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

 

[Tonguez]

Everyone seems to be misreading this. It’s not the country of Cyre that got transported, it’s one train (lightning rail - train #1313), ala “Murder on the Orient Express”, “Snowpiercer” or “Train to Busan”.

"The Express Train to Hell"​

By, Retta M. Brown (born September 18, 1893)

Mod Edit: This poem, while perhaps thematically relevant, leans hard enough into religious commentary to have ruffled some feathers. Thus, it has been removed. Folks can look it up if they feel so inclined. ~Umbran

 

[Stormonu]

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.

I think it would be interesting if it was a seasonal thing - a summer of plenty (in which sacrifices are secretly made in the vain hopes of staving off what is to come, and reduce the number of competitors come winter) and a winter of extreme hardship situation. The populace gorges itself in a short time of plenty because they know when the “hard” season hits that despite their best-laid plans, famine will come (Rats break into the granary and eat/defoul everything, locusts wipe out the food crop before it can be harvested, a natural disaster wipes out the food warehouse, bandits steal the food, it rots unnaturally fast, etc.).

Could have some interesting adventures where the PCs encounter a food cache, and have to defend it against all attackers and distribute it to those in need.

 

[Remathilis]

So with the "other domains" section being less than a page per Domain, in guessing that most of them are going to be designed as DIY ideas for DMs to expand using the darklord rules rather than directly updating older domains. It also tells me they aren't changing much with those domains directly, unlike the featured domains. I would bet the adepts on DMsGuild will be fleshing out a few of them via that project.

 

[Faolyn]

This. The idea of having fixed worlds following real world rules like economies, trade, etc undermined the initial concept.

Maybe the Dark Powers got annoyed that people were settling in and forming political and economical connections, and that's why they broke the Core up.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that limiting rests is a great way to ramp up the tension of any D&D horror scenario.

Putting them in a tube full of ravenous undead where there's no side rooms to hide out in and no way to get "out" without taking a fatal fall takes this beyond just a no-rest ordinary scenario.

 

[overgeeked]

Putting them in a tube full of ravenous undead where there's no side rooms to hide out in and no way to get "out" without taking a fatal fall takes this beyond just a no-rest ordinary scenario.

So you're saying it takes the normal tension of a no-rest scenario and ramps it up into horror. I'm not seeing the downside.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

So you're saying it takes the normal tension of a no-rest scenario and ramps it up into horror. I'm not seeing the downside.

Agreed.

If it worked with the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, it can work with a horror train without problem.

Getting a long rest would require an awful lot of work, but it may be possible: clear a wagon, hide, set traps, baits and decoys and wish for the best.

 

[Weiley31]

The thought of Ravenloft divorce courts with Ravenloft lawyers is equal parts hilarious and terrifying...

And to make it worse, imagine how it must vary depending on which Domain your in.

 

[Weiley31]

A Train to Busan scenario would be very, very intense and genuinely hard in D&D, since getting any rests would be difficult.

I mean, at first, in the beginning, rests would be normal. It's when you reach the mid point or near the end of the train adventure that resting starts becoming an issue. Especially if the PC's end up messing up and, only one room is left in the entire train that allows for any kind of "rest" at all.

 

[Weiley31]

Maybe the Dark Powers got annoyed that people were settling in and forming political and economical connections, and that's why they broke the Core up.

That or they are just that bored.