Life Sucks By It’s Very Nature in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft for 5E D&D

Ravenloft sucks! Or rather, I suppose I should say life in Ravenloft would suck. Now that I’ve got your attention let me explain myself. Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is the official guide for twisting your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games with horror. When I say life in Ravenloft sucks, I’m specifically talking about how it sucks for the townspeople, the nobodies, the people with whom the main characters interact.

Dark Powers change the nature of life in domains

In the worlds of D&D like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Greyhawk, life is full of danger and suspense. Dragons fly the skies like living natural disasters that could raze a whole village in an instant. Wizards vie for power through both clandestine politics and mystical research. Meanwhile, liches threaten the very existence of life on the planet with their undead hoards.

Yet in all these horrific scenarios some hopeful themes resurface. Heroes rise to meet every challenge as though chosen by fate itself. The accessibility of magic offers everyone protection and even the slightest sliver of hope they might one day be truly resurrected from their afterlife and given a second chance. Even the existence of planar travel offers safe harbors, should the world as a whole be destroyed.

Monsters and danger are staples of the fantasy genre. Yet Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft suggests painting this particular 5E D&D setting into the horror genre through the very nature of Ravenloft itself.

The Mists

Unlike most fantasy worlds with pockets of civilization, Ravenloft is not so open. While any adventuring party can choose to travel from Red Larch to Baldur’s Gate at their leisure, the existence of the enigmatic Mists prevents travel between domains in Ravenloft, as a rule.

With the blessing of the Dark Powers, Darklords of Ravenloft each control the Mists surrounding their domains, freely opening and shutting their borders with supernatural precision. Horrific, disorienting illusions haunt the Mists and even if their supernatural burden on a character’s physicality doesn’t destroy them after they’ve avoided madness, said character usually exits the Mists at the same place they entered.

Included in the section on the Mists in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft we have a table to assist Dungeon Masters with determining what happens and where the characters exit based on a d100 roll. This is great not only because it offers an easy and efficient way to mix things up and gamify the characters’ travels through the Mists, but I also just love a good table from time to time.

Mist Talismans

If characters need to enter a specific Domain of Dread or if your players themselves want to visit a specific domain then Mist talismans might be the way to go. Usually taking the form of something ominous and indicative of the horrors to come, Mist talismans offer passage through the Mists to a particular domain of dread.

While Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft suggests using the horror trinkets table I like the idea of the DM choosing a specific item or making one up that might be especially relevant to a character’s backstory or to some clue to a mystery seeded previously by the DM. Mist Talismans are a fantastic way to guide the story and lore of the game without necessarily giving a direct info dump.

Magic and Metaphysics

Part of what distinguishes Ravenloft from other 5E D&D settings in the prevalence of untamed and malicious magic combined with the rarity of controlled or accessible magic. For people in the domains of dread, magic is mysterious, haunting and even dangerous.

Shrouded in superstition and intrigue, magic is not the sort of thing individuals in Ravenloft manipulate. Rather, in Ravenloft magic usually manipulates the individual. Not only is magic rare and mysterious but it also often possesses a corrupting nature to it. Either something magical is also sentient and tries to manipulate through coercion or deceit or else the magic itself intrinsically changes the core of the person’s being.

Just as the Darklords themselves are prisoners of the domains, so too are many of the domains’ inhabitants who encounter magic. The potential for entrapment is all too real in this setting. Sometimes this manifests as people being trapped in bodies not their own, such as when a person is transformed into a monster. Sometimes a person is trapped in the confines of their own mind while another puppets their body, or possibly this person had no soul to begin with and is a drone of the world itself.

Of course, physical imprisonment exists as well, living your days rotting in a dungeon or whatnot. But probably the most commons type of imprisonment in Ravenloft (outside of being trapped in a domain) is the imprisonment of fear itself. Those born with souls are often stifled by the soulless around them. Even death offers no reprieve as ghosts simply reincarnate if they aren’t damned to an afterlife of undeath.

