What do you think?
Rate this book
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition
Domains of Dread: Ravenloft Campaign:
Add a touch of horror to your AD&D game with this medieval Gothic setting Vampires, werewolves, forbidding castles, and ghosts of all kinds inhabit the Demiplane of Dread.
Features new rules for creating heroes native to the domains, adapting magic to the demiplane, and dealing with fear and horror checks when the characters experience the true terror that dominates the Ravenloft "RM" campaign.
Night is Falling. The Mists are Rising
Embrace the Darkness.
Enter the dark and macabre world of Ravenloft.
But beware -
once you begin to walk among the mists and shadows,
you can never leave.
Domains of Dread is the core rulebook for the second edition of the award-winning RAVENLOFT campaign setting - the original fantasy horror role-playing game.
Within the pages of this book, players and Dungeon Masters will discover the darkest secrets of the Land of the Mists, including many never-before-seen features:
Detailed guidelines on designing anything from short-term horror adventures to long-running campaigns of twisted terror.
Complete rules for generating player characters native to the Demiplane of Dread.
Four new character classes specifically designed for use in RAVENLOFT campaigns - the avenger, the anchorite, the gypsy, and the arcanist!
An all-new player character race - the half-Vistani!
Updated and expanded descriptions of the Demiplane and the foul lords who rule its tortured domains!
Revised fear, horror, and madness checks to enhance the terror.
New rules for power checks, plus thirteen detailed steps that lead from grace to absolute corruption!
Summary of content:
1: The Demiplane of Dread: general description of Ravenloft, as well as a history and theories about the nature of the dark powers, and an overview of the technological levels in Ravenloft (from Stone Age to Renaissance)
2: Domains of the Core
3: Islands of Terror (Bluetspur, G´Henna, I´Cath, Kalidnay, Nosos, Odiare, Souragne and Vorostokov)
4: Clusters (Amber Wastes (Har'Akir, Sebua and Pharazia), Zherisia (Paridon and Timor), the Burning Peaks (Vecna and Kas's domains) and Pockets (Davion, The House of Lament, The Nightmare Lands and Scaena)
5: Secret Societies - short chapter on nine secret societies - Keepers of the Black Feather, Green Hand, Circle, Church of Ezra, Vistani, Carnival, Kargatane, Fraternity of Shadows, Unholy Order of the rave)
6: Fear, Horror, and Madness rules
7: Powers Checks rules
8: The Path of the Priest - changes in the priest class
9: The Way of the Wizard - changes for wizards.
10: Mazes of the Mind - changes for psionics
11: Forged of Darkness - changes for magical items
12: The Whispered Evil - curses.
13: Tenets of Terror - discussion about the general nature of Ravenloft adventures and campaigns
Appendix: ability scores, character races, character classes (some new: Avengers (paladins), Arcanist (wizards), Anchorites (priest of Ezra), gypsy (bard)
Features new rules for creating heroes native to the domains, adapting magic to the demiplane, and dealing with fear and horror checks when the characters experience the true terror that dominates the Ravenloft "RM" campaign.
Night is Falling. The Mists are Rising
Embrace the Darkness.
Enter the dark and macabre world of Ravenloft.
But beware -
once you begin to walk among the mists and shadows,
you can never leave.
Domains of Dread is the core rulebook for the second edition of the award-winning RAVENLOFT campaign setting - the original fantasy horror role-playing game.
Within the pages of this book, players and Dungeon Masters will discover the darkest secrets of the Land of the Mists, including many never-before-seen features:
Detailed guidelines on designing anything from short-term horror adventures to long-running campaigns of twisted terror.
Complete rules for generating player characters native to the Demiplane of Dread.
Four new character classes specifically designed for use in RAVENLOFT campaigns - the avenger, the anchorite, the gypsy, and the arcanist!
An all-new player character race - the half-Vistani!
Updated and expanded descriptions of the Demiplane and the foul lords who rule its tortured domains!
Revised fear, horror, and madness checks to enhance the terror.
New rules for power checks, plus thirteen detailed steps that lead from grace to absolute corruption!
