Discover Your 5E D&D Character’s Horror Background with Van Richten’s Guide Backgrounds

Salutations, nerds! Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft sets up backgrounds a little bit differently from other fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons books. There are two in particular with suggested characteristics but as far as background features go there’s a list of those you can use for pretty much any other set. I like this. As someone who generally uses custom backgrounds anyway simply having the background feature to choose from is cutting out the middle man so to speak. Let’s take a look at what Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft reveals about backgrounds in this 5E D&D horror campaign setting.

Influences of horror on character background

“The following background features explore origins suited to characters in horror adventures. Optional features and characteristics for characters of any background suggest how portentous forces might influence anyone’s life. Additionally, the haunted one and investigator backgrounds provide options for characters shaped by or determined to reveal the mysteries surrounding them. Finally, a selection of horror trinkets provide characters options to carry their own personal terrors.”

Background Features

All of these are excellent for characters in a 5E D&D Ravenloft campaign no matter what Domain of Dread the adventures take place within. A few of them, however, translate well to other games as well. I’d love to see someone play the Inheritor or Spirit Medium traits in a normal game of 5E D&D. The Trauma Survivor is fairly easy to port as well.

• Inheritor. You’re carrying around the baggage of an ancestor or mentor. This background feature means you have a reputation to lean on, which you didn’t have to garner for yourself. That can be excellent both for roleplaying and as a mechanic — you have the benefit of being able to easily grab attention when you want it and the potential angst of living in your predecessor’s shadow.
• Mist Wanderer. This one is going to be useful in a Domains of Dread campaign and not much else. You have a connection to the mists, and it tells you things.
• Spirit Medium. Gives you advantage on Arcana and Religion regarding spirits and the afterlife and an ability for communing with otherwordly forces. This is pretty cool and flavorful and while there are more optimized choices you can make I could definitely imagine picking this one. There’s something really cool and thematic about a medium in a horror game.
• Trauma Survivor. You went through something bad and now people know you know something about the horrible thing that happened to you. A very good choice if your background includes your village being destroyed.
• Traveler. You’re not from around here, are you? But being from somewhere else entirely is helpful to you since you’re already experienced in finding places to hide and take a break when you need it, and experience talking people into helping you. This is probably a good one for most characters who got misted into the Domains of Dread.

Horror Characteristics

Instead of writing a whole set of personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws for each background they’ve given you mix and match tables of characteristics. Most personality trait tables are six to eight items long and this one is 12 so it balances out a little bit. In this case it makes a little bit of sense given the limited number of pages they had in the book. As much as I would have liked to have seen them all get their own treatment there are only so many hours in a day. I will say however that every one of these traits adds something to the horror play experience you might not necessarily get elsewhere.

Haunted One

It’s exactly what it says on the tin. You’re haunted by some terrible thing that won’t leave you alone and makes it hard to connect with others. One very interesting thing about this background is it comes with languages and all of them are the weird languages you have to get Dungeon Master approval to take. The selection of languages says a lot about what this background is supposed to be. They speak of being dragged tooth and claw into another plane of existence, spirited away to the Underdark or plagued with strange visions. You also get a Harrowing Event and the accompanying table is excellent for illustrating the diversity of the background.

Heart of Darkness. People know you’ve seen some serious stuff. They know it’s real business here and they’re willing to help you out as they can.

Investigator

The truth is out there. Do you want to believe? No, seriously if you want to play an X-files-esque character or someone who could belong in The Magnus Archives this is the background you want. I read this and immediately got several character ideas just from the flavor of it. There’s a table with examples of what got you started wanting to investigate the supernatural in the first place and they’re all excellent motivators for the person in the tin foil hat. In case you can’t tell this is one of my favorite tropes.

Official Inquiry. You know those moments in Supernatural where Dean and Sam have fake documents and bluff their way into morgues and police records? It’s kind of like this. People wouldn’t usually like you poking around in your stuff but you’re really good at making them think you’re supposed to be here. There’s a lot to play with and pick at here! If you’re looking for more options for your character this is an excellent way to start. A tad bit unorthodox, it feels a lot like they gave us the pieces and told us to mix and match.

To be fair, I was going to do that anyway and I know a lot of people who really care about this kind of content would have done the same. So whether you’re into it or not I hope you found something of use in this section of the book.

Horror Trinkets

According to the 5E D&D Player’s Handbook trinkets are simple items lightly touched by mystery. Nestled at the end of chapter 5: Equipment this d100 table gives characters a little something special. Many of them are taken from the Gothic Trinkets table in Curse of Strahd but the list here is doubled so there’s twice as many.

“Sinister deeds and festering evils take many forms, sometimes as stories and sometimes as physical scars. All manner of talismans, mementos, criminal evidence, mysterious devices, cursed relics, and physical impossibilities might embody just such scars—summaries of terrors in material form.”

Share your thoughts and ideas about 5E D&D backgrounds, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft and the Domains of Dread in the comments below. Of course, as always, have so much fun and stay nerdy!

*Featured image — A knight of the circle takes up her ancestor’s sacred charge to challenge the dark as seen in the 5E D&D Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

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