Monstrous Mondays: The Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums

 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.

I have been doing the same thing with my Forgotten Realms monsters as I talked about a while back.

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!

Review: Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales

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: 

1. The AD&D 1st Ed Monster Manual
2. D&D Basic Moldvay Edition
3. 1st Edition Chill
4. CJ Carella's WitchCraft RPG
5. 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. 

Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales 

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. 

Review: Islands of Terror (2e)

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. 

RR4: Islands of Terror (2e)

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.

In Search Of...Barovia (Ravenloft)

 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. 

1. First, there are no core domains from Mystara. 
2. 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. 

• Ravenloft / Glantri connection
• Averoigne via Ravenloft
• On the Road to Averoigne
• Castle Amber by Candle Light
• Castle Amber, Butterbeer and the Order of the Platinum Dragon

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.

WORKING: Timeline

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.

This shorter timeline is based on these works: 

• John W. Mangrum's epic Ravenloft timeline.
• Timeline of Ravenloft adventures, found on Reddit.
• The Unofficial Timeline of Mystara
• TIMELINE for Mystara, "Twin Campaigns" version

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.

 

Links

• Ravenloft / Glantri connection
• Vaults of Pandius Mystara/Ravenloft timeline
• The Unofficial Timeline of Mystara
• Nu-Ravenloft and Mystara: Cosmic Parallels
• Ravenloft / Karameikos map alignment (huge file)
• The Piazza Board
• Strahd von Zarovich was from Mystara?
• Strahd's Home Plane?
• Mystara Connections in Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft?
• Reddit: What world was Barovia originally a part of?
• Barovia
• Ravenloft wiki
• Eberron wiki
• Forgotten Realms wiki
• Plansescape wiki
• Dragonsfoot with my original posting from the 90s.
• Fraternity of Shadows with a possible DragonQuest connection

Products

• Basic and First Edition
• I6 Ravenloft
• I10 Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill
• B7 Rahasia
• X2 Castle Amber
• GAZ3 The Principalities of Glantri
• GAZ13 The Shadow Elves
• Second Edition
• Ravenloft, Realms of Terror
• Ravenloft, Forbidden Lore
• Night of the Vampire (2e)
• Mark of Amber (2e)

Review: Forbidden Lore (2e)

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.

Forbidden Lore (2e)

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.

Review: Darklords and Book of Crypts

 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.

RR1 Darklords (2e)

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. 

RR2 Book of Crypts (2e)

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.

Review: House of Strahd

 How many times will the makers of D&D re-do I6 Ravenloft? Well, they show no signs of stopping. House of Strahd brings Ravenloft to, well, Ravenloft.

RM4 House of Strahd

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.

Review: Van Richten's Guide to Vampires

 The 1990s brought something of an existential crisis to AD&D and TSR. For the first time ever, there was a real competitor for RPG sales, and that was White Wolf's Vampire The Masquerade.  I know a lot of AD&D gamers dismissed WW and Vampire at the time, but we all know that was a mistake. Vampire:TM was a phenomenon that still has an impact today. It was felt in the halls of TSR as well. Granted, doing a book on Vampires for Ravenloft was a no-brainer; their premier inhabitant was a vampire. But there is a little more going on here. 

Van Richten's Guide to Vampires

Nigel D. Findley, 1992
PDF. 96 pages, color cover by Den Beauvais, Black & White interior art by Stephen Fabian.

For this I am considering the PDF and Print on Demand versions.

One of the best Vampire supplements ever for a game was the Chill 1st Edition Vampires book. This book is for the AD&D 2nd Edition game, and it has the same utility to me.

First, a bit about these Van Richten's Guides. Rudolph Van Richten is Ravenloft's resident Vampire hunter and expert on the supernatural. He was Ravenloft's answer to Van Helsing, and he was not really all that different. If you read about him and picture Peter Cushing, you will be excused.  The conceit is that they were all written by Van Righten himself and left for other hunters to find. There were several of these Guides, and all had quite a lot of utility for me. They were a good mix of "crunch" (game mechanics) and "fluff" (narrative material). I would LOVE to say I used them outside of Ravenloft when I was playing AD&D 2nd Ed, but in truth my AD&D 2nd experience was all about Ravenloft. I will point out that a lot of the "innovations" of these books would later find a home in D&D proper post AD&D 2nd Ed. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Chapter 1 is the Introduction and sets the tone for the book. This is all from the point of view of Van Richten himself. Game applications appear in text boxes throughout.

Chapter 2 covers the background of vampirism, including how it is spread and how vampires think. Here we learn that a vampire's blood can cause damage to the living much like holy water does to the undead. 

