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Common questions
Who created the Ravenloft campaign setting in 1983?
Tracy and Laura Hickman created the Ravenloft campaign setting in 1983 when they released the original module. They play-tested their adventure with a group of players every Halloween for five years under the title Vampyr before its official release.
When was the Ravenloft campaign setting first launched as a full-fledged product for AD&D 2nd Edition?
The Ravenloft campaign setting was launched as a full-fledged product for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1990 with the Realm of Terror boxed set. This boxed set won the Origins Award in 1991 for Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement of 1990.
What is the name of the vampire who became the first Darklord of Barovia?
Strahd von Zarovich became the first Darklord of Barovia when the Dark Powers crafted the domain around him. He was originally a man who loved too fiercely and lost too completely before his transformation into a vampire.
When was Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft released for the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons?
Wizards of the Coast released Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft on the 18th of May 2021. This sourcebook introduces other Domains of Dread to the edition and provides an overview of 39 Domains.
Who is the mad scientist that rules the Lamordia domain in Ravenloft?
Viktra Mordenheim is the mad scientist who rules the Lamordia domain in Ravenloft. She is tormented by her inability to replicate the Unbreakable Heart device that keeps her reborn lover Elise alive.
Ravenloft
Strahd von Zarovich did not begin as a monster; he began as a man who loved too fiercely and lost too completely. In 1983, when Tracy and Laura Hickman released the module Ravenloft, they introduced a vampire who was not merely a creature of the night but a tragic figure trapped in a cycle of eternal failure. Strahd was the first Darklord, a ruler of his own domain, Barovia, who was simultaneously the jailer and the prisoner of his own making. The Dark Powers, an enigmatic and malevolent force, had crafted Barovia around him, ensuring that he could never escape the land he once ruled, nor could he ever win back the love of his brother, Tatyana, who had been the catalyst for his damnation. The story of how Count von Zarovich became the Darklord of Barovia was later detailed in the 1993 novel I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire, which revealed that his transformation was not a simple act of evil but a complex tragedy of ambition, betrayal, and the crushing weight of an unquenchable desire. The Hickmans, who had play-tested their adventure with a group of players every Halloween for five years under the title Vampyr, wanted to create a vampire with fleshed-out motivations and history, moving beyond the trite archetype of a creature that simply sat in a random dungeon with oozes and goblins. Their creation became the cornerstone of a campaign setting that would evolve over decades, transforming from a simple module into a sprawling, interconnected demiplane of terror known as the Demiplane of Dread.
The Dark Powers and the Mists
The true antagonist of Ravenloft is not a single villain but a force known only as the Dark Powers, a malevolent entity that controls the Demiplane of Dread and manipulates the fate of every Darklord within it. These powers are deliberately kept vague, allowing for plot development that mirrors the Gothic tradition of storytelling where heroes are frequently outclassed and outnumbered by unknowable evil forces beyond their control. The Dark Powers serve as a plot device that torments the Darklords, who are themselves the rulers of their domains but are forever imprisoned within them. While player characters may be able to defeat a Darklord, no such victory over the Dark Powers seems possible, or even conceivable, for the Darklords themselves. The Dark Powers make their wishes and intentions known through subtle manipulations of fate, ensuring that Strahd's many attempts to win back his love, Tatyana, are doomed to failure, yet he never truly loses hope. Each time, Strahd's own actions may be partially culpable for his failure, and as such he may go through crippling self-recrimination, rather than cursing the gods solely and giving up. Most other Darklords have similar tales of frustration, kept all the more unbearable because the flicker of the possibility of success is never truly extinguished. The Dark Powers also seem capable of non-evil manipulations, playing a role as dispensers of justice, with some tales of innocents who have escaped Ravenloft for happier environs attributed to the Dark Powers, who have judged a being worthy of reward and release from their misty domain.
When was the Curse of Strahd module revised to remove negative stereotypes about the Vistani?
Wizards of the Coast released a new edition of the Curse of Strahd module entitled Curse of Strahd: Revamped on the 20th of October 2020. This revision removed the portrayal of the Vistani as superstitious and removed reductive tropes through consultation with a Romani consultant.
The Demiplane of Dread is not a single land but a collection of domains, each a reflection of its Darklord's psyche and sins, specially crafted to grant them a tantalizing amount of power and yet typically deny them what they desire the most. The concept of Domains and locations in Ravenloft, besides Barovia and Mordent, was introduced in the 2nd Edition campaign setting book Ravenloft: Realm of Terror in 1990, which outlined that the size of Ravenloft is 40,000 square miles spanning 26 different domains, including Barovia and Mordent. The revised 2nd Edition boxset Ravenloft Campaign Setting in 1994 is an update to Realm of Terror, but it removes Domains that were destroyed in the Grand Conjunction adventure series and adds new Domains. The metaplot of the adventure series was used to update the setting, with David Wise, leader of the Kargat of Ravenloft designers at TSR, explaining that some domains were changed or removed because they didn't fit into Ravenloft ecologically, some were removed or merged because their lords were too similar, and finally some islands of terror were kicked to the curb just because they were less exciting. The 5th Edition campaign guide Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft in 2021 includes an overview of 39 Domains and many Domains are given a wholesale revision while other Domains keep their original lore but are advanced in other ways. Some of the more notable Domains include Barovia, the first Domain introduced and foreboding home of Strahd von Zarovich, which was inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Lamordia, which paid homage to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, now ruled by Viktra Mordenheim, a mad scientist tormented by her inability to replicate the Unbreakable Heart device that keeps her reborn lover Elise alive, even as Elise flees from her at every turn.