The existence of such sinister magics and supernatural understandings only exacerbate mysteries and questions. In a world where truth is even rarer than controlled magic, safety is a luxury few can afford for more than a night. The overall theme resurfacing time and again to truly reinforce the genres of horror is the concept of being alone. Not only are individuals unable to trust even close friends or the rules of reality itself but the isolation of the domains forces people into routines of loneliness, breeding despair and a perpetual soul stifling discouraging traditional fantasy heroics.

[NERDITOR’S NOTE: One very significant difference when it comes to magic in Ravenloft regards spells allowing contact with extraplanar beings. When these sorts of spells are cast while in the Domains of Dread the realm’s Darklord senses the magic and can choose to make themselves the target and hence the entity contacted by the spell. Freaky!]

Eerie vendors such as those at The Carnival’s Litwick Market deal in unique Mist talismans. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

Life in the Domains of Dread

At this point I’ve probably convinced most of you how life in Ravenloft does truly suck for the vast majority of the populace. But what else is this life like? Without hope and expression, life truly isn’t worth living and even in the bleakest of conditions humanity finds ways to entertain, engage and drive purpose.

The last section of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft’s explanation on the nature of the demiplane deals with what day-to-day life looks like for Ravenloft, devoid of the supernatural. Due to the extreme isolation most domains possess their own cultures, currencies and levels of technology. Even linguistic differences are suggested in this section and I personally really like this angle. Even if two peoples begin speaking the same language, ages of isolation and linguistic evolution is sure to create vastly different dialects at the least.

Despite these many differences a few themes resurface. One of these is Ezra, an enigmatic goddess of the Mists. While religion is predominantly empty ritual in Ravenloft, the singular theme of this goddess remains a near constant, which is quite fascinating given the limited correspondence between domains.

On a tangential note, while correspondence among the domains is rare, with few even expressing interest outside their own domain, there are individuals who travel the Mists and occasionally carry correspondences. Of note, there’s also a carrier raven service called the Keepers of the Feather that reliably sends and receives messages between domains.

“The denizens of several domains worship an aloof god known as Ezra. Depicted as a vague, vaporous figure, the god is known for her dark, billowing hair and for her ability to manipulate the Mists. Her holy symbol is a sprig of belladonna atop a silver kite shield. Beyond that, her disparate sects of worshipers view her differently—and contradictorily. For some, Ezra is a goodly guardian, while others perceive her as a soul-stealing embodiment of the Mists. Ultimately, though, her true nature is a mystery. Whether she’s a manifestation of the Dark Powers, an aspect of the Plane of Shadow’s mysterious Raven Queen, or something else entirely is for you to decide. Whatever the case, Ezra’s followers, traditions, alignment, and the domains she grants her clerics vary widely. Collaborate with players who want to create characters devoted to Ezra to define the god’s role in their domain of origin.” — Sidebar about Ezra, God of the Mists from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft for 5E D&D

On the whole, life in the domains of dread sounds kind of terrible yet even the smallest flickers shine brightest in the dark. I love the idea that any inkling of heroism could be enough to spark a revolution (culturally, politically or whatever). One of the core elements of fantasy on the whole to me, personally, is the notion of how even in the bleakest of places hope can still shine. This drives me and my own game group toward heroism in spite of the dark themes Ravenloft presents. Even though life in Ravenloft sucks this doesn’t mean a spark of hope can’t make an individual’s life just a bit better and that’s a lesson we all can carry no matter how dark things may get.

Wow, who would have thought an article about life in Ravenloft could end on a hopeful note like this? Certainly not me! If you love dark fantasy as much as I do, check out my article on ways to make your game even grittier, and make sure to visit Nerdarchy the Store for some horror driving adventures, monsters and the like to augment your own campaigns in Ravenloft and beyond!

*Featured image — Dr. Viktra Mordenheim, Darklord of Lamordia, crafts the perfect body for her newest band of golem-hunting mercenaries as described in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft for 5E D&D. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

New videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here