History TabletopGame / Ravenloft

* ''Die, Vecna, Die!''

** Amazingly, it's also subverted; Ravenloft is home both to one of the few ''non-evil'' species of werebeast, the Wereraven, and to the Bruja, which are Hags[[note]]a WitchSpecies embodying the WickedWitch archetype[[/note]] that have turned to good.

* InNameOnly: All of the domains that were mentioned in the 5th edition SoftReboot which had a presence in earlier editions are changed from their older lore to varying degrees. Some get off quite mildly; Lamordia, new Darklord aside, is just a slightly exaggerated version of its previous self, and both Borca and Mordent are much te same. But many are so extensively changed they could be given a brand new name and nobody familiar with the setting's lore would tell they were supposed to be connected. TropesAreNotBad, however, as some of the "nu-Ravenloft" domains can be called legitimate upgrades, particularly Har'Akir and I'Cath.

*** The Penanggalan, a South-East Asian vampire that takes the form of a FlyingHead with fangs and trailing its internal organs, is also found in the Demiplane of Dread. Fans responded by fleshing out its "family tree" and converting several iterations of the Aswang (a catch-all name for vampiric entities from the same region) into monsters. These are the base Aswang (a shapeshifting, bloodsucking ghoul which feeds via its prehensile tongue), the Manananggal or "Greater Aswang" (upper torso sprouts bat wings and flies away, optionally trailing its guts), the Allawig (surrounded by an aura of hellish flames) and the Padara (constantly dripping with blood from eyes and pores).

The setting also has TONS of variants (even though the regular ones are most common): a racial variant for each race (e.g. elven vampires kill vegetation and are harmed by moonlight), [[LooksLikeOrlok nosferatu]] that can walk around in the daytime, vampyres (who aren't undead but living creatures that suck blood), and about a zillion others.

** I'Cath was originally a single Chinese-themed fortress-mansion in the middle of nowhere, inhabited by Tsien Chiang, a mad, ugly, bitter old misandric witch, her three equally evil and monstrous daughters, and her single good, beautiful daughter, as well as an assortment of monstrous vassals. In 5th edition, it's instead a massive, labyrinthine city-state maintained by armies of [[Chinese Vampire]]s, as its living population is forcibly kept in an enchanted slumber so they can populate a dream version of I'Cath.

* ConstructedWorld: The world is a construct of the Dark Powers, who can rearrange it however they please.

* KnightTemplar: One darklord, Elena Faith-hold, is a former paladin who fell due to hitting this trope. If anything she's gotten even worse since.

** The setting also has TONS of variants (even though the regular ones are most common): a racial variant for each race (e.g. elven vampires kill vegetation and are harmed by moonlight), [[LooksLikeOrlok nosferatu]] that can walk around in the daytime, vampyres (who aren't undead but living creatures that suck blood), and about a zillion others.

* CurseEscapeClause: Cursing someone with undeath or another torment is very easy to do as long as you include one of these. A lot of modules revolve around figuring out and fulfilling a clause.

Many of the individual domains of ''Ravenloft'', along with their inhabitants, are directly inspired by classic {{horror}} and [[GothicHorror Gothic literature]], infamous historical figures, and twisted versions of FairyTales and other stories. ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'', the works of Creator/HPLovecraft, ''Literature/{{Pinocchio}}'', ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau'', Creator/{{Shakespeare}}'s ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'', and the historical Borgia family among many others comprise only a few examples.

** Strahd's personal brand of skeletons and zombies have a number of advantages over the typical kind... namely they have a HealingFactor that makes them ''extremely'' hard to kill.
** Archer skeletons are not only skilled archers who can get more bone-arrows from raiding graves, when those arrows miss without breaking they have a chance of turning into pissed-off skeletons who attack any living thing they see.
** Giant Skeletons cross this with GiantMook, as they're exactly what they sound like, and they can throw ''fireballs'' (as per the famous spell) once an hour with abandon as they're immune to magical and non-magical fire. They also turn as mummies rather than skeletons.

* WanderingCulture: The Vistani are heavily inspired by the real life Romani. They mostly make a living travelling between the domains of dread, trading in jewelry and rare goods, or doing small jobs for locals. While they were considered suspicious-to-outright villainous in earlier editions, 5e rewrote them as being seen with some suspicion, but also a welcome change of pace in the otherwise monotone lives of Ravenloft's denizens. Until ''TabletopGames/DungeonsAndDragonsFifthEdition'', they were also afflicted by a curse that made them unable to stay in one place for long.

''Ravenloft'' began as the sixth adventure in the "I" series of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules, published in 1983, where a party of adventurers end up in and around the eponymous castle. It received a sequel, ''Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill'' (I10), in 1986. It was turned into a full-fledged campaign setting for AD&D 2e in 1990 with the publication of ''Ravenloft: Realm of Terror'' (nicknamed the Black Box). The ''Ravenloft Campaign Setting'' boxed set (the Red Box), released in 1994, revised and updated the setting to include developments in the metaplot. In 1997, the hardcover ''Domains of Dread'' updated both setting and rules, and was the first version to include rules for the demiplane's natives. The setting was licensed for Third Edition D&D to Creator/WhiteWolf, who released supplements through their Arthaus imprint, starting with 2001's ''Ravenloft'' hardcover. They updated it for 3.5 with 2003's ''Ravenloft Player's Handbook''. Plans to publish a fourth edition version of the setting were cancelled, but a number of Domains of Dread were introduced to 4e's [[TabletopGame/NentirVale default setting]], thus integrating Ravenloft into fourth edition's core. The setting and some of the characters are also mentioned in the 5th Edition manuals, and an expanded UpdatedRerelease of the original I6 campaign titled ''TabletopGame/CurseOfStrahd'' was released on March 15, 2016. ''Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft'', the proper return to Ravenloft as a campaign setting for 5th Edition, was released on May 18, 2021, [[SoftReboot seeing a reimagining of the setting with established domains getting revamped and new ones introduced.]]

