1990

2105 Monstrous Compendium Vol. 4 (Loose) January

2111 PHBR2 The Complete Thief’s Handbook (soft bound) January

2106 Forgotten Realms Adventures (Hardcover) March

DMGR1 The Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide (Soft bound) March

DMGR2 The Castle Guide (Soft bound) May

2107 Monstrous Compendium Vol. 5 (loose) May

2113 PHBR3 The Complete Priest’s Handbook (soft bound) June

2115 PHBR4 The Complete Wizard’s Handbook (soft bound) July

1053 Ravenloft Campaign Setting (Boxset) June

2116 Monstrous Compendium Vol. 6 (loose) July

2108 Legends & Lore (Hardbound) August

2109 Monstrous Compendium Vol. 7 (loose) August

This was a fairly successful year for TSR as well as fans of AD&D, they completed the 4 core Complete Class Handbooks, plus advanced users got some of the best world building tools ever produced by the company! 

Things were really starting to look up! Unfortunately the core Complete Class Handbooks, and the best world building tools had been published. Where do we go from here?

Everyone knows that I6 Castle Ravenloft (a very well documented module) inspired a very financially successful line of products that is still being published to this day, be it in a very diluted form compared to what came before it, new players introduced to Strahd von Zarovich in later editions of the game have no idea just how short changed they have been.

Written by Bruce Nesmith and Andria Hayday; 1053 RAVENLOFT: Realm of Terror was first released in June of 1990. It not only expanded the realm of Count Strahd von Zarovich, it created a new style of play and a new way to look at an old product.

A quick search of this blog will reveal that I have done a lot of writing in regards to Ravenloft, most over-critical or grossly inaccurate; I wasn’t always too keen on doing real homework and did a lot of speculations. This blog has been a learning experience and you can see me grow as a DM and as a blogger through the passage of time.

To be clear, I am reviewing what we refer to as “The Black Box”, this is the original 1^st printing that sold out very quickly, it was repackaged, redesigned, and republished as 1108 Ravenloft Campaign Setting, or “The Red Box” in 1994 which updated the timeline (a flaw), and included information from product 1079 Forbidden Lore Boxset supplement that had been released in 1992.

It is also worth saying, right from the start, that the Black Box is beyond rare. I am not even going to bother placing a value upon it, that is a collector’s item and because those that purchased this boxset fell in love with it, I don’t think that it is even possible to find a truly complete set. By 1995 this was already a rare item. It came with lots of stuff that really isn’t necessary to play the game, namely a stack of loose card-stock pages that had color pictures of building, castles, and people on one side and stats on the other, a few of these cards were cheat sheets to the rules system which is a heavily modified version of the 2e ruleset, as well as a fold-out castle. You don’t need any of this stuff to enjoy the product, all you need is the maps, there were four, but you can get away with just having a map of the core, and the 144 page booklet Realm of Terror. You can sometimes find this stuff loose on the web, but in this case, a PDF file is probably preferred to the physical copy as you can just print off what you need from it, and paste together your own maps.(Upon investigating my links, it appears that Drivethru RPG only offers a legal copy of the Red Box, which is a bummer, but serviceable).

What is most important is the book! So, let’s open it up and see what we find.

CHAPTER I: From Gothic Roots

Hands of Orlac (1924

Ravenloft has an identity crisis, the suits in charge of TSR didn’t have much faith in it, and it was too different. They figured that people would pull it out once or twice a year, have a one-shot adventure, and then return back to where they came from. That isn’t what happened, players of AD&D found Ravenloft to be something new and totally different and fresh! Ravenloft was moody, it was dark, and it showed us how to go about making a new system that isn’t just Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk with different names. Instead of playing high fantasy, this was gothic horror, and it was a big departure from what we players of AD&D had been doing up to that point.

This chapter quickly gets down to the business of telling you that this is not Dracula with swords and sandals; the land itself is alive, the npcs require special treatment, the laws of physics and magic don’t  always work here, this is different! It also included something that wasn’t different, but a throwback to 1^st Edition, including a list of books that it suggests that you read to properly understand the mood and setting.

