This past weekend I went downstate to see my family and celebrate my Dad's 95 birthday. Yeah, he still doing great at 95! I also stopped by my old friend Michael's house, where his widow gave me a bunch of his old D&D stuff.
There is so much here. That black grocery bag is filled with character sheets dating back to 1981. There were a lot of duplicated books too. Much to my surprise and delight, a few of them were mine!
I have always talked about here how in the 1990s I lost a lot of my Basic and 1st Ed AD&D collection in various moves. I know where some of it went. I guess I lent some of it to Grenda back then. There was my Fiend Folio, Manual of the Planes, Tales of the Outer Planes adventures, a bunch of other modules, and more. My oldest got my replacement copies, and I reclaimed my originals.
There is so much more here too.
In addition to a bunch of city books, I found a ton of his notes on our house rules for playing in cities and urban environments. By the way, other than some box damage, that Haven set is in fantastic shape.
Maybe our "Urban Survival Guide" will see the light of day.
There are also hundreds of characters here—so many that I don't even know what to do with them all. Some of the main ones, the ones I remember from our time playing, are going to get some airplay here.
I found maps of our shared world, maps (so many!) of his city, the Riddlemaster, Shadowmaster, Beastmaster, and Starmaster classes—they were so overpowered, but it was a blast when we were teens. Details of his Greyhawk campaigns into CY 800—just so much stuff.
It is also sad. I would have loved to have gotten this stuff out there for others to enjoy while he was still alive. I could have asked him about these complex family histories and the differences in these maps.
There is so, so much here. It is like walking into a past I only vaguely remember. It is also a reminder of how long ago some of this actually was.
I tend to think of my University days as being "not that long ago." Maybe because I am still hanging out with the same girl I was then (best friend. totally married her). But it really was. There is sadness in that. It is sad to know that Warluk, Adnerg, Danis, Finn, Tali, and Alix will never have their stories continue. Well, they can, with me I suppose, but that is really not the same is it?
I do take comfort and joy in the fact that my oldest has been converting over to AD&D 1st ed and will use all of this stuff and my own stuff with his group.
I'll spend more time with all this material and see where it takes me.
One last AD&D 2nd edition Ravenloft product before moving on. This one is unique for me for a lot of reasons. First off, I never owned the original print version. I wanted to, but at the time it came out (1999), I was pretty much out of D&D completely. I made a comeback at the end of the year with my "Complete Netbook of Witches and Warlocks" and soon would come back fully with D&D 3.0. Secondly, I also don't have PoD version of this since there isn't one. So it is just the PDF this time.
1999. by John W. Mangrum and Steve Miller. Cover art by Todd Lockwood. Interior art by Kevin McCann. 64 pages.
Carnival, if memory serves me correctly, was the last Ravenloft product produced. It's banner is "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" with the late 90s "Advanced" part reduced in size, and "For use in Ravenloft" as a subtitle. It is also one of the TSR Silver Anniversary branded books. Strange that there is as much time between now and this product's publication as there is between it and the publication of the original D&D rules.
This product covers "The Carnival," a traveling side show/carnival with some not-so-subtle horror elements.
The product gives the players some background on this carnival and very detailed NPC descriptions. As with many of the later-day Ravenloft products, this one is heavy on the "fluff," and the "crunch" is typically presented in boxed text. The entire product is given from the point of view of the Carnival Barker. It a way it reminds me of the Planescape setting. Though there is a fair amount of Ravenloft background here, ie. some language used in the previous Vistani sources are used here: "Vardos" instead of "wagons."
This can also be seen in the Mistress of the Carnival herself, Isolde is an Ghaele Eladrin from the Planescape setting.
The vast bulk of this book covers the various people and things found in the Carnival. This is actually a good thing since the attraction of the Carnival is it's, well, attractions. The people that work for it.
While there are implicit plot hooks spread about these pages, the adventure ideas and campaign only uses the last four-five pages of the book, along with Isolde's stats.
Honestly, despite that, there is a lot here.
This covers every concept from Tod Browning's "Freaks (1932)," to "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (book and movie). I would also say there is a little bit of the 7th Doctor serial "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" here. There has always been something a little unsettling about a carnival. Hell, Rob Zombie has made a career out of it.
I feel like it accomplishes more in fewer pages than "The Wild Beyond The Witchlight" does. However, both products could benefit from notes from the other. Both could benefit from ideas from Baldur's Gate 3's Circus.
This would be a great product to have as a PoD, but at 64 pages it is not unreasonable to run off on my home printer and put it into a three-ring binder. I could then scribble notes on my changes.
Maybe I could even port over the clowns Dribbles or Thaco.
I just need a good place to use it. I am certainly not at a loss of ideas here.
We are getting to the end of the AD&D 2nd Ed era of Ravenloft. Well...there are still a lot of products to cover but we are getting to the end of my coverage of them.
AD&D 2nd Ed was really the golden age of campaign settings. Sure, that gold was only a very thin veneer, maybe even just electroplating. But instead of focusing on that I want to enjoy what was great about that time and that was the depth of products. TSR must have known the writing was on the wall by 1996 because the Children of the Night books, starting in 1996, were an attempt to build bridges across the campaign worlds.
1996. By Paul Culotta and Steve Miller with Carol L. Johnson and Jonathan Ariadne Caspian. Cover art by Daniel Home. Interior Illustrations by Jason Burrows. 96 pages.
For this review I am considering the PDF and PoD from DriveThruRPG and my memories of my original print copy.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Nigel D. Findley, who created Rudolph Van Richten. Findley had died of a heart attack at age 35.
This first of the Children of the Night series features 13 unique vampires to challenge PCs. "Challenge" doesn't always mean "fight."
I should point out that this is not the first time we have seen a "Children of the Night" for Ravenloft. The first one was "MC15 - Monstrous Compendium - Appendix II Children of the Night."