Chapter 3. Here, I want to point out that none of the chapters use "1, 2, 3," but rather just the titles. The feel is that of a journal or a quasi-academic treatise.  Chapter 3, Vampiric Powers, is a good one. It covers all the powers normally associated with the AD&D 2nd Edition Vampire and adds more.  Most importantly is the idea that vampires get more powerful as they age. This was not a new idea; it was sort of implicit in all the retellings of Dracula and other popular media. It had also made it's way into other games before this, but for AD&D this was new stuff. Less revolutionary and more evolutionary; that is, it was going to happen sooner or later. It is an idea that has been adopted for D&D ever since for all vampires, in one form or another. I certainly used it in all my AD&D games going forward, even applying it to my 1st Ed and Basic-era games. Vampires also gain control over lesser undead.

Chapter 4. Covers the way new vampires can be created. Here, Van Richten moves away from Van Helsing and more into Professor Hieronymus Grost from "Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter." Detailing all the then known ways the vampiric curse can be passed on. Throughout the book, this information is presented as Van Richten's personal experiences and those of trusted colleagues, with the caveat that there may be other means and ways they do not know yet.

Chapter 5. This covers the various weaknesses of the Vampire. This includes all the classic ones and how they are altered by Ravenloft's unique environment.  

Chapter 6. This covers all the means to destroy a vampire, including the classics: Stakes, running water, blessed items, and sunlight.

Chapter 7. Magic and Vampires is the most "D&D" of all the chapters really. It not only covers how vampires are affected by magic but also how they can use magic items. Want to polymorph a vampire? Great, if it gets past their magic resistance, and they fail their saving throw, they will be come what ever it was you wanted. For one round. Then, they can shift to one of their alternate forms. 

Chapter 8. This chapter is called "Life-Blood: Vampiric Feeding Habits" and is the one that takes the vampire further away from the AD&D model of the vampire. In particular the vampires of Ravenloft drain blood, not really levels, though there is an option for that. This was great because frankly I never liked level drain as a mechanic. We have seen blood drain in the Core Rules and Feast of Goblyns introduced us to a vampire that drains spinal fluid. Again the parallels to "Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter" are there. 

Chapter 9. Covers the "Sleep of the Dead" and how vampires sleep. We learn through other sources (and put into game terms here) that Strahd sleeps the sleep of the dead during the daylight hours and can't be woken. Other vampires like Jander Sunstar are very light sleepers. Note: Neither of these vampires are mentioned here as examples. They are detailed in other contemporaneous products. 

Chapter 10. Akin to sleep in Hibernation, something all vampires do after a certain number of years. Hibernation is an extended sleep all vampires go through and as a means to keep 1,000+ year old vampires out of the game. OR at least out of Ravenloft.  The previously mentioned Jander Sunstar is thought to be 700+ years old (as a vampire) and Cazador Szarr is also believed to be very old. Both are elves. I bring these two up in particular because rules laid down in this book continue to effect their 5th Edition versions.

Chapter 11. Relationships between vampires is our next chapter. As (mostly) Chaotic-evil creatures vampires rarely work together, save for a master-thrall relationship. There are also vampire "brides" and "grooms" (see Dracula) and they are little more than elevated thralls, albeit ones with more free-will. One wonders how this book might have been different if a movie like "The Only Lovers Left Alive" had been out then.  

Chapter 12. This covers vampire psychology. How a vampire thinks and how they deal (or not) with immortality.

Chapter 13. Related to the previous chapter is this chapter on "The Facade." As the most human and living looking of all the undead (odd exceptions aside) the vampire has the best chance of blending in. But their immortality and their altered psychology often prevent a full integration into any society. 

Chapter 14. In a largely mechanical chapter, this deals with the vampires of certain classes and the powers and skills they can retain. Honestly, I think this one would have been a better Appendix since this chapter lacks a lot of the Van Richten notes and would have given us a nice 13 chapters. 

At 96 pages this is a wealth of information about vampires. Just as I extended it from Ravenloft to all my AD&D 2nd Edition games, you can also use ideas (and even some mechanics) to extend this form AD&D 2nd edition to other editions of D&D. Indeed, some of that was already getting baked into post AD&D rules. I have also used ideas from this in other games outside of D&D.

The interior art is all by Stephen Fabian and gives us a great visual connection to the core rules. There is some repeated art here from the core and other products, but only someone who has all the books and read them all over and over would notice.

A word about the PDF and PoD

I had this book when it was first published, but I unloaded it from the time I was in grad school to when I bought my first house. I kinda regret that. The PDF, though is easy to read and bookmarked. 

