Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (Dungeons & Dragons, … (2024)

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is purported to be everything a DM needs to run a Ravenloft campaign in 5th edition. Is it?

f*ck if I know. I played in a couple Ravenloft campaigns in the 2nd edition days but never felt compelled to run a campaign. I will say it's a pretty good read for an RPG manual, though. There are new backgrounds, new races like the Dhampir, new class features, villains, NPCs, more monsters, and lots of tips for running a horror game. There's a good overview of some of the domains of Ravenloft and even a sample adventure.

I gleaned some useful knowledge from this despite having no intention of running a Ravenloft game and even had an idea for an adventure I'm going to run once the SIL and BIL come to town. Plus if I ever get to play in a Ravenloft campaign in 5e, I'm running a reborn monk with a touch of death Dark Gift.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

I've generally enjoyed most 5th edition books. Even the ones I'm not planning on playing in, such as Eberron and Ravnica, I enjoyed and felt were not wastes of money.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft changed all that. Worst money I ever spent on a D&D product. Hands down.

Back in 1990, when the original Ravenloft Boxed Set came out, I bought it. I wasn't much into horror, but this system intrigued me. And I was so happy to have done so. The lore, the terror, the darkness of this system appealed so strongly to my creative mind. The backstories of many, even most, of the Darklords and their domains were rich, well-written, and thorough, with a lot of room for creativity on the part of the DM. In this washed-out version of the Ravenloft history, Darklords are given pathetic crimes they perpetrated to become eternally tormented beings, the Domains have been reduced to mostly one-trick ponies, and the writing is frankly awful. An entire chapter out of five total chapters is devoted to, essentially, telling the DM how to create a "Realm of Horror," using rules that the authors clearly didn't follow in creating their realms. In addition, many of the "rules" boil down to, "Here's a list of ten ideas you can randomly roll -- figure out how to link them together and make an adventure!"

In addition, they made a few ridiculous changes:

1) while I am enthusiastically for inclusion for minorities, women, and non-heteronormative genders and orientations, there comes a point where it swings to the offensive (speaking as a non-heteronormative orientation). There appears to be a REQUIREMENT now that "Caucasian" cis-male heterosexuals cannot be villains! Almost none of the Darklords are, and while representation matters, it is striking how FEW of the heroic NPCs introduced are not white heterosexual males. One pair of gay white males, and two females (seemingly heterosexual). If minorities are ONLY going to be represented in the villainous vein, I'm not sure what is accomplished!

2) in a book about the evil within, dark and evil forces, evil powers beyond the pale, the monster stat blocks go out of their way to eliminate alignment completely! Despite mentioning how evil the monsters are, none of them have alignment given. While I understand that representing a race as evil is problematic, these are constructs, undead, and abominations from beyond the cosmos -- whose feelings are we protecting by avoiding the label "evil" here!?

3) the maps...whoever chose the font used to label the maps should be fired. Out of a cannon. The maps are beautiful...and they are incredibly difficult to read thanks to a script-like font that blends PERFECTLY with the lines of the maps...does that say Dementlieu or is it a part of those hand-drawn mountains?

There's a tiny bit in this book that is of use, but not enough to justify this book at a quarter of the price. I am disgusted with the slap-dash job the writers and worse, editors did with this book.

VGR is now easily my favorite of the 5E rules books, with all the new character options, dozens of new Domains of Dread (campaign settings) to spark the imagination (or to whisk the players off to for a short arc), a well thought out section on creating compelling villains and custom Domains of Dread from scratch, rules for running horror, new monsters, and other stuff I can’t list because I’m over my daily limit for commas already.

EDIT: I don’t know how I missed the Survivors section, but it addresses everything from here on. So feel free to disregard the rest of this rant!

The only thing I wish this book would have added (and this is not at all a shortcoming, but rather an observation) would have been rules for running a low-power, truly horror-based game for 5E. As I’m discovering running Rime of the Frostmaiden (a horror adventure), it’s really freaking hard to run horror in 5E because PCs are basically superheroes. They fear nothing. And sure, if you want to scare a super powerful hero, send a super powerful villain after them. But that’s not all there is to it. Low power means your character can be a VICTIM, which is essential to horror. But 5E is by and large a system that makes you feel powerful and heroic, which is the opposite of what you want if you’re running horror.

So that’s my only thing, and it’s not a knock against the book, or against anything really. Understandably, 5E wants their horror to be haunted house themed whoop-ass, where after the skeleton pops up, you incinerate it, scrape up the ashes for spell components, and high five your buddies. Because of course they do, it’s fun and that’s their brand! But it must be said that all of the horror elements in this book are hampered by the fact that you’d be running them with one hand tied behind your back. You’d have to work extra hard to scare the players or make them feel dread, and I wish that had been addressed for those of us who keep giving that Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook the side eye and wondering if it’s finally time to learn a new system that was built for horror.

By the way, if you are at all interested in writing tips, you might find the chapter on creating villains and custom Domains of Dread useful for more than just TTRPG planning.

Much like the undead that populate its domains, Ravenloft rises from the grave. This updates the setting for 5th edition with a slew of changes to the classic setting, some entirely new creations for this new era, some new characters options, an adventure, and a handful of new monsters.