The concept is a solid one. Ravenloft breathed new life (heh) into Vampires with the very first adventure, so it makes sense that it would continue to do so and then expand on that. The book starts out by saying that while these are all unique takes on vampires native to Ravenloft's mists, they don't have to stay there, and they can be added to your own campaign world.
Each entry includes a stat-block, description and history, usually with how they became a vampire. There is also a mini adventure/plot hook you can use with the vampire in question.
Among the famous, or about to become famous, vampires include Ravenloft's Jander Sunstar, the eleven vampire introduced in the novel "Vampire of the Mists." Jander is a Chaotic Neutral (which as close to Good as it gets) vampire from the Forgotten Realms. He is just as likely to help the PCs fight vampires as he is to want to be left alone.
Also, here are Lyssa von Zarovich, Strahd's great-niece (or something like that) and one of the members of his family line that was not killed when Barovia was pulled into the Mists. Don't mistake her hate for Strahd as "goodness" she is still quite evil. She will later go on to appear in Curse of Strahd.
We get a desert vampire, Moosha, the Ixitxachitl vampire Myxitizajal, and the vorlog Don Pablo among the others.
The one I liked the most back then, because the concept was novel to me, was Lady Heather Shadowbrooke, the Druid Vampire. She is quite evil and a tragic character, really.
I certainly think this is a great addition to any AD&D 2nd Ed game, Ravenloft or not.
Note about the PoD
The Print on Demand copy I have does show some fuzziness, but all in all it is a very good copy. There are two PDFs you get from DriveThruRPG. Once is quasi OCR and the other is image. Neither seems as clear as the PoD which I find weird.
This PoD is a worthy replacement for my original book from 1996.
Children of the Night vs. Vampires
Children of the Night Vampires is not the first time a collection of various vampire NPC/Antagonists has been done for an RPG. The first one I ever bought was Vampires for the Chill RPG (1st Ed). The 2nd edition version is available on DriveThruRPG.
Both books do the same thing for their respective games, and both do it well. I give a slight nod to the Chill one since it came first. The Ravenloft/AD&D one has 13 vampires vs the Chill's 11 (10 entries), so it has that in it's favor.
I am skipping over the otherwise great Ravenloft Campaign Setting, Revised for the last core book of the Ravenloft AD&D 2e line for a few reasons.
First and foremost, I don't have a copy of the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, Revised boxed set anymore. I had the box, but it was lost somewhere along the way. I have the PDFs, but that really isn't the same, is it. Also, the Revised set is just that, Revised. It came out in 1994, only a couple of years after the original boxed set. It takes some details from the Core set and Forbidden Lore plus other material current at the time and gives us a new boxed set complete with more Tarroka cards.
All of this would then be surpased with the publication of Ravenloft Domains of Dread.
1997. By William W. Connors, Andria Hayday, Steve Miller, and Bruce Nesmith. Art by Paul Carrick, Henry Higgenbotham, Scott Johnson, Robert Lazzaretti, David G. Martin, Val Mayerik, Mark A. Nelson, Arnie Swekel, and Peter White. 288 pages.
We are nearing the dawn of several eras. The end of the 90s, the end of the 20th century, and the end of TSR. Wizards of the Coast had just recently purchased TSR and saved it and D&D from bankruptcy oblivion. The changes were subtle at first, but one of the first clues was the shift in trade-drees and art for the Ravenloft books. Domains of Dread was a new hardcover, the first, for Ravenloft. I am not sure when the hardcover novels (and I think it was just "I, Strahd") were published.
For this review, I am considering my PDF and Print on Demand versions from DriveThruRPG and my memories of my original hardcover.
This is a good-sized book of the sort that was popular in the waning days of TSR. Notable about this one is the copyright page which includes the address for Wizards of the Coast, located in Renton, WA and not Lake Geneva, WI, and the use of the website www.tsrinc.com. You can still buy that if you like.
This book covers the same ground as the two previous core Ravenloft sets and updates them to reflect the recent events in the lands.
I am happy to report that this one does indeed have 13 chapters and extra appendices to cover all the matieral. For example Darkon was gone and The Necropolis was in it's place
There are subtle as well as overt changes here. Some Domains are gone, others sent off to be Islands of Terror, and all due to the Grand Conjunction. Now I have mentioned this in terms of some of the adventures I have covered this month. If you buy this version, as opposed to say Realms of Terror, it is going to assume that the meta-plot of the Grand Conjunction has already happened. Does that mean you can't run say, Feast of Goblyns or Ship of Horror? No, but they are not going to work the exact same way.
I think this was one of my big disappointments with this book. By 1997 I had began to not play much AD&D at all. So a lot of the Grand Conjunction and later plots were still new to me when they were old news to everyone else. While this was certainly the shape of all AD&D settings at the time it did make entry, or re-entry a lot harder.
That all being said if you are new to AD&D Ravenloft OR you don't care about the meta-plots then this is a great place to start. Everything is revised and brought upto date with all the other Ravenloft rules published. It is the book I recommended to my oldest when he wanted to read more about Ravenloft in AD&D.
Of most use here to all Ravenloft players and DMs are the appendicies which cover various character creation rules. This helps with creating Ravenloft-native characters. Ability scores, races, and classes all get an individual appendix. New races and classes are also covered. Among the new classes are Avengers, new rules for Elementalists, Arcanists, and Anchorites. There is even a new "Gypsy" class as well as Psionicist.
There is also a fairly robust index.
About the PoD version
The PoD version is actually rather nice. It compares well to the original hardcover version to be honest.
A side step today, but one that is important to me. I have been talking about how I believe that Barovia, the core domain of Ravenloft, was originally part of the World of Mystara and from Glantri in particular. Today I am providing some more fuel for that fire, but with the runner-up land of Karameikos.
1994. Adventure Design: L. Richard Baker III. Editing: Michele Carter. Project Manager: Andria Hayday. Cover Art: Jennell Jaquays. Interior Art: Dan Frazier. 32 pages.
