I was wondering if the Ravenloft PHB, Ravenloft DMG, and Ravenloft MM versions 3.5 are worth buying?
I should probably just forget it and wait for someone good to take over Ravenloft someday.
-Tony
I was wondering if the Ravenloft PHB, Ravenloft DMG, and Ravenloft MM versions 3.5 are worth buying?
I should probably just forget it and wait for someone good to take over Ravenloft someday.
No (if you already have the 3.0 version, that is). Yes. No.
And don't be too harsh about what WW did with the setting. The Gazetteer series is priceless to those who have always wanted to know more about the various domains. For that alone, I am happy they got the publishing rights, if only for a few years.
I was wondering if the Ravenloft PHB, Ravenloft DMG, and Ravenloft MM versions 3.5 are worth buying?
The RL: PHB is almost a direct reprint of the Campaign Setting. The DMG and rest are excellent books but, also, black and white.
It is all in black and white in the age of full color books and the editing was bad.
If you want to pay an extra $10-20 for pretty pictures they could be colour.
They've had full-colour books for a while, just the print counts and like have made it cost prohibitive. Even WotC had only a couple colours in the eighties and nineties with occasional full-colour pages.
White Wolf tends to favour the atmospheric b-n-w and I think it works for the setting.
The editing was terrible (WW has problems with that in general and the editors in change of Ravenloft were particularly sloppy), but things like that tend to reflect the publishers more than the content of the book itself.
I should probably just forget it and wait for someone good to take over Ravenloft someday.
You'll likely have a long wait. Just like fans of Dark Sun, Al Qadim, Kara-Tur, etc.
White Wolf tends to favour the atmospheric b-n-w and I think it works for the setting.
In fact, they tend to use Black and white almost exclusivley, especially for anything Gothic in nature. The only exception I can think of was Changeling, which was part of the World of Darkness series. It was in colour to represent the stark contrast between Changelings in the World of Dreams vs. the real-world where their human hosts live. They even had a page comparing and contrasting the 2 planes, with the WoDarkness graphic in B&W. So yes, they like their books B&W for effect. I miss the 2e Ravenloft style though, which had thick black borders on every page...sigh.
I was a big fan of Ravenloft back in 2.0. I bought the 3.0 version from Sword and Sorcery a couple years ago but I was not very impressed. It is all in black and white in the age of full color books and the editing was bad.
I was wondering if the Ravenloft PHB, Ravenloft DMG, and Ravenloft MM versions 3.5 are worth buying?
I should probably just forget it and wait for someone good to take over Ravenloft someday.
-Tony
I actually enjoy the black and white very much. I think that yes the editing was poor, however the books have a underground / quiet / gothic feel to them and I enjoy them. I do not want 'anyone good' to take them over since this means Wizards will probally then up putting out books.
That would be bad. I say this because it would be too main stream and loose its underground feel. When you get into Ravenloft you feel you have stumbled upon something hidden and secret from the mainstream crap big companies put out. I do not want to see a hard cover, full color, Monte Cook version of Ravenloft (Sorry Monte, didnt mean to trash you, you do good work.
) I know we all see Wizards getting into this too by their release of this so called (heroes of horror) or whatever its called. If you like Ravenloft do yourself a favor and pick up the books while you can still get them, since White Wolf cannot publish anymore you better get them fast.
First, the bad. I don't have the RL PHB/DMG so I can't comment. I do have the RL Campaign Core Rulebook and it is not as impressive as the Black Box or Red Box packages for 2nd ed. The most glaring problem with it is the seriously underwhelming index, where they have very little of worth and a lot of the page references are wrong. However, they do cover most things from Black Box through to Red Box and the Forbidden Lore boxed set, so in terms of content it's definitely all there. If you plan on running a RL campaign you should still have this book at least, as it lays out all the Fear/Horror/Madness rules as well as things like altered spells etc. Materials from the various Van Richten's guides of 2nd ed. are also included.