It's a guide to horror roleplaying in the D&D system. However, D&D (and especially the 5th edition of that game) is really badly suited to horror roleplaying. The D&D team seems to be tangentially aware of this as there are several asides that amount to "Heroes have to be able to kill their problems" and "Nothing bad can ever happen to player characters" in the name of player agency. Which suggests to me that the D&D team learned that 'player agency' is a term of great importance in the RPG community but never bothered to really understand it. I look at actual horror RPGs like Call of Cthulhu and others and bad things happening to PCs and disempowered PCs are not a problem. So, why is it called out here? Because D&D promises a teenage power fantasy and is largely unwilling to give that up even when dabbling in horror. There is included a section on Curses, pretty similar to classic Ravenloft, but with this design ethos how can you ever give one out? One of the curses even gives a character disadvantage on all their attack rolls. That'll never fly with the epic fantasy power fantasy mold. They advise a lot of caution with dark pacts because that could interfere with pLaYeR aGeNcY but in this book they're all actually pacts. The player has to knowingly engage in a bargain with powers beyond their ken. Unlike a curse they at least volunteered for this.

The book contains short guides to a handful of different horror genres, most of which don't really work with D&D. Cosmic Horror, for instance, doesn't jive well with D&D because, by definition, you can't stab cosmic horrors in the face. But I liked the old versions of Ravenloft, so how does that jive? Because old-school Ravenloft largely leaned in to Gothic Horror. This is one of the genres of horror in the book they should probably have just done a 20 page gazetteer on Gothic Horror rather than trying to cram in wholly inadequate descriptions of other horror genres. Gothic Horror runs on big personality and melancholy. Rarely are there sharp moments of stark horror, many Gothic Horror stories are told in the first person and past tense telling us instantly that the writer is going to survive. Gothic Horror villains are Shakespearian tragedies unto themselves. They've suffered terribly and it's all their fault and because of one or more tragic flaws they'll never acknowledge that it was their own fault. It's how the Demiplane of Dread Works. The greatest desire of a Dark Lord is dangled just out of reach and no matter how many times it is pulled from their grasp, they'll keep reaching for it. Horror also has a long history of being insensitive and these write-ups do note to avoid harmful tropes but can't spare any page-space to defining what those tropes are, generally. Like they say that body horror often is insulting to the disabled and not to do that but several characters have their age and/or infirmity treated as monstrous. So, I guess it's a "Do as I say, not as I do" sort of thing?

Most of the changes are either good or fine. A lot of classic Dark Lords have been given gender or race lifts to make Ravenloft less blindingly white and this is good. In some cases it even makes the character less of an obvious reskin of a literary character. Victor Mordenheim has been restyled as Viktra and as a woman. She's also possibly LGBT+ but the section goes on to imply that maybe she never really loved them anyway (*sigh*). Adam and Victor's wife, Elise, have been combined into Elise who carries Viktra's greatest scientific accomplishment. I really dislike the sudden shift to imply that Viktra doesn't love Elise and just wants her to harvest her artificial heart back. It kind of robs a lot of the pathos from it and questions why Viktra worked so damn hard to save a dying Elise if she didn't actually care about her. The struggle between Viktra's scientific side needing her artificial heart back to reproduce its success and loving Elise would make for some great drama. It's kind of a missed opportunity. Rudolph Van Richten's son, Erasmus, is described as aromantic but affectionate (I'm unsure what that means but.. Erasmus is a ghost so I imagine that makes carrying on a romance very difficult) but it's nice to see that. There is also a pair of NPCs who are thinly veiled versions of Sherlock Holmes and Watson but they're gay and married. There's a lovely full page piece of art of them shooting creepy dolls (it's not very 'horror' as they seem to be not very scared at all but it is pretty fantastic). I appreciate the effort to make a lot of nods to classic Ravenloft. Harkon Lukas (who is hands-down the best Dark Lord ever) has a son named Casamir. Casamir is from one of the old Ravenloft novels. The text doesn't really DO anything with him but it's nice that they brought him in. Harkon Lukas is given a motivation of wanting to gain fame so he can.. conquer the world. It's boring. I liked the old motivation of loving humanity so much that he wanted to transcend his wolfwere nature through it but always failing. That was way, way more interesting than just "regional domination." But his character interactions of attaching himself to better artists so he can steal their ideas and exploit them should be fantastic fun in practice and makes for a pretty nice metaphor for how companies exploit artists and cast them aside. Oh, Jander Sunstar is back. "But he was dead in Avernus!" I hear you cry. Yes well, they resorted to the laziest of sleezy soap opera retcons: He's got clones now. *Shrug*

Additionally, there's one extremely peculiar change. Ezmeralda d'Avenire, first introduced in Curse of Strahd, is now just called 'Ez.' This is weird, right? d'Avenir is a major character in Curse of Strahd and Hasbro is taking steps to make her the new Face of Ravenloft giving her a prominent place in the cover art of the general release and the alternate art cover is a character study of her. She has one miniature released through Gale Force Nine and another through WizKids in the Nolzur's Vampire Hunters pack as well as a pre-painted one in the miniatures released alongside the Curse of Strahd boutique box set. It's really odd to suddenly, and without explanation, rename a character you're trying to brand that heavily. So.. why? I have a suspicion. There's no proof of it but it's the only thing that fits the puzzle pieces together for me: Ez d'Avenir was going to be revealed as a trans/non-binary character but Hasbro chickened out at the last moment.

