There’s the Carnival, a domain that itself wanders the mists, populated by wild performers and a powerful, living sword the broken land of Darkon, whose central castle is frozen mid-explosion, its disparate rooms desperately trying to reassemble the whole in mid-air there’s even a haunted train, itself its own distinct setting, plunging through them all.

There’s the feudal land of Borca, dripping with poison and intrigue, its population trapped and harried by not one but two fiendish villains. But there’s also Bluetspur, a world of cosmic horror populated by malevolent mind flayers that will make your heroes question their own memories. Strahd’s land of Barovia is here, of course, with its famous vampire traipsing the halls of his deadly castle. Photo: Charlie Hall/PolygonĮach “Domain of Dread” is presented not as a fully featured campaign, but as the seed of a dark and magnificent adventure. It’s a bid to give the non-player characters in these realms a kind of agency that has not been afforded in past settings.

Van Richten’s Guide reinvents some of those settings, and also adds new ones along the way.Įach of the main Domains of Dread mentioned in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft includes a sidebar on creating a character from that realm. The module proved to be immensely popular, spawning an entire series of horror-themed adventures loosely connected by a semi-sentient mist and a fantastical cosmology. That slim, 32-page adventure stars a charismatic vampire named Strahd von Zarovich. Van Richten’s Guide is hands down the most feature-rich D&D book of this generation, and I can’t wait to see what fans do with it.įirst, a little background: The classic Ravenloft adventure was first published in 1983. Somehow project lead Wesley Schneider also managed to cram in a multitude of new options for character creation, an assortment of clever allies, 32 vicious new monsters, and all the gentle guidance your group needs to run a spine-tingling campaign of your own devising safely at the table. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform(s) of choice, check out Polygon Essentials. When we award a game the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the title is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule.

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