It is back!!! What we do know about VR Guide to Ravenloft?

[Jester of the FoS]

I'm pretty pro-diversity and fixing issues in the game but the response to Ezmerelda is eye rolling.
First, I don't know why she's called "Ez" now. Was her name an issue prior? (I saw lots of complaints regarding her hiding her leg and Vistani roots, but I don't recall anything on her name.)
Too hard to spell?

My guess: to distance her from Esmerelda, the Romani from Notre dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame, arguably the most well known named "Gypsy Girl" character in pop culture/literature. If they're trying to distance the Vistani from the Roma, they may be trying to walk back on using Romani names, or what a 19th century Frenchman thought was a good name for a Romani. (I don't actually know how accurate a name it is).

"Esmerelda" being a real Spanish name and one the character in the book took as an alias.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Looks like my copy hasn't been delivered. Drat.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

And double drat. I checked, and I won't receive my copy until around the 3rd of june. Grr.

[TwiceBorn Reborn]

I have no idea when I'll get mine, which I pre-ordered months ago.

It's being held up by two other items that are part of the same order, but the releases of which have been delayed (Return to the Circle Undone for the Arkham Horror LCG, and the Children of Fear for the Call of Cthulhu RPG... who knows when that one will become available).

[Le Noir Faineant]

Not gonna lie to you, I'm as oldschool a D&D fan as you can ever be, and I don't mind updating the older settings according to more modern standards. (Still waiting for a version of "Dragonlance" in which women aren't generally presented as idiots, for example.)

That said, this new take on Ravenloft is on the weaker side. My friendly guess is, the writers didn't really know the setting, and pretty blatant tokenism more often than not replaces more creative approaches to the genre, and to the specific scenarios. I say that in the context of this book adapting "Ravenloft", not in the context of "D&D trying to do horror": The game-related content and the trademark 5e design structure don't disappoint. It's the need to connect to the older material that weakens the book: Rather than straight out butchering classic Ravenloft - because, make no mistake, this is what's done here - it would have been nice to see the same authors try something completely new and original.

From a genre/horror point of view, I find the book rather replaceable. Other RPGs have done that better, with WotC's "Curse of Strahd" or several Pathfinder modules essentially showing how it's done. If I was looking for a new setting, these days, I would probably consider something like Troll Lord Games' "Haunted Highlands". That one is already a few years old, already, but considerably less convoluted than this new take on Ravenloft.

From a Ravenloft point of view, I feel really old. The tokenism doesn't faze me - this is a book for younger folks, and hitting them over the head with some stuff is not necessarily a mistake. That said, again, a display of love for the source material, rather than an attempt to "improve on it", would have been what I would have liked to see. I was aware that I was not going to see the White Wolf gazetteers continued - but I would have hoped that, after the very literary take on the setting we saw from the Kargatane, we would now get a condensed, play-focused version of established concepts, not just a new version that is more "inspired by" than "based on".

From an applicability point of view, I doubt that I will ever use this book as the base for one of my games. Which brings me to the book's core weakness: The writers don't seem to understand their source material.

Harkon Lukas being presented as black isn't a problem because of his race, but because it shifts the reference point. Kartakass isn't supposed to be, whatever, the Mardi Gras, it's supposed to be a pretty specific fantasy version of medieval Germany, with Wagnerian connotations, and all. That's a lot of free background to toy with as a more sophisticated DM. Taking it away cheapens the value of the content. The same for - and this seems to have been a real knee-jerker for some of the many internet commenters - the presentation of Mordent: Not a problem to make the Weathermay twins black, per se. But a problem as soon as it distracts from the intention of the original scenario. - Which is, at least to me, that Mordent is essentially the standard Bronte, "Rebecca", "Woman in Black"-kind of Gothic horror backdrop, and the players have a clear idea from the get-go what they are in on. Like the story where you are aware that your mission is essentially to slay the evil vampire in his castle , it's a narrative all participants can place and toy with because it's heavily reliant on narrative tropes. It allows for a different kind of roleplaying than "generic" horror outside of that narrative frame, the same way players of CoC or WoD usually have a clear idea about the game they're going to play.

...And that's something 5e Ravenloft seems to struggle with, throughout all the reimagining and namedropping: It reads as if it's a way less efficient take on "classic horror" than its predecessors used to be. Unless the writers soon supply us with a proper practical take on the new Ravenloft, in form of a proper campaign or adventure module that gives the many new changes a proper meaning within the game, 5e Ravenloft will continue to lack "character", compared to older versions of the setting, or to other takes on the "fantasy horror" genre.

As it is, 5e RL is playable and easy to read - but it's plainly not a good adaption of the older stuff, and it's long-time value as a horror backdrop for D&D is not yet defined. As it is, it's neither a proper hommage, nor fresh enough to create a following of the kind classic Ravenloft did; on the long term, this book might very well age just like a slightly more setting-driven 5e version of 3e's "Heroes of Horror".