This review is considering the PDF file from DriveThruRPG only.
A couple of points about our creative team. First, more art from the legendary Jennell Jaquays. Rich Baker would go on to have a very good career at TSR and then Wizards working on D&D 3.x, D&D 4, and Gamma World. Andria Hayday, who does not often get mentioned (she is not even on the DTRPG page for this) would later go on to be one of the main developers of the Ravenloft: Domains of Dread hardcover.
I never owned this boxed set, but after buying it from DriveThruRPG, I really wish I had. It is, CD-Audio aside for the moment, a fun adventure for low level characters.
The task set before Richard Baker and his designe team was to created a low-level (levels 1-3, or possibly 4-6) adventure where the big bad was a vampire. A daunting task. A well-played vampire can wipe out a party of even mid level, and an exceptionally well-played one is a challenge to higher level characters, especially in what is now a Post-Ravenloft I6 world.
Baker gets by this issue by having some magic items available to the PCs to use. And even provides some rules for grappling and taking down a vampire en masse.
The adventure starts with a shipwreck trope, in which the PCs end up on an island off the coast of Karameikos. Now, there are a lot of ways to spin this; my choice? The shipwreck is not about the sea but instead the Mists of Ravenloft.
The adventure is a bit rail-roady and there are a LOT of NPCs to keep track of. The vampire-plot is reminiscent of the Strahd-Sergei-Tatyana tragedy so much that this adventure could be used as stand-in prequel to I6. Granted, there is a LOT more going on here. Namely all the NPCs, but an enterprising DM could re-mold it into this prequel. Great for heroes and players familiar with the tale of Strahd already in a strange time-travel adventure.
About the PDFs
Ah, the 90s. There was a lot of role-playing, and that often meant lots of handouts. The PDF allows you to print out all the handouts you want.
Plus, printing out the PDFs also allows me to edit them as I need. For starters I would make the PCs higher level and get rid of some of the aids given to them. The pages are all filled with color so
About the Audio Tracks
There are 72 audio tracks on the CD, which is not included with the PDF. BUT you can find them on YouTube.
The pros include proper pronunciations of the names of the various NPCs and some eerie background music.
The cons include audio tracks putting words into the PCs mouths and it doesn't always jive with the adventure itself. It's not a perfect fit. For example the PCs are treated as well known heroes in the tracks. At 1st to 3rd level this is not really likely. Also, there are some spoilers in the audio tracks. Personally, I would listen to them all first and be a little more selective. That is if I used any of them at all.
Despite the shortcomings, this is a rather interesting adventure with a lot of potential. It also satisfies my desire to use Ravenloft and Mystara together.
The layout and trade dress are very good and bright, which is typical of the Mystara products of the time. I rather love them, to be honest. It is a shame everyone was fighting online (at the time) about Forgotten Realms this or Greyhawk that while Mystara fans were off on their own enjoying some really fun products.
I think my FLGS might have a copy of this in the store now that I think about it.
Today I continue my exploration of Ravenloft's Gothic Earth. But first I want to set the proper stage. These next two products were released in 1995 and 1996, respectively. I had moved to Chicago already and I had gotten married. I moved to the suburb of Mt. Prospect, the point? Well, after years of buying my Ravenloft material from Carbondale's Castle Perilous, I was buying again from Games Plus, a place I had mail-ordered from since the 1980s. I bought my copy of Chill Vampires via mail order from Games Plus, so buying these two from their physical store seemed like a sort of homecoming.
This is also when I began to feel the shortcomings of the AD&D system. I loved the idea of Gothic Earth, I wanted that to be a world I played in, but that AD&D 2nd Edition rules just didn't quite cut it for me. I began to go back to Chill, this time the 2nd Edition, and most importantly to CJ Carella's WitchCraft RPG. But before I get to that, let me talk about these two products and why I still love them.
For this review, I am considering the PDFs from DriveThruRPG and my originals purchased in the mid-1990s.
1995. by William W. Connors. Cover art by Robh Ruppel. Interior art from Dover Publications. 64 pages, detached cover and poster map.
I want to state out of the gate that this is an indispensable guide for playing in the 1890s. While some Ravenloft-isms are here, I have used this guide with countless Victorian-era RPGs.
We start with an Introduction and an overview of the 1890s in the form of Headlines. A set of bullet points covering the biggest news items around the world from 1890 to 1899 and The Spanish-American war. Even in the days prior to easy to access resources like Wikipedia (and I practically wore out my copy of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia CD-ROM looking all this up back then!) there is enought here in the first 16 or so pages to keep an enterprising Game Master* busy. Sorted by date and then by continent.
I say Game Master instead of the more accepted Dungeon Master here for two reasons. Gothic Earth is really a significant step away from the dungeon-crawling ideas of Dungeons & Dragons. While yes there could be dungeons here, that is not what Gothic Earth does best. The back street of London, Paris, or New York is where this game does well. Also, I have already mentioned that this guyid can be used anywhere. This first section typifies what I mean. You can just as easily use this in Victorian Age Vampire, Cthulhu by Gaslight, or any other later Victorian-era game.
This section is then expanded in the next section with other events more closely tied to the setting. Events of the 1890s covers The Ghost Dancers (and man, did I ever want to make ShadowRun the future of Gothic Earth!), Arctic Exploration, Railroads, Spiritualism, and a lot more. Each section gives a real world background, and then in true Ravenloft fashion some "Forbidden Lore."
We then have a similar section, Who's Who on Gothic Earth, that covers specific people. There are more people covered than events, so the section on each is smaller. Not everyone has a Forbidden Lore section, but enough to keep any Game Master busy. This book + a little research would allow the GM to create even more if they wanted. If there is a figure from the Late Victorian era you can think of, then they are likely covered here. Sadly one of my favorite figures from the time, Harriet Tubman, was not listed. Maybe I could fix that.
Our last section covers various groups and cabals active in the 1890s (and beyond) on the Gothic Earth.