CHAPTER II: The Demiplane of Dread

The land itself is unusual; the entire world is unstable, and bizarre. Here you will find the original Timeline, and a definition as to what exactly is going on in this place. This chapter tells a story, it doesn’t tell you why this is happening, who caused this to happen, it just tells you that it is. At this stage of the game it did not support native PCs, all of the PCs had to begin play in their own worlds and were somehow drawn into the mists. This goes back to the belief that the system couldn’t stand on its own, but, for many of the people who bought it, they would rather do this for a while. It was a true campaign setting that suggested that you don’t have campaigns there; well, we did. Since the rules didn’t support this, much like what took place in the 70’s, where everybody was inventing their own house rules, Ravenloft users got to experience the same sense of fun and exploration as they tweaked things here and there so that they could game here full time. More on this later.

CHAPTER III: The Reshaping of Characters

This was a new concept which works well, by slightly altering how some classes work, and not telling the players about it, allowing them to find out for themselves, it allows the players to feel like they are learning a new game, without having to learn a new game.

This chapter also introduced Powers Checks, if the player violates any of the secret lists of actions, a 1d100 is rolled to see if the dark forces notice or not; it is a fun mechanic, but I think that 1d100 is a bit too small of a window, bad things happen when a player fails a powers check! And while it is fun for a one-shot campaign, for full-time enjoyment this needs to be altered. You want it in play, just not at the frequency suggested in this book. At least that has been my experience; the Powers Check is definitely wonky.

CHAPTER IV: Fear and Horror Checks

Another wonky mechanic that requires tinkering, but it is effective. If the player role-plays fear, or horror, this can usually be bypassed, unless the DM has a reason for using it. This is one of those Ravenloft mechanics that actually gives the DM permission to control a PC. It does have its place in the game, but it is a prime example of a rule in the wrong hands.

CHAPTER V: Werebeasts and Vampires

This chapter is one of those that changed how I played the game, though this chapter is dated, as it was written before the Ravenloft monster compendiums were published; the DM had to modify his own monsters to allow them to do what we want them to do. If you look in the MM under mummy, you’ll see Greater Mummy, this is a Ravenloft monster that was altered, it took a common monster and made him very difficult to handle, but it didn’t stop there, we were instructed to write a history for the mummy, a full-fledged back story that provided motivations for what he does. He isn’t a high-fantasy baddy, he should be almost pathetic in some way, he was wronged and if the story was written from his perspective, he’d be the hero . . . except he’s a killer.

It gave attention to lycanthropy and vampires to get us started.

CHAPTER VI: Curses

Attention to detail: that is the lessons of Ravenloft. Avoiding all mention of mechanics and focus on storytelling. Curses are typically what takes a normal mummy found in the MC, and makes it the exceptional mummy found in the MM. It teaches you to fuss over the right details, players probably can’t handle the mummy in the MM, but they might be able to break the curse.  You can tell many different stories using curses, and since you are modifying monsters, this is an easy way to account for it. While in normal AD&D all vampires are the same, in Ravenloft, they are all different and unique because the curses placed upon them are different and unique.

CHAPTER VII: Gypsies

In this book, gypsies are a new race and class, later publications would allow you to play a half-vistani (gypsy), this goes back to the one-shot premise, and gypsies were mysterious and powerful beings that moved our stories along, much like the Dungeon Master character in the 80’s cartoon. They could be evil, or they could be good, or neither. It suggested to use gypsies to talk to your players, as these people knew all of the mysteries of the world, and could be cryptic enough to point the players in a helpful direction (else betray them). We are delving into a world that supports DMPCs, this was a way out of doing that.

CHAPTER VIII: Telling the Future

Because it sounds like it is telling you to railroad the players (cause it is), just like the module that inspired the setting; they thought that this mechanic would help randomize things, or at least give the illusion of it. Telling the Future is hard, especially when a player attempts to do it, you don’t want to give away too much information, but you don’t want to give them nothing either. The Divination spells in the AD&D system are basically more fleshed out here, you don’t want any mechanics showing, and since we were told to use gypsies as story-tellers, this chapter can be helpful for quickly informing the players what their goals are.

Another example of: In the wrong hands. During full-time play, this will quickly turn into a cliché.

CHAPTER IX: Spells in Ravenloft

Many spells, and we are talking about major spells, don’t function as written in the PHB. During one-shot games, this can lead to the players feeling like they are playing a new system without having to learn a new system, but if you are playing full-time here, you are going to have to make some judgement calls. If you play this section to the letter, all the time, it won’t be fun, it will be frustrating.  Just allowing the priest to cast cure light wounds can be an issue, if the party is someplace safe to lick their wounds, I allow it, however if they are in our mummy’s tomb, in the heart of darkness itself, then I’ll stick to the modified version of the spells.