Summary of content:
1: The Demiplane of Dread: general description of Ravenloft, as well as a history and theories about the nature of the dark powers, and an overview of the technological levels in Ravenloft (from Stone Age to Renaissance)
2: Domains of the Core
3: Islands of Terror (Bluetspur, G´Henna, I´Cath, Kalidnay, Nosos, Odiare, Souragne and Vorostokov)
4: Clusters (Amber Wastes (Har'Akir, Sebua and Pharazia), Zherisia (Paridon and Timor), the Burning Peaks (Vecna and Kas's domains) and Pockets (Davion, The House of Lament, The Nightmare Lands and Scaena)
5: Secret Societies - short chapter on nine secret societies - Keepers of the Black Feather, Green Hand, Circle, Church of Ezra, Vistani, Carnival, Kargatane, Fraternity of Shadows, Unholy Order of the rave)
6: Fear, Horror, and Madness rules
7: Powers Checks rules
8: The Path of the Priest - changes in the priest class
9: The Way of the Wizard - changes for wizards.
10: Mazes of the Mind - changes for psionics
11: Forged of Darkness - changes for magical items
12: The Whispered Evil - curses.
13: Tenets of Terror - discussion about the general nature of Ravenloft adventures and campaigns
Appendix: ability scores, character races, character classes (some new: Avengers (paladins), Arcanist (wizards), Anchorites (priest of Ezra), gypsy (bard)
288 pages, Hardcover
First published August 26, 1997
1 person is currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Steve Miller
34 books7 followersFrom 1995 to 1999, Steve worked on Dragonlance meta-story direction and specific print products, along with Doug Niles, Harold Johnson, Stan!, Sue Cook and Miranda Horner. When Wizards of the Coast aquired TSR, the influential Dragonlance authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman once again took charge of Dragonlance story direction, and Steve soon moved onto other things.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Read
September 27, 2022I gotta find a project that brings me joy. To vary things up, I decided to skip reviewing some of the adventures and jump to two sourcebooks: the Domains of Dread (a _third_ version of the core box set, detailing what a Ravenloft campaign should feel like and all the stuff you need to play in one) and Champions of the Mist (an accessory with a few player options and some good NPCs to serve as allies to the PCs.
And I have very little to say about these two books, but here goes:
DOMAINS OF DREAD
It's the same thing as the first two core boxes, only in less interesting book form. The first box set was really mind-opening about the possibility of monsters have stories and personalities and motivations, sometimes even relatable and tragic ones. The second box set kind of retread the same material, but included a bunch of other material that had been published since the first box, including the Grand Conjunction metaplot, where a couple of realms got moved around.
Now, if you recall, my major problem with the first book was that the realms were too numerous and too similar and too underdeveloped; and this was a little corrected -- barely -- by the second box set, which kept a lot of the ho-hum domains. (And then included a lot of the material from the Forbidden Lore box set, like info on curses, etc.)
Domains is the third at-bat for this idea and it's clear to me that the writers and editors have their own, different ideas about how to make Ravenloft work, and that answer isn't to remove and focus some of the domains but to clump a bunch of them together as clusters. So, besides introducing the changes made to Darkon and Azalin in the Death trilogy, this core book also clumps a bunch of desert domains together, so all the mummies live close to each other, and also clumps a bunch of jungle/South Asian domains together, so the weretigers and tigers live close to each other. It makes sense geographically, but is that really how you want your gothic horror to make sense?
Then they do this odd thing where they include a bunch of player info in this core book that really only the DM should have; so they reprint (with some slight changes -- they say) the rules for stats, and some race and class stuff, including a playable class for... well, you know how this setting has problems with wanting to include the trope of the evil or at the very least magical Romani travelers? Well, they go in for more of that.
I just... look, I've got to be honest about my past love for this campaign setting, but this isn't what I loved about it.
***
CHAMPIONS OF THE MIST
The bulk of this book is about new kits and, you know what, I like them a lot, except for the fact that they probably shouldn't be kits. Like, a kit was a way to distinguish one fighter from another if, say, one was trained in horse combat and the other was an archery expert. Then some of the kits sort of blended into background stuff, like if you were a noble or if you grew up in the arctic.