The new character ancestries are pretty good. The follow the new Tasha's rules of each having a +2 and +1 to hand out to ability scores as they want (Which, y'know, if you make this universal and want to uncouple ability scores from uncomfortable implications about race.. why not just make ability score boosts not related to race at all? It seems way simpler and these new rules really necessitate a 5.5E release just to bring everything back in line and update the core ancestries to account for power creep). I really like them as it's kind of a stealthy way to bring back templates or stealing from Pathfinder 2nd Editions' rules for variant human ancestries. Each of the new ancestries can kind of combine with another to give the character a sense of continuity (You can keep certain aspects from your Dwarfness in your new Dhampir form) and that's super neat. I love it. The classes are okay. The new bard subclass is basically RandomWildMagic Bard and it strikes me as less than useful. The new Warlock sunclass has two Super forms and gains the ability to become a suicide bomber once every 1d4 days. It seems really powerful. For myself, I'd have the GM roll the recharge on the explode-and-not-die ability just to keep some tension with it.

The general release cover art is great. Ez and Van Richten being ambushed by Strahd with Strahd high in the frame, showing his dominating presence. It's good stuff. I got the alt art cover, though, because the general release cover is emblazoned with "WORLD'S GREATEST ROLE PLAYING GAME" stuff and.. I hate it. The alt art cover is a character study of Ez d'Avenir and it looks like it was designed by committee. There's some kind of figure crammed in to every corner of the image and I'm not a fan. It's a very busy image and I don't think it needed to be. The image of Ez looking like a badass with a spectral Strahd looming over her could have been cool enough. The interior art is okay and in the 5E standard. I like the monster art, especially the vampiric Mind Flayer with its creepy mis-jointed limbs. I really dig the visual update for mummies, making them something eldritch and strange rather than a Universal cast-off from the 1920s.

Representation has become an important subject for Hasbro. Polygon, a detestable rag, made much of how Hasbro fixed the insensitivity from previous versions with this treatment of Harakir mummies but it seems to belabor the point. It's still an Egypt-coded culture and there are some other domains that are similarly flavored: one based on East Asia and another based on India. And while I'm not equipped to judge the sensitivity of them, I do note that there are zero sensitivity readers listed in the credits and the biggest cultural note for the India-domain seems to revolve around extravagant executions (like, by elephant) so it rubs me the wrong way. Valachan is now a Heart of Darkness pastiche with Karkov having been deposed by a local who must now continue his hunts anyway. The indigenous people of Valachan aren't given much besides being called "hunters" and "people of the jungle" which is coding them in a way that, if it isn't offensive, is at least offensive-adjacent. Polygon also declared the Vistani fixed but it strikes me as Hasbro trying to have their cake and eat it too. The Vistani are reduced to a page and a half of content. They clearly wanted to keep them because the old grognards would have raged about "SJW cucks" and so forth if they took them out but they're still a Roma-coded culture but with no effort to expand them into a culture that feels real. Ez d'Avenir isn't a Vistani anymore (her family merely pretended to be when kidnapping Van Richten's son) and I don't know that that was the best solution to that problem either.

There are some good ideas here and I'd say it's about 50% good material. I like a lot of the domains. Aside from the easy to ignore regional-conquering note about Harkon Lukas, I love what they did with Kartakass. A lot of the classic domains are represented, enough to keep a fan of the classic setting interested, but they didn't just sit on those laurels and tried to do a few new things. I like the Ghost Train domain, that looks really fun. I just wish it had an option to suplex the train a la Final Fantasy VI, which is clearly the inspiration. The new ancestries are fantastic and should be fun to play with tons of Gothic Horror angst baked in. What's holding the release back appears to be a lot of what always holds Hasbro back: Inability to commit. They published a horror roleplaying supplement are, at best, wishy-washy about the features that make horror roleplaying work. There's also some.. lazy editing. In-book citations just list the chapter or "earlier in this chapter." Could you not give us page numbers? "Page XXX" uses less characters than "Chapter X" so.. It looks like they were just too lazy to go back and change those references after the text had been put down.

Still, I'm glad to see Ravenloft back in print.

I have a couple of issues to deal with first. For all those whining about the PCness of the game--I don't see any problem here. The book deals with how to play horror, and if none of these problems or issues apply to your group--then they don't apply to your group. But you won't know unless you ask. There's a couple of gender swaps, deal with it. Change them back if you want. I haven't yet bought a source book I used in it's entirety and I have played, and still own a few, versions of Ravenloft from the very first module to this newest version.

Here are the more important, to me, changes I did notice. I present them as observations, rather than critiques.

The old Ravenloft was a patchwork of different places, but it had an over all feel of Eastern Europe/Russia. It read as a coherent whole, with the weirder places on the fringes. The patchwork aspect has been played up, this Ravenloft is even more a series of discrete places that are linked more thematically than physically. Each domain has been dialed up to 11 as well, becoming less a real place, which the old version tried to stay grounded in, and more a fairly tale place.

My example is Kartakass. In the old game it was essentially a place you could drop into a campaign set in Eastern Europe in the 1800's. Villages, mountains, and ok, a wolfwere bard is a darklord. The new Kartakass is, again, dialed up to 11. The whole domain is a cutthroat theater district or Disney theme park putting on a show. It is suitable for a different style of play. And that's fine.

