The Quick and Dirty Guide to Setting up a Ravenloft 5E Campaign

Very quick and very dirty, but you can do it now with almost no effort on your part. As many may know, Curse of Strahd did arrive earlier this year for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, which was cool and all that but it was a tight focus on a Strahd reboot/remaster story line, and focused exclusively on the domain of Barovia, leaving us with precious little to go on in terms of 5th edition's take of the broader Domains of Dread.

Thankfully, entrepreneurial sorts have populated DMsguild.com with lots of useful Ravenloft resources, and WotC themselves have made a print edition of the Ravenloft 3.0 Core Rulebook available. So here's what you need to kick off that fully-functioning campaign in the Domains of Dread using 5E rules now:

Ravenloft 3.0 Core Rulebook and Secrets of the Dread Realms

The POD edition of this book is spot-on, and the only way to identify it as a reprint is by the fact that there's a mark in the back from the printer; it is otherwise an excellent print copy. The 3.0 edition rulebook was useful in that it provided a detailed write-up on the Domains of Dread in great detail, but it is less useful in that it omitted DM-only information for the follow-up sourcebook, Secrets of the Dread Realms. That particular tome is (oddly) not yet available on dmsguild.com but you can find it readily on  Ebay for a decent price. Problem of course is you'll need to convert the lords of Ravenloft yourself to 5E, so you could also bypass the 3.0 edition and go for Domains of Dread, which is the definitive 2nd edition resource for Ravenloft, and also quite useful. For my money I liked DoD the most, but over the years have grown to like the 3rd edition version a bit more.

Ravenloft Bestiary

Leonaru made this amazing resource, which is a couple hundred pages of Ravenloft monster conversions, complete with text details and all information necessary to run the Ravenloft beasts in 5E. Get it, then turn it in to your own POD private document through Lulu like me so you can have a play copy at the table that looks like a real book. Well worth it.

If you have the above books, you are pretty much set. But if you want more specific 5E conversions and options, the next two are also well worth looking in to:

Ravenloft Archetypes I: Nightmares of Barovia

This is a dmsguild.com resource which includes lots of archetypes, spells, races and monster options for 5E characters tailored for Ravenloft. It's a decent resource, and while the rule of thumb on "user beware" for all 3PP applies, I haven't seen anything in this book that is particularly egregious....when I do get around to running Ravenloft soon I will likely be able to report on it with some playtest feedback, though.

Ravenloft Archetypes II: Core Domains Adventurer's Guide

This book expands beyond the first, looking in to several core domains and providing material derived from and attempting to expand on prior Ravenloft resources. It's useful in this regard, and worth looking at, though you may just prefer to host a game with the 2nd edition or 3rd edition core Ravenloft books mentioned earlier. Main problem with this PDF is it is not really optimized and has a huge (200MB) download size. Anyone using PDFs on their tablets know what a pain this can be to navigate.

....So, if you have the above five books then you basically have everything necessary to run a Ravenloft campaign in 5th edition, and the only work you'll really need to do will be to convert the actual dread lords of the domains themselves, using whichever version you prefer (2nd or 3rd).

D&D Reprint On Demand Report: Spelljammer and Ravenloft

Three more books from the POD option at dmsguild.com came in today: Ravenloft II: The House on Griffon Hill, Spelljammer: Goblin's Return and the first-time-in-print Scourge of the Sword Coast. I won't focus on the content, but instead on the quality of these print editions:

Ravenloft II: The House on Griffon Hill

I couldn't resist this primarily because I never owned the original, and I always wanted to investigate the first module to outline Mordent, one of my top five domains in Ravenloft. The cover and binding of this module is great, and it's a bit thicker than the old 1E modules were, mainly due to being perfect-bound on heavier quality paper. The cover and back look great.

However, the interior looks a bit faded to the naked eye, although I noticed it less once I put the reading glasses on. The net effect is that some pages....many....just look a bit "off" in that way a print from a scanned copy tends to be. This is unfortunate. It's not bad enough to make me regret the purchase, however....or the advantage of an inexpensive new copy over hunting for one on ebay. The back contains reprints in color of the handouts and maps for the module, and they actually fare much better, being legible and useful.

Spelljammer: Goblin's Return

I owned this one long ago and ran it once. Like Ravenloft II, the module's color cover looks great, and it's thicker paper and perfect bound spine mean it looks just a tad thicker than the original (which was itself a big book at 68 pages including fold out ship cards. The cards are in the back, and remain in full color, albeit standard, slightly washed-out colors instead of the glossy cardstock of the original.

