D&D 5E Everything We Know About The Ravenloft Book

Here is a list of everything we know so far about the upcoming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Art by Paul Scott Canavan​

• May 18th, 256 pages
• 30 domains (with 30 villainous darklords)
• Barovia (Strahd), Dementlieu (twisted fairly tales), Lamordia (flesh golem), Falkovnia (zombies), Kalakeri (Indian folklore, dark rainforests), Valachan (hunting PCs for sport), Lamordia (mad science)
• NPCs include Esmerelda de’Avenir, Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, traveling detective Alanik Ray.
• Large section on setting safe boundaries.
• Dark Gifts are character traits with a cost.
• College of Spirits (bard storytellers who manipulate spirits of folklore) and Undead Patron (warlock) subclasses.
• Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood lineages.
• Cultural consultants used.
• Fresh take on Vistani.
• 40 pages of monsters. Also nautical monsters in Sea of Sorrows.
• 20 page adventure called The House of Lament - haunted house, spirits, seances.

​

D&D 5E - Full Wraparound Cover Art For Ravenloft

We've seen the cover already, but here's a look at the full wraparound art by Anna Podedworna. https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-with-cover-the-d-d-book-is-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft.678411/ https://www.enworld.org/threads/heres-the-ravenloft-alternate-cover.678414/...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Here's the Ravenloft Alternate Cover!

As usual, there is an alternate hobby-store exclusive cover for the upcoming Ravenloft book. Here's a look at it! And here's the full wraparound art. https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-with-cover-the-d-d-book-is-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft.678411/...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - [Updated with cover!] The D&D Book Is.... Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft!

Yesterday's hints that a new D&D book would be announced today have born fruit -- we now have a product description and a title! It's a Ravenloft setting book, with tools and new rules for horror-themed games, and new horror-themed character options. I'll update this post with a product image as...

www.enworld.org

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm the one who said it wasn't horrifying, because all I was told was

1) Always going to war
2) Lord was a misogynist who hated losing
3) If he invaded this wizard guy then his soldiers were turned to zombies and attacked their living brethren.

All of that taken together... isn't horrific. The torture, the slavery, the experimentation, that all is horrific, and none of it was mentioned until later, or if it was I didn't connect it to this place of war.

That isn't my description of Falkovnia. I was describing it across multiple posts, and you seem to have picked up a handful of mine, and mixed them with some other peoples. But either way: the soldiers turned into zombies is horror. I don't care how you cut that, it is horror. Whether it is successful at horrifying the players, depends on how it is done.

The slavery I definitely mentioned. The torture I believe i mentioned (and if I didn't another poster responding mentioned). Like I said, you should read the entry yourself and decide if it is sufficiently horrific. I believe it is because Falkovnia is the one domain almost every group I ran Ravenloft with circled around when they traveled. They would go through Kartakass no problem. They would go through Barovia even, no problem. But they avoided Falkovnia, even if there were no demihumans in the party. So it clearly made an impact. I would say it is one of the more horrifying domains, and one of the hardest to run well (but definitely worth it if you can pull it off)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Look, dude, it is 1 AM and I've been struggling to catch up on all of these responses for hours. Just flat out accusing me of things isn't going to make me know what the heck you are talking about.

My issue was you quoted me in a way that didn't reflect what I was saying over the course of the conversation. It is 1 am here as well. I am trying to respond to you and take your posts seriously but if I am going to post, I I don't want words put in my mouth

 

[Bedrockgames]

What did I say to offend you, because just saying I offended you doesn't tell me anything.

I wasnt' offended, you simply quoted me inaccurately and attributed statements to me that i believe were made by other posters, and you paraphrase me inaccurately.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But again, the Van Richtem tool set is not labeled with "for use in Ravenloft only, do not take to other settings"

Sure, that is great that they provided those tools, and they sound like great tools, but the draw of Ravenloft isn't that you can make a super unique and compelling Vampire. The draw of Ravenloft if that it has a super unique and compelling Vampire in the figure of Strahd.

I think you have completely meshed the tool set and the setting, because you are an old fan who got the tool set for the setting and have been using them together for years, but I'm not. And so saying "but the Van Richten books allowed me to make great monsters" doesn't sell me on Ravenloft. It doesn't even sell me on Van Richten, because I'd have to convert those 2e books anyways. This is a breakdown in communication, you are telling me about a 2e toolset and trying to sell me on a 2e story.

First, the van richten books like any other supplement, can be kludged to another setting or game. But the books are largely written in the first person from the perspective of Rudolph Van Richten, and all the accounts he gives are of things happening inside ravenloft. So while you can use the tools elsewhere, they are designed with Ravenloft in mind, and the flavor of all the accounts are happening in the setting.

I reject the idea that the draw is Strahd. I think you can say strahd is a kind of mascot or figurehead, but in terms of what you are meant to do in ravenloft, you are very much meant to have adventures with all kinds of other monsters other than domain lords. Domain Lords are meant to be used very, very rarely. They help provide the backdrop. The purpose of the Van Richten books is largely to equip the GM with tools so they can run long term campaigns featuring monsters like vampires, flesh golems, lycanthropes, ghosts, etc. You can get so much more mileage out of those books than you can with domain lord confrontations.

But the van richten books were released when the setting came out. They were part of the line. They elaborated on material in the black boxed set. They are essential for understanding what Ravenloft was all about and how you were supposed to craft villains and monstrous opponents. This is not a controversial opinion.

Yes these were made for 2E. But we are talking about a setting based on the 2E material. That is where it comes from. And one thing an old fan can help provide is an understanding of why that setting worked. One of the things that worked well about it was the van richten books. If the new setting material isn't providing the tools that the van richten books provided, then it is truly missing something essential.