The rules that explain horror in an RPG, that support the character generation, style of play, the monsters, are all spot on. I probably won't use this to run a horror campaign. I have ideas, ways to integrate it in a way that works for me. If I need old stuff, I still own the AD&D box set if I need it. I didn't need to buy that again, and I'm glad I didn't.

Too little content that will actually be of use in a game for player and DM.

The good part is the new subclasses, bosses, a bestiary. The content about the domains in the shadowfell.

The bad part of this book is about what is horror, what is gothic, what is a monster, what is a good villain? Basic stuff... Not really about the ravenloft campaign.

And way too many stuff about being inclusive to your players, talk about what upsets people, make sure that everybody feels good at the table... I don't know. If people don't like your horror story, it's a horry story for something, then they need to find another table. Horror is simply not for everyone, same for horror movies.

I really, really liked this book. It offers you a plethora of horror-themed settings, a handful of some very interesting monsters, a short adventure, and some nice notes helping DMs run terrifying adventures without traumatising their players. The different domains have some good atmosphere and can serve as a great inspiration not only for settings, but also for adventures with a tinge of horror. The lineages also add some great character options. Overall, while the book certainly has its shortcomings, it is pretty worth the money.

Ravenloft? More like WOKEnloft.

This book spends more time telling you how not to offend anyone, then giving you any real juice to use in a horror game. Better off going back to the AD&D material then picking this up.

Look, I get it’s a reference book and maybe that doesn’t count for some people, but I have spent a lot of time with it while piecing my homebrew dread domain together like the eternally slow fool that I am, so I’m counting it thanks (: overall extremely helpful with lots of very cool sh*t, especially love the backgrounds and bargains. I think the weird “Strahd was actually a good agent of this dread domain ghostbuster squad until he was deliberately targeted and corrupted by dark powers” take was uhhh… the worst and most unnecessary and you’re lucky I’m only taking a star for that crime. Please use legible fonts on maps and would love more than a single box text of Ezra, apparent goddess of the Mists, when these are called the Mistlands and basically inaccessible to other deities like… elaborate ffs!! Anyway, Erasmus VR deserves the world. That is all.

Are you planning a horror oneshot or campaign in D&D? Then this is the book for you!

You get a lot of interesting dark lords and worlds where they are captured, new monsters and NPCs to throw at your players, and fun 'dark gifts' to give player characters. It also has great summaries of different kinds of horror and how to have a fun horror game without accidentally making the game suck for the people involved. So you don't have to specifically aim for a Ravenloft game, it's a good book for all kinds of horror games in D&D.

Terrific 5e take on gothic gloom and horror gaming in general

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft offers a lot of terrific material for players and DMs alike for building out their own Ravenloft campaign, or more broadly, for creating a horror-themed D&D adventure or campaign. The book is lavishly illustrated, clearly written and nicely laid out, and is quite in line with the generally high production values I have found in my other 5e books.

A good portion of the book - Domains of Ravenloft (pp.60-180) - provides additional setting information on Ravenloft, which is you've already visited the place in Curse of Strahd, this should give you plenty to book a return visit. Or, you can turn that adventure book into something larger with the additional detail provided here. It's all fun stuff to read and to imagine one's players in.

Monsters of Ravenloft (p.222-255) offers a bunch of fun critters and villains to throw at your party as well. They are all horror-themed, of course, so they will feel most suitable for horror adventures or campaigns. But you could work one of these into a particularly dark and spooky corner of a dungeon or one-shot you're writing on your own, just fine.

But where the book really shines is in its sections on Creating a Domain of Dread (p.38-60) and Horror Adventures (p. 184-221), which are marvelously written chapters on how to get into the tone and direction of a fantasy horror game.

Creating a Domain of Dread is helpful intro material for those looking to dive into a horror campaign, and offers nice overviews of various sub-genres of horror, which make the whole thing a bit more manageable to understand and absorb. Just calling a game a horror game is fairly broad, and creates a lot of opportunity for players to have widely divergent expectations of where the game will take them, and that leads to an experience that often isn't as fun for everyone as i could be.

The Horror Adventures section is aimed at DMs, but would be a good section for any player to read as well. It is a really, really great section because it doesn't presume one knows what makes a horror story tick. Sure, everyone knows what it's like to be scared or creeped out, but actually crafting that experience for others so that they enjoy it is a much more difficult and nuanced thing. And this chapter provides a lot of helpful tips on how to set atmosphere, create tension, and so on. It also has some really important guidance on setting boundaries, checking in on the players and seeking consent. It gets into the concept of having a Session Zero for the campaign (which is a good idea for any campaign in any game, really), and it stresses that just because you know your players, it's not good to presume to know what their deepest fears are. The point being, running a game that triggers your friend's most intimate fear or trauma is not a legit avenue for entertaining them, yourself, or the other people at the table. And guess what? Everybody has something deep down that they just don't want to see mined for role-playing. We just don't like to talk about that often.

There are those gamers who feel such things are unnecessary, to the point of grousing over how this book is too "PC" or "woke" or whatever other buzzword folks like to use to complain about how hard it is to actually be respectful of others at the table. (These same voices seem to have difficulty accepting illustrations of adventurers in wheelchairs, which also appear in this book. That seems like a strange hill to defend, but I digress.)