Likewise, the Denizens of Darkness series incorporates information from RL Monstrous Compendium I and III (they don't include the unique characters from RLMC II) and is a good campaign base rulebook. It looks like their editors started to get into their stride with this book.
I also have the Secrets of the Dread Realms, where they give a load of Darklords updated stats to 3rd ed. This was controversial because of the relative lack of major changes to the setting. If you're sympathetic with the "Ain't broke/Don't fix it" approach, this might be okay for you. However, you may also want to pass this up for the Gazetteer series, which includes most of this information but in a far more detailed way. If you have a small budget, get this for the fast listings of Darklord details.
The good: The Gazetteers are very good. They have details of minutiae in the campaign setting from town to town, to help you recreate a Ravenloft that's much more holistic than 2nd ed. ever had. Each one deals with about four or five domains and their darklords, and although WW lost the RL license after the fifth Gazetteer, the ones they did put out are probably the best RL work they've ever done.
Art: As far as artwork goes, that never bothered me. Most of RL art in 2nd ed. was black and white (although some of the pictures seemed like they might have been color to begin with, and the interior printing wasn't up to replicating that). Personally I think RL hit a high when they got Stephen Fabian doing the black and white art, and never quite recouped his skill afterwards. A few of the pictures in the White Wolf books are a little goofy (they tried a similar trick to 2nd ed's paper cutting, but with lesser results). A lot of the 3rd ed. art is very atmospheric and well done too.
I don't have any WW adventures for RL (I'm not even sure if they exist) but the whole "railroading" problem that 2nd ed. adventures had before should now be easier to eliminate. PCs could spend their whole adventuring career in the demiplane and think of it as home.
The authors of the line never got a page count and went about designing a product for the DM thinking it would be the size of the Core book. Then they found out it wasn't and had to cut. And cut. And cut.
It was supposed to be simmilar to the *excellent* RL: DMG but the content was moved to that book as well as VanRichten's Arsenal and other products.
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I've been spending more time in my game shop recently and it turns out alot fewer books are full colour than you might think. The really big publishers (WotC and their related lines) get the full colour and lots of illistrations while most of the smaller lines still make due with b-n-w.
I was eyeing the Dragonlance books lately and while the main book is the typical full colour w/ pretty pictures much of the supplements are word heavy on white paper with just a coloured border and sparce on the illustrations. They chose full-colour over artwork. Other companies like Fantasy Flight Games for their Midnight Campaign Setting went for 30-odd pages of full colour and pictures then shifted to b-n-w for the rest of the giant book. Even the new White Wolf WoD line tends to have an opening of coloured pages (not full colour) followed by straight b-n-w.
I guess if you don't have a HUGE corporation like Hasbro smoothing out things it gets hard to go full colour.
I've been spending more time in my game shop recently and it turns out alot fewer books are full colour than you might think.
I guess if you don't have a HUGE corporation like Hasbro smoothing out things it gets hard to go full colour.
Some may not know the costs involved in printing in color, as someone who studdied advertising, the print costs are sick for anything in color. Most of the time its not how a product is designed that determines if it will be in b&w but what the budget is.
Mike
WOTC is publishing Castle Ravenloft a setting book in the fall.
Mike
Are we sure it's a setting? He asked hoping the answer to be yes.
Are we sure it's a setting? He asked hoping the answer to be yes.
Indeed, we know nothing for the moment on this future release. There are many speculations however, as seen on the Fraternity message board.
I expect a 3.5 update of I-6, with advices to add this place in any setting, plus possible other ideas for similar gothic-themed adventures.
I'd be surprised if it was the resurrection of Ravenloft as a setting. But I won't be mad if I'm wrong
Joël
Also, as a setting, many of the core rules are suppossed to be not only altered, but twisted, so if you are not ready for that or don't want an unfamiliar lack of a set of rules, it is not for you.
That said, the 3.5 books are a lot better, all around. The setting is much much clearer and defined, the general rules are altered to work, etc. The art is not greatly changed but there are new pics, in B&W.
Nirnel