WotC Shattered Ravenloft's Core, everything is Islands now.

[Gyor]

From Dragon+ Magaize "Much like Thanos’ quest to complete his jewelry collection in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft may have been “inevitable”, as Design Lead F. Wesley Schneider describes his colleagues as “a team full of horror fans who absolutely love Ravenloft.” Following the successes of Curse of Strahd (blending gothic horror and D&D), Eberron: Rising from the Last War (steampunk plus D&D), and Mythic Odysseys of Theros (Greek myth meets D&D), bundling together every possible flavor of horror with the world’s greatest roleplaying game should scratch a similar itch.

“Dungeons & Dragons has always been a horror game,” Wes suggests. “Grabbing a sword, going into a creepy hole full of monsters, and not knowing whether you’re going to come back out alive: That’s absolutely a horror story.”


When it comes to horror, there’s no better D&D setting than Ravenloft. DMs and players might be most familiar with the setting’s most famous corner, the domain of Barovia, having campaigned against the infamous vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich. Yet the horrors that lurk in the Domains of Dread that make up Ravenloft are widespread. As outlined in the early boxed sets (Ravenloft: Realm of Terror and Ravenloft) and the second edition campaign setting Ravenloft: Domains of Dread (first published in August 1997), Ravenloft is not a world in the traditional sense. This setting was described as a collection of domains ruled by Darklords, each surrounded by magical mists amid the vapors of the Ethereal Plane.

As its title suggests, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft looks beyond Strahd to catalogue the threats posed by the other domains and their Darklords. While you might expect it to be written in the voice of famed monster hunter Dr. Rudolph van Richten, similar to how Volo and the Xanathar would pipe up in their guides, the book borrows from the pages of Dracula to introduce Ravenloft’s terrors with correspondence between several different characters.

“Van Richten traces his roots back to Van Helsing from Dracula—a story comprised entirely of correspondence and journal entries,” Wes explains. “Now that our view of Ravenloft is expanding, we share a glimpse of some of van Richten’s own exchanges with other heroes as he encourages them—and also all the players out there—to venture out boldly and confront the night.”

HORROR HANDBOOK
Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft cracks open more than just the gothic horror crypt. Gothic horror is, of course, still a major element of Ravenloft, but cosmic horror, dark fantasy, ghost stories, occult detective stories, psychological horror, and more are now on the table. If you love any sort of horror, there’s a Domain of Dread for you.

“Finding the horror that’s right for you is a major element of the book. Your horror stories might feature cartoonish investigators hunting down mysterious monsters, or they might be more serious, suspenseful nightmares. The book discusses how to get your entire group involved in establishing guidelines and using safety tools to make sure everyone’s comfortable and enjoys the game. We provide frameworks to help make sure your horror adventures are fun, accessible, and safe, while also supporting players who voice concerns if things take an uncomfortable turn.”

THE DOMAINS OF DREAD
“This incarnation of Ravenloft reimagines a great deal of what came before. Past explorations of the setting directly linked many of the domains of Ravenloft into a pseudo-continent called the ‘Core’. We’ve taken the Core, the heart of the Ravenloft setting, and shattered it. In this new interpretation, every domain is a lonely island drifting through the mists.

“Many of the domains get a modern-day brush up. We took the setting’s characters, locations, monsters, and other pieces, shook them up, and took some new directions. For example, in the ’90s, the domain of Falkovnia was a totalitarian regime ruled by a Darklord named Vlad Drakov, who had a Vlad the Impaler vibe. Well, we already have a Vlad-type figure in residence at Castle Ravenloft in Barovia, so we saw this as the perfect opportunity to give the domain a stronger identity and embrace a different brand of horror. In its new form, Falkovnia is ruled by a Darklord named Vladeska Drakov, a notorious military commander who’s struggling to defend its last surviving city against a domain-wide zombie apocalypse.”

BUILD YOUR OWN DARK DOMAIN
“Well over a dozen domains get the spotlight in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, but with a whole chapter on making your own domains and Darklords, the book gives you the tools to unleash an infinite number of nightmare realms upon your game.

“In that chapter, we discuss the fundamentals of what makes a Ravenloft domain and how to create your own Darklord. Once you have those concepts, we explore a spectrum of horror genres to help inspire your own unique creations. Want a villain with a body horror vibe in a cosmic horror setting where you can run occult detective stories? We give you the tools to build that terrifying story. Only once we’ve explained how to do all of that do we present domain after domain, by way of example.”


(Select to view)
HERE BE MONSTERS
“The bestiary for Ravenloft is a Who’s Who of horror. It includes our favorite nightmares from Ravenloft’s past, as well as beings from folklore and urban legends. For example, longtime D&D fans might recognize monsters such as the carrionette and the gremishka from the second edition Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums.

“Carrionettes are creepy marionettes that jab you with silver needles and swap consciousness with you, taking over your body and stranding you in a doll body! While gremishka are creepy gremlin-things that are allergic to magic. If you cast a spell on them, they might have an adverse reaction that includes potentially exploding into a swarm.

Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft also includes a number of new takes on various D&D monsters and horror staples, including a variety of new zombies and vampiric mind flayers.”


(Select to view)
PLAYABLE MONSTERS
“Eberron: Rising from the Last War pulled a sideways horror move by including a construct person, a lycanthrope, and even a changeling, giving its race section a horror undercurrent,” Wes says, as he confirms that the Gothic Lineages published in Unearthed Arcana will appear in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.

“The fear of corruption, the fear of infection, the fear of change, those all play fascinating parts in many horror stories. Van Richten’s Guide presents three new types of races called ‘lineages’ that play into those fears.

“The dhampir lineage has traits inspired by vampires, with a bite attack and the ability to feed off the living; the hexblood is tied up with fey magic and might be at risk of transforming into a hag down the road; while the reborn has died at some point and might take the form of a pseudo-undead creature or a Frankenstein’s monster-style construct.

“One thing that makes these lineages different from other races is that you can gain them in the course of adventures. DMs aren’t meant to impose these changes on players, but if an adventure develops in a way that such a change makes sense, it’s a new—potentially terrifying—option the group might explore!”


(Select to view)
DARK GIFTS
“In Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, we present Dark Gifts. If you’re familiar with the ‘Piety’ system in Mythic Odysseys of Theros, you’ll be aware of its supernatural gifts. These are blessings from deities which provide a kind of mythologically themed superpower. Van Richten’s Guide takes a twist on that concept, allowing characters to start out with a Dark Gift or gain one in the course of play.

“A Dark Gift is a horror-themed ability that offers a character a lot of upside. But, of course, there’s a catch. Every Dark Gift provides a real benefit, but also a chance for something to take a sinister turn you didn’t expect.

“For example, one Dark Gift provides you with memories from your past life, whispers of information you really shouldn’t know. Sometimes these can be great—maybe you’ve never played the piano before but somehow when you sit down at the keyboard you can now play. By the same token, under certain circumstances, you might start having visions from past lives that distract you from what you’re doing.

“Many Dark Gifts also provide grim roleplaying opportunities and ways to customize your character. You could certainly take those memories I just mentioned and say they come from a past life. Or you could interpret them in a spectrum of different ways. Is there some mysterious intelligence that’s been merged with your own? Or is an alien entity communicating with you, sneaking memories into your head? It’s your choice. Each Dark Gift is the first line of a horror story. It’s up to you to decide the full tale of terror you want to tell.”

Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is released May 18, 2021 with an MSRP of $49.95. Preorder a physical copy at your local game store, bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, or online at retailers such as Amazon. Also available as a digital version at D&D Beyond, Fantasy Grounds, and Roll20."

They shattered the Core of Ravenloft, I can believe it, even the Spellplague didn't do that much damage to its repective setting, same with that Saga thing that happened to Dragonlance. Does WotC ever learn from its mistakes? Don't blow up/shatter/spellplague your settings.

The interactions between Domains were a huge part of what made Ravenloft an actual setting.

I'm still getting the book, but the arrogance of this worries me for future setting books.

Seriously WotC say it after me "I will not nuke beloved settings".

[MaxWilson]

From Dragon+ Magaize "Much like Thanos’ quest to complete his jewelry collection in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft may have been “inevitable”, as Design Lead F. Wesley Schneider describes his colleagues as “a team full of horror fans who absolutely love Ravenloft.” Following the successes of Curse of Strahd (blending gothic horror and D&D), Eberron: Rising from the Last War (steampunk plus D&D), and Mythic Odysseys of Theros (Greek myth meets D&D), bundling together every possible flavor of horror with the world’s greatest roleplaying game should scratch a similar itch.

“Dungeons & Dragons has always been a horror game,” Wes suggests. “Grabbing a sword, going into a creepy hole full of monsters, and not knowing whether you’re going to come back out alive: That’s absolutely a horror story.”

D&D has never been a horror game, because going into a hole full of monsters with the expectation of engaging them in combat (and gradually increasing your power to slay monsters more effectively) may be dangerous but isn't the least bit creepy.

"Never" may seem like an overstatement but I have never seen it done well, and frankly am skeptical that it can be done well on a D&D chassis, which has inherent positive feedback loops as opposed negative feedback loops like "lose 1d6 points of SAN each time you meet a new monster type until you go permanently mad" or "the flesh withers off your right arm, which becomes forever useless going forward".

RE: <<“Carrionettes are creepy marionettes that jab you with silver needles and swap consciousness with you, taking over your body and stranding you in a doll body! While gremishka are creepy gremlin-things that are allergic to magic. If you cast a spell on them, they might have an adverse reaction that includes potentially exploding into a swarm.>>

Color me very skeptical that Carrionettes are going to creep anybody out in actual play or leave them stranded in a doll's body for longer than a long rest.

[NRSASD]

Color me... concerned. There's a lot of good stuff from what it describes, but there's a lot of things that... concern me. Horror is, by definition, uncompromising. Making it accessible to everyone is not a good idea because it thrives or dies on its theme.

[Unoriginal]

They shattered the Core of Ravenloft, I can believe it, even the Spellplague didn't do that much damage to its repective setting, same with that Saga thing that happened to Dragonlance. Does WotC ever learn from its mistakes? Don't blow up/shatter/spellplague your settings.

The interactions between Domains were a huge part of what made Ravenloft an actual setting.

I'm still getting the book, but the arrogance of this worries me for future setting books.