The POD version is also nice, but the interior text is a bit faded, and the red text is more pinkish. It is 100% serviceable for gameplay and reading. It just reminds me I wish I still had all my originals. 

Review: Ship of Horror

I have rather fond memories of this adventure as well. Again, I can recall sitting in my old apartment and reading this one over and over in preparation for playing. It also is one that fit into my particular campaign rather well.

Now, I often call this adventure "Ship of Fools" because of the Robert Plant song of the same name from his "Now and Zen" album, which was released just a couple of years before (1988). 

RA2 Ship of Horror

by Anne Brown.  Art by Clyde Caldwell (cover) and Stephen Fabian (interior). 70 pages.

Ok. What does this adventure have going for it? Well, lots. First off, it is our first and only domain (if I remember correctly) and characters from Mystara. Though this was retconned in a little later. 

The ship is supposed to evoke the ship-based adventures of the Isle of Dread. This is one of the reasons I think it was added to (or from) Mystara after the fact. 

 But that is not the only reason why I liked it and took to it so quickly.

There was the idea of this taking place on a ship, something I was still keen on doing despite the fact that my first ship-based/themed campaign never took off.  This seemed like a way to revive some of those ideas.  The Endurance was a great little ship, and having stats for it was great.

There was more DM advice on running Ravenloft, something I was very interested in doing since I was going to be a DM for all my Ravenloft adventures for the next 7-8 years. Though I do have some nitpicks. For example, no one in the Mists would ever refer to their land as "Ravenloft."

There are new monsters, new spells, and more ideas of ways to use well-known creatures in new ways.

Meredoth, our cover Necromancer, was also a huge draw for me. He reminded me so much of my my own Necromancer Magnus that I just used him with some of Meredoth's backstory.  When I later read the Meredoth had been retconned to Mystara, home of Uslime and Magnus, it seemed like serendipity. 

Meredoth/Magnus was the big draw for me here not just for the connections, but because he was a 2nd Edition Necromancer IN Ravenloft. It seemed like such a perfect fit for me. 

Speaking of retcons, this adventure would also be retconned into the "Grand Conjunction." I have no issues with that really. Again, there is no reason why anyone in the adventure, including the PCs, would know any of this. Though the inclusion is awkward at times. Running it again today, I have to weigh in on whether or not the Grand Conjunction is even needed. I think I might have this one as the first adventure and then move to Feast of Goblyns. I would also emphasize the Mystara/Known World connections more. 

The adventure is fine in and of itself and shows how to take a simple premise and adventure hook and turn it on's head, Ravenloft style.

My nostalgia for this one is rather high and I am very likely glossing over bits that should be read with a critical eye and not "Nostalgia Goggles" but hey, nostalgia is also part of the enjoyment here. 

Review: Feast of Goblyns

 I am not going to review all of the Ravenloft adventures. I owned them all at one time, but somewhere between 1990 (when I was an undergrad) and 2000 (when I was married with a house and new baby) I sold a lot of them off. I don't really regret it since I have bought most of them back on PDF.  But a few I kept, this is one of them. Largely because there is a lot here that feels like it could have gone into the Boxed Set.

RA1 Feast of Goblyns

by Blake Mobley. Art by Clyde Caldwell, Stephen Fabian, Karen Wynn Fonstad, Roy E. Parker.

96 pages, plus maps.

For this review I am considering my original copy from 1990 and DriveThruRPG PDF. 

This is actually a rather great adventure for a number of good reasons.

First, it expands Ravenloft, the game, into new areas. It has the set dressing of Gothic Horror, but it is an AD&D MacGuffin adventure. Nothing at all wrong with that. It introduces a new type of vampire. Introduces a new idea for Goblins, or rather, Goblyns that works great with the horror elements. It also has a proper GM screen, some more monsters, and Ravenloft-themed character sheets.

Secondly, it expands Ravenloft, the setting, into new domains. That is to say, not everything has to be about Strahd and his drama.

The adventure itself is, like I said, a MacGuffin hunt. Find the Crown of Souls and keep it out of all the bad guys hands.  In the process, a new Domain can be created.  The adventure itself is actually pretty fun and a good one. The NPCs are quite memorable. 

Back in the 1990s RPGs were all about the Meta-plot. I blame Vampire: The Masquerade, but Ravenloft was not immune. While Feast of Goblyns was not originally part of a meta-plot it was later retconned in as the first part (of 6) of the Grand Conjunction.

