Today I will cover a lot of ground very quickly as a retrospective review. I have talked about these about books off and on over the years here and they stand as some of the best deep dives for monsters I have ever seen for the AD&D game. Yes, Elmimster's Ecologies are very good and the Monstrous Compendiums sat the stage for detailed monster coverage, but where these sources fall short of the Van Richten Guides is the level of detail; in terms of monster coverage, variations of the monster, and of course hunting the monsters.
Van Richten's Guides
The Van Richten's Guides began in 1992 with the publication of Van Richten's Guide to Vampires, which I already covered in detail. The other guides that came after followed a similar format, each detailing a different monster.
They were all largely agnostic in terms of system, though they were all still AD&D books and the fluff was still very much set in Ravenloft. I personally felt they could have been used in any AD&D campaign setting, and I even felt that a few were useful enough to use in any system. For example, I used the Liches book for WitchCraft/Unisystem to great effect.
The original Guides were single volumes of around 96 pages each. The product numbering was a little haphazard, they were all "Ravenloft Reference" but Liches also had the code RS and the last two had no codes at all.
In 1998, after TSR was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, the books were combined into a compendium of three monster books, each with a third, Guide to Witches, new. It also had a bit of a different feel than the others. Though it's most similar to the Vistani one. The books were grouped by theme rather than publication dates. Volume 1 featured the "Classic" Universal monsters. Vol. 2 was undead, and Vol. 3 what can best be described as "occult" related.
I owned all of these back in the 1990s. I recall sitting in my apartment after getting married reading them all. There were subtle differences between the single (TSR-era) books and the compiled (WotC-era) books. Nothing I can recall off the top of my head, mind you, and nothing that was game-changing, save for maybe the notion that Van Richten was dead.
I unloaded all of these after I went over to other games and then later D&D 3. I don't regret it, but I kinda wish I had kept the Compendiums. Unfortunately, the PDFs, while great for reading, are not really good enough for Print on Demand. Printing them all out for a binder would be fun, but we are talking about a lot of pages (800 or so for the single volumes) and a lot of ink.
Van Richten's Guide to Witches
For obvious reasons, I want to focus on this one. Not only is it germane to this blog and my interests, it is also the odd one out.
Needless to say, I was really looking forward to this book. Obviously, the Guides to Demons (renamed from Fiends) and Vistani were still top-notch. The Guide to Witches really should have been called the Guide to Hags and Witches because it dealt with both. I'll break it down here.
Guide to Hags
I really liked this part. Hags should be part of Ravenloft, and this section did a great job of presenting another monster type in a far more complex light. It is on par with the Guide to Liches or Vampires.
I would have liked to see more on linking Hags to Night Hags. I liked the second change idea that other hag types change into Night Hags, but it does not have to be the only way they are linked. The Monster Manual 2 (1st Ed.) states that the Annis are relative to the Night Hags, and the Greenhag are relative to both the Annis and the Sea Hags.
I liked the Irdra/Ogre link to Hags, but I liked the "Dark Fey" theory much better. My hag, the Makva (or Wood Hag), is more of a dark faerie type than an ogress. Plus I don't play Dragonlance, so the Irdra are not part of my worlds.
For Hag reproduction and powers, the Makva are most similar to Greenhags. Except, most Makva only live about 800 years. Mavka is usually spawned from elves and half-elves rather than humans. Makva may join Coveys, but there will be only one Makva per covey. In spawning rituals, Makva picks elves or half-elves as victims. They can perform them only on nights of the new moon.
Guide to Witches, Warlocks, and Hedge Magicians
I was prepared to find witches that were very different than my own, but I did not expect that they would be this different. Witches have had a spotty history with D&D since the beginning, and it seems that every few years, a new rule book comes up that gives us a different vision of the witch. To begin with, this witch is not a class or a subclass, but a kit. It is also different from the Complete Wizards Handbook witch kit. What I did like was the information on the Church of Hala and the acknowledgement that witches could be good or evil, overall I did not like it.
I am not saying I did not like the new kit, I just do not like them as Witches. The author, Steve Miller, got the points right about witchcraft being based in faith and I really liked the whole idea of the Weave, I just did not feel that these were the same kinds of witches from fantasy and horror literature. For example where was any mention of the occult? Or how about familiars? These witches lacked a few of the things that made witches special.
The witches and warlocks here are interesting classes, and looking back at them now, a quarter of a century later, I find that I like them a lot more than I did then. Maybe I have seen more witches since then, or maybe my tastes have changed.
All of these books, though, are essential to anyone playing in Ravenloft, a must-have if you are playing a horror game in AD&D, or really any version of D&D, and still pretty useful for other games.
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