Seriously WotC say it after me "I will not nuke beloved settings".

I don't see how it damages anything, or how it's arrogance. They just separated the Domains a bit more, it's not like leaving one of them for another was a trivial task before, yes?


D&D has never been a horror game, because going into a hole full of monsters with the expectation of engaging them in combat (and gradually increasing your power to slay monsters more effectively) may be dangerous but isn't the least bit creepy.

"Never" may seem like an overstatement but I have never seen it done well, and frankly am skeptical that it can be done well on a D&D chassis, which has inherent positive feedback loops

D&D has never been an horror game, true, but horror has always been part of D&D's DNA, in the same way that epic adventure and silliness have been.

Horror isn't about helplessness. "Dracula" has the titular character and his minions on the run from the protagonists for a good share of the book, for example.

D&D has people getting their brains replaced by vat-grown abominations or their souls by the one of an old spellcaster, ancient evils influencing the world around you in subtle ways, pursuers who will not rest until they've caught their targets, well-meaning people having their lives destroyed when they accept the wrong bargain, snatchers of all kinds ready to drag you below the ground or the waves to condemn you to slavery... the list goes on. All of those things are horror elements, and that doesn't disappear just because you can beat the monsters with a baseball bat.



RE: <<“Carrionettes are creepy marionettes that jab you with silver needles and swap consciousness with you, taking over your body and stranding you in a doll body! While gremishka are creepy gremlin-things that are allergic to magic. If you cast a spell on them, they might have an adverse reaction that includes potentially exploding into a swarm.>>

Color me very skeptical that Carrionettes are going to creep anybody out in actual play or leave them stranded in a doll's body for longer than a long rest.

Dunno, they might go the Intellect Devourer way.

[RifleAvenger]

I'm still excited by this, and much like Eberron I've got the 3e books to fall back on for absent setting info or to undo alterations I don't like.

There's a new Indian folklore based domain, written by an Indian author (Ajit George), which is inhabited by multiple competing darklords. Definitely something I'm interested in. Wizards is indicating they're trying to rework the Vistani too, since Curse of Strahd's depiction was... not good. I'm believe it when I see it, but I hope it goes over all.

Overall, the credits line of the book looks strong so far.

I'm curious how much of the book's run will go over Barovia again, or at all, given Curse of Strahd already exists.

So much as actually scaring players can be really hard to do in D&D, there's still an aesthetic or mood that horror trappings can add to a game. Resource deprivation can also be a potential source of dread, but that needs to be handled really carefully by the GM.

Overall, I am very, very pleased that this didn't turn out to be Curse of Strahd - Director's Cut like some people had been hypothesizing.

[Leliel]

Color me... concerned. There's a lot of good stuff from what it describes, but there's a lot of things that... concern me. Horror is, by definition, uncompromising. Making it accessible to everyone is not a good idea because it thrives or dies on its theme.

I'm not, given how it's literally part of the "DM guidelines."

Seriously. This sounds like "oh, we're going to have a guide to trigger warnings so that the players aren't accidentally traumatized." "Accessibility" generally means things like "okay, maybe the black dude shouldn't die first when there's a black dude playing the game" in things like horror. It opens new possibilities like Us or Midsommar.

And for my opinion on nuking the Core:

Good. Frankly, it was impossible to manage real isolation when the way out of the country was right there. Sealing the borders helped, but it ruined immersion of keeping the darklords a secret when they were throwing up barriers left and right when pissed at players. This makes Ravenloft a much weirder, creepier place, and people often may not notice if the Mists suddenly grow very thick and impassable in isolation. I do hope clusters are still around for more complex domains, but "every cell is isolated" is way more thematic for the Demiplane being a prison.

(Also: Yeah, sure, carrionettes are not terrifying, they're only planning to steal your character sheet and leave you in a wooden body while they rampage. There's nothing scary about being Tiny, and waking up to the faces of angry villagers who the carrionette murdered the dogs of and left you holding the knife. Tabletop horror is psychological by necessity, and being possessed is more than scary enough, with the right DM.)

[Tanarii]

D&D has never done horror well, and Ravenloft has suffered for it.

It does do "scared my character is about to die" okay in some editions, but that's not horror by itself, and 5e isn't one of those editions.

[LumenPlacidum]

Ravenloft is about Gothic Horror, which is a particular subgenre.

My understanding of Gothic Horror is that it features themes of tragic loss. The scare isn't supposed to come from the wolves jumping through the window. It's not supposed to be the fear of deadly danger. It's supposed to be the idea that the enemies are... relatable, but twisted.

The romantic vampire who misses the feelings of sun on the skin and the passion of love is a classic example. They seek out places that mimic the glory of sunlight, with lofty castles in high places. They seek an imitation of the passion of love through their predation. But, everything turns to ashes to them and their nature denies their desires.

The werewolf is a classic example. An everyday person who lives among a population, but preys upon it. I think the classic example is a werewolf who tragically doesn't know of their own curse, and it's their own dawning realization that they're beyond hope that provides the relatable horror to the story.

The flesh golem is a classic example. It is a mockery either of resurrection or of the creation of new life, and it is neither. Someone worked very hard to learn the skills to create one, but the typical story is of them trying to accomplish something beyond their station. Then, when "control" over their creation is lost, it's a tragedy of decision: you brought this thing into the world, and now it is its own being. Can you just destroy it? Does its existence have meaning on its own? Is the tragic choice of its continued existence worth having overstepped the bounds of what mere mortals should be capable of?

These themes are very difficult to bring to a D&D table. The horror of them comes from a certain level of introspection that most players simply don't engage in.

The Clone spell is a great example. Players are quite happy to let the spell act as backup lives, but they don't necessarily identify the deep existential horror that should probably be invoked in any reasonably intelligent user of it. Is the Clone... actually you? Or, did you just die somewhere, and now you've created a thing that has all of your abilities and your appearance, and now you're siccing it on your friends and family?

I think introducing some Gothic Horror elements could really spice up roleplay at a table, and it might be as simple as having something that a player does twist into something horrible, despite noble intentions. Or, it might be as simple as identifying something that the players already do, and having an NPC prompt them to really think about it by just raising a question at the right time.

The players cast Revivify on the rogue after he goes down from massive damage from the swarming giant scorpions. The cleric steps back from his handiwork and sees a strange, leering grin from the rogue before he shifts expressions back to the usually-stony-faced companion that he knows. Ever since, though, there has been an offputting light in the rogue's eyes as he watches the party's sorcerer, with whom he's been flirting for ages.

The paladin regularly donates half of his treasure to his dream of creating an orphanage. But, when the party is off at an adventure, someone is seen in the shadows and the orphanage is burned down with all the doors having been nailed shut. The party looks, but finds few clues. The paladin begins to frequent a tavern, where he takes great efforts to help educate the kids of the family that owns it. On the eve of the barman's son becoming the paladin's squire, the tavern burns down. An armored figure was seen nearby holding a hammer. The doors were nailed shut. The paladin's player starts getting angry at the DM, and the DM calmly says that there are ways to figure out what happened. The players sit back down again, and the paladin starts becoming obsessed with who this figure is. The party goes out to a seer who reveals prophecies by painting them. The seer takes one look at the paladin and nearly goes into hysterics with anxiety. The party calms the seer down and asks about the events. The seer goes into a trance and starts painting. When the seer is done, a scene has been painted of each event, and in each, the paladin himself is visible in the shadows, holding a hammer in one hand, and a small ball of flame in the other, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. His eyes are looking out of the painting, knowing that you're looking at him depicted there.

The loss and the question Am I the one doing this?! feels very much like an essential sort of Gothic Horror theme to me.

Ravenloft is supposed to be filled with these sorts of characters and stories. Will the book provide a nice backdrop for them?

*shrug*

If not, then we will mourn the tragic loss of something that we once held dear, having been the ones who killed it in the end.

And Gothic Horror will live on...

[Leliel]

D&D has never done horror well, and Ravenloft has suffered for it.

It does do "scared my character is about to die" okay in some editions, but that's not horror by itself, and 5e isn't one of those editions.

Honestly, I feel the...exact opposite, because a 5e character can survive a lot.

That means the DM can get sadistic, and not worry about having to rein it too far back - the character will live.

Really, no tabletop game does horror well by itself. It can rack up tension with the right system, but real tabletop scares require dread - total disempowerment does nothing but frustrate the players, which gets them out of the mood. That's a DM skill, not something that can be easily done in a rulebook by itself. Nope, not even Call of Cthulhu. That SAN roll does nothing if the player is yawning.

I very much hope powers checks are in there in some way. Dark Gifts are a plenty good "horror abilities" from the sounds of it, but a corruption mechanic that entices you to risk more for more power? I like that idea.

[MrStabby]

My concern is that for good horror the DM and the other players need to be on the same page. A setting needs to be right for horror but also the characters need to be right as well. Guides on how to create good horror protagonists and alternative rules for character creation/progression to support a horror genre might be needed.

Horror is being on the run, on the defensive. Horror is desperately trying to avoid encounters rather than blast through them. Not all classes have the same amount to contribute to this style of play.

I am also worried that horror is different things to different people. It could be very easy to create a terrifying world for some players that isnt at all even mildly creepy for others.

That said, I am very excited at the prospect of seeing some well done horror drawing on different themes and cultures. Hopefully something a little more in depth, atmospheric and creepy than just throwing some rakshasa at a setting.

[Ashe]

The Clone spell is a great example. Players are quite happy to let the spell act as backup lives, but they don't necessarily identify the deep existential horror that should probably be invoked in any reasonably intelligent user of it. Is the Clone... actually you? Or, did you just die somewhere, and now you've created a thing that has all of your abilities and your appearance, and now you're siccing it on your friends and family?


At any time after the clone matures, if the original creature dies, its soul transfers to the clone, provided that the soul is free and willing to return. The clone is physically identical to the original and has the same personality, memories, and abilities, but none of the original's equipment.

Seems pretty straightforward to me that it's still you.

[Witty Username]

D&D has never been a horror game, because going into a hole full of monsters with the expectation of engaging them in combat (and gradually increasing your power to slay monsters more effectively) may be dangerous but isn't the least bit creepy.

