This should be obvious, but don't answer this poll unless you have bought and/or at least read most of the book.
Answer the poll above, rate it between 1 and 5 stars, and feel free to explain why you gave it that rating. Feel free to discuss the book, but if this thread gets too hostile and devolves too far, I will ask moderation to close down the thread.
I am yet to read most of the book, mostly skimming through the lore of the domains and paying most attention to the player options and monsters, so once I get to the point that I feel comfortable rating the book, I will answer the poll and explain below why I gave it that rating.
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VRG is a very good book. It is not a perfect book, but given the constraints it was under I don't think it could have been. Many people seemed to be expecting entire chapters devoted to each of the 30+ Domains of Dread in the book, as well as additional entire chapters devoted to each Darklord. The most common complaint I've seen about the book is that each Domain was given only a few pages tops of information and each Darklord was given a bit less, alongside no Darklord being given their own official stat block. People complain that this is too little, and the lack of Darklord statblocks is especially punishing.
I believe quite differently. The book spends a great deal of page count detailing how to create your own Domain, your own Darklord, and most of the 'Official' Domains in this book were clearly created using the method/tools outlined in the book. Unlike the Monster Manual, wherein all the monsters built therein have absolutely nothing to do with the Monster Workshop method outlined in the DMG, this book tells you how to build a Domain/Darklord combination and then shows you several examples of doing just that, outlining specifically how each Domain adheres to the tenets given in Chapter 2. People are treating this like an Adventure Module and feeling ripped off because they can't run an adventure straight out of the book (except for the adventure that's in the book, which - full disclosure - I did not bother reading), when they should be treating it as an extended DM's treatise on how to create a proper horror game, or introduce horror elements into an existing game. In that guise, and with that objective, VRG is one of the most solidly constructed 5e books I've seen from Wizards to date.
It is not perfect. The editing sucks, not gonna lie. This could've used another pass or two through the cleaner. The art is oddly scattered, and not all the Domains strike me as really horrifying. The Mist Wanderers are all kinda flat, and the 'Other Domains of Dread' do come off as page filler to meet the "35+ Unique Domains of Dread!" marketing bar. Some of them are cool seeds, but they're so short that they no longer follow the precedent of holding up to the book's own tools.
But the character options are cool. The Dark Gifts thing offers a lot of useful ideas and examples for double-edged power-with-a-price options to inflict on your PCs. The Bestiary is ******* phenomenal, and the 'Horror Monsters' primer offers the first hint Wizards of the Coast has ever shown of how to make mundane monsters into truly threatening entities. Even if TMKWTD did it first by several years, as well as doing it better. The idea of "Survivors" and the Survivor stat blocks is a super neat tool DMs can use to switch the viewpoint of their stories and offer players a unique experience that doesn't happen often in media in general, let alone D&D. The rest of Chapter 4 is...spotty, but its heart is in the right place and it does offer a few useful mechanisms for pulling off a horror game.
Overall? Well done. This is a book doing its best to teach a man to fish. Or at least teach a DM how to run a horror game worthy of the name. Things like Curse of Strahd or Avernus give a man a fish, and that seems to be all other people want, but me? I much prefer being taught how to do it my own ass self. So this book gets high marks from me.
Let's hope it doesn't suffer Tasha's Cauldron Syndrome and degrade in opinion the more time I have to think about it.
The character options are stellar...subclasses, Dark Gifts, backgrounds, the lineages...if you want the tools to build a gothic character, you’ve got plenty to work with.
The various Domains of Dread are mostly exceptional...coupled with the suggestions on how to build your own storylines / Dark Lords, there’s enough inspiration here for creating your own campaigns that you should never run low on ideas.
I would, however, encourage reviewing these Domains thoroughly...some of them can get quite...macabre. Grotesque. In other words...scary.
Looking at you, Lamordia...you can take an arm or a leg, or whatever...just don’t give it to someone else, or attach it to a unicycle, or something. Jeez.
I like some, but not all, of the Mist Walkers...Ez stands out as one of the more interesting ones. Fans will recognize her from Curse of Strahd.
On that note, the Vistani are as interesting as ever...I really dug their concept before; they’re given a bit more context / expansion in this book.
They even give player characters a chance to join the Vistani.
In all, there’s a TON of content here...and most of it is excellent. Well worth the notice.
Player options are meh....Warlock is the better of the two options. I think damage immunity should not be a PC feature (especially at level 10) but they seem to be fine with it now. Spiritual Projection costs your concentration so highly limits what you can actually do in the form.
Backgrounds are mostly rehashes...not very interesting overall.
