JM Hauser

Hot off the Wizards of the Coast press is a brand new sourcebook that I’ve been eyeing for a while. As a DM currently running (and loving) Curse of Strahd, this book may come a little too late, but from what I have seen so far it is way more than just “Strahd and Barovia.” Much more.

The cover notably has the quintessential vampire himself, along with Van Richten and Esmerelda (who nearly died herself in my current campaign at the fists of a grumpy golem in the Amber Temple). So while the sourcebook certainly does help one flesh out Barovia, it is much more as it fleshes the Domains of Dread as a whole, which incorporates other demiplanes and darklords other than Barovia and Strahd, including (but not limited to):

Bluetspur and the God-Brain, Darkon and the Inheritors, Mordent and Wilfred Godefroy, G’henna, The Nightmare Lands, Sea of Sorrows and more. It’s a book for DMs and players, but mostly DMs, which is nice because the majority of 5e books geared toward players don’t interest me.

Some of the new rules include:

Seeds of Fear

Aside from supernatural sources of dread and monsters who strike terror in their victims, fear is subjective and often quite personal. A battle-hardened warrior and a reclusive scholar might not deal with frightful circumstances in the same way. During character creation, a player can choose up to two Seeds of Fear to represent things their character finds truly frightening. The Seeds of Fear table offers some examples. These can change over time as characters grow, overcome old fears, and discover new uncertainties. Work with players to determine when their Seeds of Fear might change.

A character never has more than three Seeds of Fear; if you gain a new seed and already have three, choose which of your old fears is replaced by the new one.

Fear

An overwhelming foe or horrid monster doesn’t need magic or some supernatural ability to strike fear into the most stalwart adventurers. During any frightful encounter, you can call on a character to make a saving throw to resist being scared. The character must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened until the end of their next turn.

Any of the following circumstances might be reasons to have one or more characters make saving throws to resist being frightened:

• The character experiences one of their Seeds of Fear.
• An enemy is immune to the character’s attacks or spells.
• An enemy demonstrates it can deal enough damage to reduce a character to 0 hit points in one blow.
• A creature is alien or monstrous in ways the character never could have imagined.
• An object undermines a character’s understanding of reality.

Stress

Charging headlong into terrifying situations is the stock in trade for adventurers. Among the Domains of Dread, though, periods of respite between harrowing experiences can be rare. Even the hardiest adventurers find themselves worn down over time, their performance suffering as they struggle to cope with the dread and despair.

Various circumstances might cause a character stress. Stress can be tracked numerically as a Stress Score, increasing in trying situations and decreasing with care. At your discretion, a character’s Stress Score might increase by 1 when one of the following situations occurs:

• A tense, dramatic moment, especially one involving one of a character’s Seeds of Fear
• Every 24 hours the character goes without finishing a long rest
• Witnessing the death of a loved one
• A nightmare or darkest fear made real
• Shattering the character’s fundamental understanding of reality
• Witnessing a person transform into a horrid or unnatural creature

When a character makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, they must apply their current Stress Score as a penalty to the roll.

Now, of course these rules are all optional and are ultimately meant to invoke a sense of dread that pervade the various domains. In my current Curse of Strahd campaign, fear and dread ALREADY pervades the campaign pretty darn well, so I’m probably not going to jump in and make it any harder (except in maybe some exceptional circumstances). The players long ago learned that in Ravenloft you have to pick your fights, and running and hiding is a very viable solution to things you can’t beat to death with heavy weapons and harsh words.

This is not a comprehensive review of the Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft but just a quick heads up and nod to its existence. After I’ve had more time to read and absorb the material I will probably add a more in-depth analysis.

Until then, keep gaming!

I doubt anyone is reading this 6 year old D&D campaign anymore, but if you ARE, I have reloaded and updated all the links to the stories so they should be accessible now. Princes gets some flack in the community for not being that great, but I thought it was awesome. I did change things up some, so maybe that had something to do with it. We never got to the absolute end – maybe one session away – but life interrupted and the campaign had to stop. However, the penultimate session really works well as a campaign capper and was fun as heck, so I’m happy enough with that. My favorite parts of Princes were all the sessions at Feathergale Spire, and the side quest at Yartar that I inserted myself, it wasn’t part of the adventure really except as a passing mention.

• Session #5 – Shallow Graves
• Session #6 – Feathergale Spire
• Session #7 – Lair of the Purple Wyrm
• Session #8 – Escape from Feathergale Spire
• Session #9 – Assault on Feathergale Spire
• Session #10 -Deathtrap at Feathergale Spire

• Session #59 – Serena & The Book of the Exalted
• Session #60 – Yartar Faction War
• Session #61 – Lair of the Krakenspawn
• Session #62 – Demise of the Cointoss Tavern
• Session #63 – “Where the Flame Still Flickers…”

I have been running this campaign on Roll20 since mid-2020 and it is still going on. I’ve long heard it was one of the best 5th edition campaigns, and now that’s we’ve put the foot to the pedal and ground out a sizeable chunk of the adventure, I would have to agree that it is one of the better ones – if not the best. I never got into the Ravenloft setting in 2nd edition (which I now regret) but I did run Ravenloft I6 several years back (link here) and it was great fun. But Curse of Strahd is a different beast, taking the PCs from 1st to 9th level (more or less) and pitting them not just against Strahd and his deplorable castle of death, but the whole kingdom of Barovia and the myriad NPCs and mysteries enmeshed within. And there are a LOT of NPCs and mysteries.

One of our favorites so far has to be Pidlwick II, the evil Chucky doll. Although the PCs were supposed to meet him much later in the campaign, I loved the picture and idea of the character so much that I transplanted him to Vallaki and included him as part of a Tarroka clue to directly benefit a party member, and used Pidlwick as a permanent ring of regeneration. The player benefiting from P2 loves him so much and would rather have his own PC die than give up the evil doll! Now that is devotion.