 

[Bedrockgames]

How? How does the interconnectedness do anything for that? You make a claim then you don't back it up, seeming to think it is self-evident. If Strahd can't go to Borca then why does it matter if Borca is a flat plan, a floating island in the sky or on the other end of the world?

What is the point of putting them next to each other?

because the setting isn’t just about the lords, it is about the domains: that is where the players will be adventuring and most times they will never meet the lord. But even so, having Borca and barovia close to one another means strahd has reach across the border (even if he can’t go there), politicking can happen between the borders, intrigue is more of a possibility, adventures spanning domains are a possibility (for example an ‘on the road adventure’). It simply opens up more adventure structures and more adventure possibilities

 

[Bedrockgames]

There's lots to do in Barovia without ever touching Strahd. Off the top of my head, the Ba'al Vezri and the Red Vardo Trading Company, and racial tensions between the native Barovians and the Gundarakites. And Vallaki--at least pre-CoS--was described as being full of arcane secrets.


Yes. That's actually it, exactly.


You wouldn't have to let them hear about it. Unless some of the players decided they wanted to be from Barovia or thereabouts, of course. The Core and the Amber Wastes are separated by both physical distance and by the Mists, and I imagine the same will be true in the 5e books.


Most of the Domains--outside of those pocket Domains brought up earlier--are fairly large. Like, many towns with miles of space between them.

The difference between the Domains is usually not very jarring until you really start looking into it. It's generally not a case of Romania sharing a border with Egypt. It's more like... As an example, the people in Barovia are oppressed by their superstitions. They're terrified of the things that go bump in the night. As one book put it, a Barovian mother wouldn't open the door at night even to save her own screaming child, because of her fear of the wolves and other monsters. Right next door is Borca. Those people are also oppressed, but by the horrible taxes they must pay for nearly everything they do or need. They don't fear wolves, they fear that the seemingly perfect grain they just harvested is actually a deadly poison.


They don't. For one thing, the cultures between Domains is usually different. Often not radically so, but there is a difference. The Gazetteers did a good job with the cultures.

Also, they don't share languages. There are numerous different human languages, and no Common. Balok is spoken in Barovia, Borca, and some other countries. Mordentish, which is divided into Low and High Mordentish, is spoken in Mordent, Dementlieu, and Richemulot, and dialects are spoken elsewhere, such as in Souragne. Vaasi is spoken in Nova Vaasa and Hazlin. Some languages are only spoken in one country, like Lamordian and Falkovnian.

it is worth mentioning the gazetteers come later, under 3rd edition mostly. Just mentioning this stuff so people who don’t know the early material aren’t surprised if they get the black box and don’t see some of the above in it. The black box, as others have said, is bare bones: domain descriptions are more of a starting point for the GM to flesh out (personally I prefer having that space to make things). Domains of Dread is more complete. After that you have the d20 books from S&S, which I am not a huge fan of but people certainly like (I just often didn’t agree with the directions they went with the details as I had already been elaborating on the setting material myself). The core presented in the S&S version is quite different in a lot of respects too (I believe they officially make distance extremely malleable but I could be misremembering), etc. starting with domains of dread you have more info and options for native characters. And explanations of languages, religions, etc are clarified a lot as the line goes on

 

[tetrasodium]

In practice this isn't how it tended to work. Players are not just stumbling into Barovia (they hear about it and go there for some specific reason usually: it is one of the purposes adventure hooks serve)

It's late so I might be reading this wrong... are you suggesting that most PCs hear about ravenloft & decide to head there deliberately for reasons not related to things like "I don't know why the mist wont cross the doorway but we ran out of food 4 days ago and should try not to die of starvation in here"?

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's late so I might be reading this wrong... are you suggesting that most PCs hear about ravenloft & decide to head there deliberately for reasons not related to things like "I don't know why the mist wont cross the doorway but we ran out of food 4 days ago and should try not to die of starvation in here"?

No, I am saying when you run a campaign set in the core, the players are often not simply stumbling into Barovia, or stumbling into Tepest, they are venturing into them with purpose (I.e. they are part of a group of monster hunters based in a library in Lamordia and receive a letter describing a possible flesh golem fashioned from large beasts, prowling the forests of Tepest: so they decide to go investigate)

 

[JEB]

It's constructed of non-artificial parts. You know what I meant. Real people, real trees, etc.

Eh, they weren't very consistent about that. Sometimes the Dark Powers scooped up actual places from the Material Plane (i.e. Kalidnay), sometimes the domains never existed anywhere else and were shaped by the darklord's nature (i.e. Sithicus). That's why some folks having souls and some not works for me, it accounts for the inconsistency. (Plus the horror aspect that even death might not release you from Ravenloft...)

 

[Charlaquin]

I have no issues with the islands-in-the-mist concept itself, I just want to see domains implemented in such a way that regular citizens can live relatively regular lives in them, and travel/trade/etc between them, while certainly not risk-free, is not only possible but frequent. I don't want the various domains reduced to a bunch of one-shot adventure sites hanging around in some sort of limbo, populated by fake people spawned from Strahd's imagination or whatever, waiting for a PC party to show up and bash the darklord. They should be living worlds populated by people with agency and agendas and lives of their own, like any other campaign world. Except if it's one of those domains where everyone's dead...

This! This is what I was struggling to try and express by saying “I want the domains to feel like places.”

I’m actually ok with travel between domains being infrequent. But I would like for it to happen (possibly with the help of the Vistani), and most importantly I want people in the domains to have their own lives, even if they are miserable ones.