This works out well to be honest. The Grand Conjunction showed that Ravenloft was a malleable place and the lands, rulers, and rules, could change anytime. This was not a fixed world. So I do find it odd when people complain that Ravenloft is different than it was then. Really? It changed between 1991 and 1997 and no one blinked an eye then.

I never ran the Grand Conjunction back then. I might go back and reread it to see if it is something I would do today. Maybe start out in "Classic Ravenloft" and then Grand Conjunction and then end up with a Ravenloft from the 5e version. I mean it is not beyond the scope of the lands really.

My physical copy is still in great shape, likely because it has been inside my Realms of Terror box for about 30 years.

The PDF is good, if a touch fuzzy. I do not have the PoD version.

One thing I was looking forward too with the PDF was the ability to print out the character sheets. The PDF, once printed is a bit fuzzy. My own scan is a bit better.

Again, I have a lot of great memories of this one. Running it and reading through it. The early 90s were a great time for Vampire games and media. Vampire the Masquerade was out, Bram Stoker's Dracula was out in 1992. So this was the right game at the right time.

The adventure is/was fun and a great addition, but I think most of its value comes showing what can actually be done for/in Ravenloft and of course all the play aids and DM tips.

I would certainly run this one again.

Review: Ravenloft Realms of Terror

 We move right away to AD&D Second Edition with the Realms of Terror boxed set.  For this review I am going to feature the original 1990 Boxed set, the PDF and Print on Demand options from DriveThruRPG

Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990)

Boxed set. 144-page rule book (B&W), 4 full color maps, 24 full color sheets featuring various families and castles of the Demi-plane.
by Bruce Nesmith with Andria Hayday. Art by Clyde Caldwell and Stephen Fabian.

PDF and PoD is a combined product; color and B&W art, 168 pages.

It is really hard to quantify exactly what this boxed set meant to me at the time of its release. This came out in June 1990. I was 21, living in my university town year round now, getting ready for grad school. I can remember sitting at my desk in my apartment reading over this set many times.

While even at the time I knew that trying to force-feed Gothic Horror into AD&D was a tall order, I still loved every bit of it.  It was the closest I had seen up to that point that captured the play style I really wanted. D&D + Horror was pretty much everything I was doing and this was a new frontier for me.

Ravenloft was a boxed set campaign world at the height of AD&D 2nd Edition's foray into boxed set campaign worlds. It was one of the game's great strengths and, ultimately, one of the reasons for TSR's undoing, but that is not our topic today.  

The Demi-plane of Ravenloft was a Twilight Zone-like place where the truly evil were captured and put off into a prison of their own with others, including what seems like many innocents. Something that dominated the RAVENLOFT-L lists back in the day. It was a horror anthology writ large. It was everything I wanted in a campaign world.

Realm of Terror Book

The Realm of Terror book is a 144-page guide to this new world. 

Chapter: From Gothic Roots

This covers what this book is trying to do with nods both to the original Ravenloft Adventures and to the Gothic Horror genre. A very quick introduction to Gothic Horror.

Chapter II: The Demiplane of Dread

Covers the basics. What is this demiplane, how did it come into being, what connection does it have to Strahd Von Zarovich. If reading this you think Twilight Zone, Hotel California or even the old Roach Motel, then you would be forgiven. 

Of note here, for me at least, is a timeline of the major events in the Demiplane.

The Mists of Ravenloft, a feature of the first module and brought back for the second, is all important here. They can be summoned and partially controlled by the Domains' Dark Lords. They can also reach into the Prime Material and seek out other souls. Even bringing in entire new Domains with it, or leaving traces in the Prime Material.

Chapter III: The Reshaping of Characters

The big assumption here is that characters would be coming from somewhere else. This allowed for the various "Weekend in Hell" scenarios that you could do with Ravenloft. Certainly the first two adventures felt like this as did X2 Castle Amber. Thus characters will have some alterations. Clerical abilities such as Turning Undead do not work as well as it used too. Magic is always a bit wonky. Demihumans are always looked at with suspicion. And evil acts will cause the character to make Dark Powers checks. If they fail they become more and more attached to the Demiplane and can never leave. 

Chapter IV: Fear and Horror Checks

Ok. I will be honest this is one of my favorites things about Ravenloft and a mechanic I ported back over to Vanilla D&D many times. It works best here though.

Lots of text is given over to how to invoke a fearful, spooky atmosphere. But lets be honest, D&D Characters AND D&D Players can be a bit of a jaded bunch. Compare the moves "Alien" and "Aliens" and see the difference horror has on the unaware and on seasoned warriors. The Fear and Horror checks help this mood along.