This game can either make or break you as a DM. The potential to really abuse PCs is there, it is in their face, and you want it to be or what’s the point? But you want them to have fun too.

CHAPTER X: Magical Items in Ravenloft

These things must also confirm to the laws of Ravenloft, or at least to the laws of the Darklord. It also has some spooky and fun magical items that are native to this setting. Unlike the other D&D settings, magical items are rare here, just like we pay special attention to crafting our monsters, we must pay even closer attention to crafting magical items. What the players would refer to as their +2 Sword, must have a back story because if the Darklord found out about this thing, he’d destroy it. Somebody had to secret it away, and finding a weapon capable of harming a monster is a big deal. Attention to detail! This can and should apply to all games.

CHAPTER XI: Lands of the Core

This is it. This is the whole reason why you want this specific book. All of the lands of the core are here, in their original form, with all of their mistakes and errors for you to adjust as you see fit. There is political turmoil going on in this version of the setting, and I feel that it is more interesting to see where this goes at your table rather than it being dictated to you from a module or a TSR driven time-line.

Each land is quickly described with broad strokes to maximize its potential role in your game. It has a great templet that you can use to create your own domains, and gives you some guidelines to do just that. Want to try your hand at world building? Well here is the perfect environment to try it out!

CHAPTER XII: Islands of Terror

This is a demiplane, so you have stuff floating around out there, maybe it will connect to the core, and maybe it won’t. These are just smaller versions of Ravenloft that aren’t politically connected to those in the core. How one gets there, who knows? The Dark Lords in these places aren’t as powerful as those found in the core, so your chances of destroying them are much higher if that is what you want to do.

CHAPTER XIII: The Who’s Doomed of Ravenloft

This chapter helps you designed your own Darklords, or modify the existing darklords to fit your campaign, but it more than that as Ravenloft has its heroes as well. Crafting NPCs is a big deal here; every major character requires his own backstory, motivations, and personality to make him a full-fledged character. The character template is very useful here, even when gaming outside of Ravenloft, you can take these lessons to make your game stronger. There are a couple of characters found in this book that never reappear again, which was kind of a shame.

CHAPTER XIV: Bloodlines

How advanced are these NPCs? So advanced that some of them have a family tree in the core rule book! The idea behind Ravenloft is that it is a patchwork of many different worlds, and a few Darklords were so evil that they had doomed their entire bloodline. While they themselves are among the undead, their families live on for generations. Even just creating one of these things can lead to interesting scenarios.

CHAPTER XV: Techniques of Terror

The last chapter is the most inspirational, while some of the ideas are hokey and cheesy, some of them are not. Many of these ideas took the way we game into the direction that it is today. What Greyhawk did for Wilderness Exploration, Ravenloft does for adventure design. It is interesting to be able to really pinpoint something like this. The ideas were there, but ravenloft taught us that our adventures can be more polished, that we can get really creative with DMing and provide actual experiences or a form of art for our players to enjoy. It emphasized the importance of setting and pacing. It isn’t a perfect system, it requires you to filter it, to refine it further and make it playable, which is fun as hell! In some ways, Ravenloft challenged the DM a lot more than it ever challenged the players. If you have a weakness, this system will find it and expose it so you can work on it. It gives you all of the tools necessary for you to hang yourself, friend. It really does, but if you can master it, it makes it all worthwhile.

SUMMERY

No other product that TSR ever produced has been such a huge inspiration for me. I cannot praise it enough! Now I will admit that your players are going to have to put up with you screwing up from time to time, but the investment is worth it. They’ll get a DM who can modify things on the fly, who isn’t afraid to break the rules when they should be broken, and knows when to follow the rules when they should be. While it appears that Ravenloft promotes railroading, it doesn’t. This aspect isn’t necessary, not if all of your ducks are all in a row. It teaches you the art of storytelling, and applying it in a way where the players are drawn in, they don’t HAVE to complete story goals, they are drawn in and they want to see were this goes. They want to understand what is going on. They want to live within a mythology, and that is what this turns into.

This setting is only as strong as the DM wielding it. If you are uncomfortable with adjusting mechanics yourself, or just get overwhelmed with the idea, find a hard-copy of 2174 Domains of Dread, it contains much of the modifications that we applied to the setting over the years, including creating PC’s that are native to the setting, which is a good deal. I’ve been overly critical of the DoD through the years, and it had nothing to do with the mechanics of it, it was the timeline.

