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

 

[Faolyn]

It's not like WotC has absolutely no possible way of knowing what kinds of changes are likely to be needed or justified and no possible way of speaking about the pros & cons of making those kinds of changes.

First off, you're taking an idea by a poster here--that the train could have extradimensional space--and treating it as if that was the actual final decision that's in the book.

Secondly, WotC in fact has no idea of knowing what sort of changes I would want to make. They have no idea what sort of changes anybody else on this forum would want to make. All they can do is say "hey, here are some other options you might want to try!"

 

[tetrasodium]

First off, you're taking an idea by a poster here--that the train could have extradimensional space--and treating it as if that was the actual final decision that's in the book.

Secondly, WotC in fact has no idea of knowing what sort of changes I would want to make. They have no idea what sort of changes anybody else on this forum would want to make. All they can do is say "hey, here are some other options you might want to try!"

There's been a lot of examples poeple threw out over the last page or two. Those ideas are based on the way 5e itself works & the kinds of themes/tropes/lore of ravenloft itself. WotC is not incapable of providing guidance on that kind of stuff in a way that is useful to a meaningfully large subset of GMs & players simply because you might do something completely different & entirely unexpected

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The plyers can look at solid guidance from wotc & reasonably infer what kind of things their gm is likely to make up to fit a world based on ravenloft. The players can not look at an absence of that where someone scribbled "rulings not rules" in crayon to make similar inferences. that scribbled note in the empty void also basically ensures that every table will do it differently with few if any good commonalities being a seriousy strong likelihood. Giving good guidance is how wotc can avoid that unpredictability.

D&D players uncomfortable with a DM doing something that isn't strictly laid down in a book should probably jump over to computer or video game RPGs.

 

[Faolyn]

There's been a lot of examples poeple threw out over the last page or two. Those ideas are based on the way 5e itself works & the kinds of themes/tropes/lore of ravenloft itself. WotC is not incapable of providing guidance on that kind of stuff in a way that is useful to a meaningfully large subset of GMs & players simply because you might do something completely different & entirely unexpected

The fact that there have been lots of examples thrown out over the last few pages shows that WotC doesn't need to provide that guidance--that people are capable of creating their own visions of what the setting is. And that, more importantly, creating your own vision of a setting isn't turning D&D into non-D&D.

 

[tetrasodium]

D&D players uncomfortable with a DM doing something that isn't strictly laid down in a book should probably jump over to computer or video game RPGs.

I'd agree if that were the discussion, but it came up rather differently suggesting that wotc should be active in providing guidance on the types of changes to spells that were being discussed to make those spells fit better.

 

[darjr]

Although, I gotta say: I like the hilarious image of like almost all of the party holding the door shut to the horde of zombies while one of the party members gets their Long Rest nap and then everybody just rotates holding the door shut and napping.

Wasn’t there a story of a fighter deep in a dungeon sitting over a dead monster. Every few minutes he’d get up and chop at the monster? His party was supposed to go get help and he needed to keep rekilling the rejuvenating monster but they never came back.

 

[tetrasodium]

The fact that there have been lots of examples thrown out over the last few pages shows that WotC doesn't need to provide that guidance--that people are capable of creating their own visions of what the setting is. And that, more importantly, creating your own vision of a setting isn't turning D&D into non-D&D.

They didn't need to write this book by that logic, I mean I ran a whole 5e campaign set in ravenloft, the fact that I could do it should be good enough for anyone else right? I know I'm not the only person who has done that because I've run into people discussing running into similar problems not worth getting into when they were trying to run similar ravenloft games when the topic came up

 

[Faolyn]

They didn't need to write this book by that logic, I mean I ran a whole 5e campaign set in ravenloft, the fact that I could do it should be good enough for anyone else right? I know I'm not the only person who has done that because I've run into people discussing running into similar problems not worth getting into when they were trying to run similar ravenloft games when the topic came up

So basically, what you're saying is that WotC should provide guidelines because otherwise "there's only so much you can change and have it still be D&D," except they don't need to provide guidelines because it's still going to be D&D.

I'm not sure you know what you're arguing about now.

 

[Faolyn]

I'd agree if that were the discussion, but it came up rather differently suggesting that wotc should be active in providing guidance on the types of changes to spells that were being discussed to make those spells fit better.

Er, it "didn't come up." Weiley31 and overgeeked were talking about things like limiting rests for horror purposes, and Leomund's hut, and how the Cyre 1313 train, if it were presumably sentient and a darklord itself, could potentially prevent that.

This isn't a change to a spell. This would be about one domain maybe affecting a spell.

 

[tetrasodium]

Er, it "didn't come up." Weiley31 and overgeeked were talking about things like limiting rests for horror purposes, and Leomund's hut, and how the Cyre 1313 train, if it were presumably sentient and a darklord itself, could potentially prevent that.

This isn't a change to a spell. This would be about one domain maybe affecting a spell.

exactly.... that's clearly something wotc could not possibly under any reasonable conditions be expected to consider anyone ever running into a need to make those kind of choices, That kind of thing could even be anticipated and discussed in the page62 magic & metaphysics single page where they could discuss relevant things to consider for both players and gm's to consider when deciding a course of action or something. ... of course maybe tit will be a page of really useful stuff like chicken shaped magic missile bolts because someone could do that for them instead.