I've always felt that the introduction is one of the most important parts of a ravenloft campaign. It's a setting that all but begs for a moment of "crossing the threshold" to happen in the first session. Its also something that I've always struggled to write in a super satisfying way. Figuring out a thematic method of getting the party into a domain, establishing that they can't get back out, and giving them an early hook within the new location can be a bit hard to stick in the context of a session one without coming across as too hamfisted or railroady.

As for myself, my most used is probably the "mist talisman encounter" setup, where the party comes into contact with/is given mist talismans and are sucked directly into the domain. It can all happen in an intro reading, which can be a bit railroady, but also avoids a bait and switch situation with a setup adventure outside of ravenloft. It can also be paired with a light hook, like the classic "letter from strahd" if needed. I've tried running death house before, as well as using a beginner adventure as a lead in, but both felt a bit disconnected from the broader story. The unaltered death house was also a bit awkward regarding player death, as it can be weird to figure out a way to drop in a new character that early.

What are your guy's favorite introductions that you've run or played? especially when you are playing in a non-barovia domain where the classic vistani recruitment service might not be as thematic.

Hi all,

After already selling my Barovia Village and Van Richtens Tower paintings this month, I'm selling the last two out of the first set I have painted: Castle Ravenloft and Argynvostholt.

These paintings are based on my original animated scenes from Curse of Strahd, and as it's my goal to make a lot more paintings, the support is huge in helping me paint more day after day.

You can find the Argynvostholt auction here:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/920076819787

And the Castle Ravenloft auction here:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/920076860235

These are the last 2 paintings I have made this go around, but as I said I will be making more of these, most likely based on my original scenes. So, what other scenes would you like to see immortalized in oils on canvas?

Also, I would now be open to direct commissions for oil paintings, so if you would like a specific scene I have or have not already done, you can DM me.

And as a reminder, I’ve also put my Curse of Strahd and other spooky scene packs at 40% off in the Patreon Shop for the entire month.

You can find the sale here:
https://www.patreon.com/c/jamesrpgart/shop

I'm loving this new artistic journey so have and again I am very thankful for the support of this community over the years!

I've the manual but sadly i do not have the map anymore. It's the map with, among others, the island of Nidala and Saragoss. Do someone have a good scan of it? Thanks!

I wanted to share this weapon because I think it could fit particularly well in a Ravenloft campaign, where the forces of darkness are so often anything but easy to defeat.

Heavensfall is a scaling warhammer that evolves from Uncommon to Legendary, gaining increasingly powerful radiant attacks, divine spells, and the ability to prevent slain undead and fiends from returning for seven days.

I love the contrast of a weapon representing divine judgment in a setting where hope and faith are constantly tested. I could see it becoming a central part of a character's story, especially for a cleric or paladin.

This entry comes from my compendium for D&D5E and 5.5E: The Vault of Ascending Items! This manual features:

• 50 Ascending Items, including a series of rules, guidelines, and balance considerations are included within the compendium to scale these items depending on the intended power level of your campaign;
• 12 Premade Ascension Quests, each meant to be used to ascend the items within the compendium or to be employed as additional quests and short adventures to include within your games;
• 30 New Creatures and Monsters, all used within the quests included in the manual or summoned by certain Ascending Items. All these creatures are multi-tiered, offering varied levels of challenge and complexity to shape your quests and encounters;
• A Table with 100 Additional Ascending Items Concepts, providing the name and a brief overview for each without providing mechanical rules. This is designed to provide GMs with ideas to create their own scaling items without having to come up with new concepts on their own.

The compendium just received a v2.0 update, featuring brand-new artwork and illustrations, expanded compatibility with both 5E and 5.5E, balance adjustments, several new spells, general layout improvements, and more! or the occasion, you can find it discounted either on DriveThruRPG or my Patreon, alongside a vast collection of previews for this and all my other titles! I'm currently working on updated version of all my older manuals, so there's a lot to uncover.

You can also find this manual (and many more) discounted on my 300+ Mythological Items for 5E and 5.5E Kickstarter! This project brings weapons, treasures, and relics from Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Asian, Mesoamerican, and many other mythologies to 5E and 5.5E, including scaling items that grow alongside your characters. If you’d like to bring a piece of these legends to your table, check out the campaign!