The original print copy has a poster of the calendars for the 1890s, complete with images of ephemera from the time. At the time of publication, it was an amazing resource. The only thing it is missing are moon phases.
There are no AD&D stats or rules in the book at all. It still assumes AD&D and the Ravenloft universe, but the book itself has no "crunch" only "fluff." But it is extremely useful fluff.
While similar details are to be found in other Victorian Era games, I still find myself going back to this one time and time again.
1996. by Nicky Rea. Developer and Editor Steve Miller. Cover art Dawn Murin, interior art Val Mayerik. 96 pages.
This is another book I have used with many games. For some reason that I can't quite figure out, this one feels more like a Ravenloft core book than the Gothic Earth Gazetteer does. Maybe because Dracula's Transylvania was the model of for Strahd's Barovia and thus the core of the Ravenloft concept. While I stand by my assertions that Barovia is from Mystara, I have entertained the idea that it was really from Gothic Earth.
A little more stage-setting, this was released after the wildly successful and critically acclaimed "Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)" while the author and developers do a very good job of sticking to the novel and history, the movie still casts a long shadow.
The book's dedication is to various noted Dracula scholars; Radu Florescu, Raymond T. McNally (In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires), Dan Richardson, Tim Burford (Guide books), Rosemary Ellen Guiley (various encyclopedias), and Julian Hale (Historical guidebooks).
Chapter One details the history of the lands in and around Transylvania with a bulk of this covering the conflicts between the Roman Catholic people of the area and their struggles against the Ottoman Turks. Special attention is given to the family of Vlad Dracul and Vlad the Impaler. As with previous works the text is largely game-stat free and has only a few mentions of the Red Death and other "Ravenloft" details. More "game" details are given in the Forbidden Lore boxed text.
Chapter Two is a "current" sketch of Transylvania with entries on the geography, cities, and various landmarks such as the various castles. It reads like an 1890s travel guide, with Forbidden Lore boxed text.
Chapter Three covers the peoples of Transylvania. This includes the various native Romanians, Magyars, Szeklers, and Germans as well as the Romanii and Jewish populations. Language is covered a bit which is good since this place really does feel like a crossroads of Eastern Europe just before one enters the East. There is even a bit on vampires in this land.
Chapter Four, Personalities, has the most Game-related information in the book. For example, it has stats for all sorts of highly detailed NPCs. In addition to Gothic Earth's particular flavor of AD&D 2nd ed stats, there is Forbidden Lore boxed text. We learn that Jonathan Harker is a 6th-level Tradesman, Dracula is a 13HD Vampire, and Van Helsing is a 12th-level Metaphysian. Dracula's write-up is similar in feel to the write-up Count Strahd got in Ravenloft I6.
Finally we end with an AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous compendium style page for the Dhampir.
There are maps throughout the book and on the inside covers.
Both books are still quite serviceable today and work well with any Victorian era game you might want to play.
I have been covering the AD&D 2nd Ed version of Ravenloft all this month. I have also been covering the the Forgotten Realms and currently in the AD&D 2nd Edition era. One thing they both have in common is that a few of the books feature new monsters in AD&D 2nd Monstrous Compendium format.
I reviewed the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums sometime back. Since I have been reviewing the various books I have been printing out the Monstrous Compendium pages and adding them to my three-ring binder for Ravenloft.
As I run across a monster page for these reviews OR from Dragon magazine in my This Old Dragon feature, I print them out (or cut them out as the case may merit) and add them to my binder.
It has taken 30+ years but I feel that the Monstrous Compendium concept is finally living up to its potential for me.
Again, I might start mining my other MCs to see what would fit here. I already have one filled with demons and devils, so I wont add those, but I am considering taking the Death Knight from Krynn and putting in this one.
The truth is I am not likely to play AD&D 2nd ed Ravenloft again. BUT my son is running his 5e group through Castle Amber using AD&D 1st ed. So it is possible I could run an AD&D 2nd Ed game again one day. I have mentioned that I am running an AD&D 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms game with my oldest, though we have not played in a while. So I guess never say never.
Despite my concerns with Ravenloft under AD&D 2nd ed, it was my game for the 90s.
In any case I feel like an archivist in some dusty library, collecting tomes for my own pleasures.
This is another entry for my RPG Blog Carnival for October!
Very few games or game products have had *lasting* profound effects on my gaming. Oh sure there have been a LOT of great games that I have played or used over the years, but only a handful that have been a sea change for me.
They are:
The AD&D 1st Ed Monster Manual
D&D Basic Moldvay Edition
1st Edition Chill
CJ Carella's WitchCraft RPG
Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales
This last game combined everything I wanted into one game. Horror? Check. AD&D? Check? Gothic Victorian Earth? Double check.
For the longest time, it was the perfect game for me. I had to write an entire other game, Ghosts of Albion, just to get what I wanted, and then again with NIGHT SHIFT.
But before I go there, let's go back—not to the 1890s, but rather to the 1990s, when this game came out.
In the theaters, we saw Lost Boys, Near Dark, The Crow (okay, not a vampire movie, but still. And the 1994 version, not the 2024 one), and most of all, a big-screen adaptation of Dracula that was the most faithful to the book yet. In the game stores, Vampire: the Masquerade reigned supreme. AD&D had started the decade doing well but had begun to flounder by the middle. Soon, it would be all but dead; we didn't know it then. Amidst all of this, we were given the gift of Gothic Earth.
by William W. Connors, D. J. Heinrich, Shane Lacy Hensley, Colin McComb.
Art by Ned Dameron, Stephen Fabian, Robh Ruppel, David C. Sutherland, III.
Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales is nominally released under the Ravenloft line and you will need one of the Ravenloft core books to be able to play this along with the AD&D 2nd Edition rules. However if you know the AD&D rules well enough you might be able to get by. The premise of the game it rather a simple one. What if the Dark Powers from Ravenloft found their way to Earth? Well...I should state out and out that they never actually say that, but imply it rather heavily. The is a dark, malignant force controlling things on Earth, known here as The Red Death, and this Earth of the 1890s certainly has a lot more in common with Ravenloft.