Ravenloft: Realm of Terror, as primitive as it is, will always get an A+ out of me. Next time your players say, “Man, it’s trolls again.” Or “Not another Dragon, please!” it is time to download this PDF, gather up the mists, and try something different for a change. Who knows, you might just decide to stay!

May of 1990 saw the release of one of my favorite titles which I forget about more often than not. During this review I was kicking myself in the pants because if I would had remembered it and picked it up, it would have saved me many headaches.  DMGR2 The Castle Guide is the result of a collaborated effort between many writers and researchers, and it served to fill in some large gaps left in the system for a very long time. Property! At 9^th level, most PC classes gain the ability to benefit from property, and this opens up a large can of worms for many DM’s and players, namely one of law and government.

We are aware that the default government for any fantasy world with swords and sorcery is Feudalism. Even if we have different forms of rule, it still boils down to Feudalism. Researching feudalism is tough, and for the most part we can play our games in a way that completely ignores it, and we have to if we have no other options! Well, that is where this book comes in handy. The rules for a fighter becoming a lord at 9^th level, and attracting followers is not very well detailed, and there are a lot of misconceptions with it: that it limits play, that it requires BATTLESYSTEM, that it takes a lot of boring bookwork; but what the rule eluded to, was that a local hero should become a national one, an epic hero!

We players of the AD&D system are good at writing around things that we aren’t experts at. We are writing fiction! And this book doesn’t change that; it isn’t a historical text, it is a guide book that allows DMs to add a dimension to their games which we might not normally have, and it works for all settings: published or home-brewed.

Well, let’s crack it open.

CHAPTER 1: The Feudal Setting

This chapter is a crash course in government as it applies to our fantasy societies. The complex philosophies are broken down in a way that is fast, fun to read, and informative. It isn’t overwhelming, the language is kept simple, and this is all practical information that is system neutral (or dependent) which can be applied to existing games with no issues. It is thorough enough to allow us to be able to see society itself: how they live and die, so that we can remove some of the modern baggage which we take into the game. This chapter doesn’t limit play, it actually cleans it up! If we apply it to the settings, the maps make more sense, we get a better picture about what is going on, especially in regard to all of the things that had been left out.

CHAPTER 2: The Days of Knights

Knights need not be fighters, and this book is about more than just castles, but it does focus on the “Lord” clause hidden in the system. It identifies exactly what this means, how one can become a lord, what they are responsible for, and gives ideas on how to apply this concept to our games without having the entire campaign high-jacked by one PC.

It also redefines the Laws of Chivalry in a cleaner way than in previous publications that doesn’t result in suicidal characters, nor does it give rules lawyers the ability to take over the table. It is a lot more functional!

For those that do wish to pursue it, the book does examine the Knights Path as it was, and also touches upon demi-human equivalents to knights. It is fun to read! It gives tons of ideas for NPCs as well as story applications.

CHAPTER 3: The Tournament

For many of us, these things are either used to take a break from our normal game, or they are ignored, but its place in Feudalism is a very important one! Tournaments were not just sport, this was medieval politics in action, and it gives the DM a clear understanding of this, and how to apply it to their games.  Tournament, was how lords typically did war with one another; it was a means of grabbing more power or proving your dominance over your allies and enemies. Under feudal law, it is illegal to murder a lord, but if one is challenged to a duel, and the other accepts, a lord can be legally slain in tournament.

On a technical level, this chapter provides two quick systems, one for handling jousts, and one for handling contests of archery, but also gives a couple of ideas for other displays of power better suited to none-fighter classes.

CHAPTER 4: The Evolution of Castles

Once it gives details for the world of castles, it then explains the castles role in society, and what happens there. The word Castle itself is used to describe many different buildings, this chapter identifies a castle’s role in its environment, and details a few different styles of them as well. It also begins the technical details of construction by listing what materials can be used to build them.

CHAPTER 5: Castle Construction

This chapter is fun, as it provides details for its own system of play that is completely independent of the core AD&D rules. It has tables and explanations which make it possible to determine how long a building will take to construct, how much it will cost, and even a fun chart of random events that can take place during the construction!

The chapter also offers a detailed example of play using all of the rules applied, including a map of the finished product.This is sandbox play at its finest! It allows the DM and the Players to focus on aspects that they want to, and ignore those that they don’t. If one doesn’t want to play this scenario out because they are currently busy with bigger fish, they can pay others to oversee the construction and the DM will be able to know when it will be finished, or this can be a fun part of the game; and one that the players will remember!