"Never" may seem like an overstatement but I have never seen it done well, and frankly am skeptical that it can be done well on a D&D chassis, which has inherent positive feedback loops as opposed negative feedback loops like "lose 1d6 points of SAN each time you meet a new monster type until you go permanently mad" or "the flesh withers off your right arm, which becomes forever useless going forward".

RE: <<“Carrionettes are creepy marionettes that jab you with silver needles and swap consciousness with you, taking over your body and stranding you in a doll body! While gremishka are creepy gremlin-things that are allergic to magic. If you cast a spell on them, they might have an adverse reaction that includes potentially exploding into a swarm.>>

Color me very skeptical that Carrionettes are going to creep anybody out in actual play or leave them stranded in a doll's body for longer than a long rest.

D&D 5e, I am very much in agreement. However, prior editions had more tools to generate horror with, at least from my experience.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Horror comes from the heart, not rules or flavor text. I'm told I can't DM a game of any sort without making it a horror game. This is despite leaning heavy on the Monty Haul end of the DM spectrum. On the other side of the fence, I can recall at least three separate occasions where a different DM asked permission to run a horror game and got nothing but eyerolls and sighs at the table from their attempts.

Everyone thinks they can do horror, of course. You know what scares you, right? Surely that's universal? Spiders scare you, so fighting giant spiders must be spooky. Death is frightening, so skeletons and zombies everywhere should terrify just about anyone.

That right there is the mistake. If you do this, you've populated your horror with things, not feelings. It could be scary. But not in a vacuum.

Horror is the ice in your gut. The standing of hairs on your arms. An overwhelming anxiety that pushes you forward as easily as it makes you want to run screaming. Fear is as much about what you don't know as what you do know.

I'm not certain any book can really teach this. I'm dead certain no rule can enforce it.

[JackPhoenix]

D&D 5e, I am very much in agreement. However, prior editions had more tools to generate horror with, at least from my experience.

Like grapple rules in 3.x.

[False God]

I'm fine with shattering the various domains, but I don't think D&D has ever done horror well.

And I don't think there's any set of rules that can really grasp it. This is only amplified by the fact that an overwhelming amount of media thinks "horror" is gore and jumpscares.

As Waterdeep Merch points out, horror is a feeling, which is hard to impossible to generate from game rules and subjective from person to person.

[LumenPlacidum]

Like grapple rules in 3.x.

Or... the grapple rules from AD&D1e!

[NRSASD]

I'm not, given how it's literally part of the "DM guidelines."

Seriously. This sounds like "oh, we're going to have a guide to trigger warnings so that the players aren't accidentally traumatized." "Accessibility" generally means things like "okay, maybe the black dude shouldn't die first when there's a black dude playing the game" in things like horror. It opens new possibilities like Us or Midsommar.

I absolutely agree with you in that. Accessibility in the sense of not traumatizing your players and not falling into racist/sexist tropes is a good thing, and I’m happy if the book reinforces that.

My concern derives from the concept that one of the leads cites “going into a hole full of monsters, sword first” or “cartoonish investigators looking into mysterious incidents” as examples of horror. I suspect I disagree (don’t know cause the book isn’t out, but I am concerned). Neither the Hobbit nor Scooby Doo qualify as horror... I’m not sure they even have any horror moments.

As Waterdeep Merch said, horror isn’t a thing but a feeling; a feeling easily lost, (in my opinion) if the tone shifts too much or isn’t handled with appropriate deftness.

I, for one, am thrilled with the idea of an Indian inspired domain and the dark power rules, but I’m not as confident as I want to be that the book is of uniformly good quality given the puzzling statements from the lead.

Therefore, I am... concerned.

[MoiMagnus]

My concern derives from the concept that one of the leads cites “going into a hole full of monsters, sword first” or “cartoonish investigators looking into mysterious incidents” as examples of horror. I suspect I disagree (don’t know cause the book isn’t out, but I am concerned). Neither the Hobbit nor Scooby Doo qualify as horror... I’m not sure they even have any horror moments.

Horror is about tone of the campaign. The same "horror setting" can be a deep existential horror or some comedy with characters breaking the 4th wall and the villain checking regularly his handbook to make sure he doesn't go outside of the script.

The way I understand OP's post is that the book will describe the setting using the traditional gothic horror tone, and have sections on how to run a game in this setting covering different kinds of horror one might be interested in, and different non-horror tones that can be used in the same setting (scooby doo, etc).

But I could be wrong, and it's not unreasonable to be concerned about it.

[JackPhoenix]

I, for one, am thrilled with the idea of an Indian inspired domain and the dark power rules, but I’m not as confident as I want to be that the book is of uniformly good quality given the puzzling statements from the lead.

Well, it's not like that sort of thing (https://ravenloft.fandom.com/wiki/Sri_Raji) didn't exist before....

Not that the claim that Vlad Drakov is too similar to Strahd wasn't already dubious. Falkovnia was nothing like Barovia, and turning it into zombie apocalypse and changing the darklord to a woman (with barely different name, to boot) is... well, they could've invented new domain for that.

[Sception]

Personally, I preferred the 4e version where the domains of dread are anchored/positioned in the Shadowfell rather than free floating in the ethereal plane. It put the games spookier elements together in a way that complimented each other well, and 'escaping' from a domain of dread generally just left you in the wider but equally dark and dangerous world of the Shadowfell.

But that's just a matter of personal preference. floating islands in the Ethereal Plane also works just fine, and if you want to have a few bump into each other to form a temporary or permanent cluster of overlapping horrors, that's still doable.

I agree with those who don't tend to find 5e, or D&D in general, to be a good format for genuine horror. I've never felt genuinely scared in a game of D&D, just can't suspend disbelief and immerse myself the same way I can for a more solitary experience like reading a book or watching a film. But even if genuinely scary is generally out of reach for me in D&D, spooky is still readily obtainable and a lot of fun, and creepy can even sometimes be managed, and for those I'm quite excited for a 5e take on ravenloft.

As for the bits about session zero and respecting boundaries, I'm all for it. Too many people aim for scary, miss entirely, and land in gross, crude, and even insulting or disrespectful instead. A small disclaimer section about avoiding that thing is worth the couple pages it takes to write it out if it helps a few games avoid that mistake.


All in all, the previews look good to me so far, and I'm pretty excited for this one. I mostly liked the UA articles that seem like they were aimed at this. Hopefully the dark gifts & similar rules are expanded somewhat and not just reprinted directly from Curse of Strahd.

[StoneSeraph]

The "Horror Handbook" section of the article sets the expectation, for me, that the material presented is just going to be tame, bland, and forgettable. Worse, that same tameness is going to be applied across the board to all of those different subgenres of horror. It reads "Horror is great! So we're compiling Baby's Intro to Horror, where we take a shotgun-style approach to the genre at large, whitewash or bowdlerize the more challenging aspects, and hope that the shiny new toys will distract the players enough to forget that we don't trust the majority of them to be rational adults."

>We provide frameworks to help make sure your horror adventures are fun, accessible, and safe, while also supporting players who voice concerns if things take an uncomfortable turn.

So... infantilize the players? Pretend I'm at a campfire telling a scary story, having to remind everyone that "it's just a story, it's not real"?

I'm kidding, of course. I get what they mean behind this - avoid the cheesy or dated tropes, make sure no one is actually triggered by the material presented, don't go overboard with viscera if it's there at all - you know, "Know your group and be an adult about it".

The problem is that such a gesture doesn't say "inclusivity". It says "corporate". WotC sees a red door and they want to paint it beige.

[jojosskul]

Honestly I'm just happy that we'll get zombies that I'm assuming will have bad things happen when they bite you besides damage finally. Current zombies aren't scary in 5E because the scary thing about zombies is the threat of BECOMING one. Or being eaten, but to be fair a fair number of the monsters in DnD ALSO want to to eat you so that's not unique to the zombie.

[Tanarii]

The problem is that such a gesture doesn't say "inclusivity". It says "corporate". WotC sees a red door and they want to paint it beige.
Thats in line with other decisions they've been making recently. It's like they've hired someone that lives in Tumblr for advice on how to be woke to vet their products.

[Willie the Duck]

I feel like there's a lot of other games out there that do all kinds of horror better than D&D ever has.
This edition in particular is weak in that regard since characters get so powerful so fast and are basically built to take on and overcome all sorts of horrors.
The Domains as Isles doesn't really concern me too much. Kinda helps if you're planning to develop your own Domains and Dark Lords since you won't have to worry about where to put them on the map and which other Domains they might connect with. Everything is fair game now.

D&D has never done horror well, and Ravenloft has suffered for it.
It does do "scared my character is about to die" okay in some editions, but that's not horror by itself, and 5e isn't one of those editions.

D&D has never been a horror game, because going into a hole full of monsters with the expectation of engaging them in combat (and gradually increasing your power to slay monsters more effectively) may be dangerous but isn't the least bit creepy.
"Never" may seem like an overstatement but I have never seen it done well, and frankly am skeptical that it can be done well on a D&D chassis, which has inherent positive feedback loops as opposed negative feedback loops like "lose 1d6 points of SAN each time you meet a new monster type until you go permanently mad" or "the flesh withers off your right arm, which becomes forever useless going forward".

D&D horror has always seemed to me to be, well, pretty much the Hammer Horror and Lugosi-Karloff movies that inspired a good chunk of the monster section, and those, to me, aren't horror so much as 'monster movies.' It is iconic actors made up as monsters (or for D&D, actual monsters that look the part) chasing around protagonists where, for the most part, the worst that they can do is kill them. Horror movies, in the vein of the single syllable ones (It, the Thing, etc.) tend to be less about 'this thing is going to kill me,' and more towards, 'something is trying to kill me, and everything I know and see is called into question.' D&D doesn't do that well (or at least doesn't specifically aid in it). I'm not really sure that I think just a negative feedback loop would make the difference (CoC, to me, is a great mystery game, but it too is usually only superficially a horror game). Some inventive RPGs from the past 10 years (table-top, like Ten Candles, plus some computer ones some of my friends have mentioned) apparently do a much better job at this.

Regardless, while I doubt this new Ravenloft will suddenly make D&D good at horror, I also don't see it as a big letdown. They aren't nuking the setting, they are making it modular; and I don't see arrogance, I see ad copy.

[Tanarii]

Horror movies, in the vein of the single syllable ones (It, the Thing, etc.) tend to be less about 'this thing is going to kill me,' and more towards, 'something is trying to kill me, and everything I know and see is called into question.'
I'd say that kind of horror tends to be 'something is stalking me and trying to kill me, and I'm helpless against it" and possibly "it's enjoying my growing fear".