Pretty much from the time it was published to the onset of the new 3rd Edition rules, Masque of the Red Death was my campaign world of choice. I still played AD&D2 in Ravenloft, or rather, I ran AD&D2 in Ravenloft, but the lines between Ravenloft proper and "Gothic Earth" became very, very blurry.
For this review, I am considering my original boxed set from the 1990s and the PDFs from DriveThruRPG.
This package from DriveThruRPG includes five PDFs, which correspond to the four books and the DM's screen found in the Boxed Set.
Book I is the main Masque of the Red Death book. It is 130 pages of a high quality, OCR scan. Some the images are fuzzy, but I feel that is more due to the source images rather than the scan itself. The scan comes in at just over 35 meg.
We begin with an overview of what this campaign guide is about. I might be mistaken, but this is the first official AD&D product to take place on Earth. This followed up with a history of Gothic Earth. Things began to go downhill for everything around 2700 BC when Imhoptep (yes, same as the Mummy movies) began experimenting with darker magics. The next dozen or so pages bring us to the present day (1890s). The history is a fast read and I would not ignore it. It sets the tone for the entire game.
Chapter II details character creation. There are different methods used than the PHB to reflect that characters are not your sword wielding barbarians of a bygone age. So characters are more average.
There are rough parallels to all the classic AD&D classes, Soldiers, Adepts, Mystics, and Tradesmen. The AD&D Proficiency system is used here as well. Interestingly the system seems make more sense here (since skills are really what sets characters apart) but also shows its wear and tear.
Chapter IV also details money and Equipment. Interestingly, this is one of the few Victorian-era games in which the default currency is American Dollars rather than Pounds Sterling.
It should be of note that this is also the book that adds guns to AD&D2. Quite a number of guns are detailed here as well.
Chapter V covers magic, and you need the Player's Handbook for this section.
Chapter VI covers the changes to combat.
Getting back to what really makes this special is Chapter VII, An Atlas of Gothic Earth. I should point out at this point that the large poster-sized map that came with the boxed set is not included here. It gives a brief overview of the world. This section is done much better in the full-fledged product that shares its name.
The first Appendix covers various character kits. If you remember 2e at all, you remember kits. Quite a few interesting ideas are detailed, but you could also do these with the base four classes and good roleplaying.
Appendix II covers some villains of Gothic Earth. There are plenty of old favorites here and some new takes on old characters. Though I will admit the one thing that still gets on my nerves is Moriarty re-done as a Rakshasa. In my games, he was human. And yes, Dracula is there as well.
Finally, Appendix III covers the adventuring of Gothic Earth.
Book II is an adventure in three parts by future Pinnacle Entertainment head honcho Shane Hensley and features the rock star of Gothic fiction, Dracula. What is the advantage of this PDF over my boxed set copy? I can print it out and make changes to it. Yeah, it is a good adventure, but it is a pastiche of Hammer and Stoker's original work.
Book III is a Jack the Ripper adventure, Red Jack. Unlike Moriarty's change into a supernatural creature, this adventure makes "Jack" into something more mundane. Normally, I would be fine with this, but the name of the adventure itself and some of the elements BEGS it to be tied to the old Star Trek episode The Wolf in The Fold and Redjac.
Book IV is The Red Death, an adventure based on elements of the Edgar Allen Poe story. Some details have been changed and added, but the spirit is the same. Again, I am tempted to make the main antagonist, Prospero, the Prospero.
Book V is the DM's screen.
Part of me wants to get the Print on Demand version, just to see how it is, but I know it will not live up to my boxed set.
In any case, boxed set, PDF, Print on Demand, this is still one of my all-time favorite Ravenloft products and changed how I wanted to play my games. I spent a lot of time talking to the late Johnathan Thompson and we both agreed had it not been for MotRD there would not have been his Gaslight nor my Ghosts of Albion games.
We are slowly moving through the 1990s and coming up on our next Ravenloft accessory. This one expanded on the idea of realms not connected to the core, but rather as "islands" in a sea of mist. You ended up in these realms largely by chance aka DM's whim. But the notion does fit with the idea of Ravenloft. As expected, some of this island would later cease to exist. Was it because their Darklords were defeated? Not as evil as the others? Or some other darker fate? Questions like these filled the old RAVENLOFT-L email list for a long time.
1992. By Scott Bennie and Colin McComb. Cover art by Jeff Easley. Interior art by Ron Hill, John Knecht and Jaime Lombardo, art and maps by David C. Sutherland III.
For this review I am only considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG. There is no Print on Demand copy yet and I lost my original a long time ago.
This book contains new "island" domains and their darklords. Many pulled from or influenced by other TSR campaign worlds.
Nidala. This realm is the domain of a Lawful Good Paladin turned crazed zealot. She is now just a Lawful Evil fighter and rules her land with an iron fist. Of course she still sees herself as acting for the good of all. I liked this one because I played a lot of Paladins in my time, and Elena was a great example of her "Lawfulness" overpowering her "Goodness." Plus she still thinks she is a Paladin because the Dark Powers are now granting her her former paladin powers.
Elena Faith-hold is connected to Kateri Shadowborn from the Darklords book (Ebonbane). Given the descriptions of each and their lands, I am inclined to say they were all from Oerth, the World of Greyhawk.
The Wildlands. This is an African-influenced, fable-like, domain full of talking animals. The animals act like humans in other domains and they are all terrified of the land's Darklord King Crocodile. This darklord is a huge crocodile with the abilities of a 12th-level fighter.
Scaena. This domain is a theatre controlled by its author-lord, Lemot Sediam Juste. It is a "travelling show" that floats from place to place. It can appear as anything that Juste wishes (writes) it is just a theater building. The obvious influence here is Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera movie.
