u/mjdunn01

Hello everyone! So as folks on this Reddit may have heard, I’ve been working on a Nightmare Lands project. Well: the first adventure is available for purchase on DMsGuild!

A DREAM COME TRUE

(Act 1 in A Nightmare Adventure)

This adventure, “A Dream Come True” can be played as stand-alone but is also best played with this others; it is the entrance into the Nightmare Lands. (The other two are about getting out!) It’s written for Adventurers League format but really it can work in any Ravenloft context.

It also includes:

• A mini-gazetteer of the Nightmare Lands and its major regions
• Profiles of the darklords the Nightmare Court and Caroline Dinwiddy and the relationship between them
• Basic Dream Rules designed to plug easily into 5E/5.5E play without a major sub-system
• 6 Dream Encounters that run the gamut of horror genres each with their own Special Dream Rules to make the experience unique
• Maps for all these things, including a map of the Nightmare Lands I made

A couple notes:

• I played Ravenloft since its inception and have a fondness for the original Nightmare Lands box. The story and lore I built reflect 5e, but tie a bit back to prior editions. You’ll see that more in Acts 2 and 3.
• Adventurers League rules don’t allow for homebrew stats or adventures longer than 4 hours. But almost all of the bullets above will be supplemented by a non-AL resource, after I get this trilogy done. Things like “Dreamweaving”, stat blocks, regional encounters, etc.
• The trilogy (collectively called “A Nightmare Adventure”) also fills a hole in the Mist Hunters story line — specifically >!what is the Urn of Dreams and what does it do?!< — and fits right in among the later adventures.

So take a gander! I started writing this after VRG came out. 5 years later now RHW came out and suddenly my slow pace looks like prescient planning! 

Thanks to this community again for your support and brainstorming. AMA about the writing process, the content, publishing on DMG, etc.

I’d been seeing these amazing psychedelic art pieces of some of the darklords from Ravenloft: The Horrors Within pop up in promos and merch… but I couldn’t find them in the book itself!

Well I stumbled upon the page of the artist (James Fenner).

There’s 10 in total:

- Strahd von Zarovich;

- Cthulhu,

- Wilfred Godefroy,

- Saidra d’Honaire

- Mother Lorinda (I believe the thumbnail)

- Viktra Mordenheim

- Ebonbane

- Azalin

- Lord Soth

- and… Castle Ravenloft? Okay so 9 darklords and the setting’s namesake

Each has a static version and an animated one.

Kudos again to the team behind *RHW* for some stellar art - and James Fenner for these!

[edit: updating this without a spoiler tag on the whole thing. But: spoilers ahoy!]

Ravenoft: The Horrors Within is now available for folks with Master Tier subscriptions on DDB (or for a few who got the physical version at their FLGS). So now is a great time - with spoilers, to be fair - to start discussing it. I'll start...

What is your favorite new little (or big) thing in RHW**?**

Mine, so far, was the update to the Klorr, and the dead domain hints listed there.
>!Amid the realm’s surreal skies float the ruins of lost domains—among them, a city of skulls, a realm overrun by dogs, and an array of bloody, iron arenas. Echoes of domains that exist elsewhere in the Domains of Dread also drift here, including at least one duplicate of Castle Ravenloft.!<

So that'd be, I think:

• >!Cavitius, Vecna's domain!<
• >!Farelle, aka the home of Jark Karn the jackalwere tinder-wanderer!< and
• >!A sneaky reference to the video game Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft!<? X-D

Plus that last line is funny, I'm not sure I get what they're playing at there.

What's yours? (also please be considerate with spoiler tagging if you can but be forewarned, all!)

Probably a pretty self explanatory post.

Will be interesting to see what they reveal. Even more interesting if Wes shares any “then & now” insights from VRG then vs RHW now.

[edit: note that this material was intended only for stores and organizations that are part of the Wizards Play Network at the moment. The product was taken down from the site, but I'm keeping the links here so people can learn about the Encounters program and see where they can play it!
https://wpn.wizards.com/en/news/dnd-organized-play-new-seasons-programs-and-event-types\]

Wizards of the Coast’ “WPN” (or Wizards Play Network) for FLGS (Friendly Local Game Stores) released the first of the “Encounters” program adventures today:

“Shadows of Sithocus” (note: not just Sithicus, see below)

The Encounters program existed in some form on the past as a way to help bring new players into the hobby, create community, and support local partners. That went away for a while so it’s great to see it come back.

The adventure is put out there for stores to run and they get additional special treats as the website shows. But the adventure does appear free to just download, in PDF.

I don’t feel like I want to spoil things for too much. I’ll just note what’s m interesting is that it appears to be more of a set of encounters around several domains not just Sithicus. There’s one in Tepest, Darkon, Borca, and Valachan. And they really are teasers more than anything. At the end it hints to short adventures in Lamordia, Borca again, and Barovia.