Here the kits are largely interesting ways to tie your character into a narrative, like the accursed (someone laboring under a curse) or the cold one (someone nearly killed by an undead and now still close to death) or the Green Hand (which is a follower of Osiris and sworn enemy of the bad mummies). Some of the kits make me scratch my head a bit -- the invisible is sort of geared towards espionage and the pistoleer's gimmick is, well, that they use pistols, neither of which necessarily seems like it has to be for Ravenloft or even fits there. Is that one reason why this book (printed at the end of TSR's financial solvency) advertises itself as fit for any campaign world? Still, there's some here that seem interesting to play (and maybe a few that feel like they're here to emphasize the heroism of the PCs against the evil).
The back 20 pages or so of this book are a bunch of NPC heroes, including adventure hooks (and also notes on what novel or adventure these NPCs can be found in). Some of this seems promising, though I'm not sure all of these heroes hit the right gothic notes.
And I have very little to say about these two books, but here goes:
DOMAINS OF DREAD
It's the same thing as the first two core boxes, only in less interesting book form. The first box set was really mind-opening about the possibility of monsters have stories and personalities and motivations, sometimes even relatable and tragic ones. The second box set kind of retread the same material, but included a bunch of other material that had been published since the first box, including the Grand Conjunction metaplot, where a couple of realms got moved around.
Now, if you recall, my major problem with the first book was that the realms were too numerous and too similar and too underdeveloped; and this was a little corrected -- barely -- by the second box set, which kept a lot of the ho-hum domains. (And then included a lot of the material from the Forbidden Lore box set, like info on curses, etc.)
Domains is the third at-bat for this idea and it's clear to me that the writers and editors have their own, different ideas about how to make Ravenloft work, and that answer isn't to remove and focus some of the domains but to clump a bunch of them together as clusters. So, besides introducing the changes made to Darkon and Azalin in the Death trilogy, this core book also clumps a bunch of desert domains together, so all the mummies live close to each other, and also clumps a bunch of jungle/South Asian domains together, so the weretigers and tigers live close to each other. It makes sense geographically, but is that really how you want your gothic horror to make sense?
Then they do this odd thing where they include a bunch of player info in this core book that really only the DM should have; so they reprint (with some slight changes -- they say) the rules for stats, and some race and class stuff, including a playable class for... well, you know how this setting has problems with wanting to include the trope of the evil or at the very least magical Romani travelers? Well, they go in for more of that.
I just... look, I've got to be honest about my past love for this campaign setting, but this isn't what I loved about it.
***
CHAMPIONS OF THE MIST
The bulk of this book is about new kits and, you know what, I like them a lot, except for the fact that they probably shouldn't be kits. Like, a kit was a way to distinguish one fighter from another if, say, one was trained in horse combat and the other was an archery expert. Then some of the kits sort of blended into background stuff, like if you were a noble or if you grew up in the arctic.
Here the kits are largely interesting ways to tie your character into a narrative, like the accursed (someone laboring under a curse) or the cold one (someone nearly killed by an undead and now still close to death) or the Green Hand (which is a follower of Osiris and sworn enemy of the bad mummies). Some of the kits make me scratch my head a bit -- the invisible is sort of geared towards espionage and the pistoleer's gimmick is, well, that they use pistols, neither of which necessarily seems like it has to be for Ravenloft or even fits there. Is that one reason why this book (printed at the end of TSR's financial solvency) advertises itself as fit for any campaign world? Still, there's some here that seem interesting to play (and maybe a few that feel like they're here to emphasize the heroism of the PCs against the evil).
The back 20 pages or so of this book are a bunch of NPC heroes, including adventure hooks (and also notes on what novel or adventure these NPCs can be found in). Some of this seems promising, though I'm not sure all of these heroes hit the right gothic notes.
September 25, 2018
I love gothic horror, and so of course I love Ravenloft. This book is everything you need to run 2E games in the Domain of Dread. As well as being a great core book, it is also a really great read, as you get to find out about a lot of Ravenloft's different countries, peoples, and rulers.
September 22, 2023
Disastrously bad, I’m not sure if Ravenloft ever really needed to be more than a long adventure module. It just doesn’t hold up as a full campaign setting filled with (bad) pastiches of various Hollywood and classical monsters.
The book also assumes that you know everything about the setting already so much of it makes little sense. The maps are terribad (grey on black) and don’t provide any actual information that’s useful. The writing is also a boring slog.
The book also assumes that you know everything about the setting already so much of it makes little sense. The maps are terribad (grey on black) and don’t provide any actual information that’s useful. The writing is also a boring slog.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews