series of novels out it doesn't mean there wasn't a Realms Shaking Event for Ravenloft.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Also: Wolfweres were always dumb. They were an old school "ha HA, the players will never see this coming" spin on jackalweres and werewolves that were purely intended to screw over the players. They don't occupy any particularly interesting game niche and have rightly not reappeared in 5E. There's nothing that's been done with them that can't be done by some flavor of werewolves, whether a clan that hates other werewolves or variant werewolves that turn into humans but are wolves in their natural state.

 

[Dire Bare]

Also: Wolfweres were always dumb. They were an old school "ha HA, the players will never see this coming" spin on jackalweres and werewolves that were purely intended to screw over the players. They don't occupy any particularly interesting game niche and have rightly not reappeared in 5E. There's nothing that's been done with them that can't be done by some flavor of werewolves, whether a clan that hates other werewolves or variant werewolves that turn into humans but are wolves in their natural state.

I never really got into the distinctions between werewolves, wolfweres, and loup-garou in the D&D game. They are all just flavors of werewolf that can be summarized by one MM entry and perhaps a couple of statblocks.

 

[Faolyn]

Also: Wolfweres were always dumb. They were an old school "ha HA, the players will never see this coming" spin on jackalweres and werewolves that were purely intended to screw over the players. They don't occupy any particularly interesting game niche and have rightly not reappeared in 5E. There's nothing that's been done with them that can't be done by some flavor of werewolves, whether a clan that hates other werewolves or variant werewolves that turn into humans but are wolves in their natural state.

They're interesting if you consider them to be more like trickster spirits than just another type of werewolf. Wolfweres are never mindless, slavering beasts, aren't bound by the moon, don't spread lycanthropy, and can appear, AFAICT, in any number of human(oid) forms of any gender or appearance--Harkon canonically has a female form as well as his male form, although he seems to prefer the male form. The fact that they used to be vulnerable to iron instead of silver gives them a very fey heritage.

 

[Tonguez]

They're interesting if you consider them to be more like trickster spirits than just another type of werewolf. Wolfweres are never mindless, slavering beasts, aren't bound by the moon, don't spread lycanthropy, and can appear, AFAICT, in any number of human(oid) forms of any gender or appearance--Harkon canonically has a female form as well as his male form, although he seems to prefer the male form. The fact that they used to be vulnerable to iron instead of silver gives them a very fey heritage.

Thats actually a kinda cool take on wolfwere but I’ve never really seen them treated as anything other than an alternate werewolf. Also Jacklaweres are a better take on the Trickster spirit. I wonder if having Harkon be a Jackalwere and more Fey would work

 

[Torquar]

And a giant bouncing ball for the Darklord

Rover is what happens when Number Two seals the border .

 

[Faolyn]

Thats actually a kinda cool take on wolfwere but I’ve never really seen them treated as anything other than an alternate werewolf. Also Jacklaweres are a better take on the Trickster spirit. I wonder if having Harkon be a Jackalwere and more Fey would work

Unfortunately true (that nobody uses them as anything but werewolves). I honestly wouldn't mind Harkon being a jackalwere--they're not including Farelle so they wouldn't be stepping on that domain's toes--but the climate and terrain isn't quite right. I don't know if Kartakass would do as well if it wasn't in such picturesque temperate forest, and jackals are much more desert-y.