Lack of spells hurts...not sure why they are so stingy with spells as of late.
Dark Gifts are pretty good...some very interesting. Some are not. Second Skin for example is just mostly fluff and does not offer a ton of value as a "gift".
Overall player options are like a 2/5.
PROS:
Domains have enough information to get rolling and have maps/etc...pretty much all a DM needs to get started in the Domain
Bestiary is amazing...one of the best in any book so far.
Actually uses the guidelines it suggests and provides examples. How has it taken this long for this to happen? No books up to this point have done this as well as this book did. DMG is especially terrible at this.
Let me start by saying I love this book, having been running Ravenloft games for three years now, I’ve poured countless hours into the Domains of Dread already - so this book made me extremely happy. There were a few lore tidbits I wish they would not have changed, but things I can for the most part get over. Each domain is terrifying and every Darklord is intriguing, especially Valachan’s Darklord, Chakuna and Dementlieu’s Duchess Saidra. The choices they made for Strahd are the only ones I’m not crazy about, having poured hours of reading into the AD&D Strahd and his novels, but I’m slowly accepting them.
I must disagree, 1/5 and that’s being generous. I say this as a long time player who’s enjoyed playing Ravenloft since 3rd edition and delved into 2e. I hate to say this as well as the vast majority of the book I liked. Then I read the domains and the Darklords section and was livid. They ignored 30+ years of canon history and lore and warped many of these domains and Darklords to either try and make it “child friendly” or twisting them to fit a “PC” narrative, I could not tell. Example: Falkovnia was ruled by Vlad Drakov, not Vladeska Drakov so they already gender-swapped a character with decades of lore establishing them. He was a ruthless mercenary that craved respect which caused him to commit atrocities that got him sent to the Mists. When he took over the realm, he made it a mage hating, xenophobic to nonhumans, military society. All natural born citizens of the realm had his sigil, an eagle, branded on their forehead during childhood. He wouldn’t have cared too bits about a zombie that had the “face of an innocent” he killed. This is just one domain and Darklord they screwed over and may as well have spit on Ravenloft (I’m looking at you Lamordia).
What upsets me most however is that I can tell (at least at some points) that the creative team had the talent and means to make something great as the domains they actually created from scratch were good, the same with domains that were a natural progression from prior domains (Tepest for ex) and continued the story instead of warping it or changing it without explanation (Dementlieu).
For starters, I like physical books and have been a completionist., buying most stuff both on paper and Beyond. But starting with Candlekeep I've decided to only buy rulebooks like Tasha and Xanathars on both formats, other books only in digital format. The reason is that Candlekeep and Van Richten are a bit uninspiring in my opinion. The production values are good as always, but they just don't get my creative juices flowing.
Shure, if you want to play horror in D&D I guess VR is ok:ish, but I prefer other systems for that. So I basically bought the digital book to give my players a few more options.
With that said, I'm happy that Wizards cater to different tastes. But I still cross my fingers for Spelljammer and Planescape in a near future, those I would buy on all formats in a heartbeat :-)
I must disagree, 1/5 and that’s being generous. I say this as a long time player who’s enjoyed playing Ravenloft since 3rd edition and delved into 2e. I hate to say this as well as the vast majority of the book I liked. Then I read the domains and the Darklords section and was livid. They ignored 30+ years of canon history and lore and warped many of these domains and Darklords to either try and make it “child friendly” or twisting them to fit a “PC” narrative, I could not tell.
As somebody who has been running and/or playing Ravenloftian campaigns for 25+ years, I can sympathize a bit with your feelings. I've also been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to speak and interact with some of the 2e/3e Ravenloft writers, which makes reading some of the changes to Darklords and their domains even harder. However, despite some of these feelings, I would mirror most of the compliments (and criticisms) that the others previously voiced. The majority of the book is well written (overlooking some of the editing issues), and I love how evocative it is with drawing people to the horror genre setting. I would probably give the book a 4/5 rating myself.
At the end of the day, I feel that this book fits a fairly niche area, which varies even further by whatever role the particular reader fills.
DMScore 4-5 range: There's a lot of good advice and even some mechanics that help a DM wanting to create a horror campaign. I really liked the new "horror-themed" monsters, and I loved the conceptualization on how to make monsters individualized and special. Also liked the amount of detail devoted to defining the different horror tropes, which helps build better and more complex Darklords and domains.
Player Score 2.5-3.5 range: Most of the book is not intended for players, and the few sections that are more player centric don't add very much. Lineages are interesting but fairly weak. Disappointed that there were only two Ravenloftian subclasses available in the book. The Dark Gifts were a fun extra to add to character creation (or potentially later development).