The print in this module suffers from the same problem as Ravenloft II: a bit light, and feels like a bit washed out in a "print of a scan" kind of way, but the problem once again more or less disappears for me with my reading glasses on so I'm not 100% sure it's me or the book itself. I'm leaning to "book" though because of the next module, which serves as a great control....

Scourge of the Sword Coast

This was the third module to be released in the 2013-2014 D&D Next playtest phase, which means its at once compatible with D&D 5E and also contains some interesting artifacts in its design from that formative phase of 5E, including some interesting monsters stats. The book's never been offered in print before, but it was clearly laid out and designed for print; the POD version looks awesome, and the version I got (the deluxe premium color paper) is crisp and sharp....and the fact that it looks so good and is also so readable is a good test to confirm that the lighter print of the other two books is a real problem, and not just an issue with my eyes.

As a side note this module is a direct sequel to the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle module, which was a Gencon special with playtest rules and a level 1-10 quartet of scenarios. This is another great candidate for a future POD edition. I actually ran the entire Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle as a level 1-10 campaign in the first half of 2015, albeit ported from the Sword Coast to the Silver Coast of Pergerron. Good module! But not sure how viable Scourge of the Sword Coast is as a direct sequel, since it's aimed at level 2-4, and takes place after the last scenario in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, where the PCs would be pushing level 10-11.

Overall

I think for the price all three POD books above were worth it, but if you're a collector I'd keep hunting the originals, especially Ravenloft II and its large map of Mordenshire. For Goblin's Return, this module would be perfect if you want to run it....and more than sufficient if you're collecting Spelljammer for fun, but maybe not ideal if you want a "first printing" level of quality. As for Scourge of the Sword Coast....if you had the two prior print release modules from that era (Murder in Baldur's Gate and that other one with the drow elf and the crystal shards) then this is a must-have, and contains plenty of useful stuff to crib for 5E games.

Saturday goes Ravenloft

The Saturday group has gone to Ravenloft. It's an odd transition to the Domains....a concession that my Enzada campaign was not quite working for all players (or even me) as intended, but allowing me to segue into a new campaign featuring existing characters kidnapped into the Domains of Dread for some horrible fun.

My Ravenloft experience is pure 2nd edition, so I'm running from the Domains of Dread sourcebook, as I have none of the 3rd edition material done by White Wolf anymore, and didn't much like it's style, anyway....2E's Ravenloft was a setting with brief but concise guides that gave you just enough info to be inspired, then a lot of modules with a "show don't tell" approach to the domains that worked great for me. 3rd edition's licensed adaptation suffered from the problem so many 3E era settings did, with authors who were getting paid by the word (it seemed) to take something you could convey in 10 pages and do it in 50 instead. It heaped lots of special rules in endless splatbooks and managed to drag out the brevity of the Domains into an endless churn of sourcebooks, and hardly any effort at all was made to make actual modules.

Anyway, the Saturday group is still enmeshed with Pathfinder, so I'm doing a sort of on-the-fly 2E Ravenloft to Pathfinder conversion as I go, running a series of modules from late in the setting's history. Opening session was a lot of fun, though it became evident this will be an interesting experience for all: even the one player in my group who once ran a couple modules for Ravenloft used them in the Forgotten Realms and not the actual domains....none of these players have actually ever played in Ravenloft.

It's going to be interesting to contrast this experience with the 5E Curse of Strahd when it arrives! Either way I'm enjoying a chance to return to one of my favorite published D&D worlds, from two rather interesting angles.

D&D 5E: The next book is Curse of Strahd

Morrus broke it early, but details are here. It fits the rumor lead-up, and Amazon has a spot listed, and there are lots of "placeholder hits" on the WotC website, so I think this one's official. Best part is the release date is March 15, so not long to wait!!!

From Amazon's listing:

Under raging storm clouds, the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich stands silhouetted against the ancient walls of Castle Ravenloft. Rumbling thunder pounds the castle spires. The wind’s howling increases as he turns his gaze down toward the village of Barovia. Far below, yet not beyond his keen eyesight, a party of adventurers has just entered his domain. Strahd’s face forms the barest hint of a smile as his dark plan unfolds. He knew they were coming, and he knows why they came — all according to his plan. A lightning flash rips through the darkness, but Strahd is gone. Only the howling of the wind fills the midnight air. The master of Castle Ravenloft is having guests for dinner. And you are invited.