I'Cath. This land is obviously from Kara-Tur and one of the few I had used from this book.
Saragoss. This watery domain is from the Forgotten Realms' Sea of Stars. BUT I misread it back in the day and though it was from Krynn. Remember it was 1992, not much of an internet yet and I did not have ready access to either Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms books. The darklord here is a Pirate Captain who can change into a shark and is a Priest of Umberlee. It is an interesting one and I wanted to use in my failed nautical AD&D 2nd Ed game.
Timor. This is a large, Victorian-like city where the darklord is the Hive Queen of the Marikith. We would see something similar with the 10th Doctor in the Doctor Who episode, The Runaway Bride. The city of Timor is filled with food, no one goes hungry. Why, because the Hive Queen wants to keep the populace fattened up for her children to feed on. Outside of Ravenloft this would make for a nice scary one shot.
Pharazia. While not specifically stated, this land could have originated in the Al-Qadim setting. The darklord, Diamabel is an interesting sort. He sees himself as not just good, but the embodiment of goodly virtues. He is where he is because he has been betrayed by the entire world.
Staunton Bluffs. I am not sure this one was needed. It does a lot of things that other domains also do. Gothic. Ghosts. We have seen this all before. A man jealous of his brother and his brother's position in the the family. BUT there is a little clue here that gives me some hope. One of the nearby duchies on their homeworld was Avergne. Now this could be the Auvergne of France OR the Averoigne of Glantri and Castle Amber. I am inclined to go with Glantril and Mystara here. Especially since there was a great magical rite performed by the would-be darklord Torrence Bleysmith (also cribbed from Strahd).
Bleysmith is now a ghost. He leaves his people alone, likely due to guilt, and their lives are better for it.
Nosos. In a horror tale a little too close to reality, this is the land of what happens when the wealthy control everything. It is a vast industrial wasteland of pollution and disease.
We wrap-up the book with four "new" monsters. I say "new" because we have seen some of these before, but with new Ravenloft writeups. One, the Sea Zombie was first published in the AD&D 1st Ed Greyhawk Adventures book with AD&D 2nd Ed stats.
Over-all a good set of new domains and darklords for your Ravenloft game. Like a lot of the Ravenloft books the game stats are limited, so you could adapt this to and edition of Ravenloft you are playing with little to no effort at all.
I have been talking about the AD&D 2nd Edition campaign setting Ravenloft. Every domain in the Land of Mists / Domain of Dread is a copy of some land from one of the other campaign worlds. Darkon and Tovag are copies of old Oerth. Hazlan and I'Cath are from the Forgotten Realms; Thay and Kara-Tur specifically. Sithicus and Falkovnia are from Dragonlance. Lamordia seems to be from an Earth-like world given it has the same months we do. Even Eberron creator Keith Baker has a Domain in Ravenloft from his world.
But there are two notable exceptions.
First, there are no core domains from Mystara.
Secondly, the black heart of the Core Domains, Barovia, does not have a "home world."
Why? Because Barovia is from Mystara!
Now, please keep this in mind. None of this is supported by real-world evidence at all. There was no secret cabal of ur-Developers at TSR deciding this was true and leaving breadcrumbs for me to find. This is less than circumstantial evidence. This is full-on Conspiracy Theory, tin foil hat territory. No, this makes conspiracy theories look like rational arguments. This is conclusion shopping at its lowest.
But at least it makes more sense than some conspiracy theories. So adjust your tin foil hat, make sure your webcams are turned off, and your phone is nowhere near because we are going down a rabbit hole.
Evidence From the Novels
The Ravenloft novels...were a wild bunch. But we can at least assume they were canon. In the first one, "Vampire of the Mists," Strahd does not know about Faerûn when he meets Jander Sunstar. Jander also does not know about Barovia. Likewise, in "Knight of the Black Rose," Strahd has never heard of Krynn or Lord Soth, not something that would been true for someone of Strahd's age and position. Everyone knew about Lord Soth. The best evidence comes from "I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire," where Strahd describes his lands and also mentions he has never heard of Azalin (Azalin Rex) or Oerth.
These are all strikes against Oerth, Krynn, and Abeir-Toril.
Most of the novels in the Ravenloft line are self-contained, so no mention either way of what worlds they might be from originally.
Evidence from the Campaign Worlds
Going the other direction, we know that the Gods of Krynn keep a pretty tight hold on their world. So much so that Spelljamming and Outer Plane travel to and from Krynn is very difficult. One more strike against Krynn.
The Forgotten Realms have nearly ever square inch of their world map accounted for. If it had been the Realms, we would have heard about it by now. One more strike against Abeir-Toril. OR at least the Toril part, "Forgotten Abeir" might be a different story.
Dark Sun's Athas is a desert wasteland filled with Psionic-enhanced creatures. So there is no way it is from there.
The World of Greyhawk's Oerth has a LOT of land that is unaccounted for. So, we need to find a way to rule it out based on the campaign setting.
Eberon was not created yet, so that one is out as well.
None of this tells us where Barovia and Strahd are from. It just tells us where they are not from.
So, what does Mystara have to offer us? Well, a lot really.
Mystara
While Tracy Hickman is best known for Dragonlance, that is also one-half Margaret Weiss. So, I am not ready to say Ravenloft is from Krynn based on the Hickman connection alone. But there is another Hickman publication, and it is from Tracy AND Laura Hickman, just like Ravenloft. That is Rahasia.
Rahasia was written by the Hickmans and features body-snatching undead witches, a strong horror trope. Even in the 5e era, The Curse of Strahd adventure, lists Rahasia as an influence. Plus, there are some other solid connections, like finding the same wines in Rahasia's Wizard Tower and in Ravenloft Curse of Strahd. Rahasia is a solid Mystara, or at least a BECMI adventure.
There is also Castle Amber. This Expert Set adventure is explicitly Mystara with the inclusion of Glantri. It also reads like a "Proto-Ravenloft." I have discussed the Castle Amber/Ravenloft connections before.