Diehard 2e/3e Player Score: 1-2 range:Van Richten's Guide is a good (if not great) book for new people being introduced to the Ravenloft setting, but some of the changes can feel like a slap to the face for those who have been playing the game from earlier editions. The material can still be useful, but it doesn't suitable update/replace all of the source books that had been published over the years.
TL/DR: I would say that Van Richten's Guide is well worth having for any DM wanting to run a more horror-based campaign, and it might even be beneficial for players wanting to be in a horror-based campaign (albeit more DM helpful than player helpful). However, some of the changes included in Van Richten's Guide will probably not be appreciated by a DM/player with 2e/3e Ravenloft experience.
What upsets me most however is that I can tell (at least at some points) that the creative team had the talent and means to make something great as the domains they actually created from scratch were good, the same with domains that were a natural progression from prior domains (Tepest for ex) and continued the story instead of warping it or changing it without explanation (Dementlieu).
Again, I can sympathize with your sentiments on the Darklord/domain changes that were made in Van Richten's Guide. I am not going to debate whatever reasons and rationales were behind these changes, but I personally was disappointed that the writers went in the directions that they did for some of these changes. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed some of the new concepts that they created. Using Dementleiu as an example, I rather enjoyed reading the concept of Duchess Saidra d’Honaire and how her domain meshed with her background and torment. However, I didn't see the need for removing the previous (2e/3e) Darklord, Dominic D'Honaire.
Personally speaking, I would have preferred that they made an entirely new domain for Saidra d’Honaire to be the Darklord. If there was a reason for not wanting to include Dominic D'Honaire, then Dominic and Dementleiu could have been left out entirely instead of changing almost everything about the domain except for the name. For those who are new to Ravenloft, these changes make little to no difference, but it potentially changes a lot for those who have a history with the setting.
Yes, somebody can always ignore these changes and/or switch around names as they see fit...but I cannot deny that some of it feels like somebody is using their Sharpie to draw on somebody else's picture/portrait.
I must disagree, 1/5 and that’s being generous. I say this as a long time player who’s enjoyed playing Ravenloft since 3rd edition and delved into 2e. I hate to say this as well as the vast majority of the book I liked. Then I read the domains and the Darklords section and was livid. They ignored 30+ years of canon history and lore and warped many of these domains and Darklords to either try and make it “child friendly” or twisting them to fit a “PC” narrative, I could not tell.
As somebody who has been running and/or playing Ravenloftian campaigns for 25+ years, I can sympathize a bit with your feelings. I've also been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to speak and interact with some of the 2e/3e Ravenloft writers, which makes reading some of the changes to Darklords and their domains even harder. However, despite some of these feelings, I would mirror most of the compliments (and criticisms) that the others previously voiced. The majority of the book is well written (overlooking some of the editing issues), and I love how evocative it is with drawing people to the horror genre setting. I would probably give the book a 4/5 rating myself.
Again, I can sympathize with your sentiments on the Darklord/domain changes that were made in Van Richten's Guide. I am not going to debate whatever reasons and rationales were behind these changes, but I personally was disappointed that the writers went in the directions that they did for some of these changes. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed some of the new concepts that they created. Using Dementleiu as an example, I rather enjoyed reading the concept of Duchess Saidra d’Honaire and how her domain meshed with her background and torment. However, I didn't see the need for removing the previous (2e/3e) Darklord, Dominic D'Honaire.
Personally speaking, I would have preferred that they made an entirely new domain for Saidra d’Honaire to be the Darklord. If there was a reason for not wanting to include Dominic D'Honaire, then Dominic and Dementleiu could have been left out entirely instead of changing almost everything about the domain except for the name. For those who are new to Ravenloft, these changes make little to no difference, but it potentially changes a lot for those who have a history with the setting.
Yes, somebody can always ignore these changes and/or switch around names as they see fit...but I cannot deny that some of it feels like somebody is using their Sharpie to draw on somebody else's picture/portrait.
That’s just it though, as stated I enjoyed everything else in the book, but I cannot forgive the Darklords section for its blatantly revisionist work on the domains and darklords which, to me, seem to be trying to fit it into a PC narrative when Ravenloft is about the furthest thing from that (Darksun being it’s only contender in that regard). If they had wanted these changes there would have been better ways to incorporate them such as Saidra d’Honaire engineering Dominic’s downfall then claiming heritage. They’d have had all the trappings for her (pretending to be what you’re not) and have fit it into canon history without feeling like some Twitterati no lifer was writing it. Again Tepest proves they had the wherewithal to do this. I’d honestly even be willing to give them a Mulligan if they’d learn from this and do it right. As it stands now though, giving them any positivity to what they did to the Core seems like encouragement to keep doing it, and that I can’t abide. Wizards please stop pandering to these people, this is what screwed up our future Dragonlance novels, don’t t let it mess up Ravenloft too!!!
