Van Richten's guide to Ravenloft was, in my personal opinion, one of the best and most creative books WotC has released. It provided a lot of good tools for running horror in DnD, something that's always been difficult but was made a much easier and more streamlined process by the book. For me, it provided tooooons of inspiration for creating monsters and horror one-shots and scenes. So what's one of the coolest or most creative things you've done with this book?

Some examples:

A homebrew monster

A domain of dread

A one-shot or a campaign you ran

A favorite genre or idea you had

feel free to share some inspiration and thought. I'd love to hear it

I was setting up a 5e adapted Spelljammer campaign once, and one of the worlds was Ravenloft, with a bunch of domains of dread. I built a one to two session story for a few different domains. The party got through the one where the Dark Lord was the carionette (I can’t remember what domain that is). It was a cool story about the toys killing all the adults or turning them into toys, and forcing all the kids to play with them and stuff. It really freaked out my party, even though they skipped a lot of what I had planned lol. After that they made their way to the domain where the Dark Lord is the woman with the son and the mansion (can’t remember the name of that one either). They were enjoying what I did with that one as well, but then the campaign fell apart. 

There was one quest I created for my campaign where a nightmare monster trapped the players in a nightmare reality where they faced their worst fears. I had a lot of fun with the dreamlike unreal descriptions and drawing on the players’ backstories to create the fears.

 Another idea, that I haven’t fleshed out or played is a domain where the lord was a grand con artist. His domain is filled with a whole bunch of gullible people, which makes him incredibly bored because they are such easy marks. When the players show up, he is so excited by the challenge that he concocts an extremely complicated scheme to take them down. This idea was inspired by my players swindling every NPC they came across. The main reason I haven’t run this is that it will be difficult to scheme like an evil mastermind!

I am currently running a campaign with 6 players and one day three of the party were going to be late to the session. I had the idea to continue playing the game with the three players who could make it, but instead of having them play other's characters when they woke up from their long rest something was off, and my idea in my head was a night hag made a nightmare for the party to appear. They fought a giant who was too tough for them but they actually outwitted me and ran away as it destroyed the bridge it stood on, then they found a body and it was one of the characters who was missing (they were shocked to see that one of their companions was dead on the ground, a person who was not aware of this nor was there as a player). They eventually set free the hag unbeknownst to them, and ended up in a room where about a dozen hooded cultists were present chanting and there was a crucifix (a little backstory, one of the players made a cleric of "Jesus", so I thought to mess with him I was going to crucify his character), so the cleric is on the cross and the party freak out and rush to help him, all the cultists dissipate to their attacks because they are illusions, and they grab the one whos nailing the cleric. It turns out to be the cleric's real life wife who was the third missing character. At this point the party is even more confused and the wife's character resumes what she was doing, so they wanted to shake her and make her stop, but this time as she turns its the hag who just shouts WAKE UP!" and by now the three people who were missing from the session come in and the rest are just confused, in shock and scared, because to finish it off I played a sound effect of a hag laughing, which meant the nightmare was partially real as they released her from her prison. She's yet to come back to haunt them, but that's my story, was super fun. Thought I would share. 

Quote from sirauilos >>

I am currently running a campaign with 6 players and one day three of the party were going to be late to the session. I had the idea to continue playing the game with the three players who could make it, but instead of having them play other's characters when they woke up from their long rest something was off, and my idea in my head was a night hag made a nightmare for the party to appear. They fought a giant who was too tough for them but they actually outwitted me and ran away as it destroyed the bridge it stood on, then they found a body and it was one of the characters who was missing (they were shocked to see that one of their companions was dead on the ground, a person who was not aware of this nor was there as a player). They eventually set free the hag unbeknownst to them, and ended up in a room where about a dozen hooded cultists were present chanting and there was a crucifix (a little backstory, one of the players made a cleric of "Jesus", so I thought to mess with him I was going to crucify his character), so the cleric is on the cross and the party freak out and rush to help him, all the cultists dissipate to their attacks because they are illusions, and they grab the one whos nailing the cleric. It turns out to be the cleric's real life wife who was the third missing character. At this point the party is even more confused and the wife's character resumes what she was doing, so they wanted to shake her and make her stop, but this time as she turns its the hag who just shouts WAKE UP!" and by now the three people who were missing from the session come in and the rest are just confused, in shock and scared, because to finish it off I played a sound effect of a hag laughing, which meant the nightmare was partially real as they released her from her prison. She's yet to come back to haunt them, but that's my story, was super fun. Thought I would share. 

 Pretty sick. You can do some messed up stuff with dreams. That's one of my favorite ways to mess with a party.