First, a disclaimer: I haven't read this book all the way through, let alone playtested it. This isn't intended to a comprehensive, in-depth review. What it
is intended to do is to highlight some of the cool (and not-so-cool) stuff you can find in the book, to draw attention to a worthwhile book which apparently has gone unnoticed by the RPGnet community (if the lack of reviews is anything to go by), and hopefully to prompt someone who
has fully read it to do me one better. Some of the comments below are more along the lines of stuff I would post in a forum in response to a review -- except that there's no review to post it under.
Second, some background: I have never played in a Ravenloft campaign before, and I did not previously* own any Ravenloft material except for Carnival (one of the best accessories I've ever purchased for any game system) and a couple of adventures that I picked up from the bargain bins of local game shops. In fact, I probably never will run or play in a Ravenloft campaign; I picked the book up mainly to see what I was missing out on, and to mine it for material usable in other d20 games.
Still with me? Good. On with the show!
What It Is
For those in the dark, a quick summary: Ravenloft 3rd edition is a d20 "core" rulebook published by the ArtHaus division of White Wolf under their Swords & Sorcery imprint (or is it the other way around?). As with all d20 books, you need the D&D3e core rulebooks to properly utilize it (although the setting could easily be used with a different game system if D&D's not your cup of tea). It's also worth noting that the authors of the book are two Kargatane and one ex-Kargatane, the Kargatane being the overseers of the official Ravenloft fansite, Secrets of the Kargatane. Any Ravenloft fan with an Internet connection probably already knows all about the site, but if you're new to the setting you owe it to yourself to check it out. (Incidentally, one of the message boards, entitled "Ask Azalin", is the Ravenloft equivalent of Dragon magazine's "Sage Advice", so it's a good place to go if you've purchased the new book and have questions about it. But make sure you read the post entitled "READ THESE RULES FIRST", or Azalin may smite you.)
What You Get
Ravenloft 3rd edition is a 221-page (not counting ads) hardback with black-and-white art throughout. There's a political map of the Ravenloft core domains on the inside front cover and a geographic one on the inside back cover. The chapter layout is as follows:
Chapter 1: The World of Ravenloft has an introduction to the Gothic genre of literature, a brief overview and history of the Realm of Dread, Darklords, and Dark Powers, a definition of different "cultural levels" from Savage up to Renaissance, and finally a Lexicon (no White Wolf book would be complete without one).
Chapter 2: Player Characters has all the stuff you'd expect, including information on how the standard races and classes fit into the Ravenloft setting, new feats, new religions and clerical domains, and new equipment. All the usual races and classes show up except for half-orcs (there are no orcs in Ravenloft). For new races, we get the calibans (deformed offspring of humans, which have the same racial traits as half-orcs) and half-Vistani (the Vistani being a race of gypsy-like humans with mysterious powers and motives).
Chapter 3: The Ways of the World continues the rules-related coverage with rules for fear, horror and madness checks (of course), curses, powers checks, and specific information on how magic is altered in Ravenloft.
Chapter 4: The Dread Realms is the meat of the setting information, containing overviews of each of the various domains of Ravenloft. The domain entries include descriptions of cultural level, landscape, major settlements, inhabitants, government, trade and diplomatic ties. There are also recommended classes, skills, feats for adventurers from each domain.
Chapter 5: Horrors of the Night is probably the most useful chapter for someone wishing to cannibalize the book for ideas. Here we get modified rules for vampires, ghosts, liches, lycanthropes, golems, the ancient dead (i.e. mummies) and hags. More on these later. There are also rules for how fiends affect and are affected by the Ravenloft setting (i.e. reality wrinkles, for those familiar with Ravenloft) and an introduction to the Vistani.
Chapter 6: The Ravenloft Campaign gives advice for DMs on how to evoke the gothic horror atmosphere of the Ravenloft setting, complete with recommended reading and viewing lists.
The interior art ranges from decent to quite good in my opinion, with the race portraits and other pieces by Talon being particularly well-done. You can find samples of it on his website. Steve Prescott, whose style I recognized from previous work in Werewolf and Shadowrun, is more subdued than usual. This is a good thing, since his art can border on cartoonish at times (witness the tribe portraits in the Werewolf Player's Guide, 2nd edition), which would have been jarring in this context.