P.S. Sorry for the rant but this is a subject (D&D) I’m passionate about and a subject I loathe (Revising something with already established canon to fit someone’s “sensitivities”) crashing into each other head on at 100+ mph (160+kph for everyone else).
For those who are new to Ravenloft, these changes make little to no difference, but it potentially changes a lot for those who have a history with the setting.
This, quite literally, makes no sense.
Regardless, I disagree with the general sentiment. Having played since 1E, Ravenloft in previous editions has consistently been a head-scratcher for me, bloated and full of clumsy cliches. I’ve always liked the general idea but the proliferation of domains lacked any real originality or spark.
In my opinion, this book does a much better job of creating distinct domains and is a massive improvement in thinking about genre and sub-genre.
Regardless, I disagree with the general sentiment. Having played since 1E, Ravenloft in previous editions has consistently been a head-scratcher for me, bloated and full of clumsy cliches. I’ve always liked the general idea but the proliferation of domains lacked any real originality or spark.
In my opinion, this book does a much better job of creating distinct domains and is a massive improvement in thinking about genre and sub-genre.
When they attempted to make there own domains then yes I agree with you, or when they attempted to continue the story of a prior domain. However they didn’t do that for the majority of domains in this book. They took preexisting domains and then warped them, half the time for what seemed like a pc woke narrative. Lamordia’s darklord for instance was Adam, a creation of the “good” doctor and his punishment was to see this own realm reject him in favor of his creator who was too wrapped up in his own work to do anything with it. Now they swapped the docs gender, screwed with the docs “preferences”, made the doc the doc the darklords, and added the “I must get my greatest creation back” goal for the darklord. These would have been fine if they’d made their own new domain with it instead of holding a funhouse mirror up to the canon and saying “I think we’ll go with this, the players won’t mind”.
Got it for the bestiary and was not disappointed. Best monsters since MToF, and probably even better. For a real horror primer, get Monte Cook's "Stay Alive".
In terms of content, yes, the devs toned down a lot of the edginess of prior renditions (this is not exactly unexpected, and the main reason I'm more than a bit wary of a Planescape, never mind Dark Sun, update for 5E). In every other respect the book is absolutely great though. Absolutely great. The DMG is 5E's biggest disappointment so far for me, and VRGtR gets everything right the DMG got wrong. When, sometime down the line, WotC decides to go for a 6th edition or enough of an edition update to warrant new core books, please, put the same people in charge of the DMG that developed Van Richten's and point them towards this book every day. This is the kind of DM content I want.
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@pangurjan I totally agree about everything else in the book being great, but seeing that and then seeing the darklord and domain section is what upsets me the most. They had the creativity and talent to do this and they squandered it making some milquetoast watered down swill pandering to a demographic that nobody wants to deal with. They had all the history and foundation they could ever want when going into this, and they spit on it.
@pangurjan I totally agree about everything else in the book being great, but seeing that and then seeing the darklord and domain section is what upsets me the most. They had the creativity and talent to do this and they squandered it making some milquetoast watered down swill pandering to a demographic that nobody wants to deal with. They had all the history and foundation they could ever want when going into this, and they spit on it.
I get that you don't like it and have feelings about it. Having feelings about a thing are fine. This, though, is verging on making attacks against people because you're having strong feelings about something. Take a breather and maybe think about who you might be inadvertently attacking.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
pandering to a demographic that nobody wants to deal with.
I think that if that were true, D&D wouldn’t be booming the way it is - even if that boom is largely due to influencers, more than anything WotC has done.
That aside though, this is a bad argument to make. My personal thoughts and opinions don’t always gel with WotC’s newer policies regarding social issues and in some cases I feel that some people are seeing or making problems that aren’t there - but at the end of the day, I don’t get to decide what offends others and what doesn’t. It’s ok to have a different opinion of these matters - provided it’s a respectful and baseline informed opinion, at any rate - but that works both ways. Acknowledging opinions isn’t pandering.
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Please clarify who I actually attacked if you’re going to accuse me of attacking someone as the only people I’m hostile to over this is the developers. Granted I will acknowledge how my prior comment could be misconstrued, as the demographic my accusation was directed toward was the rabid Twitterati/me too groups running around the internet, not the groups the various dark lords have been warped into. My issue is primarily the fact that they made the changes to preestablished canon in what seems be an attempt to virtue signal or just couldn’t be bothered to actually look at the prior material and follow through on it (I’Cath, Har’Akir I’m looking at you).