I’m putting together a holiday one-shot called Saidra d’Honaire Must Die!

The players are level 3 and for reasons of their own, have banded together on a secret mission to kill the Duchess in her island mansion during the Winter Solstice Gala.

Once the players arrive at the mansion, they will see just how powerful she is (using her RHW CR9 stats and thinking of making her Red Death form her second boss phase).

This would prompt our heroes to scour her mansion and the flooded caves underneath for magic items to help them defeat her.

My question for you all is: what magic items should be scattered throughout this massive area? I was thinking there should be 12, one tailored (though not restricted) to each class.

I won’t be using the map from RHW but a much larger one that has 6 levels, so there should be enough space for all of them.

I know. I know it isn't formatted. I know it's stupid. I know it's probably an absolute shambles to read. I know! It's just... You ever hate-watch something? Well I hate-wrote this!

What do you think are the most important things to add, and what are your favorite things about Lamordia? Trying to make sure my players get the best feel for the place they can! This is my first campaign and I am excited and nervous to run it.

I always thought it would be ironic if the werewolf of a werewolf story was a zoologist who specializes in wolves. This is someone who knows them inside and outside, and works for their conservation. And like many werewolf stories, it's that heroism that damns them.

But I digress. Which DnD theme do you think comes the closest to being a zoologist? I should also point out that zoology isn't all done in the wild. A lot of it is done in laboratories. Looking at blood samples or helping vets. A lot of it also done in the library, researching and reading. Zooologists are also expected to write academic essays and reports of their research. Some have even written books for public or academic reading.

So we need a theme that gives good bonuses to animal handling and intelligence. Especially since the two nature based classes tend to favor wisdom rather then intelligence.

Some Horror and Dark themed maps for the scariest evening... Have you prepared your DnD sessions for Halloween evening? The important thing is to have fun while playing Vaesen!! Good Day everyone! 💀👹👻

Available on: https://ko-fi.com/s/331943c001

One of the treasures in my father's cellar

On their way to the city of Dementlieu the party encounter a horse carriage that has been crashed.

youtube

https://youtu.be/TKJ4JDcwCWY
Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/episode/03ukeKCxdVS7cSljReGkGa?si=HuCLj7vQQOqtaXkdLuo3BQ

Made a domain of dread for sale for $5 in Dmsguild

New Domain of Dread inspired by the concept of Trick-or-Treating.

One dungeon outline (d20 table of suggested dungeons)

5 stat blocks (including the Darklord)

20+ magic items

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/590603/ravenloft-eve-s-hallow?affiliate_id=2883756

I first played the original Ravenloft adventure back in the 1980s. In 2020, I returned to Barovia with Curse of Strahd and started working on my own expanded version of the campaign. I had put together a free Guide to Strahd von Zarovich, which has since been downloaded more than 5,000 times.

I recently revisited the guide, updating Strahd the guide and I have also been working with an artist, Hardi, who's creating original watercolor artwork for Legends of Barovia. These are his new portraits of Strahd in his noble and vampire forms.

The updated guide is completely free, and I also included the original 2014 version - just incase you are interested.

You can find the guide, artwork, and tokens here:

https://www.pyramking.com/strahd-von-zarovich/

Hope you find it useful.

Thank you and have fun storming the castle!

Introduced in White Wolf's 3rd edition revamp of Ravenloft in the 3.0 Ravenloft Campaign Setting and retained for the 3.5 Ravenloft Player's Guide, Calibans are the second of Ravenloft's two signature playable races, succeeding the Half-Vistani introduced in Domains of Dread. They were, mechanically, amongst D&D's worst official races, since they took the Half-Orc - already widely considered the worst race in the PHB - and gave it an Outsider Rating of 5, a new Ravenloft mechanic which meant that Calibans get a +5 to Intimidate checks but a -5 to every other Charisma skill. But they also had very intriguing lore, which described them as human (or, more rarely, demihuman) infants warped in utero by the underlying corrupting energies of the Demiplane of Dread.