The reality is, a horror game is still about having fun. And if you genuinely freak out a player because you weren't mindful of their limits, you've failed as a GM and you've done harm to your player. That's not what any game should be about, even a horror one. And keeping these things in mind is a way to respect everyone at the table. Very few games bother to address this, let along provide helpful guidance to DMs on it, so for this section, I'd give the book a sixth star, if I could.

I will also say this - I didn't see any specific sections on "Insanity" or "Madness," as often appear in other horror games, and I welcomed that. Such approaches often treat mental wellness with a very broad brush, ignorantly wielded. Van Richten's Guide often rounds back to how much fear a player is experiencing, and how debilitating that is to one's character in the moment. It doesn't rely on tired old concepts of mental collapse that a) lead to lazy storytelling and b) often reinforce a weird kind of aggression from DMs who say where and when a character is no longer fully in control of their faculties. Once again, there are those who find this approach too gentle. I say that in a world where we are making strides to acknowledge and destigmatize mental wellness issues so that people in the real world can get the help they need without shame or ridicule, using things like D&D to dress up in broad stereotypes about mental illness isn't helpful, and is not pointing towards a better future for this game, our beloved hobby or the RPG industry.

Van Richten's Guide is a rich, detailed and fun book that I am looking forward to integrating into my game. I'm not a particularly huge horror gaming fan. But I can see the many things here that I can make use of and bring a sense of dread into my game that I think my players will enjoy.

This book was just all over the place. I've seen other reviewers mention that this may have been because multiple authors wrote the book, and I think this point combined with a lack of editorial work is what made the book so disjointed. For example, the authors would often tell the DM not to do certain things in horror settings like 'have body horror NPCs with disabilities' but then a few pages later, they would have a prominent example of a body horror monster with disabilities for use in your campaign setting.

So yeah, it's an easy skip. I was so disappointed that I'm considering checking out earlier sourcebooks for Ravenloft from past editions for inspiration.

A great resource for anyone wanting to run a horror campaign. I like the Reborn lineage. Some nasty scenarios and good maps. Gives the full range of possibility for adventure.

Без никакво съмнение това е най - добрата книга на Wizards в ерата на "петото издание" на правилата. Брилянтно написана, пълна с тонове полезна информация - една любовна история към хорър жанра и как той да присъства със вашата игра на D&D.
Единствената ми критика е, че книгата е полезна повече за водещи, отколкото за играчи. Но пък изхождайки от тази идея, това е една чудесна с която да започнете кариерата си на Дънджън Мастър.

I finally managed to read (what I could stomach of) the new, 5E Ravenloft. I may be harsh in tagging this with the "trash" label, but there is one succinct description for it: it is a book written from people who do not understand or like horror, for people who do not like horror.

This is essentially a book about how to pretend you are playing horror with people who don't really like any of its conventions. There is so much repeatedly wasted space about "safe", "comfortable", "moderated" etc. horror, that it basically cancels horror. The book often repeats that characters should be scared, not players. That right there means "not horror", unless you mean Scooby Doo or Goosebumps (and even the latter toes the line by that logic). Have you watched horror movies? The characters WILL be scared because that is what the script says. If the viewer is not scared or stressed to some measure (and yes, that is the definition of a "safe scare" because it's a 90-120 minute visual fiction), the movie is a failure.

In this case, if the player is not scared (again, narratively, we are not talking about psychological torture here, for chrissake - IT'S A GAME), the character won't be either. There is a line about writing down "automated" responses for the character being afraid. It is laughable. And on the one important point about players with severe trauma, phobias, etc, maybe, just maybe, they should not expose themselves to horror. Horror is not for everyone and that's OK.

As for the domains, the Darklords, the Dark Powers (especially their corrupting influence), the whole point of Ravenloft, it has been defanged and altered to fit the tenets of political correctness ad nauseum. Never has there been a more ludicrous proposition than the Dark Gifts that replaced Powers Checks. No, wait, actually some of the most vicious villains of Ravenloft (like Azalin) have become anime-like quest givers. It's basically just another worldspace in an MMO.

There IS a smattering of useful things in the book, like Haunted Traps, Lineages and stat blocks for old Ravenloft monsters (also defanged where possible and get this, without alignment), but literally everything is subject to the tyranny of beautification.

If you liked Ravenloft once upon a time (up to and including 3.5E), do NOT waste your money on this.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is the seventh campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons' 5th Edition. These sourcebooks usually describe a particular world of DnD's multiverse (see for example the first one, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, which describes the Forgotten Realms), which sometimes happen to be crossovers with Magic: the Gathering (like Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica) or crossovers with popular DnD shows (like Critical Role's Explorer's Guide to Wildemount or Acquisitions Incorporated). VRGtR, however, describes a certain corner of the Shadowfell, a reflection of the material plane, that is known as the Domains of Dread or more simply Ravenloft.

This area consists of multiple 'Domains' which function as prisons for their Darklords, creatures that have done unspeakably evil things and are perpetually tormented by the evil Dark Powers. Domains range from entire countries to small valleys or even a travelling circus, each focusing on some aspect of this book's main theme: Horror. It all springs forth from the original Domain of Dread: that of Barovia, home of the evil vampire lord Count Strahd, as popularized with the Ravenloft setting of 1983.

