Ravenloft: Core Rulebook

by Wizards of the Coast, John W. Mangrum, Andrew Wyatt

Ravenloft Campaign Setting for d20.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Horror, Dungeons and Dragons, Gaming, Reference, Games

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]

Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.

Reviews

[Benjamin]

OK, I flipped through the 3.0/3.5 books produced by White Wolf/Wizards of the Coast, so:

There's 3 core books at the beginning:

Ravenloft core (game rules, overview of the domains)
Secrets of the Dread Realms (mostly dark lords)
Denizens of darkness (monsters)

A lot of this info gets reprinted/updated for 3.5 in later books:

Players Handbook
Dungeon Masters Guide (which is the standout for me, with info on running horror and creating your own realm/community)
Denizens of dread

There's some more character options:

Van Richten’s Arsenal 1 (tools, spells, etc.)
Heroes of Light / Champions of Darkness (character options for pure and tempted by evil characters, including notes on campaigns with either)
Legacies of the Blood (classes, feats associated with famous families, what it might be like to be related)

There's some more monster info in Van Richten’s Guide to the Walking Dead (Skeletons, ghouls, revenants) / Shadow Fey -- both of which felt like scraping the bottom of the barrel.

There's something like an adventure anthology in Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends, which, like, tells stories and talks about the adventures you could do with those stories.

But for me, the shining part of this series is the Ravenloft Gazetteer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (in-depth view of some domains, from creating local characters to points of interest) -- which is what I've kept asking for from this product line. (Either the domains are single-shots around the Darklord or they are just a vibe/theme you can run in several different adventures.)

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to flip through their version of Masque of the Red Death, so there's that in my future, maybe.

[Abraham Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

good ravenloft book

[Scott McCloskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent resource into the Demiplane of dread for building campaigns. A bit of info on some of the lesser domains was sadly overlooked, but overall it's pretty useful stuff.

[Knocturn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harder to survive than a D6 Star Wars game , and that's saying something!