Second, it’s a disservice to all involved when you pull revisionist on preestablished canon material for any reason, inclusivity or otherwise. Instead of coming up with original content for the characters you could make with that, they handed out reheated leftovers with random sauce thrown on it hoping you won’t notice it’s still leftovers. Kalakeri proved that original content was something they could do and do well, it’s one of the few domains I have absolutely no issue with at all, it’s original, well written, with an interesting darklord and her rivals all stuck playing musical chairs for the throne. Tepest, as cited earlier, is also a domain I had no issue with as it’s a continuation of a prior story that led to major changes to a domain occurring in what could be a believable manner. All changes have an in game explanation and chain of events, not just “Oh it’s like this now! Don’t question anything about any changes from prior works and editions!” Also I will admit I did like the Wickerman/Sommer vibe they got with that one.
I will again say everything else but the Darklords and domains I liked/loved and will state that the bestiary is one of my favorite parts of the book as a whole.
I will admit a good deal of my anger was because of all the prior domains, my favorite Lamordia was whacked the hardest with revision bat, and that is bleeding over into my comments, so apologies for that.
I will also state that those looking for a real Ravenloft experience would be better served reviewing older material and updating it when it comes to the domains and darklords. Anton Misroi , Boyar Gregor Zolnick, and Althea are big recommendations.
pandering to a demographic that nobody wants to deal with.
I think that if that were true, D&D wouldn’t be booming the way it is - even if that boom is largely due to influencers, more than anything WotC has done.
That aside though, this is a bad argument to make. My personal thoughts and opinions don’t always gel with WotC’s newer policies regarding social issues and in some cases I feel that some people are seeing or making problems that aren’t there - but at the end of the day, I don’t get to decide what offends others and what doesn’t. It’s ok to have a different opinion of these matters - provided it’s a respectful and baseline informed opinion, at any rate - but that works both ways. Acknowledging opinions isn’t pandering.
First, great observation that the boom is due to influencers rather than the work of WoTC itself. I think I recognized that on a base level, but never really took that thought all the way to completion. Second, I really like how you tackle the social issues argument.
Please clarify who I actually attacked if you’re going to accuse me of attacking someone as the only people I’m hostile to over this is the developers. Granted I will acknowledge how my prior comment could be misconstrued, as the demographic my accusation was directed toward was the rabid Twitterati/me too groups running around the internet, ...
This really doesn't sound like your comment was misconstrued. Or that you're not hostile towards said demographic.
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This should be obvious, but don't answer this poll unless you have bought and/or at least read most of the book.
Answer the poll above, rate it between 1 and 5 stars, and feel free to explain why you gave it that rating. Feel free to discuss the book, but if this thread gets too hostile and devolves too far, I will ask moderation to close down the thread.
I am yet to read most of the book, mostly skimming through the lore of the domains and paying most attention to the player options and monsters, so once I get to the point that I feel comfortable rating the book, I will answer the poll and explain below why I gave it that rating.
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Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
VRG is a very good book. It is not a perfect book, but given the constraints it was under I don't think it could have been. Many people seemed to be expecting entire chapters devoted to each of the 30+ Domains of Dread in the book, as well as additional entire chapters devoted to each Darklord. The most common complaint I've seen about the book is that each Domain was given only a few pages tops of information and each Darklord was given a bit less, alongside no Darklord being given their own official stat block. People complain that this is too little, and the lack of Darklord statblocks is especially punishing.
I believe quite differently. The book spends a great deal of page count detailing how to create your own Domain, your own Darklord, and most of the 'Official' Domains in this book were clearly created using the method/tools outlined in the book. Unlike the Monster Manual, wherein all the monsters built therein have absolutely nothing to do with the Monster Workshop method outlined in the DMG, this book tells you how to build a Domain/Darklord combination and then shows you several examples of doing just that, outlining specifically how each Domain adheres to the tenets given in Chapter 2. People are treating this like an Adventure Module and feeling ripped off because they can't run an adventure straight out of the book (except for the adventure that's in the book, which - full disclosure - I did not bother reading), when they should be treating it as an extended DM's treatise on how to create a proper horror game, or introduce horror elements into an existing game. In that guise, and with that objective, VRG is one of the most solidly constructed 5e books I've seen from Wizards to date.