The Vistani and the Mists
The Vistani are a nomadic ethnic group that serves as a unifying element in the Ravenloft and the Masque of the Red Death campaign settings, offering Gothic horror scenarios and some control of the Mists of Ravenloft, which divide realms. Since their introduction in the original Ravenloft module in 1983 as fortune-tellers, the Vistani have been described as superstitious and had abilities to curse and hypnotize players or cast spells like Evil Eye, but this portrayal was removed in the adventure module Curse of Strahd Revamped in 2020. Their portrayal was further retconned in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft in 2021, where the Vistani people are no longer considered superstitious but instead focused on their traditional practices and their abilities are grounded in the forms of magic found in Dungeons & Dragons. The fictional character Rudolph van Richten, a famous Monster Hunter in Ravenloft and author of a series of guides to hunting and slaying various monsters, had a great enmity for the Vistani for most of his monster-hunting career, but his opinion improved during his penning of Van Richten's Guide To The Vistani, during which he befriended a mortu, a Vistani outcast. The Vistani people were originally stereotyped as uncivilized and heavy drinkers, but this portrayal was removed in the adventure module Curse of Strahd Revamped in 2020, and Wizards of the Coast announced that in the editorial process for Strahd's reprint, as well as two upcoming products, Wizards worked with a Romani consultant to present the Vistani without using reductive tropes.
From Module to Multiverse
Ravenloft was launched as a full-fledged campaign setting for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1990, with the Realm of Terror boxed set, popularly known as the Black Box, and winner of the Origins Award in 1991 for Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement of 1990. The campaign setting was revised twice during AD&D 2nd Edition, first as the Ravenloft Campaign Setting or Red Box, then as the Domains of Dread hardback. In 1994, Ravenloft spun off into a sub-setting called Masque of the Red Death, set on Gothic Earth, an Edgar Allan Poe-influenced alternative Earth of the 1890s, where fantasy creatures and magic exist in the shadows of civilization. A major revision of Dungeons & Dragons was released in 2000, the first edition published by Wizards of the Coast, which had acquired TSR in 1997. In the same year, Wizards of the Coast licensed the Ravenloft brand to White Wolf Publishing, which released the 3rd Edition d20 System Ravenloft Campaign Setting in 2001 and the 3.5 Edition Ravenloft Player's Handbook in 2003. The license to the Ravenloft trademark reverted to Wizards of the Coast on the 15th of August 2005, but White Wolf retained the right to continue to sell its back stock until June 2006. In 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced the printing of two new Ravenloft novels for 2008, Black Crusade and The Sleep of Reason, fueling more speculation, and in 2008, Ravenloft was revealed to be re-introduced to 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, as was depicted in the October issue of the Dragon online magazine.
The Modern Renaissance of Terror
In 2016, Barovia, one of the main locations within Ravenloft, was the main setting for adventure module Curse of Strahd, which acts as an adaptation of the original Ravenloft module for the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The module was developed in-house by the Wizards of the Coast team, led by Christopher Perkins, with story contributions by original creators Tracy and Laura Hickman. Charlie Hall, for Polygon, explained that instead of reinventing the wheel, designer Chris Perkins brought in the module's original writers, the husband and wife team of Tracy and Laura Hickman, to create the very best version of the famous module yet. Tracy and Laura have been hosting nearly annual sessions of the original Ravenloft at their home, for friends and family, over the course of decades, and when Perkins asked for their input, they flew out to meet with the team, resulting in a torrent of ideas for new locations, characters and encounters. Wizards of the Coast released a new edition of the Curse of Strahd module, entitled Curse of Strahd: Revamped, on the 20th of October 2020, which is the first released with the publisher's new focus on diversity and inclusion. Wizards of the Coast released a new Ravenloft campaign sourcebook, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, on the 18th of May 2021, which introduces other Domains of Dread to the edition, and the limited series comic Ravenloft: Orphan of Agony Isle in 2022, by writer Casey Gilley and artist Bayleigh Underwood, then featured the mad scientist Viktra Mordenheim, the Darklord of Ravenloft's Lamordia domain introduced in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
The Enduring Legacy of Fear
Game designer Rick Swan commented in 1994 that when the Ravenloft setting first came out, it just didn't seem special, a Forgotten Realms variant with a few more bats, but after supplements like Forbidden Lore, The Created, and the Van Richten's Guide series, Swan felt that the Ravenloft campaign has proven to be a credible adventure alternative for players interested in the dark side of the AD&D game. Darker Days Radio declared Ravenloft the greatest D&D campaign setting, citing the unique gothic horror elements and classic villains such as Azalin Rex. In the Io9 series revisiting older Dungeons & Dragons novels, Rob Bricken highlighted that Vampire of the Mists isn't scary, per se, but Strahd wreaks enough horror and carnage to drive home that Ravenloft is much, much more sinister than the Forgotten Realms. Shelly Jones, in the journal Analog Game Studies: Volume IV, highlighted the Tarokka Deck mechanic used in both the original Ravenloft module and the 5th edition Curse of Strahd module to add randomization to the game and increase replayability, writing that the Tarokka Deck incorporates an inconsistency in the game play that reflects fragmented traumatic memory and reifies the inconsistency present within an abusive relationship. The Ravenloft setting has been criticized for reinforcing harmful stereotypes through its portrayal of the Vistani, an in-fiction analogue for the Roma people, but in 2020, Wizards of the Coast announced that in the editorial process for Strahd's reprint, as well as two upcoming products, Wizards worked with a Romani consultant to present the Vistani without using reductive tropes.