The book describes rules and advice for the running of horror-themed DnD adventures, focusing on setting the scene, talking about each others fears, and finally on rules for the game. It presents several races for characters that could replace or repress their original race (like the Dhampir, a kind of half-vampire), along with rules for haunted traps, and two subclasses for Warlock and Bard focusing on undead patrons and spirits respectively. The biggest portion of the book is taken up by descriptions of an absolute massive amount of individually interesting Domains of Dread, along with their themes, ideas for adventures, the nature of their torments and their Darklords. It also presents a small adventure for characters of level 1-3 to serve as a springboard into adventures in the Domains.

This is a thick book full of inspiration for your horror-themed adventures. I'm excited to explore the lands of the mists, and throwing my players into the zombie apocalypse of Falkovnia or the dream-state of I'Cath, the unending civil war of Kalakeri or the house wars in Borca. Plenty of fun to go round...

A modern look at horror D&D fit for the current generation of players.

This book covers many aspects of the Ravenloft demi-plane and adds interesting story components and tons of new mechanics to use.

Crunch:
The class options, monsters, and various character creation techniques are interesting, very useful, and immediately spark the imagination.
The segments on various types of horrors and tools to create atmosphere are a nice read.

Fluff:
Many Domains of Dread are described in brief. The book fully expects people to mix and match different aspects to create their own, custom experiences. As a Bulgarian who frequently visits Romania, I found the Slavic and Transylvania-inspired names to miss the mark, making them an annoyance to read. It's Harry Potter's idea of Bulgaria all over again.

What's old:
The book draws heavy inspiration from the classic Ravenloft book of the AD&D days, as well as the current Curse of Strahd. You'll hear familiar names, draw Tarokka cards, and all that. Veterans will sense a Heroes of Horror influence as well.

What's new:
This book is definitely designed to serve short play sessions and moody one-shots. It encourages people to customize experiences and even pull characters from ongoing campaigns for "one night of thrills" type of play, which I think is great.
The book is heavy on trigger warnings and advice for inclusivity and trope-avoidance, which makes sense, but I personally find unneeded and somewhat immersion-breaking. Could be just me.

Overall, this is a great toolkit for spooky adventures. If you're a DM who wants to try something fresh, run a "Halloween special" for your group, and insert a touch of the supernational in your setting, you'll find all the mood, inspiration, and mechanics you'll need.

As for me - I gotta be blunt, I don't trust my players to take a horror game seriously enough to create the atmosphere the books suggests. Fart jokes and Ravenolft do not mix together well.

I love the concept of this book, and I’ve found that I like it as a whole more than most DMs I’ve talked to about it. It definitely could be better though, and I think there’s something to be said for both what it does do and what it doesn’t.

What it does do: it gives you a lot of inspiration. The fully fleshed out domains of dread in the book have enough info to let you totally run wild and make your own story/campaign. The artwork is awesome, the maps of the domains are well done and full of areas waiting for you to give your own spin. It also has official versions of some horror-themed lineages/classes which are cool. I like that the lineages are ones that can be achieved through story progression rather than a static race chosen at creation, that’s a concept that could certainly be fun to play around with.

What it doesn’t do: much else. There’s a few new enemy stat blocks in the back, but this is very much more a setting book than an adventure book. It’s a cool setting: a collection of worlds trapping evil darklords in a domain designed to torment them for their wicked deeds.

But after that, the encounters are basically up to you. The book kinda tosses some out like “idk maybe they fight this dark lord at the lake? Maybe the dark lord is actually good? You decide!” Which at that point, why did I pay money for a book to tell me to just do what I want, you know? I get this is a common thing for setting books, but I feel like a few things might have made it feel more worthwhile. The biggest fix would be including some statblocks for the darklords themselves. I kinda understand why they didn’t, and I’ll admit that most of the time I end up having to either tweak or homebrew from scratch boss stats, but it’s preposterous to have actual nothing for them in here.

I also feel like Candlekeep did this concept much better. I’d much rather have a book full of short adventures each set in a different domain than what we did get.

I bought this book with the alternate cover for a few reasons:

* I've always loved Ravenloft's mix of horror and fantasy (that one Monstrous Compendium where all the "monsters" are fully-fleshed characters with tragic backstories)
* the pandemic got me craving something new and self-indulgent
* I joined this one RPG auction site and I keep thinking about re-selling all my RPGs (there's a bit of a bubble going on right now I suspect) (the effect of this is that I looked through this book very carefully)

This is not the first 5e book I've looked at, and this follows the general trend of being very nice to look at and full of stuff (some new character options (classes and races), some monsters, some notes about gamemastering safely, and a lot of setting stuff). Each of the domains in this book looks very interesting, but I wish they had written little capsule descriptions of the domains for easy skimming.

Edited to add: In the old Ravenloft, there was a sense that you could just wander from one nightmare into another, and they all had semi-clear antecedents -- oh no, I'm in the vampire kingdom; oh no, I'm being hunted by werepanthers in the most dangerous game; oh no, I'm in Frankenstein; oh no, I'm in Universal's The Mummy movies. It was all sort of unified by a sense of Gothic dread/terror.