Chapter V: Werebeasts and Vampires

The MVPs of Gothic Horror (along with Ghosts), if characters get special hinderances, these guys get special bonuses.  Most importantly we get the Vampire Powers due to age a year before Vampire: The Masquerade did it. This is also something I ported back to D&D. Though I will admit, it does lessen the impact that this campaign setting has when I do that.

Chapter VI: Curses

An ancient cursed family? A scientist (er...Naturalist) cursed to discover a cure that might be worse than the aliment? Undead, Lycanthropes, the restless Vampire? What is Gothic Horror without curses. You would think with all this they would have given us some proper witches, but that comes later.

Chapter VII: Gypsies

Ok, you know that disclaimer on DriveThruRPG that many of the old guard whinge about? It is for things like this. Did the authors mean to disparage people of Romany descent? Of course not. They were using the common term as it was used when this printed. That doesn't mean the name is not offensive to some. We have to respect that. 

In newer versions of Ravenloft these have been replaced with Vistani. There are still some issues with that yes, but it is beyond the scope of this review to go into that.

What the chapter does cover are a people that seem to have some sort of special relationship to the land and to the Mists. 

Chapter VIII: Telling the Future

The I6: Ravenloft adventure casts a long shadow over this product. Fortune Telling is covered here. Typically with regular playing cards, but we used a Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

Chapter IX: Spells in Ravenloft and Chapter X: Magic Items in Ravenloft

We mentioned in Chapter III that characters have changes, well here are various spells and magic items from AD&D 2nd Edition and how they are changed. 

These characters, though while longer than the previous ones, could have been combined.

Chapter XI: Lands of the Core and Chapter XII: Islands of Terror

Ahh! Now we are getting to the world proper. This chapter describes the various lands/countries of teh Core Domain with Barovia as the beating, black heart. Each land is covered along with who their Darklord is, what the population is made up of and what characters can expect. Each land also has a section on how the Darklord can close their borders to keep people out or in. The Darklords themselves can never leave their lands. 

The Islands of Terror are largely disconnected from the Core, but can be reached via the Mists. 

Nearly* every AD&D 2nd Ed world is represented here, some more than once. 

(*I'll deal with this in another post.) 

These two chapters are the largest.

Chapter XIII: The Who's Doomed of Ravenloft

Were the chapters padded to make sure this one was Chapter 13? Maybe.

This covers the Darklords and important NPCs, both good and evil, you can encounter in Ravenloft. There are a lot of archetypical (some say stereotypical) villians of Gothic Horror. We get Dracula for example in both his human (Vlad Drakov) and vampire (Strahd) personas. Ghosts, Liches, were creatures, poisoners, the lot.

The Ravenloft adventure really sold the idea that the monster at the end, something later known as the "Big Bad," should really be a developed character. This takes that to logical next steps and makes all the Darklords detailed characters. This is a good thing really. 

Chapter XIV: Bloodlines

Covers the various family trees of the folks of Ravenloft. 

Chapter XV: Techniques of Terror (and Adventure Ideas)

More DM advice on how to run a horror game. 

The book ends with seven new AD&D Monstrous Compendium style monster pages.

The Boxed Set Contents

The boxed set also comes with 4 Poster sized maps; 1 of the Core, 1 of the Islands of Terror, and 2 of the various villages and towns. There is a clear plastic hex-grid to lay over the top.

There are 16 full color cards (8.5" x 11") of the various important castles and homes in Ravenloft.

Five cards of the various important families with details on the back.

And three with information usable by players and DMs.

The Print on Demand Copy

The Print on Demand copy is great, still quite clear. ALL of the material from the Boxed set is here. And by all I do mean all the maps and even the clear hex grid (no longer clear obviously). It does limit the utility of the maps, but since you can opt for the PDFs at the same time you can print out the maps and cards. 

I was very active in the Ravenloft fandom scene online back in the 1990s. I was a very active member of the RAVENLOFT-L email list back then and then later on the various Usenet groups.

Some of those people I still talk too today.

Ravenloft WAS 1990s AD&D for me. As long as I stayed in my dark little corner of the mists, I didn't care about what the other worlds did or didn't do. I still paid attention to Mystara and a little bit of Greyhawk, but the rest were so much noise to me. And my experiences were not unique.

I had pretty much given up on D&D, having moved on over to other games, but I had kept a lot of my Ravenloft stuff. Sadly, I did unload a huge bulk of it all in the early 2000s. I have since been able to buy it all back on PDF. Less space in my home, and less likely I'll decide to sell it all again.

I have a good example of this coming up next.

But I am going to say this, after so many decades away from the AD&D 2nd Ed version of Ravenloft, it is nice to be "home" once again.