OTOH that kind of makes Terminator, Jurassic Park, etc into horror movies. So the calling into question would be the supernatural aspect to the unknown & unstoppabilty.

On the gripping hand, maybe Terminator and Jurassic Park should be considered a kind of horror. :smallamused:

[Corsair14]

Meh, I already see the first thing I am throwing out. Ravenloft is a solid domain with the main continent with the majority of lands, sea of sorrows, sea of whatever the other one was, with many large and small domains out in the seas. Roads connect the domains where possible and only walls or invisible walls of mist separate the domains. These bubble islands and stuff the way they describe it is nonsense. Its how you have populations of elves outside the core realm or two that have them, they cross the very stable border with Sithicus and whatever the other realm that had them.

[MrStabby]

I'd say that kind of horror tends to be 'something is stalking me and trying to kill me, and I'm helpless against it" and possibly "it's enjoying my growing fear".

OTOH that kind of makes Terminator, Jurassic Park, etc into horror movies. So the calling into question would be the supernatural aspect to the unknown & unstoppabilty.

On the gripping hand, maybe Terminator and Jurassic Park should be considered a kind of horror. :smallamused:

I often hear the film Alien described as horror in contrast to Aliens as action. I have has Hostel described as horror as well. None of these scare me in the same way supernatural horor can.

[StoneSeraph]

>>“For example, one Dark Gift provides you with memories from your past life, whispers of information you really shouldn’t know. Sometimes these can be great—maybe you’ve never played the piano before but somehow when you sit down at the keyboard you can now play. By the same token, under certain circumstances, you might start having visions from past lives that distract you from what you’re doing.

Just so I'm clear, the tagline for "Dark Gift" is that I could either be Secret Beethoven or recreate an episode of That's So Raven. The horror...

[Willie the Duck]

I'd say that kind of horror tends to be 'something is stalking me and trying to kill me, and I'm helpless against it" and possibly "it's enjoying my growing fear".

OTOH that kind of makes Terminator, Jurassic Park, etc into horror movies. So the calling into question would be the supernatural aspect to the unknown & unstoppabilty.

On the gripping hand, maybe Terminator and Jurassic Park should be considered a kind of horror. :smallamused:

Yeah, my examples might not have been best for what I was trying to portray. I was thinking mostly about The Thing, and I think a big part of why that one works so well is not just that it is stalking the protagonists, and that they feel helpless, but who knows where it is and whether I can trust this other person. It throws everything into doubt. There are no boundaries, confines, or places beyond which you know are safe. There is no solid wall you can put your back against and think "well it's not coming from that direction." D&D can do parts of that (things can literally go through walls, and Doppelgangers and ghostly possession can make anyone into the monster), but it has an uphill climb to do so.

A "something is stalking me and trying to kill me, and I'm helpless against it" scenario is doable in D&D, and that to is a kind of horror movie (and yeah, Terminator and Jurassic Park probably fit the broad definition of a horror movie). It runs into the issue that hunting down and killing monsters is a main part of D&D. It turns the game into much more Terminator 2 than Terminator (and Terminator 2 is much less of a horror movie, as both sides have unstoppable killing machines).

[Unoriginal]

Horror doesn't require helplessness.

I have personally no interest in horror stories where the protagonists are facing an unbeatable force from and that it's obvious from the start.

I don't mind if the force is unbeaten, but if it's unbeatable, then it's just watching people getting tortured.

The Thing would be a boring movie if the titular Thing was like Jigsaw from the Saw franchise and had the superpower of always doing everything right and have the other characters fail to do any of what could stop him.

[Segev]

I say this a lot - pretty much every time horror comes up - but the biggest problem with horror in tabletop RPGs is similar to the problem with a lot of so-called "slasher horror:" people mistake the trappings and aesthetics for the genre.

Horror, done well, almost always is about a betrayal of expectations. Specifically one that digs at instinctual understanding of the world and how you interact with it. Lovecraftian/cosmic horror tries to do this by attacking your "place" in the world. Making you feel insignificant, undermining your self-hood by attacking your sanity (and therefore ability to perceive reality/trust your perceptions/have your own identity), and making you feel like reality is a random moment away from shattering around you. (I actually don't think Lovecraft does this very well, but that's what it's going for.)

Monster horror both sets you up as prey when you normally are predator/farmer, and attacks your understanding of safety. The monster almost always exploits some special power that makes your normal means of staying safe become untrustworthy. It's this kind of horror that often people point to - consciously or not - as ceasing to work when people are too familiar with the monster. And a lot of not-so-great creature-feature horror tries to use "it's unstoppable!" as the horror element when that's only what makes it an action or disguised natural disaster story. It's not that it's unstoppable. It's that your normal means of stopping it don't work, and the rules that make it work don't, initially, seem to make sense. Good monster horror has alien rules (even if they're perfectly sensible) that defy your instinctual self-defense mechanisms.

A Quiet Place has a very simple set of rules for staying safe: don't make noise. The movie accomplishes horror beautifully by showing the tremendous extent to which the protagonists go to live in utter silence. (It does a few other things right, including a brazen Chekov's Gun that fires more or less exactly how you expect, but is all the more effective for it; the horror element they used there is dramatic irony, and the sense of helplessness a spectator feels as they can do nothing while what they KNEW was going to happen unfolds in all its tragedy before their eyes.) Silence is easy to do...for brief periods. With preparation and effort, silence can be maintained more easily over longer periods. But the eternal vigilance needed, and the ease with which any of a million possible mistakes can screw that up, makes for the tension and sense of betrayal of the environment. Hearing is our second most-important sense, and by having to avoid any sound, we create a sense of being naked and defenseless when we are actually doing our best to be protected.

Deadly Premonition is a video game where they have a cool horror element that they don't do nearly enough with. The zombie-like monsters of the game detect you by your breath. Hold your breath, and they'll ignore you unless they literally run into you. They don't seem to hear nor see. So if you're holding your breath, you can walk right by them and they right by you and they'll never react (provided you don't blunder into them). Holding your breath is easy...for a time. The more nervous you are or the harder you have to work, the less time you can do it. And the longer you hold your breath, the harder it becomes. (The game mechanic is an increasing heart-beat as you run out of air.) This is a great horror mechanic, because it doesn't feel safe to have dangerous creatures that you can see and hear and which you're making no effort to hide from by conventional means right there, so you are nervous and tense on a visceral level even when safe. Worse, the rule is simple, but very hard to follow in any lengthy way, and lack of air actually goes to a primal fear in and of itself. (Admittedly, that last bit doesn't apply to the PLAYER, since he doesn't have to hold his breath.) So you can keep yourself safe, but don't FEEL safe, and your efforts to keep yourself safe will inevitably fail and you'll need to do something else to try to regain your breath and "turn invisible" again.

In this thread, it was mentioned that Gothic Horror as a subgenre is about loss and tragedy, and I think that is at least partially right. Like Lovecraftian/cosmic horror, it's existential, but in a sense of the ephemeral nature of existence, and the idea of the monster within being what undermines your identity, rather than madness.

Where cosmic horror sets up a sense of futility through the notion that gears bigger than everything you know are impersonally crushing your existence and you can't even notice because you'll be dead by the time you could, gothic horror sets up a similar sense of futility through inevitability and "no 100% golden ending." That is: good gothic horror is inevitably also tragic, and the best ending still involves loss and unfairness. The werewolf can be stopped from killing more innocent people, but it's the kindly old mayor's only remaining son, who is also a sweet and lovable angel of a young man, and killing him will rip the heart out of the town. The unstoppable flesh golem assimilates parts of the people it slays into itself, seeking "perfection," and starts to show glimmers that it might develop a conscience the more good and noble people it subsumes; is the (only) way to stop it to sacrifice enough good and noble people that it comes to realize what it is doing is wrong? Vampires combine doppelganger/"Among Us Impostors" with the tragedy of what they've lost and their horror hunger.

A lot of gothic horror is also monster horror, but the monster can get away with being better-known because what IS known about it tends to create a catch-22: if the gothic monster exists, you have a high probability that its very nature makes a "happy ending" impossible, and you'll have to settle for "cutting losses." Often, even THAT is hard.

D&D can do gothic horror. A slight modification to the Intellect Devourer to make it a slow take-over, or even just by having the Devourer itself suffer an amnesiac overlay where it honestly thinks it is the person it's taken over, can be gothic horror without needing any special "sanity" or "fear" rules. "Am I already dead, and really the monster without knowing it? If I am, does that matter? Can I stay the person I am now and not devolve into the evil thing that killed this person to make me?"

Because, again, horror is all about betrayal. It can be betrayal of others, or just of expectations. Not "subversion," but betrayal. A betrayal requires that the undermining of your expectations or trust come with a real harm.

https://i.chzbgr.com/full/2827187456/hB8D3CE44/bless-you-why-you-scream

[Warder]

What's the point of shattering the Core? That's what I don't get. That just removes a lot of story opportunities and interplay between domains. What's the net gain from doing this?

[KorvinStarmast]

D&D has never been a horror game, But it's been informed by horror since Arneson's proto D&D games. Literary influences include Clark Ashton Smith, and Lovecraft, RE Howard (who wrote horror as well as Conan) among others. (Heck, a few of Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd/Mouser stores delve in that direction).

Green slime, grey ooze, ochre jelly, black pudding; horror stuff in the original game.

Mind Flayers (originally in Strategic Review: tentacled brain eating horrors from 'out there somewhere')

I could go on. Horror has always been an element in the game, and in particular in primal dungeon crawls, although the larger genre is Swords and Sorcery. There's overlap; there need not be stove pipes here.

(Granted, there are games that confine themselves to horror, but to say that Horror isn't part of D&D seems to be an odd take)

[Willie the Duck]

But it's been informed by horror since Arneson's proto D&D games. Literary influences include Clark Ashton Smith, and Lovecraft, RE Howard (who wrote horror as well as Conan) among others. (Heck, a few of Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd/Mouser stores delve in that direction).
Green slime, grey ooze, ochre jelly, black pudding; horror stuff in the original game.
That's pretty much what people have been discussing, about how it has the trappings of horror films and books, but isn't a horror game. It's has monster movie monsters, but doesn't do a good job of actually doing horror. Or at least that's the arguable position I think people are taking.


