Van Richten Guide to Ravenloft - What we know so far

In a short break on our journey through the mists, we will talk a little about the recent Wizards of the Coast reveal about the return of the Ravenlfot Campaign Setting to the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons through the Van Richten Guide to Ravenloft.

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[erichelvie]

I have to be honest. None of these changes impress me or give me a great desire to go out and waste my money on this. I will stick with the old tried and true. And what does not already exist, I will create myself. I have been DMing for almost 30 years, most of which was in Ravenloft. Keep up the great work on your channel, your coverage of the lore of Classic Ravenloft is fantastic and most welcome.

[fleetcenturion]

I don't know if you know this, but this channel isn't listed under the subject "Dungeons & Dragons." I don't know if you have to list it as such, if YouTube doesn't bother, or if the channel is just too small, but Ravenloft is my favorite setting, and I only recently found you by word of mouth.

[grandadmiralahab]

I am more interested in the story you are weaving than where the new stuff will take it... You still have tons of old lore you have not touched yet either, but all things take time.
Use the new stuff only if you like it... keep the islands in the core if you have the old maps, or rearrange the islands into a new core... Just because wizards made that change, doesn't mean you (or anyone else) need to use that change in a game, or video... Use the material as a framework, and change what you want to how you want it... or take your story to the conjunction that split the core... They are probably planning another grand conjunction already anyway. Modules always follow campaign settings.

[asahinainu]

Wrote a huge post but then accidentally hit a shortcut that took me back a page and deleted all of my post so I guess ill just do a TLDR style post instead.

I'm hopeful, yet pessimistic, about the new setting. Wizards does not have a good track record with in house treatment of settings in general, and haven't done any published work with Ravenloft outside of I6 remakes. It recently came to light that the cancelled 4th edition Ravenloft was previewed by the Fraternity of Shadows, and was quite poorly received as being so different as to be incompatible with what came beforehand, which may have had a part in its cancellation. This reinforces my opinion that WotC cares more about the potential of IP branding than of setting authenticity.

Unfortunately, valid praise and/or criticism of the new take on the setting WILL become overshadowed by the inevitable war between Basement Dwelling Misogynists and the Wokeness as Carte Blanche Justification Crew over the changes to the setting. With tweets like VGtR contributor Jessica Price's, "I can also attest that new Ravenloft is very, very queer. I'm sure there are some straight people in it somewhere. I think." its almost inevitable, and will become the main talking point to shut down discussion about the product itself. People who like the old setting might end up becoming conflated with bigots, because bigots will all of a sudden become super fans of traditional Ravenloft, and liking the new edition might end up being a "Right side of History" stance for some. I wish White Wolf was still in charge of Ravenloft as somehow they seem to have a better approach on how to continually move forward social progress in their games without denying that their past troublesome continuity ever existed in the first place, while also not coming off as better than thou for making said progress.

[jeramiedavis]

I mean the core being shattered could be interesting if you wanted to use the planescape keys and doors shtick to domain hop.
But i do have the old domain maps from 2nd edition so ill likely be sticking with that.

[zeromancer-x]

I'll never use the 5e rules to play/run the game, but I'm at least interested in reading the new and expanded background material for each domain. The shattering of the Core both works and doesn't work for me. Maybe we'll be able to connect them together as we see fit for our individual campaigns?

[goatsuckervonsasquatch]

I've been enjoying D&D since 1988 I'm hoping for the best but I expect the worst they're going to screw it up

[thehillz]

I'm not huge on this lore wise but I guess it's fine as an alternate universe for the setting or something.
But that's how I feel about most of 5e new lore

[artisturn]

So far it's mixed feelings about this book, nice to see some new content, but I am not keen on the core being broken up into islands.

[KS-PNW]

I'm not thrilled at many of the changes. Particularly getting rid of the core.

To be clear I'm fine with more female Darklords/characters but this bit where Victor becomes Victoria (or whatever) just feels like lazy lip service. Also nervous about them saying content "will be appropriate for all ages.". It's great to have kid friendly material, that helps keep the hobby alive but not EVERYTHING needs to be G rated, especially in Ravenloft.

Also a whole chapter on how to make sure everyone is comfortable and how to offer Trigger Warnings? To me that's just offensive, in that it's Wizards basically saying they know better than their customers where comfort levels lie. IMHO it's a good thing to think about when crafting adventures (you want everyone to have fun) but it's not something I need a company to spell out to me.

Having said that, I'm cautiously optimistic for new content. Even though in any game I run the core will still be a thing....

[brianpratt]

I think there is a lot of new players, so they cater to them more than the old ones. They assume most people won't know or remember the old settings. I find this all very bittersweet. Ravenloft was a big part of my college days. I had all the novels, modules, box sets, etc. So, when I heard I was really excited, then started to see the changes, which really disappointed me. What keeps me going is that this is still DND and I can make my campaign anyway I want to. So, I can take their rules, but run it anyway I want. So, if I want to have the core, I will put the core in. The weird gender swapping doesn't seem to make any sense, as Ravenloft was pretty good about having a lot of female darklords. And they did it badly, by just trying to feminize the names of Vlad and Viktor. Which is kind of a stupid way of doing it. I mean Elisabeth Drakov and Greta Mordenhiem would have been better than that. But, I am going to remain hopeful and buy the book, knowing I have the control on how its run, when I put on one of my games.

[maggoli]

Just got mine today...cursory impressions not pleas4ed.

[jamesmyung]

So far based on your description, this book will be a hard pass for me. The changes are hardly inspiring to me, but instead seems to be made to pander to political correctness. I was hoping for either even more information on the current Darklords or new ones along with their lands to add to the mists. Ah well, I guess I'll stick with the classics. Thank you for the fine video, and cheers!

[docnecrotic]

I know Wizards doesn't respect people like us, haha. As it is, they've not only broken the heart of the Core, but our hearts as well.

[ckmishn]

Honestly I don't think Wizards either respects their history, or is capable of anything truly creative anymore. Then again, all their great settings (Spelljammer, Planescape, Dark Sun, Mystara, Greyhawk and Ravenloft) were created before Wizards even bought the company.

Now all they make is politically correct content run through a committee. The mechanics of 5th edition are ok in general (if a little over-complicated and filled with too many options), but how can you even do horror in a system where it's almost impossible to die anyway? And the lore of 5th edition is becoming almost as bad as that of 4th edition.

[ZelkovaOnAcid]

Okay I will say like everyone else here I'm mad about the change to the Core. But I will say I am hype about certain darklord changes. I found Vlad and Dominic to be really boring. I'm happy those two are scrapped.

[laternite]

Fukn woke Ravenloft. Why don’t they just create new domains instead of screwing up the lore?