Now the downside of this system is that it details how to construct a building from scratch, it does not detail how to take an existing structure and improve it, for that you will still need to use the 1st Edition DMG.

CHAPTER 6: Unusual Castles

As noted before, this guide allows any structure to be built, not just castles! From simple wooden forts, to enormous palaces, anything is possible. This section is an idea factory so that the DM and the players can work together to see these things built.

CHAPTER 7: Warfare!

There are two game systems that can be played with our structures once they are constructed, BATTLESYSTEM and AD&D, these are two very different games. While it recommends BATTLESYSTEM, and sets out to revise and expand rules for handling a siege, it also allows this to be played out through AD&D rules, which is writing around the mass combat. Yes, it offers quick play rules for very complex things, but it also seeks to empower a DM with the knowledge that he needs to feel up to the challenge of writing scenarios that can be technically terrifying for them.

Detailed in this chapter are military strategies and concepts for both sides, and the most comprehensive details of siege engines and mechanics that has ever been undertaken by TSR.  It also reprints materials found in Dragon Magazine which detailed unusual means of attacking a castles walls such as Giants beating the things down, and while the systems detailed in this book focus mostly on historical data, it does give you warnings on how the effects of magic, if left unchecked, are going to destroy society and render it back into the stone age. Unlike real castles, these have to withstand attacks from wizards and dragons as well, and while the book can’t provide the answers to all of our problems, it gives us enough information so that we can be prepared for the them.

CHAPTER 8: Quick Resolution Systems

This chapter addresses two problems inherited in the system, the level of detail that we are wanting to achieve, do we want to play this out with BATTLESYSTEM, do we want to stick to AD&D, or do we want to use a combination of both? Either way, a siege can last months or years, regardless of the methods we want to use to determine who wins,  we are going to want to speed up the clock from time to time.

We want a mixture of random and character driven events, and this offers a few different methods for dealing with it. No method is perfect, but it will get you started, and at least comfortable with the idea of dealing with anything from orcs testing the defenses to all out war, regardless of what side of the walls your character is standing on.

CHAPTER 9: Generic Castles

The biggest failure of this book is the noticeable lack of examples. Including the example found in chapter 5, there are only four maps, and three of them are those worthless forced perspective maps. While sitting down with your players and designing a castle from scratch can be fun for some tables, that is not playing D&D. DM’s know how to draw maps, but players typically only think about the game when they are at the table, and players who sit down and draw detailed maps of dungeons is kind of a lost art now, simply because we play differently than we used to.

Thankfully, today we have the Internet, and many examples can be purchased 3^rd party. I personally recommend PDF versions of Castle Book I (1978) and Castle Book II (1981) that were put out by the Judges Guild, as you’ll get more bang for your buck with them. TSR did follow up this title in 1991 with Castle Sites, but it only offered seven examples that were limited in use and too overly detailed for my taste. It is also acceptable to steal maps from modules; even if the module is trash, sometimes they at least have a map or two that you can lift and have your players key it.

Summery

This book is one of my favorites, and it is well designed! I like the fact that it offers lots of options and, historically, in AD&D, this was the precursor to the Green Series of historical settings. The Castle Guide stands on its own as a fun campaign, I played it in a one-on-one scenario and it was one of my all-time favorite games! Granted, it isn’t without problems, as it still requires Gary Gygax’s Dungeon Master's Guide, at least in my opinion, but I think that this is as close as you can get to a perfect book that is easy to grasp and fun to play. Its usefulness is limited, but that does not take away from it, as what it does do is superb in execution. I give it a B-, it did push the game further and allow anyone to play high level campaigns easily, it also helps us up our medieval game without being snobbish.

As far as value, this book got a huge print run, but not as large as the "Complete Class Handbooks" did, so it’s going to cost a bit more. For a copy in good and gently used condition, you are looking at between $20-$35, a beat up copy should run you no more than 5-10 dollars depending on just how bad it is. A near mint copy I can see getting a fair market value of $55-$75 max. If you own this book, take care of it! Use it, as it is fun and very helpful, but since they aren’t going to make any more of these things, once one is destroyed, then it is gone.  PDF’s are available for it, and while they’ll do in a pinch, if you do use this book, you’ll be doing a lot of page turning, so the physical copy is preferred.