Averoigne was later added to Glantri and the Amber family is said to have come from Old Earth. In many ways the Earth of the Ambers is very, very similar to the Earth of Ravenloft's Gothic Earth.
So, another set of near-evidence is connecting Ravenloft to Mystara. What else do we have?
The vampires of Mystara are more diverse than vampires of other game worlds. This collection of Vampiric Bloodlines at the Vaults of Pandius attests to that.
Immortals vs. The Dark Powers
Mystara and Ravenloft are both settings largely devoid of gods. There are the Immortals of Mystara that cover the same role as gods, but are explicitly not gods. Ravenloft has its Dark Powers which are also not gods. In fact, there is even some evidence that gods worshiped in Ravenloft might only be reflections of the Dark Powers. This all runs pretty counter to most D&D worlds, especially Krynn and Abeir-Toril where the gods are important and very active in the affairs of mortals.
Could the Dark Powers be Chaotic Immortals? I think that is a question best left un-answered, but it has, to quote Stephen Colbert, a bit of Truthiness to it.
Another factor. Both the Immortals and the Dark Powers have a history of scooping up land, countries, even entire civilizations and hiding them away. The Immortals do this with the Hollow World, and the Dark Powers do it with the lands of Ravenloft.
Barovia could have been scoped up and planted elsewhere, and both the Dark Powers and Immortals could have covered it up. Which does lead into my next point.
Lands
Mystara is a strange patchwork of cultures and lands. Vikings live right next to a Khanate, and on the other side of these steppes is fantasy Wales with bits of Renaissance Italy. These lands only make sense when you realize the Immortals have a hand in moving people around.
Same is true for Ravenloft. Only here, there is less movement.
Barovia is also small, only 24 miles East-West and about 10 miles North-South. This makes it smaller that an average hex on many Mystara maps. A place like could come from anywhere. More to the point it could go missing from anywhere.
Like Mystara, Ravenloft is a hodge-podge of lands and cultures.
Time Lines
Additionally, I can use some dates from the novels to narrow some ideas down. Now, a note about time. Time seems to run differently in Ravenloft, so I can't put an exact formula for it. There isn't one. I just have to try to deal with it. The only hard and fast rule I will adhere to is that there is no travel to the past.
This timeline is a work in progress with changes being made all the time.
I will add and move details around as I discover them. I am using the Forgotten Realms DR calendar here since many worlds have had interactions with the Realms so it helps with the dating. Any date in Red is a fixed date, one I have confirmation of. I have squared all the dates yet. Part of the issue is that Mystara's year is different from the other worlds. Some of the dates do not line up right yet, I am working on those.
I still have a lot of work to do on these and some funky math to make them work. This is, of course, assuming that time passes the same way in all the realms, and I am not making that assumption. I could hand wave and say "it fits" but I at least would like to find a large enough whole for Barovia in Mystara to fit.
The Art
This one is a little more interesting in my mind.
Both the early Mystara Gazetteer line and the Ravenloft line share the same artists. Now this is not a huge surprise. There were a lot of books being pumped out by TSR in the AD&D 2nd Ed days and only a few artists. But they typically were used on various projects in various combinations.
Both Mystara and Ravenloft shared the same cover artist, Clyde Caldwell, and the same interior artist, Stephen Fabian. And some of the parallels are striking.
Count Strahd (Ravenloft) and Prince Voszlany (Glantri)
Victor Mordenheim (Ravenloft) and Rafiel (Mystara - Shadow Elves)
Count Strahd and Prince Voszlany look like they are related, and Victor Mordenheim and Rafiel look like they went to University together.
The Caldwell covers are fairly part-and-parcel with the look of Ravenloft from the start. So seeing all the books side by side they do "feel" right together.
Likewise the Stephen Fabian interior art has a dark spookiness to it and his style is so unique that when I picked up a 1990 copy of Anita and saw his art I knew it right away.
Maybe I need to make a witch, named Anita, (or Anita Tina, I always wanted a character with a palindrome name) from Mystara, Glantri in particular, who gets stuck in Ravenloft. I like this.
--
Of course, none of this is true. But it feels true, and isn't that better than the truth? At least that is what Leonard Nimoy, the Patron Saint of "In Search Of," has to say.
By 1992, Ravenloft was going full speed, though we would later learn that all of the settings were contributing to the eventual demise of TSR. I am not even sure if Ravenloft was ever profitable. I made my best efforts to make it profitable, even on a Graduate student budget. I bought a lot Ravenloft material. The Forbidden Lore boxed set was one I purchased back then. I loved the idea of my own Tarokka Cards and Dikesha dice sets. The material included was a mixed bag of course.
I sold off my boxed set many years ago, likely in my big move in 1997 or maybe in 2001-2002. Do I regret it? Hard to say. The material is not not needed to play in Ravenloft, and while having those cards would be nice, I have since acquired other Tarokka decks and even other tarot decks that work great.
1992. Design by Bruce Nesmith and William W. Connors. Box cover art by Clyde Caldwell, Booklet cover art by Stephen Fabian, interior art by Stephen Fabian and Bob Klanish.
The boxed set originally came with five booklets, each covering a different aspect of the game. Reading these you can see that it is a collection of errata, material that didn't quite make it to the Ravenloft boxed set, and updates to cover the evolution of the AD&D 2nd Ed game and other game worlds; for example psionics.
While the books could be used in any order. I am going with the order used in my Print on Demand copy.
Dark Recesses. Psionics.
Much like magic, this section deals with how psionics are changed. The psionics used here are the same as featured in the The Complete Psionics Handbook. If you are not using that book, or don't have it, then you can ignore this book. Well...sort of. Even if you are not using "AD&D Psionics" this is a good resource on any sort of psychic powers or visions when used in Ravenloft. Psychic ability has been a horror staple forever, even if the psychic ability is "magic" there is still great advice here.
This includes an appendix for Dark Sun characters coming to Ravenloft.
