Ravenloft Campaign Setting (Ravenloft: Campaign Setting: Rulebook) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Firstly, here's what's inside:
*Chapter One: The World of Ravenloft
- How to use this Book
- The Gothic mystique (outlining the history of Gothic literature)
- The Realm of Dread (giving an overview of the setting)
- History
- Timeline of Events
- Geography of Mists (contains Cultural Levels for the domains of dread)
- Lexicon (terms used in the game)
*Chapter Two: Player Characters featuring:
- Races
:Humans
:Calibans (twisted humans exposed to foul curses)
:Dwarves
:Elves
:Gnomes
:Half-elves
:Halfings
:Half-vistani (a new race)
- Classes
:All of the Core classes are present, with additional rules for each class

*Chapter Three: The Ways of the World
- Fear, Horror, and Madness rules
*Chapter Four: The Dread Realms
- Covering each Domain, giving information on Cultural level, Landscape, Major Settlements, The Folk, The Law, Trade and Diplomacy, Characters.
*Chapter Five: Horrors of the Night
- Covering the monsters of Ravenloft.
- Vampires, Ghosts, Liches, Lycanthropes, Constructs (including a new template: the Dread Golem), The Ancient Dead, Fiends, Hags, and the Vistani
- Each entry is detailed much as the old Van Richten's Guides did.
*Chapter Six: The Ravenloft Campaign
- Tips and hints on maintaining a gothic horror atmosphere.
- The book ends with a list of reading and viewing materials in the genre.

All in all the book delivers more than enough source material to run a campaign of Gothic Horror in your D&D game and plenty of material to allow for a flawless conversion of your 2nd edition Ravenloft campaign to D&D3E.

My only REAL disappointment is the lack of statistics for the Darklords themselves. Hopfully this information will be forthcoming in another Ravenloft supplement, perhaps one that will address the variety of monsters not given. This small flaw is not enough to deter me from giving this product my highest rating.

Well done Sword and Sorcery and thank you for my Halloween present...

This is a player's book and a rules book. The DM's "guide", "Secrets of the Dread Realms" will come in December.

The book is nicely written and achieves it's purposes: bring RL to 3e and move the setting forward. There are many new things in there as well: a section on faiths, calibans, new feats and skills, rules for firearms and improvised weapons, the appearance of mistways and many many small things.

Compared to Domains of Dread, RL has evolved into something more of a "true world". It feels much more connected. Not only have all the clusters finally been detailed and mistways charted but politics and relationsships (including currencies and tradegoods) have been developed. "Culture" has been given a lot of thought. While the book is significantly shorter than e.g. the Forgotten Realms CS, and comparatively much space had to be devoted to RL-specific rules, I never got such a clear and distinctive picture of the people (how they look and what is important to them)in any other setting before. All this is stuff for a player (and dm) to make interesting characters and stories - and all the informations about the domains is of a nature that could conceivably be aquired by "gather information".

There are also sections, especially the chapter about monsters that are more geared for the fangs of the DM. But the "monsters" are "templates" (more in the Van Richten's sense than that of the MM) - and thus the player won't learn much more than "Be careful with everything in RL".

The only complaint I have is that it's too short. 300 pages would have been better.

The Ravenloft setting is all about horror, with a particular focus on the gothic. It is a nightmarish world full of danger and despair, evil and cruelty. The players' role is to portray a true hero (or anti-hero). Not just one who is physically powerful... The heroes of Ravenloft make sacrifices, face dilemmas, overcome their fear... but ultimately never succeed completely. The evil in Ravenloft is too great to overcome, but it is not invincible. If it wasn't for the many heroes, Ravenloft would be a much more horrible place.

Ravenloft is probably the one DnD campaign setting focused primarily on in-depth roleplaying. Characters should never be flat, villains should never be simple killers, and an encounter should never be a random one. This book gives all the basic guidelines on how to play or lead a Ravenloft campaign. It is useful for players and DMs alike, as this book does not reveal too much information about given domains. Few may find this odd, but the book was intended to be very usable by players, without the need for a DM watching over their shoulders to make sure they don't get to read the parts that are supposed to be secret.

It is recommended for DMs, though, to get a copy of Secrets of the Dread Realms before starting a campaign, as it sheds light on the true nature of the political leaders of many domains. Just make sure your players don't get to read it!

5 stars-- And don't worry if you've never played Ravenloft before. This book contains all you need to know.