In the new edition, each domain feels separate, both physically (there's talk about how the mists transport you, or a cursed boat, etc.), but more importantly, thematically; and the book actually goes into some detail about different types of horror and what makes, say, Body Horror different from Folk Horror; and each domain is labeled with what type of horror(s) the domain embodies. That gives a wide spread to the types of encounters (and I am very excited by some of the random tables here about what might happen in what domain), but it also means that Ravenloft doesn't have as cohesive a theme.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is an exceptional addition to the Dungeons & Dragons library, offering players and dungeon masters alike a wealth of material to delve into the dark and twisted world of Ravenloft. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the domains of dread and their rulers, each with their own unique flavor and set of challenges. It's clear that a lot of thought and care went into crafting each of these domains, and the attention to detail is impressive.

One of the standout features of this guide is the section on character creation, which provides players with a range of new options and subclasses to choose from, all with a focus on horror and the macabre. Whether you're playing a vampiric sorcerer or a lycanthropic ranger, there's something here for every type of player. The book also includes a variety of new spells, magic items, and monsters that will keep players on their toes and add to the overall atmosphere of dread and tension.

As a dungeon master, I found the advice and resources in this guide to be invaluable. The book offers tips on how to build a horror campaign, create memorable NPCs, and design terrifying encounters that will keep players engaged and on edge. The extensive list of plot hooks and adventure ideas will also provide plenty of inspiration for anyone looking to run a campaign set in Ravenloft.

Overall, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is an outstanding addition to the world of Dungeons & Dragons, providing players and dungeon masters with a wealth of new material to explore. Whether you're a fan of horror, fantasy, or both, this guide is a must-have for anyone looking to add a touch of darkness and intrigue to their gaming sessions. Highly recommended!

Absolutely phenomenal sourcebook for 5e--the best, in my opinion, to date! I adore the Ravenloft setting and how they handled it, updating and changing it for the newest edition and generation of D&D players. The updated worlds are amazing--I am particularly fond of the change to Dr. Mordenheim--and the new worlds are captivating! A particular highlight for me is I'Cath and its sleeping-waking dual worlds. As well, the tools and subclasses they added are fantastic.

My only criticism is really minor and probably is not going to be a big deal to anyone else, regarding a change they made to Ezmerelda d'Avenir's backstory. It's an interesting change but I think trying to divorce the bad reputation they had previously established for the Vistani (as they should!) by claiming her criminal blood family was only *pretending* to be Vistani feels like a weak change. I understand where this comes from, as fixing the negative stereotypes they wrote into the Vistani as a whole in the past books was something they have desperately needed to address, but it just feels a little cheap how it was handled for her backstory specifically, as if to say "Oh, no real Vistani would ever be criminals EVER." It just sort of robs them of depth, going from one extreme (all bad, always) to another (all good, always).

However, if that's my worst criticism, suffice to say, this is a VERY good book. I adore the positive changes they've made and I love how absolutely, unapologetically queer they've made every inch of this book. (See: Dr. Mordenheim and her wife, Sedgwick/Ray, etc)

I can't wait to use all of the information I gathered from reading this book at my own table!

Useful, but could have been better.

The good: helps generate ideas for fun games. Is presented in easy to read, easy to reference chapters. There's a lot of advice for customising or creating your own Domains of Dread, and à huge table of pre-existing Domains you can set your adventures in. You also get an introductory scenario, the House of Lament which serves as a good example.
The book contains warnings on setting expectations and talking about limits and boundaries and exploring horror safely, and it should, I agree, you want a safe environment.
Overall I feel more like I want to get creative with this book.

The neutral: a lot if the Domains sound similar in theme. There are quite a few "Gothic horror" and "disaster horror" which seem less like horror scenarios than something more outlandish. Not exactly a bad thing, but it doesn't seem to set a lot of domains apart from a typical game of D&D.

The bad: the book is afraid to be scary. It's scared of being scared. Nothing really jumps out as horror, being fair, that is up to a DM and Players to make their own experiences.
Like I said, in the good. The book contains warnings on setting expectations and talking about limits and boundaries and exploring horror safely, and it should, I agree, you want a safe environment. It just maybe over does it, maybe just a little too much handholding. Something just sort of feels like they were emphasising this more out of concern for their own liability than for the players, but I could be wrong-it was just a feeling I personally got.

Overall, I do recommend picking this up and having it in your Ttrpg library.

I don't vibe with the short adventure contained here, House of Lament, but otherwise this is extremely my kind of sh*t. Riddled with cool mechanics, settings, plot hooks, and more besides. It doesn't tell you how you ought to use any of it, it just offers it up and says here, go nuts. Have sex with an ancient vampire. Get your organs stolen by mind flayers. You know, live a little.

Miscellaneous thoughts:
- the College of Spirits is neat, unique, and a nice way to get distance from the usual bard-as-musician trap
- can't say the same about the Undead patron for warlocks; it makes sense, but aesthetically it's pretty identical to the Undying patron (from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide). Damned if I can think of new aesthetic territory for warlock subclasses right now, but this certainly isn't it
- the domains provided have something for every flavour of horror fan: zombie apocalypse! spooky carnival! mummies! ghosts! Dorian Gray! Darkon is my personal favourite, a land without a leader that's gradually being swallowed by the mists
- even better are the shorter descriptions of other, less well-defined domains, and the framework provided to create your own. The idea of a series of self-contained areas, somewhere between the size of a house and a nation, each with its own clear mood and theme, is an extremely appealing idea for a campaign

If you want to experience horror in DnD in self contained adventures, campaigns, or even just quest by quest, this book is great. It talks about different types of horror stories in game such as Ghost Stories, Body Horror, Cosmic Horror, Gothic Horror, Folk Horror, Slashers, etc. and what themes, tropes or monsters make good story material.

