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Ravenloft is a campaign setting for the AD&D game and has been around for pretty much ten years now. There have been many supplements for it, as well as additions to the rules and various boxed sets. Well, TSr no longer produces boxed sets for their campaign settings, only hardcovers, and when Domains of Dread came out about 12 months ago it was the first since they made this decision.

Basically, it is Ravenloft revised. Now, if you are unsure of what Ravenloft is (highly unlikely), it is a campaign setting for fantasy horror roleplaying, where the undead are extremely powerful and the players are caught in a land that is almost impossible to escape. And that was always the main problem with the demiplane of Ravenloft, in that many GMs used it to whisk their players away to from another plane and plonk them down in the middle of it. Paladins and Clerics suffered, Druids almost shrivelled up and died, and finding a way home was the hardest challenge of a PCs career. Most of the time the PCs died or the GM fudged the rules to allow them an escape route. It was never a nice place to stay for any extended period of time. Deadly, exciting and terrifying, but ultimately destructive.

But finally TSR has made Ravenloft more than just a place to send PCs who thought they ruled the planes. Now it is a place where characters can be created that are native to the plane of Ravenloft, characters that have been born and bred there, who are accustomed to its secrets and do not suffer huge penalties because their God is no longer in contact with them, or has trouble getting their healing spells to them. I, for one, have always enjoyed the concept of Ravenloft, but could never get my players too excited about it. I thought playing native-born characters to the plane would be interesting, but I did not have the time to create rules to reflect characters that were born there.

But now this book does it for me. Domains of Dread is superb, with a wonderful, flowing writing style, and the atmosphere of gothic horror infused through many of the pages and text. Qoutes and proverbs relating to the people who live within the world abound, adding a nice touch and a genuinely eerie feeling. There are chapters on the domains within the Land of Mists (as it is known), the many Powers that rule them, an excellent geographical section with various maps, along with sections on secret societies, priests, wizards, and psionics. Even the Horror and Power checks (the ones where characters can run away from a scene screaming in fear or end up sprouting wings and fangs) have been revamped and streamlined to make them more easily slotted into gameplay. But best of all? There are chapters on creating characters native to Ravenloft, with sections detailing fighters, wizards and all the other standard AD&D characters: why they are there, what they do, what they stand for, etc. There are also new classes - Avengers, Arcanists, Anchorites,and Gypsie - as well as rules on playing a half-Vistani. It's all here.

Domains of Dread is Ravenloft updated, expanded, and all the various rules from previous accessories included in this one hardcover. Even if you have visited the Land of Mists before, this book is worth buying, as not only is it well written and full of excellent information, it has complete rules on generating players native to the Demiplane of Dread. This is what Ravenloft should have always been.

Highly recommended!

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)