(Granted, there are games that confine themselves to horror, but to say that Horror isn't part of D&D seems to be an odd take)
But no one said that.

[KorvinStarmast]

Ravenloft is about Gothic Horror, which is a particular subgenre. {snp rest of a nice post} Many goodnesses there, your three classics being foremost. :smallsmile:

My concern is that for good horror the DM and the other players need to be on the same page.

Horror is being on the run, on the defensive. Horror is desperately trying to avoid encounters rather than blast through them. Not all classes have the same amount to contribute to this style of play. Horror is also watching the Alien eat your friend's face. :smallcool:

Horror comes from the heart, not rules or flavor text.

Horror is the ice in your gut. The standing of hairs on your arms. An overwhelming anxiety that pushes you forward as easily as it makes you want to run screaming. Fear is as much about what you don't know as what you do know. Horror, in terms of the fear element, in D&D can be improved by using monsters that aren't in the book. Rob Kuntz made a comment once on Arneson's DMing style, remarking something like "he can scare the bejeebus out of your" - I wish I could get my hands on at the moment. A lot of writers can write stories, but Stephen King writes a really good horror story. Horror, to be effective, I think requires a certain style.

As Waterdeep Merch points out, horror is a feeling, which is hard to impossible to generate from game rules and subjective from person to person. Setting the mood at the table is useful; the few times I have seen it done well we had the lights down low and the DM used particular mood music in the background. And, we had games where character death was possible, as was character mutilation as a consequence of running into various traps and monsters. But as many posters have noted: D&D doing horror isn't easy.

Or... the grapple rules from AD&D1e! The Horror! :smalleek:
"Know your group and be an adult about it". Bingo.

The problem is that such a gesture doesn't say "inclusivity". It says "corporate". WotC sees a red door and they want to paint it beige. As a long time Rolling Stones fan, I loved your closer there. :smallcool:

or recreate an episode of That's So Raven. The horror. If we could please have a trigger warning on such ideas in the future? :smallbiggrin:

[MaxWilson]

The Clone spell is a great example. Players are quite happy to let the spell act as backup lives, but they don't necessarily identify the deep existential horror that should probably be invoked in any reasonably intelligent user of it. Is the Clone... actually you? Or, did you just die somewhere, and now you've created a thing that has all of your abilities and your appearance, and now you're siccing it on your friends and family?

This would be a more horrifying spell if the Clone spell worked differently. The fact that it has all of your memories up to the point of death, and the fact that your old body cannot be Revivified, is IMO too strong of a clue that it's genuinely you. The 1 cubic inch of flesh is still pretty horrifying, of course, unless you Clone via Wish.

I would prefer it if the Clone had your memories at the point of cloning and didn't prevent your old body from being Revivified, but there was just a meta-rule that only one version of you can be a PC.

[StoneSeraph]

What's the point of shattering the Core? That's what I don't get. That just removes a lot of story opportunities and interplay between domains. What's the net gain from doing this?

So the writers can say they did it first.

This whole article feels like walking past a nice building covered in bad graffiti. It's not my building, I don't even particularly care about the building, but I can see that it's covered in bad "art" that ruins the original aesthetic that someone put a lot of care into making look good once upon a time.

Worse, the "artist" is outside with a megaphone in hand, shouting about how 'beautiful' and 'modern' the vandalism is. In the other hand is a firearm used to hold the building owners hostage and force them to sing praises and take social media pics to draw attention.

[Unoriginal]

Gothic horror isn't really about tragedy or loss, it's about the past, and how it still affects the present.

The thing that people forget about "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" is that they were not written as gothic horror. They both are about contemporary, and one can argue universal, fears.

"Frankenstein" is all about a young person giving birth after a period of feverish, reckless passion, rejecting the offspring, and then spending the rest of their life suffering the consequences of their own actions while blaming said offspring, who grew up into a bitter, vengeful person.

"Dracula" is all about a foreign Other bringing diseases and preying on women who fall under their charm, then using their status and power to avoid the law. In other words, it's primal tribalism in all its ugliness fueling the fear. There's a reason why the Count is given a scene where he specifically trains to *not* reveal he's a foreigner by his accent.

[KorvinStarmast]

This whole article feels like walking past a nice building covered in bad graffiti. It's not my building, I don't even particularly care about the building, but I can see that it's covered in bad "art" that ruins the original aesthetic that someone put a lot of care into making look good once upon a time.

Worse, the "artist" is outside with a megaphone in hand, shouting about how 'beautiful' and 'modern' the vandalism is. In the other hand is a firearm used to hold the building owners hostage and force them to sing praises and take social media pics to draw attention. That's some nice word crafting right there. Were you using a +3 pen of eloquence? :smallsmile:

[StoneSeraph]

That's some nice word crafting right there. Were you using a +3 pen of eloquence? :smallsmile:

Worse. It's that pen from the Harry Potter books, but different - it doesn't scar my skin in the form of the words I write, but that nagging evil lady in the ugly pink sweater still stares over my shoulder whenever I use it...

[MaxWilson]

D&D horror has always seemed to me to be, well, pretty much the Hammer Horror and Lugosi-Karloff movies that inspired a good chunk of the monster section, and those, to me, aren't horror so much as 'monster movies.' It is iconic actors made up as monsters (or for D&D, actual monsters that look the part) chasing around protagonists where, for the most part, the worst that they can do is kill them. Horror movies, in the vein of the single syllable ones (It, the Thing, etc.) tend to be less about 'this thing is going to kill me,' and more towards, 'something is trying to kill me, and everything I know and see is called into question.' D&D doesn't do that well (or at least doesn't specifically aid in it). I'm not really sure that I think just a negative feedback loop would make the difference (CoC, to me, is a great mystery game, but it too is usually only superficially a horror game). Some inventive RPGs from the past 10 years (table-top, like Ten Candles, plus some computer ones some of my friends have mentioned) apparently do a much better job at this.

Regardless, while I doubt this new Ravenloft will suddenly make D&D good at horror, I also don't see it as a big letdown. They aren't nuking the setting, they are making it modular; and I don't see arrogance, I see ad copy.

These are good points and I agree that negative feedback loops are probably insufficient to generate a feeling of horror, but I am inclined to think that positive feedback loops (growing ever more powerful as you triumph over evils) kill the horror vibe completely, unless the DM finds a way to make each new horror call everything you know into question (in a way that your growing power is irrelevant to). I don't know how to do that in D&D--I'm not really a horror guy though.

I'm very, very skeptical that any ideas the WotC team generates will be better than the crummy ideas I've come up with myself like requiring every player character to include, as part of their backstory, a story about what awful thing you did that got you exiled to Ravenloft (to set an expectation that the PCs are there to be punished and die), encouraging distrust between players via secrets and lies (a la Diplomacy or Betrayal at House on the Hill) tied into that awful backstory, and subverting expectations and genre tropes about e.g. denouments (the princess you rescued from the dragon panics when she realizes you're taking her back to her father the king, because it turns out she's Allerleirauh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allerleirauh) and she'd rather be eaten by a dragon than go home). The things I've thought of probably won't generate a feeling of horror in players, but at least I believe they'll generate a different experience than the standard D&D location-based resource-oriented dungeon crawl will.

I was reviewing Grimm's Fairy Tales recently and came across a story that, I think, illustrates why the possibility of permanent loss (negative feedback loops) is tied to horror:


The Girl Without Hands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Without_Hands)

A strange man approached a miller and offered him wealth in exchange for what was standing behind the mill. Thinking that it was just an apple tree, and unaware that the strange man was actually the devil, the miller agreed. He soon found out that it was actually his daughter standing behind the mill and that the man was the devil. When three years had passed, the devil reappeared to take the girl as he said he would, but the girl had kept herself sinless and her hands clean, and the devil was unable to take her. The devil threatened to take the miller instead if he did not chop off his daughter's hands. Out of fear, the miller and his daughter agreed to do so. However, she continued to weep onto the stumps where her hands once were, so they remained clean and the devil was still unable to take her.

I think there's potential there to make that little story part of a horrifying Ravenloft adventure somewhere, because the combination of capricious harm to innocents, hope for escape, thwarting that hope, and negative emotions (fear, loss, sadness) does IMO generate feelings that this should not be. That's not to say that those feelings cannot be resolved (the original fairy tale eventually makes everything well again through the help of an angel) but I think once you resolve those feelings (Regenerate the hands and kill the devil so it can never do this to anyone again) it ceases to be horror, and becomes foreign to Ravenloft.

I think my ideal way to use that little vignette would be as part of a PC's backstory: "I'm the miller in this story and I'm in Ravenloft because I did this to my daughter out of fear. And that's why I panic and investigate every report of a handless orphan girl here because the Dark Powers tell me that she is here too, because of me, suffering." There's no particular expectation that the PC's crime be resolved, remedied, or expurgated, but if somehow it happens in the course of adventuring maybe that PC would vanish from the campaign--leaving Ravenloft is a victory, and the purpose of the game is to stop being in this campaign instead of just dying here. That's the opposite of a normal campaign where the reward for victory is the chance to continue playing and becoming more powerful.

So, those are my ideas on how to make Ravenloft horrifying, and they stink, but I think whatever WotC comes up with will be even worse.

[Thunderous Mojo]

It's this kind of horror that often people point to - consciously or not - as ceasing to work when people are too familiar with the monster.
(Just have to say, excellent post Segev, very insightful👍👍)

"Horror" is such a broad spectrum, that one really ought to be precise delineating what type of Horror D&D does or does not do not do well.

The scariest game, I have ever played in, was a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying campaign, (1e),, that we played while camping. Playing outdoors, in the woods, with moths, raccoons, and bear bags is ambience that is quite effective.

In contrast, whenever I have played Sandy Petersen Call of Cthulhu, I'm typically not scared, at all. Every character in a C.o.C. game is doomed. Everyone, including the players, knows this. Thusly, (Bushido-like), it is difficult to have fear of death, when you acknowledge that you are already dead.

HP Lovecraft's Mountain of Madness has D&D adventure written all over it.

DM-ing in a way that conveys horror is the hard part. The base requirement is trying to minimize the use of game 'Jargon', and use evocative descriptions, instead.