The cover was a bit of a disappointment to me, but this is purely a matter of taste. It's mostly black, with the familiar Ravenloft title bar and a cameo of a vampire, bathed in shadows and red light, baring his fangs. I suppose it's supposed to be moody and understated, but to me it just looks gaudy. Also, I would have preferred something closer to a full-sized cover illustration rather than just a cameo.
The Good
When I first picked up this book and browsed through it, there were four things that struck me as being really cool. That's not to see there isn't plenty of other really cool stuff, just that these were the things that stood out at first glance:
1) Redheaded characters can take a feat which gives them access to a small selection of low-level druid spells, reflecting the touch of the fey. (The other feats are generally very useful and evocative too, and very appropriate for a horror campaign, but Redhead is my personal favorite of the lot.)
2) Tool-grade weapons. There are rules for using everyday tools as weapons (in a sidebar appropriately named "Death by Pitchfork"), with a list of the military-grade equivalents of common farming implements.
3) New skills offered by third-party d20 supplements have tended be extremely narrow and of questionable value (Urban Lore being the notable exception). The one new skill in Ravenloft is Hypnosis, which can be used to mimic the effects of the hypnotism spell, as well as aiding in recovery from madness. While this might seem of limited value, it's still a nifty idea and potentially quite useful in a horror campaign. Incidentally, Hypnosis also appeared in the "Book of Shadows" netbook on the Secrets of the Kargatane site, along with the 3rd edition rules for fear, horror and madness checks.
4) In chapter 6, there are rules for "leveling" the various types of undead (and hags) mentioned above. As they increase in power, they get additional "salient powers" which are chosen from a list. Consequently, intelligent undead in Ravenloft can be both tougher and more individualized in their abilities than the standard templates. Vampires and hags become more powerful with age, liches get salient powers based on intelligence, and ghosts and mummies have a fixed power level determined at the time of creation.
The Bad
Not so much a bad point, but a source of debate on the Kargatane message boards (which I've been visiting sporadically since the release of the book) is the contention that Ravenloft 3e doesn't give enough information to run a Ravenloft campaign. For example, there are no stats for darklords, no prestige classes, no scale on the maps (which was intentional according to the authors), and few clues as to the nature of the malevolent denizens of Bluetspur.
The reason I say this is not really a bad point is because Ravenloft is intended to be a player's guide. Secrets of the Dread Realms (for DMs) and Denizens of Darkness (with more monsters) are due to be published sometime in the near future. However, some people have purchased Ravenloft expecting it to be as complete as the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was, and have been disappointed. The best answer I've seen to the book's detractors is a comment made by John Mangrum (one of the authors) on the message board: "You know, I'm seeing an interesting pattern emerge. We've received this complaint numerous times, that new players and DMs can't run a game with this book. Yet, as far as I can tell, this complaint is always made by old-timers." As a newbie, I can testify that the book gives me all the information I'd need to play Ravenloft, if not to run it.
The Ugly
There's only one thing in Ravenloft 3e that really stuck out as a serious flaw, and that's the index. White Wolf (fairly or not) has a reputation for putting out books with inadequate indices, but Ravenloft's index is sparse even compared to the usual standard. It's barely three pages long, and while it references the main rules on each given subject, it's no help at all when you're flipping through the book trying to remember where you saw some specific detail mentioned. To add insult to injury, almost all the page numbers in the index are off by a page or two, some as many as five pages!
In Conclusion
For the Ravenloft fan with an extensive collection of material, there's probably not much here aside from the updated rules (some of which, as I said, you can find in the Book of Shadows), although I gather that the authors made an effort to give a coherent shape to the disparate mass of Ravenloft material. For the D&D3e fan who wants to get into Ravenloft, this is definitely the place to start. Just be aware that you may wish to pick up Secrets of the Dread Realms and Denizens of Darkness if you're planning to run a campaign. If you're a casual collector like me, you might not want to pay the full cover price, but if you can get it on eBay or an online bookstore at a discount, it's worth it.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
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*I say "previously" because a couple of weeks ago, one of my friends was giving away a bunch of old gamebooks that he doesn't use anymore, and I picked up Realm of Terror, Forbidden Lore, and House of Strahd. However, since I haven't gotten around to reading any of them yet either, it's a moot point.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)