[HyperionSol]

In general, I like the book in terms of mechanics and things I can add to my game. The subclass and lineage options are things I'd like to see in any supplement. Their identifying horror genres and elements of it does help me better define what I want in a horror adventure, at least as a solid foundation for what I have in mind. The use of curses, fear, and stress can all have a welcome place in my ideas and adventures. So in terms of game mechanics and such, I can happily add this to my knowledge, although a section dedicated to meanings of the Tarokka like in a previous edition would have been appreciated!

In terms of lore, it's just ripped to shreds. They had some good ideas, and I didn't mind replacing some darklords since it could have shown showed time in the Domains of Dread continued on. With how Dominic D'honaire and Vlad Drakov ruled, it wouldn't have been out of the realm of reason that they were overthrown by members of their family in these new Darklords. Instead, they retconned a lot and really reshaped everything about Ravenloft. It reads more like a remake rather than an update and continuation of the Ravenloft line. It seems they dismissed the Grand Conjunction too, a pivotal moment in Ravenloft history! Not that there are elements in lore or maps that I think can be useful, such as a more detailed map of Har'Akir with plenty of locations, but I was disappointed that the lore was reworked to the point I can't see much of the original Ravenloft anymore. I expected some rewrites, considering some sensitive subject matter in older editions, but this was just...ugh.

[onmyoji]

Harkon Lukas being presented as black isn't a problem because of his race, but because it shifts the reference point. Kartakass isn't supposed to be, whatever, the Mardi Gras, it's supposed to be a pretty specific fantasy version of medieval Germany, with Wagnerian connotations, and all. That's a lot of free background to toy with as a more sophisticated DM. Taking it away cheapens the value of the content.

Thanks for putting into words what my problems were with Kartakass! I knew there was something that seemed so wrong about their presentation of it, but I really couldn't put my finger on it.

I also have zero problem with Harkon being black. My only issue with how he's presented is that the image seems to present more of a traveling minstrel image, rather than the sort of swashbuckler/pirate image that was so prominent in his art up until this point. I guess my problem is that he's missing that sort of "classy" air that his image previously had.

— onmyoji

[Le Noir Faineant]

Thanks for the kind words, man. - The overall problem I have with the wanna-be-woke writing in the field of RPGs is that the respective authors - we have talked about Jessica Price in this thread already - use their political attitude to justify their bad writing.

"Tokenism" happens when you "replace", but not "adapt". And too much is arbitrarily replaced here, and not properly "adapted". - For example, I'm pretty sure one of the reasons why we got "Black Harkon" is that one of the most awesome PG-13 horror novels/novellas of the last few years has been "The Ballad of Black Tom":

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/268 ... -black-tom

You look at that cover, you know what I mean. --- Now, instead of using that idea, and "adapting" it to something awesome - something on its own that could probably play off the whole Kartakass theme - the powers that be decide to "replace" the classic character, sacrificing the coherency and congruence of the setting to their half-baked efforts. And that's not, whatever, a "sophisticated political statement" - that's just plain-out bad writing.

Now, all of this is not the end of all things - the books is surely going to make some mo', and going to stay popular for some time. But if you count off preorders, and purchases by folks that just buy everything with a certain logo on it , then the question is, what's the unique selling point of "Ravenloft 5e", compared to the competition?

Like, "Curse of Strahd" was an extremely well-done adventure module. Is VRGtR an "extremely well-done campaign setting", compared to, say, "Shadow of the Demon Lord", or even the rather goofy "The Chained Coffin" by Goodman Games? - Hmmm.

[onmyoji]

Thanks for the kind words, man. - The overall problem I have with the wanna-be-woke writing in the field of RPGs is that the respective authors - we have talked about Jessica Price in this thread already - use their political attitude to justify their bad writing.

"Tokenism" happens when you "replace", but not "adapt". And too much is arbitrarily replaced here, and not properly "adapted". - For example, I'm pretty sure one of the reasons why we got "Black Harkon" is that one of the most awesome PG-13 horror novels/novellas of the last few years has been "The Ballad of Black Tom":

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/268 ... -black-tom

You look at that cover, you know what I mean. --- Now, instead of using that idea, and "adapting" it to something awesome - something on its own that could probably play off the whole Kartakass theme - the powers that be decide to "replace" the classic character, sacrificing the coherency and congruence of the setting to their half-baked efforts. And that's not, whatever, a "sophisticated political statement" - that's just plain-out bad writing.

I've said it in other threads here and on the Discord and I'll say it again. Having seen what we got with VRGtR, I kinda wish they just gave the one-paragraph writeup for all the preexisting domains and spent the space they'd have saved just creating some wholly new domains from scratch. They can be as "woke" as need be and adapt wholly new things that weren't concerns during 3rd edition. I think that would've provided a superior product for sure.