Virtual Play can facilitate this. I'm in CoS game where only just the Player of the PC that received the damage, is told the exact amount of damage, via a private message. Everyone else just receives the verbal description.

It helps, me at least with immersion. Music, props, mood lighting, and subtle, unexpected changes, to familiar effects or rules can combine to unnerve veteran players, regardless of the RPG system.

In 3e, I had players freak out when they realized something didn't have Improved Grapple, but rather had some other, Unknown, feature instead.
This feature was actually weaker than the standard rule, but was scarier to expert players, precisely, by being an "unknown, unknown".

The forthcoming book could certainly contain useful tips. I've found Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos book for 5e to have decent general advice, (even if the mechanical aspects are off). It might be possible for WoTC to do the same, but that would most likely entail less pages devoted to Setting, and actual pages and time spent on how to evoke Horror, in games.

[awa]

I'm particularly hesitant about allowing the pcs to play monsters as a default option in a horror setting. Is a vampire really all that scary if the party has a half vampire in it? Past versions of ravenloft tended to work with the assumption that monsters were really a kind of rare thing and that seeing a zombie or flesh golem was a terrifying experience.

Some pcs might be able to role-play the fear of losing control of your body to a corruptive force, but most are just going to see it as a new optimization choice which is poison to horror.

[MaxWilson]

I say this a lot - pretty much every time horror comes up - but the biggest problem with horror in tabletop RPGs is similar to the problem with a lot of so-called "slasher horror:" people mistake the trappings and aesthetics for the genre.

Horror, done well, almost always is about a betrayal of expectations. Specifically one that digs at instinctual understanding of the world and how you interact with it. Lovecraftian/cosmic horror tries to do this by attacking your "place" in the world. Making you feel insignificant, undermining your self-hood by attacking your sanity (and therefore ability to perceive reality/trust your perceptions/have your own identity), and making you feel like reality is a random moment away from shattering around you. (I actually don't think Lovecraft does this very well, but that's what it's going for.)

Monster horror both sets you up as prey when you normally are predator/farmer, and attacks your understanding of safety. The monster almost always exploits some special power that makes your normal means of staying safe become untrustworthy. It's this kind of horror that often people point to - consciously or not - as ceasing to work when people are too familiar with the monster. And a lot of not-so-great creature-feature horror tries to use "it's unstoppable!" as the horror element when that's only what makes it an action or disguised natural disaster story. It's not that it's unstoppable. It's that your normal means of stopping it don't work, and the rules that make it work don't, initially, seem to make sense. Good monster horror has alien rules (even if they're perfectly sensible) that defy your instinctual self-defense mechanisms.

A Quiet Place has a very simple set of rules for staying safe: don't make noise. The movie accomplishes horror beautifully by showing the tremendous extent to which the protagonists go to live in utter silence. (It does a few other things right, including a brazen Chekov's Gun that fires more or less exactly how you expect, but is all the more effective for it; the horror element they used there is dramatic irony, and the sense of helplessness a spectator feels as they can do nothing while what they KNEW was going to happen unfolds in all its tragedy before their eyes.) Silence is easy to do...for brief periods. With preparation and effort, silence can be maintained more easily over longer periods. But the eternal vigilance needed, and the ease with which any of a million possible mistakes can screw that up, makes for the tension and sense of betrayal of the environment. Hearing is our second most-important sense, and by having to avoid any sound, we create a sense of being naked and defenseless when we are actually doing our best to be protected.

Deadly Premonition is a video game where they have a cool horror element that they don't do nearly enough with. The zombie-like monsters of the game detect you by your breath. Hold your breath, and they'll ignore you unless they literally run into you. They don't seem to hear nor see. So if you're holding your breath, you can walk right by them and they right by you and they'll never react (provided you don't blunder into them). Holding your breath is easy...for a time. The more nervous you are or the harder you have to work, the less time you can do it. And the longer you hold your breath, the harder it becomes. (The game mechanic is an increasing heart-beat as you run out of air.) This is a great horror mechanic, because it doesn't feel safe to have dangerous creatures that you can see and hear and which you're making no effort to hide from by conventional means right there, so you are nervous and tense on a visceral level even when safe. Worse, the rule is simple, but very hard to follow in any lengthy way, and lack of air actually goes to a primal fear in and of itself. (Admittedly, that last bit doesn't apply to the PLAYER, since he doesn't have to hold his breath.) So you can keep yourself safe, but don't FEEL safe, and your efforts to keep yourself safe will inevitably fail and you'll need to do something else to try to regain your breath and "turn invisible" again.

In this thread, it was mentioned that Gothic Horror as a subgenre is about loss and tragedy, and I think that is at least partially right. Like Lovecraftian/cosmic horror, it's existential, but in a sense of the ephemeral nature of existence, and the idea of the monster within being what undermines your identity, rather than madness.

Where cosmic horror sets up a sense of futility through the notion that gears bigger than everything you know are impersonally crushing your existence and you can't even notice because you'll be dead by the time you could, gothic horror sets up a similar sense of futility through inevitability and "no 100% golden ending." That is: good gothic horror is inevitably also tragic, and the best ending still involves loss and unfairness. The werewolf can be stopped from killing more innocent people, but it's the kindly old mayor's only remaining son, who is also a sweet and lovable angel of a young man, and killing him will rip the heart out of the town. The unstoppable flesh golem assimilates parts of the people it slays into itself, seeking "perfection," and starts to show glimmers that it might develop a conscience the more good and noble people it subsumes; is the (only) way to stop it to sacrifice enough good and noble people that it comes to realize what it is doing is wrong? Vampires combine doppelganger/"Among Us Impostors" with the tragedy of what they've lost and their horror hunger.

A lot of gothic horror is also monster horror, but the monster can get away with being better-known because what IS known about it tends to create a catch-22: if the gothic monster exists, you have a high probability that its very nature makes a "happy ending" impossible, and you'll have to settle for "cutting losses." Often, even THAT is hard.

D&D can do gothic horror. A slight modification to the Intellect Devourer to make it a slow take-over, or even just by having the Devourer itself suffer an amnesiac overlay where it honestly thinks it is the person it's taken over, can be gothic horror without needing any special "sanity" or "fear" rules. "Am I already dead, and really the monster without knowing it? If I am, does that matter? Can I stay the person I am now and not devolve into the evil thing that killed this person to make me?"

Because, again, horror is all about betrayal. It can be betrayal of others, or just of expectations. Not "subversion," but betrayal. A betrayal requires that the undermining of your expectations or trust come with a real harm.

https://i.chzbgr.com/full/2827187456/hB8D3CE44/bless-you-why-you-scream



Wow, Segev, thanks for a fantastic and insightful post. You've given me a lot to think about there. I love the werewolf/mayor's son, and that flesh golem gives me the creeps. Well done.

[Thunderous Mojo]

I'm particularly hesitant about allowing the pcs to play monsters as a default option in a horror setting. Is a vampire really all that scary if the party has a half vampire in it?
Any Google search brings up the stats of any published monster.

The players know the calorie content of any ingredients you select. So scary is about how you use the ingredients. If Dhampair, Au Pairs, and Vampires have complex social orders...with numerous rules and obligations....then the answer to your question, could be "yes".

Imagine an honor bound character, being commanded by a figure of 'legitimate' authority that is also Strahd. It certainly sets up conflicts of conscience for the character, which is a potential horrific element.

[RifleAvenger]

Well, it's not like that sort of thing (https://ravenloft.fandom.com/wiki/Sri_Raji) didn't exist before.... I'm far more interested in a new idea, by an Indian author, and involving multiple darklords than "ok guys, India-inspired domain, what do? Rakshasa darklord... caste system... eh good enough." Sri Raji is boring. This has the potential not to be.


Not that the claim that Vlad Drakov is too similar to Strahd wasn't already dubious. Falkovnia was nothing like Barovia, and turning it into zombie apocalypse and changing the darklord to a woman (with barely different name, to boot) is... well, they could've invented new domain for that. The name is barely different probably because it's the same character just genderswapped, or at most a family member. Probably effectively the same character, at any rate.

The zombie apocalypse part I like, but not because of the zombie apocalypse bit. No, I like it because it gives a reason for the living populace to cling to and obey Drakov despite how cruel and savage he/she is. Think about a lot of recent zombie fiction, and how it focuses less on the unliving hordes and more on how survivor society changes, becoming more brutal and authoritarian. A zombie apocalypse is also a military horror; boxed in on all sides by a relentless, overwhelming force, with commanders who don't care a whit and supply lines running low.

So long as Drakov can pose as the option of survival, they'll command obedience, and maybe even loyalty, despite being a horrible person or even a poor commander. And, of course, being a darklord they can never actually win, nor absolutely lose, keeping the domain perpetually in a state of existential war that 'justifies' the atrocity du jour. In another parallel to autocratic dictators, Drakov's technically responsible for this awful situation existing and maintaining to begin with (any new backstory aside, if the mists weren't trapping people here they could just leave).

All of which means that any PCs wandering in will be crunched between several distinct flavors of horror. They not only need to survive the zombies and how Drakov "maintains order," they need to defeat the notion that Drakov's methods are correct.

[awa]

Any Google search brings up the stats of any published monster.

The players know the calorie content of any ingredients you select. So scary is about how you use the ingredients. If Dhampair, Au Pairs, and Vampires have a complex social orders...with numerous rules and obligations....then yes.

Imagine an honor bound character, being commanded by a figure of 'legitimate' authority that is also Strahd. It certainly sets up conflict of conscience for the character, which is a potential horror element.

Knowing stats doesn't effect what I'm talking about, most horror stories are about mostly regular people the farther from that you are the harder its going to be to foster fear. As a very simple example, the dark is only scary if you can't see in the dark.

The problem is not that its impossible to have fear for a party including a warforged and a tri-kreen its that these types of creatures greatly reduce your options, they make a hard thing much harder. Part of being afraid is getting in character and getting into the character of a magic robot is a lot harder than a common person and then even once you do their are a lot fewer things you can reasonably be afraid of.

[KorvinStarmast]

So, those are my ideas on how to make Ravenloft horrifying, and they stink, but I think whatever WotC comes up with will be even worse. Overall good post, and particularly the closer.

