Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft
Jason Mical, Contributing Editor
How do you successfully reboot one of the oldest and best-loved intellectual properties in role-playing game history? How do you make it more inclusive without sacrificing the distinctive feel of the original? This is what Wizards of the Coast set out to do with Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, an update of the Ravenloft campaign setting for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. And they knocked it out of the park, creating an iconic campaign setting that will inevitably steer a generation of gamers into the Mists.
Ravenloft is one of the oldest Dungeons & Dragons settings, its origins dating to the adventure I6: Ravenloft, first published in 1983. The adventure was expanded into a complete setting in 1990 with the boxed set Realms of Terror and went on to include several dozen additional boxed sets, books, and supplements across 2nd edition and 3rd edition D&D. Wizards of the Coast published Curse of Strahd in 2016, updating the original I6 adventure for a new generation of 5th edition players. They announced in 2020 that Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft would update the entire setting in much the same way that the Realms of Terror boxed set did in 1990.
VRGTR is as much about running different kinds of horror RPGs as the Ravenloft lore itself. The book opens with background on the setting—that Ravenloft is a Demiplane in the Plane of Shadow, imprisoning some of the most evil beings that exist across the D&D multiverse—and that adventures there are inevitably about experiencing and combating this evil. It covers making characters, including some excellent horror options. The Reborn lineage is great, offering rules for PCs brought back from the dead (in the tradition of the Harrowed from Deadlands), and the College of the Spirit gives bards an option to bring spirits into the world—think of a Victorian medium mashed up with The Frighteners.
The next section is devoted entirely to lore. This is the biggest departure from previous versions of Ravenloft, but in a good way. Nearly every domain and Darklord (the evil rulers of said domains) have been updated in some way. The best comparison I can think of is that 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition Ravenloft are the Marvel comic books, while 5th Edition Ravenloft is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
For example, the domain of Lamordia in 2nd and 3rd editions was Frankenstein with the serial numbers filed off. Dr. Victor Mordenheim created a creature named Adam from corpses and animated it. It killed (or nearly killed) his wife Elisa and both the doctor and the creature are doomed to eternal life in the Demiplane of Dread. 5th Edition loses the creature entirely and focuses on Dr. Viktra Mordenheim and her near-dead partner Elise. Viktra now focuses entirely on keeping Elise alive with corpse parts and steam-science.
It’s a simple matter for a DM who likes the old canon to simply borrow the bits they enjoy and bring it into the new (or vice-versa.) In fact, the book encourages this, almost to a fault. The one weakness the book is that it often falls back on “what is true? Well, that’s up to the DM!” Which is fine, but for a DM who just wants to run an adventure rather than invest in building a world (or demiplane), finding so many blanks to fill in could be very exhausting. The vagaries in Darkon’s description, especially its final fate, feel particularly challenging—especially for someone not invested in the lore.
As for the inclusiveness of the new edition, it removed most if not all of the problematic elements of previous editions and did an excellent job diversifying the denizen of the demiplane. Some previously white characters are Black, some previously male characters are women, and some characters simply don’t exist anymore. It really helps open up Ravenloft to new audiences, giving BIPOC folx, queer folx, and women representation in a game where they had little to none. It also provides a great deal more storytelling possibilities. As much as I loved the old Ravenloft setting, it could definitely feel a little same-y. It borrowed heavily from classic horror, where the new version has been updated by tapping into new horror tropes that have evolved in the last 30 years, bringing far more choice to the table.
All told, the new Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is one of the best-written, best-assembled, and best-illustrated (the portrait of Firan on page 181 and Ivana Boritsi on page 79 are standouts) RPG books I’ve ever read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in horror RPGs, fantasy RPGs, or both. (And no, you need not be into D&D to get quite a bit of inspiration from this book).