It is not perfect. The editing sucks, not gonna lie. This could've used another pass or two through the cleaner. The art is oddly scattered, and not all the Domains strike me as really horrifying. The Mist Wanderers are all kinda flat, and the 'Other Domains of Dread' do come off as page filler to meet the "35+ Unique Domains of Dread!" marketing bar. Some of them are cool seeds, but they're so short that they no longer follow the precedent of holding up to the book's own tools.
But the character options are cool. The Dark Gifts thing offers a lot of useful ideas and examples for double-edged power-with-a-price options to inflict on your PCs. The Bestiary is ******* phenomenal, and the 'Horror Monsters' primer offers the first hint Wizards of the Coast has ever shown of how to make mundane monsters into truly threatening entities. Even if TMKWTD did it first by several years, as well as doing it better. The idea of "Survivors" and the Survivor stat blocks is a super neat tool DMs can use to switch the viewpoint of their stories and offer players a unique experience that doesn't happen often in media in general, let alone D&D. The rest of Chapter 4 is...spotty, but its heart is in the right place and it does offer a few useful mechanisms for pulling off a horror game.
Overall? Well done. This is a book doing its best to teach a man to fish. Or at least teach a DM how to run a horror game worthy of the name. Things like Curse of Strahd or Avernus give a man a fish, and that seems to be all other people want, but me? I much prefer being taught how to do it my own ass self. So this book gets high marks from me.
Let's hope it doesn't suffer Tasha's Cauldron Syndrome and degrade in opinion the more time I have to think about it.
Please do not contact or message me.
I rated a solid ”4”out of 5.
The character options are stellar...subclasses, Dark Gifts, backgrounds, the lineages...if you want the tools to build a gothic character, you’ve got plenty to work with.
The various Domains of Dread are mostly exceptional...coupled with the suggestions on how to build your own storylines / Dark Lords, there’s enough inspiration here for creating your own campaigns that you should never run low on ideas.
I would, however, encourage reviewing these Domains thoroughly...some of them can get quite...macabre. Grotesque. In other words...scary.
Looking at you, Lamordia...you can take an arm or a leg, or whatever...just don’t give it to someone else, or attach it to a unicycle, or something. Jeez.
I like some, but not all, of the Mist Walkers...Ez stands out as one of the more interesting ones. Fans will recognize her from Curse of Strahd.
On that note, the Vistani are as interesting as ever...I really dug their concept before; they’re given a bit more context / expansion in this book.
They even give player characters a chance to join the Vistani.
In all, there’s a TON of content here...and most of it is excellent. Well worth the notice.
4/5 for me.
CONS:
Player options are meh....Warlock is the better of the two options. I think damage immunity should not be a PC feature (especially at level 10) but they seem to be fine with it now. Spiritual Projection costs your concentration so highly limits what you can actually do in the form.
Backgrounds are mostly rehashes...not very interesting overall.
Lack of spells hurts...not sure why they are so stingy with spells as of late.
Dark Gifts are pretty good...some very interesting. Some are not. Second Skin for example is just mostly fluff and does not offer a ton of value as a "gift".
Overall player options are like a 2/5.
PROS:
Domains have enough information to get rolling and have maps/etc...pretty much all a DM needs to get started in the Domain
Bestiary is amazing...one of the best in any book so far.
Actually uses the guidelines it suggests and provides examples. How has it taken this long for this to happen? No books up to this point have done this as well as this book did. DMG is especially terrible at this.
DM stuff: 6/5
So overall I give a 4/5.
Let me start by saying I love this book, having been running Ravenloft games for three years now, I’ve poured countless hours into the Domains of Dread already - so this book made me extremely happy. There were a few lore tidbits I wish they would not have changed, but things I can for the most part get over. Each domain is terrifying and every Darklord is intriguing, especially Valachan’s Darklord, Chakuna and Dementlieu’s Duchess Saidra. The choices they made for Strahd are the only ones I’m not crazy about, having poured hours of reading into the AD&D Strahd and his novels, but I’m slowly accepting them.
Overall, this book gets a 4.5 out of 5.
I like that D&D's version of Sherlock Holmes is married to his Dr Watson.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I must disagree, 1/5 and that’s being generous. I say this as a long time player who’s enjoyed playing Ravenloft since 3rd edition and delved into 2e. I hate to say this as well as the vast majority of the book I liked. Then I read the domains and the Darklords section and was livid. They ignored 30+ years of canon history and lore and warped many of these domains and Darklords to either try and make it “child friendly” or twisting them to fit a “PC” narrative, I could not tell. Example: Falkovnia was ruled by Vlad Drakov, not Vladeska Drakov so they already gender-swapped a character with decades of lore establishing them. He was a ruthless mercenary that craved respect which caused him to commit atrocities that got him sent to the Mists. When he took over the realm, he made it a mage hating, xenophobic to nonhumans, military society. All natural born citizens of the realm had his sigil, an eagle, branded on their forehead during childhood. He wouldn’t have cared too bits about a zombie that had the “face of an innocent” he killed. This is just one domain and Darklord they screwed over and may as well have spit on Ravenloft (I’m looking at you Lamordia).