"Horror" is such a broad spectrum, that one really ought to be precise delineating what type of Horror D&D does or does not do not do well. The scariest, and tensest D&D I played in was an Original campaign where it was all theater of the mind - we players were allowed to sketch out maps on blank paper (not graph paper!) based on DM descriptions.
He rolled our HD each time a session started - if we were at full health; how many HP we had was an unknown.
If we had had the session interrupted, he'd pick us up where we left off and gave us a general "you feel good, not bad, near the end of your rope" to help us calibrate our sense of how close to death we were.

Our attack rolls and saving throws were all dice rolls that we made. He made all damage rolls, to us and to enemies, behind the screen and narrated their results to us.

This works when you trust the DM.

Tense as hell. We had a variety of narrow scrapes as we tried to progress and recover loot, discern false rumors from good leads, carefully explore areas to try and find treasure ... the rush of negative feeling that came to me when coming across my partner - just as the NPC magic user pumped magic missiles into him while he hung from a web in the basement of a warehouse - was palpable. (We'd been split up while evading the city guard after stealing some stuff from a different PC).
My PC died not long after by falling into a pit wherein lay a green slime. The DM embellished the description of my demise nicely.

Anyway, it can be done, but it takes a certain buy in from players to get the element of fear to complement the immersion into the dangerous fictional world.

I think that to get horror to work, the prospect of death, disfigurement, and horrible happenings to the PC must be an accepted part of the game menu. Not everyone likes that in their Table Top RPGs, so if a few in the group are OK with it, and a few are not, I don't think horror will fit too well.

[Doug Lampert]

Like grapple rules in 3.x.


Or... the grapple rules from AD&D1e!

Obligatory Link (https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0233.html)

Of course some might claim that the horror should be experienced by the players, not the GM. :)

[BoutsofInsanity]

You know you can like, unshatter the core right?

Like if it's a concern?

I mean it's super easy.

Here watch.

"Hey guys, the book says the domains are different floating islands. But for this campaign they are all on on super continent."

Boom.

[MaxWilson]

The best thing about this thread, aside from Segev's post, is that it introduced me to Sandy Peterson's Cthulhu supplement for 5E. (https://petersengames.com/the-games-shop/cthulhu-mythos-for-5e/) I just bought a copy and spent some time perusing it and there's some excellent advice there for running horror games, as well as interesting ideas for "formula" spells (i.e. spells that can be cast by non-casters, at some risk, ideally suited to horror) and Elder Horrors that break the rules of reality (Hastur must be fought individually by everyone who perceives him--ten thousand soldiers will fight ten thousand Hasturs, and he loves those odds).

Here's an idea that I immediately wanted to steal:


Most players are familiar with the classic dungeon crawl, commonly constructed by an insanely powerful lich or a mad wizard, making it a good starting structure for a game. Perhaps the dungeon is instead being run by a Lovecraftian entity of enormous power. I’ll randomly select a possibility (rolls dice); okay, I came up with Nyarlathotep. Arbitrarily I’ve named this dungeon “The Twisted Pyramid.” (Seems Egyptian-ish.)

Now obviously the Crawling Chaos has the ability to create a vast maze full of treasure, traps, and monsters, but why would he? Let’s think about Nyarlathotep’s personality: he is the mind and voice of the Outer Gods, and what he primarily cares about is serving them. What if his goal in creating this dungeon is to keep up to date on how dangerous the most powerful adventurers in the world are? He doesn’t necessarily want to kill them—he just wants to know how powerful a threat they represent and to figure out how to challenge them. And if these top adventurers are weak enough, he can bring back the Old Ones to destroy the world with the flick of a metaphorical wrist.

Of course, the best way to ensure that he gets a good analysis of these adventurers is to tell them the unvarnished truth. Let everyone know that there is wealth—as well as great danger—in the Twisted Pyramid to draw the finest adventurers available. Once the current crop of adventurers proves too craven and feckless to brave the pyramid, Nyarlathotep will know the world is ready for the end times. Thus, the players have two reasons to brave the pyramid: one obvious, one subtle. First, they can seek the wealth, which is genuinely there as a lure. And second, they might wish to save the world from the Old Ones’ return. (They may not know about this aspect of the adventure until they get to the pyramid, or perhaps only in retrospect.)

But how else could Nyarlathotep affect the dungeon crawl? Well, since he has a thousand forms, perhaps each separate dungeon level features its own avatar of Nyarlathotep, starting out with comparatively weak forms, and working up to the most powerful. I would also suggest that each time the adventurers encounter Nyarlathotep, he speaks with them, mocking their efforts and making suggestions, foul offers, and promises.

This is a standard dungeon experience with a kick to it: the Mythos has added that little extra touch to bring it beyond the mundane. With this twist, you can turn Nyarlathotep into an ongoing foil for the players and for your campaign, using a mere dungeon crawl as their introduction to him.


I'd splice this in with some Eberron daelkyr material and make much of the treasure in this pyramid squicky organic symbionts, like a creature which grafts itself onto your head and functions in the place of your eyes to give you truesight.

Anyway, since I was just now complaining about how WotC probably isn't going to do a good job with Ravenloft, it's nice to see that someone else apparently already has. Totally worth the $20 I spent on it for the PDF--I just wish hard copies weren't out of stock. Edit: found some on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Sandy-Petersens-Mythos-5E/dp/B07YBHVM8Z/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Sandy+Petersen%E2%80%99s+Cthulhu+Mythos+f or+5e+Fantasy&qid=1614282283&sr=8-2) for, wow, $120. But it's good enough that I'm tempted to cough up the cash.

[Warder]

You know you can like, unshatter the core right?

Like if it's a concern?

I mean it's super easy.

Here watch.

"Hey guys, the book says the domains are different floating islands. But for this campaign they are all on on super continent."

Boom.

I know I can change things. I'm just sad that I feel like I have to, with every new book that comes out. I have this constant feeling that 5e is slipping away from me, and it sucks because it's an edition I genuinely like. There's no need to be snarky about it, that's really unnecessary.

[KorvinStarmast]

I know I can change things. I'm just sad that I feel like I have to ... I have found both that being a DM calls on us to put our own stamp on any adventure or setting that we didn't creat ourselves, and that the players enjoy it more if it is customized. I guess that experience may not be universal.

[Lord Vukodlak]

What's the point of shattering the Core? That's what I don't get. That just removes a lot of story opportunities and interplay between domains. What's the net gain from doing this?

Because there wasn’t really interplay between Domains, at times people might be able to travel between places but each Lords Domain stood alone.
As floating islands the Mists will determine where you go. There’s no returning to Barovia to ensure the Vampire hasn’t risen again.
No calling on allies from Domains you’ve freed. The roads of Ravenloft don’t send you where you want to go they send where the Dark Powers will it.

As islands the geography isn’t fixed if you need two domains to border each other they do.
But most importantly and island reinforces the idea that you’re trapped.

[MaxWilson]

Because there wasn’t really interplay between Domains, at times people might be able to travel between places but each Lords Domain stood alone.
As floating islands the Mists will determine where you go. There’s no returning to Barovia to ensure the Vampire hasn’t risen again.
No calling on allies from Domains you’ve freed. The roads of Ravenloft don’t send you where you want to go they send where the Dark Powers will it.

As islands the geography isn’t fixed if you need two domains to border each other they do.
But most importantly and island reinforces the idea that you’re trapped.

As I recall TSR Ravenloft lore you already couldn't penetrate the mists between domains unless the Dark Powers specifically allowed it. Honestly I've never heard of this "Core continent" thing. Is it a WotC invention from 3E?

[Damon_Tor]

The Clone spell is a great example. Players are quite happy to let the spell act as backup lives, but they don't necessarily identify the deep existential horror that should probably be invoked in any reasonably intelligent user of it. Is the Clone... actually you? Or, did you just die somewhere, and now you've created a thing that has all of your abilities and your appearance, and now you're siccing it on your friends and family?

Eh, it's a sort of "teleportation horror" that's muted in any world where souls are a thing and are definitively transferred from one vessel to the next. There are horror elements to play with via clone for sure, but I don't think "am I still me" is one of them.

One good one trick I've had played on me: whatever killed you to begin with now has your body. The party was preparing to face down the BBEG, a wizard of considerable power and cunning. Knowing it would be a hard fight, and just recently gaining access to 8th level spells, I pushed on the DM an interpretation of the first sentence of paragraph two of the spell that would allow a person killed while the clone is maturing to "wait" and resurrect later when the clone is mature. He, seemingly reluctantly, agreed that it should work... I'll never rules-lawyer him again.

The party TPKed, rather as expected, but not without foiling the BBEG's current plan. This marked the end of this particular campaign and sets up the start of a new one (the others were content to roll new characters). My wizard wakes up in his Demiplane. naked in the cloned body. He puts on some clothes left behind for this purpose and leaves the demiplane, and he finds that several months have passed, as expected. He makes his way to find the Emperor (the... Great Good... Good Guy? The guy who had been paying us) to report on the status of the quest and such, only to find that he's already there: or least his body is. The BBEG had taken my wizard's body and given it to a Dybbuk in his service to secure a place at the Emperor's right hand. The Emperor is well and thoroughly Wormtongued by now (and in my wizard's vanity he had opted for the "younger version" clone, so nobody even recognized him as him) and so after brief and largely futile battle with several of the Emperor's elite body guards (who of course have anti-magic training) the Dybbuk wasted no time in having my Wizard, in his new body, executed. So I went ahead and rolled up a new character after all.

[Tanarii]

As I recall TSR Ravenloft lore you already couldn't penetrate the mists between domains unless the Dark Powers specifically allowed it. Honestly I've never heard of this "Core continent" thing. Is it a WotC invention from 3E?
Nope. It was part of the first Ravenloft Boxed set, 2e's Realm of Terror.

The borders were normally open to "the average traveler", but the lord of a domain could close them at will. Also the mists can surround a domain occasionally. (Closing the borders didn't necessarily mean surrounding them with mists.)

[micahaphone]

If you can only go from one dread domain to another when the dark powers allow it, isn't it just "you walk into this direction, mists swell around you and by the time they dissipate you're in the next domain"? I've only played the 5E CoS, I don't know previous stuff from older domains of dread

[BoutsofInsanity]

I know I can change things. I'm just sad that I feel like I have to, with every new book that comes out. I have this constant feeling that 5e is slipping away from me, and it sucks because it's an edition I genuinely like. There's no need to be snarky about it, that's really unnecessary.

