Editing Ravenloft (section)

==5th Edition Revival==
It wouldn't be until [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] that Ravenloft would get its first official revamp at the hands of [[Wizards of the Coast]]. In fact, it would be the first [[TSR]] setting that ''wasn't'' the [[Forgotten Realms]] to get any real look in D&D when WotC launched [[Curse of Strahd]], a 5e adaptation of [[I6: Castle Ravenloft]] and the very first adventure in 5e that wasn't set in the Realms.

In hindsight... Curse of Strahd should have been a big warning signal.

The adventure wasn't so bad itself; the 3e adaptation [[Expedition to Castle Ravenloft]] is widely panned by old-school Ravenloft fans for too many lore changes and too many overtly fantastical  elements, but Curse of Strahd is relatively faithful. There were some contentious elements, such as the official stance that 90% of all "people" in Barovia are actually soulless constructs just aping human existence, Strahd having a Dracula-esque harem, and the changing of the Vistani from "morally ambiguous" plot devices to "Strahd's [[gypsy]] servants" in another direct Dracula homage, but in general Ravenloft fans considered it a step up over Expedition.

The [[hype]] train came in 2021, when it was officially announced that Ravenloft would return as a fully-fledged setting in May, under the title [[Van Richten's Guide]] To Ravenloft. Excitement grew amidst the old-school fans, and even the non-Ravenloft old-schoolers were happy that to see another old setting make the jump into the new edition... and then it actually came out.

It would be fair to say that Ravenloft fans generally regard Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft in much the same way that [[Forgotten Realms]] fans regard the [[Spellplague]].

The setting was '''mangled'''; whether from a desire not to pay [[White Wolf]] for all the cool stuff they did to bolster the setting in 3e, or entirely other reasons, the decision was made to completely rewrite the setting as a whole. Gone was the Core, and gone was the idea of playing a native inhabitant: it was all about the Weekend in Hell narrative, with the focus being on Islands of Terror that somehow move about through the [[Shadowfell]] and DMs being encouraged to handwave logistics as the setting now official ran [[Demiplane of Nightmares|on "nightmare logic"]] - aka, it doesn't matter if it ''makes sense'', so long as it's '''spooky'''. Many domains were blatantly rewritten without even an attempt to preserve their former lore, which only becomes more jarring when certain other domains are officially supposed to be their 3e incarnations with [[Advancing the Storyline|the time moved on]]. Controversial lore from [[Curse of Strahd]], such as defining the Dark Powers, was carried over.

The mechanics were also harshly criticized; 5e is the least punitive and most overtly fantastical edition of Ravenloft to date.

In fairness, there are ''some'' elements of the 5e Ravenloft that are recognized in a positive light by the community. The effort to provide a way to tweak the tone of Ravenloft to be more flexible depending on if you want a combat-heavy or roleplay-heavy game is appreciated... however grudgingly by some, since Ravenloft built its fanbase largely on the idea of being the "roleplay heavy" D&D setting alongside [[Planescape]]. Also, many of the new Darklords and Domains are actually pretty decent... they just should have been given their own names or actually had some effort put into fleshing them out, depending on which you're talking about.

Seriously, how do you come up with an idea as cool as "a [[magitek]] train screaming through the mists in an effort to escape an apocalypse that it was already destroyed by" and then deem it unworthy of more than one damn paragraph of detail?!