I'm told that the Har'Akir rewrite is quite good. I'm not familiar with the old one, even though I have to run GC 1-4 for a campaign I'm on now. (They're still early on in FoG, so I've got a long way to go before I need to read about Har'Akir.) However, that could've still been presented as an entirely new domain if they wanted to.

What I think is that it's actually much harder to create a coherent domain from scratch than WotC wants to let on, and they probably couldn't have been bothered to do that extra work. It's a lot less work, of course, to adapt something that already exists (in this case, adapting their IP from 3rd edition) and just add some flavor and sprinkles to make the outspoken happier than to rewrite something that's actually well-worked and novel from scratch.

— onmyoji

[Le Noir Faineant]

Yeah, you pretty much nail it, as far as I see things: This is not a matter of valuating content on the readers' side. It's a simple matter of lazy and/or unmotivated writing. Not a big deal, really, if, as I say above, we at least get a decent adventure out of it.

Like, how do you phrase it in English? - "I'm not even mad, I'm just disappointed." Fifteen years ago, Erik Mona had the same chance that the RL writing team had with another nostalgia-driven take on "Greyhawk". He did a distinctively better job there than the current crew did now. And that's about the end of it. "Bad book, no donut". - Doesn't faze me at my gaming table, and I'm sure happy to have the brand out there, again, because that means that the old stuff will live on, too. But if this one had my interest by default, the next books carrying the Ravenloft name will have to be really good books to get me back onto the bandwagon.

Again, speaking coldly and strategically, I think the inevitable 6e update will fix this. WotC wants to make their brands multimedia franchises: Meaning, most of the changes they're making now are meant to please the video game and series-streaming crowds. As soon as they gain a foothold in that business that goes beyond the occasional "Baldur's Gate", I suspect their brand mangement will be less dependent on the Twitter crowd than what we're seeing now - if only because their audience will be considerably bigger. "Ravenloft - The TV Series" will be written under different criteria, and with a different audience in mind than the 5e setting.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

A Ravenloft T.V.-series... What a concept.
But would it be a cartoon or live-action?
And who would they use as P.O.V.-characters?

[Manofevil]

It occurs to me to ask, What about the seas? Since they also qualify as domains, how does the new publication address them?

[Igor the Henchman]

It occurs to me to ask, What about the seas? Since they also qualify as domains, how does the new publication address them?

The Sea of Sorrows gets a short description in the book. It can briefly attach itself to any domain that has a coastline (Darkon, Dementlieu, Kalakeri, Lamordia, Mordent, Valachan) and snatch away sea travelers, effectively entrapping them a la old Saragoss. The darklord is Captain Pietra Van Riese, a female pirate ghost. The domain has a few less-than-hospitable islands, including Blaustein, Dominia, the Lighthouse and the Isle of Ravens. These got only a tiny description, but enough to show that they've changed a lot from previous editions.

No mention of the Nocturnal Sea.

[Jadeite]

Players of previous editions are a small minority now, so WotC has little reason to cater to them. And that will only accentuate the more D&D grows. I wouldn't hold my breath for a 6E version.
I didn't like most of the changes VRGtRL made, especially the destruction of the core, but I still have the Gazetteers. And there's a huge amount of 3rd party stuff for fantasy horror like Grim Hollow, Kobold Press, SP's Cthulhu Mythos, Symbaroum, the upcoming Nightfell, etc.
VRGtRL may not be for me, but there lots of other products that are.

[Le Noir Faineant]

A Ravenloft T.V.-series... What a concept.
But would it be a cartoon or live-action?
And who would they use as P.O.V.-characters?

I think people have been pushing the envelope on that one, only quite recently, say, with Netflix' "Castlevania". Shows like that, industry standard, one of these days. Now, talking about PC culture, I doubt that we're going to see Barovia on the big screen, ever, if only because the setting is such a butchery of Eastern-European cultures. Funny that with all the changes, nobody thought that the setting itself is pretty offensive BY DEFAULT:

Cowardly and dumb German-Russians in a land full of cursed, dumb hot chicks need a group of "basically-English hero-saviors" to clean out their haunted castles. Strangely, nobody's got a problem with that as long as we make sure that at least one of the "basically-English hero-saviors" has a darker skintone, and the option to be genderfluid.

- Which is why this debate is so silly: You want to eliminate racism in RPGs, you got to stop basing the core of your games on 19th century stories and tropes. And that's how complicated it will get: "Dracula", "Tarzan", or "Solomon Kane" are always going to be about as racist as a picture of Hitler eating a cracker. - And the Ravenloft 5e writers are trying to solve the problem by replacing the cracker. That's bound to produce bad results.