This lore is actually very close to the lore surrounding the Planetouched family of races, of which Tieflings, Aasimar and Genasi are the most iconic and recognizable. So, it's always struck me as to whether or not it'd be fitting to reimagine calibans as Planetouched BY the Demiplane of Dread. I admit I don't know how this would translate mechanically, outside of maybe changing the "Brutes & Banshees" version of the caliban to have a racial type of Outsider (Native) like the other Planetouched, but I'm curious what other people think.

Does the concept of calibans being the planetouched of the Demiplane of Dread feel logical to any of you?

Gristlecracker's Hags & Grimoire, Gold Best Seller on DMsGuild, is discounted by 31% for Halloween Sales!

You can find it here until Halloween: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/517804/gristlecracker-s-hags-grimoire?src=hottest

Your guide to weird magic, encounters, and hags!

Gristlecracker’s Hags and Grimoire provides new mechanics, guidelines, and tactics for using hags, magic, and the esoteric in your Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. This guide is designed for all levels of play and dungeon mastery, and uses a hybrid D&D 2014 (5e) format that includes the best of the old mixed with a few innovations of the D&D 2024 systems that do not dilute the game experience.

Every aspect of fantasy magic is improved or introduced: covens, curses, familiars, hags, magic geometry, talismans, spells, and spell mechanics. This supplement is designed to help you make your future games containing magic and hags as simple or complex as you want it to be.

Inside, you will find:

- An underwater adventure seed about a Book of Keeping

- 68 supernatural encounters

- New magic rules, mechanics, and variations

- Hags as player characters

- 112 supernatural creatures and NPCs

- 52 magic spells, with new tags: remote and moonlight

- 80 magic items

- Esoteragons (not just magic circles!)

- 28 toxic and intoxicating plants

- An improved and more intuitive Intoxicated condition mechanic

- 200 tchotchkes

- Professional layout using over 168 pictures on 262 pages

- No AI Art used

If you somehow managed to find your way onto this sub- Fidelis, Ruby, Babalu, and Kammera, stay away!

Basically just asking the title question. Running Curse of Strahd. Party is currently level 8 and got to Krezk kind of late. My players really want a Halloween special next week, so I'm planning on making them fight the flesh golem in the Abbey (not Vasilka, the other one).

I want to give them a satisfying, "tough but doable" fight, but a CR 5 creature is gonna go down like a sack of peanuts at their current level. Would using the Mordenheim's Monster statblock from Horrors Within be a fair fight? I know CRs are kind of messy- Loup Garou is CR 13 in the book but felt more like CR 7 in practice.

Note that I don't want to TPK them, but I've been planning nearly every TPK scenario as a "fail forward," so the Abbot would probably bring them back...with some freaky additions.

Few magic items are as closely tied to witches as a flying broom, so I thought Halloween would be the perfect time to share a little collection of them!

Brooms of the Witching Hour introduces 11 enchanted flying brooms compatible with 5E (2014) and 5.5E (2024), ranging from Uncommon curiosities to powerful Very Rare items and a Legendary multi-elemental relic.

Each broom has its own appearance, magical abilities, and unique flight characteristics. Fly through enemies in a trail of burning cinders, descend upon them with the luck of a black cat, pass through walls in spectral form, summon flying brooms for your coven, or unleash elemental devastation from the skies!

The collection is FREE until Halloween! I've included most of the pages here as a preview, so feel free to grab the complete manual on DMsGuild and use these brooms in your adventures. Have fun!

And if you're looking for a spooky adventure to run this Halloween, I've also just released The Red Tithe, a 75-page folk-horror one-shot featuring an isolated village, ancient sacrifices, custom monsters, and three difficulty tiers for characters of levels 3-4, 10-11, or 17-20.

My Kickstarter for 300+ Mythological Items for 5E and 5.5E is also live now! The campaign includes a physical hardcover, as well as printed editions of my previous manuals.

You can find more of my creatures, magic items, and manuals on DriveThruRPG, my Linktree, or on r/JonnyDM!

Happy Halloween, and enjoy!