Nova Aracanum. Magic.
This covers new magic spells and items. The conceit here is that some of this new knowledge comes from Strahd himself. I liked the idea that Strahd, the former warrior, was turning to necromancy and wizardry to find ways out of his prison. It certainly helped separate him from his origins as a "Dracula-clone." Had there been rules for it I would have given him Alchemy instead, but hey, it works.
This book covers more altered spells and gifts from the Realms, Wild Magic, Elemental Magic and Meta Magic.
There are 14 new wizard spells, 7 new priest spells, and 5 new magic items.
Oaths of Evil. Curses.
This book is based on feedback from Ravenloft players it seems. This covers curses and dark powers checks. Giving clarifications and some edits on material presented in the Ravenloft core boxed set.
Of note, the Apparatus of the Alchemist from module I10 makes an appearance here, though only in art, not in text.
We also get three very cursed and very evil objects that have found their way to the Demiplane of Dread.
Cryptic Allegiances. Secret Societies.
What is horror without some secret societies? Here, Ravenloft takes a page from the Forgotten Realms. We get guidance on how to create and use secret societies in Ravenloft. We are given the examples of six secret societies. Of these, the Kargatane would spin off into a real-world group I was active in to develop new Ravenloft material.
The Waking Dream. Fortune Telling.
This final book covers fortune telling and Vistani. This gives us the description of the Tarokka deck and how to use it. There are 54 cards in a Tarokka deck, so a standard deck with two jokers works in a pinch.
The next section covers the Dikesha dice. A bit on how to use and read the portents of the dice. They are standard d6s, so they can also be replicated. You need five d6s, one each of red, yellow, orange, green and black. The PDF of the dice can be used and numbers added. OR if you feel particularly crafty you can get get some d6s of the correct colors and print out the PDF and glue these faces on the dice.
Of the two, I, and I assume most people now, used the Tarokka decks over the dice. The fact that you can still find and buy Tarokka decks from various editions of Ravenloft lends some weight to my claim.
There was also a large poster map included in the Boxed set. It was not printed with the Print on Demand version, but it is available as a PDF along with a PDF of the Tarokka deck and the Dikesha dice.
The Print on Demand version of this set is nice. It is clear to read and is a better scan than most.
Do I miss my boxed set? Well, I have to say no. The boxed set was great yes, but this makes for a good substitute. It is also only $5 more than the list price, so not bad after 32 years of inflation.
The great thing about the AD&D 2nd Edition version of Ravenloft's demi-plane was that the borders were completely malleable. Lands came in and out, even darklords would come and go. So the first two accessories for the Ravenloft setting capitalized on this. The first was RR1 Darklords and the next was RR2 Book of Crypts and both gave us more expansions to the Demiplane of Dread.
1991. By Andria Hayday (with some additional design by William W. Connors, Bruce Nesmith, and James Lowder). 96-pages, color covers (Tim Hildebrandt), black & white interior art (Stephen Fabian).
This soft-cover tome gave 16 new darklords and their domains for use with Ravenloft. There is a mixed bag here, but I tried I to use all of them at one point or another. These new lords felt less "gothic" in their presentation and more "AD&D" in their origins. For example, Tristessa, the Banshee Darklord, is a Drow mourning over the loss of her son, who turned into a Drider. The Hags of Tempest certainly have a William Shakespeare veneer over them, but they are pure AD&D hags.
There are some very interesting ones here too. Merilee, the Child Vampire, brings "Interview with a Vampire's" Claudia to mind. Von Kharkou is twice cursed. He was panther transformed into a man killing machine, then cursed again to vampirism. Zolnik is a different sort of ice-age Werewolf. Anhktepot and Tyet give us two very different takes on the Mummy.
Among all of these, The House of Lament (a haunted house as a darklord) would go on to see new life in future editions of the game, and the intelligent sword, Ebonbane, would get a full adventure in the pages of Dungeon magazine.
1991. by Dale "Slade" Henson with J. Robert King. 96-pages, color covers (David Dorman), black & white interior art (Laura and Kelly Freas, Stephen Fabian).
This book has nine short and loosely connected mini-adventures taking place in the core realms of Ravenloft. Of these, the "Bride of Mordenheim" was my favorite.
This was (is) actually a fun book. Horror lends itself well to the short story format and by extension horror RPG also does these smaller adventures well. They help remind us that not every adventure is going to part of some Grand Conjunction or even dealing directly with a Darklord.
Re-reading them now there are many that I would like re-run for newer versions of the game.
And to round off the pages nicely we get three new monsters in AD&D Monstrous Compendium format.
The PDF is a scanned document and it is a little washed out compared to my original from the 1990s. But still perfectly readable. At present, there is no Print on Demand option for either titles.
by Tracy and Laura Hickman, with additional material by Bruce Nesmith. Art by Dana Andrews, Clyde Caldwell, James Crabtree, and David C. Sutherland III.
PDF and Print. 64 pages.
For this I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG and my original print copy from the 1990s.
This is the original I6 Ravenloft Adventure from 10 years prior. This time the action has moved to the Demi-plane of Dread.
Bruce Nesmith does the "Demi-plane" conversions here which include AD&D 2nd edition conversions, using the fear and horror rules from the Ravenloft boxed set AND the updated Strahd stat block.
Strahd, in I6, was a 10th-level necromancer vampire. Now, he is a 16th-level one.
The text is largely the same as the original I6 but yet it somehow feels like it is "less." I have run Ravenloft many times, and while I have run it using the AD&D 2nd ed rules, I have never used to book save for the updated stat block and some monsters. For lack of anything I can put my finger on, the I6 presentation is vastly superior.
Still, though, I am happy to have it. If I were to run AD&D 2nd Ed Ravenloft I would certainly use this adventure. I'd just use the maps from the I6 version and maybe some ideas from the 3e or 5e versions as well.
.jpg "Ravenloft Domains of Dread (2e)")