I think I'm snarky about it, is because that's the best feature of 5e and it bother's me that people don't use the books that way.

Take for example Rime of the Frostmaiden. Now would I be happy that they came out with a setting for Ten Towns. Absolutely. But the real reason I bought the book? Was to get my hands on the sweet mechanics behind a Frozen Tundra. To look and analyze what Wizards did with the rule-set and to ruthlessly steal and convert anything useful in the book. Same with the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. I don't care about the setting of Ravnica. But it opened up a whole new world of possibility on running guilds, new background features, spells and so forth.

And this book can do the same for you! 5e is so good, because you can pretty seamlessly take from whatever book you want to craft something that fits YOU. YOUR personal style. Make super-continent with all the Domains! Do it.

You can take old lore and combine it with the new stuff to fit your perfect table.

I'm sorry for the snark.

And I'm really sorry you are bummed about this setting. It can be rough when the lore changes. Goodness knows that Star Wars screwed me up permanently.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm not a fan of normal horror, and I don't think D&D does it well. I am a fan of putting horrible things in front of the players. Those could be people acting horribly, creatures out of a nightmare, the result of evil thing making "art" out of creatures while they're still alive (ie body horror), or situations where they're faced with a sacrifice in either (obvious) direction. Or the result of someone else's sacrifice.

I also intentionally shy away from things that I know my players are strongly psychologically averse to--I won't put spiders in if I have an arachnophobe at the table. Because my job as DM is to assist the table (myself included) in having fun. And that takes priority over just about everything else.

[Segev]

First off, thanks for all the compliments on my earlier post. I have, in the past, said, "I'm not a fan of horror; it doesn't do much for me except gross me out," but that's mainly because I had been exposed primarily to what I consider badly done horror. Even The Ring, which gets some things - particularly the anticipation aura - right, falls apart a bit because the doom is inevitable, until you learn the "fix." (In a sense, it does some good Gothic horror with how the fix works, though.) But it largely felt humorous to me, because Sadako is...well, she's funny, more than horrific. Also, I don't get scared by gore; I get disgusted and nauseated by it.

But... htere are aspects of horror I like, and think have powerful emotive pulls. That tension->release pattern is critical. As is that sense of unease. It's the unease more than the "oh this could kill us best run" or the "ugh look he's dying painfully" that sells it, for me. Which is why I like the first third or so of Mirrors, but walked out of the theater when it started turning to gore. (I don't know if the plot is served better when you watch the rest of the movie than it is by the synopsis I read afterwards; if not, the plot that's actually behind it is pretty dumb, too, in my opinion.)

But I will hold up A Quiet Place as doing horror very, very well, and also Blink, the episode of Doctor Who by Stephen Moffat wherein the Weeping Angels are introduced.

Horror should - as MaxWilson flatteringly said two of my examples did for him - give you chills, not just make you jump or feel briefly anxious in the same way "will the Avengers beat Thanos?" does.


Knowing stats doesn't effect what I'm talking about, most horror stories are about mostly regular people the farther from that you are the harder its going to be to foster fear. As a very simple example, the dark is only scary if you can't see in the dark.To play off of this, imagine how scary a Gloomstalker Ranger serial killer in a settlement where everyone uses Darkvision could be.


You know you can like, unshatter the core right?

Like if it's a concern?

I mean it's super easy.

Here watch.

"Hey guys, the book says the domains are different floating islands. But for this campaign they are all on on super continent."

Boom.


I know I can change things. I'm just sad that I feel like I have to, with every new book that comes out. I have this constant feeling that 5e is slipping away from me, and it sucks because it's an edition I genuinely like. There's no need to be snarky about it, that's really unnecessary.

I don't know if this is what WotC plans - I don't know how literal "islands" is meant to be taken as - but my thought upon hearing it was that they'd not so much removed connection between the Domains as made them...fuzzier. Rather than having a map that says "THIS wall of Mist is between Barovia and Falkovnia," instead each is surrounded by the Mists, and entering the Mists can take you to any of them. Including right back into the one you left. Maybe the Vistani have special powers/techniques/knowledge that lets them more reliably traverse from one Domain to another of their choice, but even for them I would have it be hazardous. I would also have each Domain have flavorful "here there be dragons" that make you want to stay out of them.

Running with what we've been told of 5e's Falkovnia, I would have the zombies wander in unending numbers out of the Mists surrounding the Domain, and entering the mists is entering where zombies are thickest and most likely to come for you.

[Thunderous Mojo]

What's the point of shattering the Core? That's what I don't get. That just removes a lot of story opportunities and interplay between domains. What's the net gain from doing this?
As a player that started with 1e AD&D, I felt the whole Ravenloft Setting was a bit hackneyed. Barovia was, originally, a small, valley kingdom, in the real world. The House of Gryphon Hill takes place in a dream....Until, eventually the modules were superseded by the Setting of Ravenloft.

The 2e Setting always felt to me like a Mist Shrouded Disneyland....
........here's Vampireworld, here is evil-elflandia, here is "we don't believe in Magic"-land, etc, etc. It was a hodgepodge of incongruous elements literally thrust together.

By removing the Core, you remove Horror Themed Gondwanaland. You can make travel between the different Domains more dreamlike, more akin to Lovecraft, rather than more akin to this: "the journey from Barovia to Sithicus takes three weeks in the back of a Vistani Wagon".

Roleplaying a 3 week bus trip isn't really the type of Horror, I want to inflict or have inflicted upon me.🃏

I do empathize with you feeling frustrated at the direction of the product.🕊

[Millstone85]

Personally, I preferred the 4e version where the domains of dread are anchored/positioned in the Shadowfell rather than free floating in the ethereal plane. It put the games spookier elements together in a way that complimented each other well, and 'escaping' from a domain of dread generally just left you in the wider but equally dark and dangerous world of the Shadowfell.Indeed, that was neat. However, keeping this model would raise questions regarding travel between the Domains of Dread.

Where 4e's Heroes of Shadow dealt with the dark reflection of a single world, that of the Nentir Vale setting, 5e's VRGtR might have darklords of Krynnish, Oerthly and Torilian origins.

In that new context, would the Shadowfell allow you to reach any domain by land or sea? Or would you have to board a spelljamming ship and sail up into shadow space?

[Thunderous Mojo]

Spelljamming in Shadowspace was the title of my first album. I'm big in the Toy District. 🃏🥸

I doubt spelljamming in shadowspace is going to be the Official answer, but all of the judges, (including the East German judge), give the answer a "9.5".🏅🏆

[Sception]

What's the point of shattering the Core? That's what I don't get. That just removes a lot of story opportunities and interplay between domains. What's the net gain from doing this?

It lets you come up with your own domains without having to try to fit them into a rigid canon map, and since domains drifting independently though the ethereal plane can remain isolated forever or bump into each other arbitrarily, you can let the narrative needs of your campaign story dictate whether, where, and when any two or more domains of dread might happen to overlap and interact. since tge ethereal plane is usually an established part of most campaign settings, you can also incorporate this version of domains of dread within more established settings without resorting to world travel & meta-setting business. Finally, it gives the ethereal plane more of an identity & reason to exist apart from being the astral plane's more boring doppleganger.

It's again not my preferred version of the DoD, but I can readily see advantages of this choice that would lead tge devs to try it this way, without having to imagine some sort of nefarious 'vandalism for its own sake' motivation.

[Corsair14]

It makes sense that it is a core continent with the islands being lesser domains more capable of floating around but you still have merchant shipping and caravans traveling back and forth between the more civilized realms. Or people escaping from one realm to another in may cases. I think Sithicus was bordered to either Darkon or Barovia by a river that people would try and get across the bridge. Barovia and Darkon also had on again off again wars just to pass the time since realistically neither could ever win and it only took one to close the border if he really didnt want it to happen. Then again, most residents of the domains are artificial with created histories and memories that like the lands, only exist at the whims of the dark powers thus most normal residents do not travel and we go back to middle ages mentality of rarely going more than a couple miles from home.

[Scots Dragon]

It's again not my preferred version of the DoD, but I can readily see advantages of this choice that would lead tge devs to try it this way, without having to imagine some sort of nefarious 'vandalism for its own sake' motivation.

It does feel like Wizards of the Coast's entire mindset for updating an edition involves blowing up a campaign setting.

They had to reverse the blowing-up of the Forgotten Realms since the last time they blew it up, they've left Eberron well enough alone for now, and they won't blow up any of the Magic: The Gathering worlds, so Ravenloft goes asplode.

[Leliel]

It does feel like Wizards of the Coast's entire mindset for updating an edition involves blowing up a campaign setting.

They had to reverse the blowing-up of the Forgotten Realms since the last time they blew it up, they've left Eberron well enough alone for now, and they won't blow up any of the Magic: The Gathering worlds, so Ravenloft goes asplode.

So, basically:

1. The one explosion was literally something they undid ASAP.

2. The other big opportunities, Dark Sun and Eberron, were left largely alone.

3. The Magic worlds were kept as is.

Wow, what a pattern. Nothing is safe from their wrath.

Let's just say, I am very suspect of anything that claims that "blowing up the setting" is their first reaction, when it was done a grand total of once, and then they undid it very fast.

Also, here's something about the Core:

The Core existed for the sake of metaplot.

I'm not joking. That's why it was there. It was so a bunch of overpowered NPCs could have lives that were completely separate from the players could have their own lives that rendered a lot of setting changes seemingly irrevocable and kept on building off of setting changes in previous books, often leaving massive holes or awaiting lore between publishing. All about how the darklords and weird characters (*cough*Neutral Good bardic lich*cough*) you weren't allowed to replicate because "the fiction" wouldn't fit it. Metaplot, frankly, is never a good idea, and if you want player options, 5E's byline, you have to drop it. Worse, it even kind of broke the idea that every domain is a prison-kingdom. After all, every darklord could just send mail to other darklords or telephone-scry for high magic ones.

Frankly, breaking it apart seems more like amputating a once-functional limb, and leaves the existence of more possibilities than it ends. The Mists simply become as omnipresent as they're supposed to be, and Mistways become even more important; now, they're ways to visit other lands. A couple stable ones, and you can have just as much cultural exchange - hell, not even that's needed, if people are brave/stupid enough. Disco Elysium shows how it can be done in a video game really well, and you never even touch their version of the Mists.