There are 3 spooky races for players, and two subclasses. If undead PCs are your thing youll enjoy it, but players should by no means feel pressure to own a copy. DMs will find a lot settings to easily drop a party into, and monsters to surprise and horrify.

If you want a long term campaign crossing many domains and stories maybe look earlier than this. Ravenloft supplements of older editions have lore for a much more traditional setting, with domains bordering each other. There was a large continent known as "the core" with politics and people moving between domains. If you know 5e look into this lore to see if its approach fits your story better. Lore can be used in any system, any edition after all.

For good or ill this book and 5e hit a reboot button on many domains, stories and NPCs from Ravenloft. If you are new you will likely not mind or notice. If you like going deep on setting wikis and having a ton of rich complicated history then definitely seek out the older material.

Very inspired by this book, and glad to have it. Its a resource for any long campaign needing a break adventure from the main queat, or any group that likes a lot of werewolves, ghouls, vampires or ghost stories.

A lot of times my metric for 5E books is "does this make me want to run and/or play the stuff in it?" But let's be real, I owned entirely too many 2E Ravenloft books (before I sold it all, and I dearly hope some grognard is very happy with it today) to pretend that applies here; this would have to be very bad for me not to be in to it. And it's mostly very good, I think! I consider it praise to say that multiple times it had me pull out the old Domains of Dread hardcover to see just what exactly had changed, even before I get to the bit where I pretty much always felt like what had changed qualified as improvements. To say nothing of the reminders of the mechanical differences between 2E and 5E - woof. The more general stuff here about types of horror etc. seemed interesting and potentially helpful (it's gonna vary DM to DM, group to group, etc.) and like some of the similar stuff in the DMG I'm glad it's here. Very into the sheer number of domains, too - honestly given how many of them you could fit a whole campaign into, if you wanted, I feel a little spoiled here. Overall, I keep going back to the fact that my initial reaction to hearing about this book was just "Ravenloft is back, baby!" and I'm pretty pleased that that's kind of where I'm still at after reading the book.

This is an excellent setting book. Unlike some of the 5e book, here the different parts work together, and very well.
The book includes character options, session 0 advice, DMing advice, new monsters and traps, and all of them work to enhance and integrate with the setting. There's no bit that doesn't seem in place with the book, solely for the value of adding more content. All the added mechanics work with the settings, and advice helps guide the game in the right direction.
The setting itself is built as disparate domains of Ravenloft, which makes sense. There are tons of those, and each has enough for a single adventure or a short campaign. You can also string a few campaigns from hopping domains. Not all domains are for everyone, but there are enough of them that anyone interested in the setting will find enough content to use.
The weakest point is the short adventure. It may show some atmosphere, but it's heavily rail-roaded, and not in a good way. It also has a strange selection of who would be the main antagonist, which doesn't make sense, as the players will only see one option, and not even know of the other options.

I will definitely want to run my own campaign based on this.

The last few D&D books had a lot for DMs. Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft tops them all. Players will get a lot out of it, too, but VRGtR is a feast of useful, imagination-sparking material—and that's not entirely limited to those who like horror.

The Demiplane of Dread known as Ravenloft is the star, of course, but VRGtR is more than just a setting book. While it highlights and refreshes domains from other editions and adds new ones, it takes a similar approach to Acquisitions Inc., Eberron: Rising from the Last War, and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount in that it includes a short adventure but otherwise explains how to make adventures and characters for the settings.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is better.

That's not a slam against those prior books. It's that the creative team for VRGtR has seriously upped their game.

See the rest of my review at https://www.enworld.org/threads/van-r...

I usually don't add rule books to my list, but this one is just great! I loved the character options, the Domains of Dread, and all the rules to help you create a horror campaign on your own. Honestly, the chapter on creating villains and domains of dread is fantastic; it can even give you ideas to write things outside a D&D campaign.

The goal of a horror campaign is to scare the characters, not the players. And this is not easy to achieve especially if you're like me and you play with a group of friends that make jokes every round. However, the suggestions on how to scare the characters are easy to implement and (sometimes) so obvious that you ask yourself why you didn't think of them before.

Overall, I think it's one of my favourite additions to my D&D library in the last few years.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft by Wizards RPG Team is a a middle-tier Dungeons and Dragon supplement that helps DMs and players understand the mechanics of adding horror-themed roleplay into their worlds through the lens of Ravenloft. While it is beneficial in answering questions regarding how to cultivate a horror-filled story, it also shows the hurdles one must overcome in the D&D gaming system to make these elements work. It's an interesting read, but more of a flavour book for those that aren't too interested in anything with Cthulhu.

TL;DR: A good introduction to D&D horror elements, but not a comprehensive guide on the topic.

Probably the best 5e DND book released by WoTC. It's core strength lies in the fact that it predominantly offers advice and ideas largely as useful in creating horror campaigns with 5e as it would be in another system. This book is the first and only official 5e book I can think of that isn't just player options, plug and play mechanics, or pre-built adventures.

I think the only core frustration I have with the book is that it's meant to be used with a system I've come to largely dislike.