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

 

[Xohar17]

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

 

[Tonguez]

Does anyone know what the Vhage Agency domain is?, I’ve not heard of that one before.

Also I just noticed Star Spawn Emissary in the monster listing, is that a sign of Lovecraftian horror beyond Bluetspur?

A couple of surprising inclusions:

• Staunton Bluffs always seemed to me to be superfluous with Mordent around; they even duplicate the 'angry ghost darklord' trope. Curious to see what might exist to distinguish SB from Mordent.
• 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..

Probably my favorite inclusion is Scaena, though -- the idea of a mobile domain whose darklord isn't actually confined to the domain itself (but still always returns, for curse-specific reasons) makes for a great mind-trippy domain to use on your PCs. Hopefully the writeup in the book will inspire me to dust off my notes and include an expanded Scaena in the DMs Guild; if used correctly, Scaena and its darklord can have your players wondering if they've ever actually left Ravenloft, or indeed ever can.

--
Pauper

With the Carnival also becoming a Domain I’m actually wondering if they are going to make a few more mobile domains or have a mechanic that allows shifting the lesser domains around as DMs want them. That would explain retaining Staunton Bluffs when it could have easily been collapsed into Mordent.

And for some reason I’m recalling that Chakuna was the name of the Panther that became Von Khakov (because people couldnt parse a Black panther having a Russian name), I’m unsure if that was a 3e change or am I misremembering things that never happened?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Since there's no longer a big connected Core, I doubt there's going to be a detailed map for each domain.

Theory: the reason the core was created in the first place is it was cheaper to commission and print one big map than a bunch of smaller ones.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

Mechanically, it makes no difference to the players if it's a wolf that turns into a man, or a man who turns into a wolf. So you might as well use the same stat block for both.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It strikes me, people are bemoaning the lack of a Lycanthrope race, but...one of the Dark Gifts could easily be Lycanthropy, based on the example of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, where you had Supernatural Gifts such as being the Oracle of the Gods or an artificial construct.

Theros had 9 Supernatural Gifts in five pages, and the Dark Gifts section is 6-7 pages long. I could see possibly more than 9 here, given the lack of a Piety system equivalent which elongated a couple of the Supernatural Gifts.

D&D Beyond did an article on PC lycanthropes last week. Embracing Your Wild Side: Playing As a Lycanthrope in D&D.

And Candlekeep Mysteries has rules for PC wereravens. I'm guessing that "the order of the feather" listed under "Travellers in the Mists" are wereravens.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Also I just noticed Star Spawn Emissary in the monster listing, is that a sign of Lovecraftian horror beyond Bluetspur?

Wondered that myself. It could just be more going on in Bluetspur beyond the single adventure though.

 

[Libertad]

Hoping they make Bluetspur suck less.

 

[Remathilis]

Hoping they make Bluetspur suck less.

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.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

A little disappointed but unsurprised that none of the new Domains of Dread introduced in 4E were included. Granted several of them were tied to to the default setting's lore.

I'm curious if the Raven Queen will be mentioned in any capacity.

 

[grimslade]

The big difference between Werewolves and Wolfweres was the Song of Lethargy ability. The slow effect before the cute bard transformed into Crinos and tore into your party's healer was suitably terrifying. Harkon Lukas was always phrased as being different than other wolfweres so I could see him as Darklord being a unique critter. No need to write up the wolfwere yet. Making the wolfwere into the Reynard and leaning hard into the fey theme is a great hook for a classic monster.