What upsets me most however is that I can tell (at least at some points) that the creative team had the talent and means to make something great as the domains they actually created from scratch were good, the same with domains that were a natural progression from prior domains (Tepest for ex) and continued the story instead of warping it or changing it without explanation (Dementlieu).
For starters, I like physical books and have been a completionist., buying most stuff both on paper and Beyond. But starting with Candlekeep I've decided to only buy rulebooks like Tasha and Xanathars on both formats, other books only in digital format. The reason is that Candlekeep and Van Richten are a bit uninspiring in my opinion. The production values are good as always, but they just don't get my creative juices flowing.
Shure, if you want to play horror in D&D I guess VR is ok:ish, but I prefer other systems for that. So I basically bought the digital book to give my players a few more options.
With that said, I'm happy that Wizards cater to different tastes. But I still cross my fingers for Spelljammer and Planescape in a near future, those I would buy on all formats in a heartbeat :-)
So, 2/5 from me.
As somebody who has been running and/or playing Ravenloftian campaigns for 25+ years, I can sympathize a bit with your feelings. I've also been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to speak and interact with some of the 2e/3e Ravenloft writers, which makes reading some of the changes to Darklords and their domains even harder. However, despite some of these feelings, I would mirror most of the compliments (and criticisms) that the others previously voiced. The majority of the book is well written (overlooking some of the editing issues), and I love how evocative it is with drawing people to the horror genre setting. I would probably give the book a 4/5 rating myself.
At the end of the day, I feel that this book fits a fairly niche area, which varies even further by whatever role the particular reader fills.
TL/DR: I would say that Van Richten's Guide is well worth having for any DM wanting to run a more horror-based campaign, and it might even be beneficial for players wanting to be in a horror-based campaign (albeit more DM helpful than player helpful). However, some of the changes included in Van Richten's Guide will probably not be appreciated by a DM/player with 2e/3e Ravenloft experience.
Again, I can sympathize with your sentiments on the Darklord/domain changes that were made in Van Richten's Guide. I am not going to debate whatever reasons and rationales were behind these changes, but I personally was disappointed that the writers went in the directions that they did for some of these changes. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed some of the new concepts that they created. Using Dementleiu as an example, I rather enjoyed reading the concept of Duchess Saidra d’Honaire and how her domain meshed with her background and torment. However, I didn't see the need for removing the previous (2e/3e) Darklord, Dominic D'Honaire.
Personally speaking, I would have preferred that they made an entirely new domain for Saidra d’Honaire to be the Darklord. If there was a reason for not wanting to include Dominic D'Honaire, then Dominic and Dementleiu could have been left out entirely instead of changing almost everything about the domain except for the name. For those who are new to Ravenloft, these changes make little to no difference, but it potentially changes a lot for those who have a history with the setting.
Yes, somebody can always ignore these changes and/or switch around names as they see fit...but I cannot deny that some of it feels like somebody is using their Sharpie to draw on somebody else's picture/portrait.
That’s just it though, as stated I enjoyed everything else in the book, but I cannot forgive the Darklords section for its blatantly revisionist work on the domains and darklords which, to me, seem to be trying to fit it into a PC narrative when Ravenloft is about the furthest thing from that (Darksun being it’s only contender in that regard). If they had wanted these changes there would have been better ways to incorporate them such as Saidra d’Honaire engineering Dominic’s downfall then claiming heritage. They’d have had all the trappings for her (pretending to be what you’re not) and have fit it into canon history without feeling like some Twitterati no lifer was writing it. Again Tepest proves they had the wherewithal to do this. I’d honestly even be willing to give them a Mulligan if they’d learn from this and do it right. As it stands now though, giving them any positivity to what they did to the Core seems like encouragement to keep doing it, and that I can’t abide. Wizards please stop pandering to these people, this is what screwed up our future Dragonlance novels, don’t t let it mess up Ravenloft too!!!
P.S. Sorry for the rant but this is a subject (D&D) I’m passionate about and a subject I loathe (Revising something with already established canon to fit someone’s “sensitivities”) crashing into each other head on at 100+ mph (160+kph for everyone else).
This, quite literally, makes no sense.
