Like many who got into role-playing games, and especially Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, during the 1980s, I owned (and still own ... somewhere) a copy of the original Ravenloft adventure. At the time I thought it was unbelievably cool, with its evocative Clyde Caldwell cover, beautiful maps by David Sutherland III, use of randomly drawn tarot cards to determine the structure of the adventure, and so forth.
However, I have not read the original module in over three decades. And I never purchased any of the subsequent Ravenloft products—including the 2nd edition and 3rd edition settings—until the recent 5th edition adventure, Curse of Strahd. And even that book I only skimmed. For the most part over the past few years it has been simply sitting on my bookshelf. (Nonetheless, a review of the 5e version, by my friend C. Robichaud, was posted here.) It’s not that I had anything against Ravenloft—indeed, it always struck me as rather intriguing, and I liked the way it was connected to other campaign settings, including the World of Greyhawk (I believe that a connection to Vecna was established in the 2nd edition version of the setting).
Anyhow, a proper ‘setting book’ for Ravenloft is coming out: Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. I have to say that neither the standard cover nor the alternative cover blows me away. (I don’t think that they’re bad, certainly, but they’re not nearly appealing in my view as, say, the two Saltmarsh covers.) But covers aside, I plan to get a copy of the book when it becomes available in late May. I hope to return to my Greyhawk campaign sometime this spring, so perhaps there will be a way to connect Ravenoft to it. Or maybe not, and I’ll just use the book to mine for ideas. Or perhaps I’ll simply read it for pleasure. In any case, I’m interested enough in the setting now to look forward to it, unlike most of the setting books that have been published hitherto for 5th edition D&D.
(But the real reason I’m looking forward to the end of May, is that it will be end of the “Domain of Dread” that is my current work situation…)
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