When they attempted to make there own domains then yes I agree with you, or when they attempted to continue the story of a prior domain. However they didn’t do that for the majority of domains in this book. They took preexisting domains and then warped them, half the time for what seemed like a pc woke narrative. Lamordia’s darklord for instance was Adam, a creation of the “good” doctor and his punishment was to see this own realm reject him in favor of his creator who was too wrapped up in his own work to do anything with it. Now they swapped the docs gender, screwed with the docs “preferences”, made the doc the doc the darklords, and added the “I must get my greatest creation back” goal for the darklord. These would have been fine if they’d made their own new domain with it instead of holding a funhouse mirror up to the canon and saying “I think we’ll go with this, the players won’t mind”.
Got it for the bestiary and was not disappointed. Best monsters since MToF, and probably even better. For a real horror primer, get Monte Cook's "Stay Alive".
4/5
In terms of content, yes, the devs toned down a lot of the edginess of prior renditions (this is not exactly unexpected, and the main reason I'm more than a bit wary of a Planescape, never mind Dark Sun, update for 5E). In every other respect the book is absolutely great though. Absolutely great. The DMG is 5E's biggest disappointment so far for me, and VRGtR gets everything right the DMG got wrong. When, sometime down the line, WotC decides to go for a 6th edition or enough of an edition update to warrant new core books, please, put the same people in charge of the DMG that developed Van Richten's and point them towards this book every day. This is the kind of DM content I want.
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@pangurjan I totally agree about everything else in the book being great, but seeing that and then seeing the darklord and domain section is what upsets me the most. They had the creativity and talent to do this and they squandered it making some milquetoast watered down swill pandering to a demographic that nobody wants to deal with. They had all the history and foundation they could ever want when going into this, and they spit on it.
I get that you don't like it and have feelings about it. Having feelings about a thing are fine. This, though, is verging on making attacks against people because you're having strong feelings about something. Take a breather and maybe think about who you might be inadvertently attacking.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I think that if that were true, D&D wouldn’t be booming the way it is - even if that boom is largely due to influencers, more than anything WotC has done.
That aside though, this is a bad argument to make. My personal thoughts and opinions don’t always gel with WotC’s newer policies regarding social issues and in some cases I feel that some people are seeing or making problems that aren’t there - but at the end of the day, I don’t get to decide what offends others and what doesn’t. It’s ok to have a different opinion of these matters - provided it’s a respectful and baseline informed opinion, at any rate - but that works both ways. Acknowledging opinions isn’t pandering.
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Please clarify who I actually attacked if you’re going to accuse me of attacking someone as the only people I’m hostile to over this is the developers. Granted I will acknowledge how my prior comment could be misconstrued, as the demographic my accusation was directed toward was the rabid Twitterati/me too groups running around the internet, not the groups the various dark lords have been warped into. My issue is primarily the fact that they made the changes to preestablished canon in what seems be an attempt to virtue signal or just couldn’t be bothered to actually look at the prior material and follow through on it (I’Cath, Har’Akir I’m looking at you).
Second, it’s a disservice to all involved when you pull revisionist on preestablished canon material for any reason, inclusivity or otherwise. Instead of coming up with original content for the characters you could make with that, they handed out reheated leftovers with random sauce thrown on it hoping you won’t notice it’s still leftovers. Kalakeri proved that original content was something they could do and do well, it’s one of the few domains I have absolutely no issue with at all, it’s original, well written, with an interesting darklord and her rivals all stuck playing musical chairs for the throne. Tepest, as cited earlier, is also a domain I had no issue with as it’s a continuation of a prior story that led to major changes to a domain occurring in what could be a believable manner. All changes have an in game explanation and chain of events, not just “Oh it’s like this now! Don’t question anything about any changes from prior works and editions!” Also I will admit I did like the Wickerman/Sommer vibe they got with that one.
I will again say everything else but the Darklords and domains I liked/loved and will state that the bestiary is one of my favorite parts of the book as a whole.
I will admit a good deal of my anger was because of all the prior domains, my favorite Lamordia was whacked the hardest with revision bat, and that is bleeding over into my comments, so apologies for that.
I will also state that those looking for a real Ravenloft experience would be better served reviewing older material and updating it when it comes to the domains and darklords. Anton Misroi , Boyar Gregor Zolnick, and Althea are big recommendations.
First, great observation that the boom is due to influencers rather than the work of WoTC itself. I think I recognized that on a base level, but never really took that thought all the way to completion. Second, I really like how you tackle the social issues argument.
This really doesn't sound like your comment was misconstrued. Or that you're not hostile towards said demographic.
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