The webcomic ''Webcomic/StarcrossedRavenloft'' is set in Ravenloft (The domains of Souragne and Dementlieu, specifically). ''Roleplay/ElementalDoom'' is in a setting where characters can become trapped in Ravenloft.

* RoguishRomani: The Vistani, the FantasyCounterpartCulture of the Romani, had a reputation as thieves, kidnappers and willing agents of evil in earlier editions of the setting. This was changed as of ''Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft'', as an effort by the writers to [[SocietyMarchesOn not rely on actual harmful stereotypes against a real-life ethnic group.]] In 5e, Vistani caravans are seen in a more-positive light, as they're often communities' only access to news and goods from outside their own realm. They tend not to be ''completely'' trusted, but Vistani aren't given any extra scrutiny or ire compared to everyone else.

* ActionSurvivor: ''Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft'' includes a set of rules specifically for creating Survivors, minor characters who can, at most, swing a sword or cast a spell or two, which are meant for either one-shot horror adventures, or flashback sequences in which the players play out historical events. Or course, wether or not they ''survive'' depends.

** The Fifth Edition ''Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft'' offers anadventure hook based around this for the realm of Mordent, in what is clearly a subtle homage to Creator/GilbertAndSullivan's ''Theatre/{{Ruddigore}}''.

** Ebonbane is a demonic creature trapped in a sword. Earlier editions flat out stated that the Dark Powers wouldn't be able to control him if he escapes his domain. Later ones are more vague on whether he has ''quite'' that level power.

* {{Railroading}}: A lot of early ''Ravenloft'' adventures forced the party to go from Point A to Point B. Some even recommend the party ''die'' in order to get where they need to go. Also, the nature of the setting makes this very, very easy for a GM. Characters going in the wrong direction? Have undead hordes keep attacking them out of nowhere -- it happens all the time here. They want to visit another domain? Just close it off, problem solved. Want the party in a specific place? Have the Mists envelop them, and when they emerge, they're somewhere else, even the opposite side of the world ''in the opposite direction they were traveling in!'' It's given the setting something of a bad reputation.
* RapidAging:
** Malocchio Aderre, the feared Dukkar, aged from infancy to near-adulthood in about six months, then began aging normally; however, his ''emotional'' development wasn't accelerated, so he acts very much like a child despite his physical maturity. This does not make him any less of a threat, as shown by the many dead Vistani his troops have left in their wake.
** The Lady of the Lake's daughter Katherine was created with accelerated aging so that she could help enact the Lady's vengeance. Unlike Malocchio, however, Katherine's rapid aging didn't shut off, meaning she went from infancy to old age in a few years. Katherine's son inherited his mother's rapid aging, becoming a hulking brute less than a year after birth.

** The Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, nativeborn Mordentish women explicitly stated in 3e to have "icy blue eyes, creamy complexions, and dark hair" are depicted in with distinctly African appearances in their artwork.

* ScrewDestiny: When Tatyana's latest reincarnation was born, a Vistana warned her father who she was and that she wouldn't live to be 20. He promptly packed up and got her the hell out of Barovia and she's made it to her thirties so far. Unfortunately, she keeps having to fight an urge to head back there. Also, Strahd has realized she's not in Barovia and is likely to send minions hunting for her soon.

** Inverted for the darklord of Dementlieu, who is (literally) cursed to appear uglier and uglier to any woman the more strongly he's attracted to her.

* TooBrokenToBreak: In ''Ravenloft'', many beings are forced to live eternally in {{ironic hell}}s. Lord Soth actually escaped because he was so broken he accepted his punishment and nothing the dark forces could do hurt him anymore.

* LooksLikeSheIsEnjoyingIt: Cover of Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts.

* GenderFlip: A number of prominent male NPCs are women in the 5e SoftReboot.

* IShouldWriteABookAboutThis: Most of the ''Van Richten Monster Hunter Guides'' are supposedly authored by Van Richten himself. (He is the {{Narrator}} in each of them.) However, he never claims he wrote them for profit, but to aid those who would, like him, fight the evils of Ravenloft.

** The bruja are a type of [[WickedWitch hag]], but unlike virtually every other type of hag aren't sadistic, malicious monsters; this may have to do with the fact that their [[{{Seer}} gift of prophecy]] always [[BlessedWithSuck informs them of the exact circumstances of their death]].

* NotSoDifferent: The setting goes to pains to describe that, as often as (insert group here) is regarded with distrust and suspicion by others, they are often just as bad and may genuinely give their neighbors reason to treat them the way they do. The Vistani are a great example of this. On the one hand, the "giorgio" are clearly shown to be xenophobes. On the other hand, the Vistani are, in many ways, just as xenophobic, as well as being smugly self-righteous, indifferent to cultural differences, and prone to blithely committing acts of theft, kidnapping and worse against giorgio simply because "it's not a crime if we're doing it to them".

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Apart from Darkon, which looks like (almost) a standard Elves-and-Dwarves Fantasy setting, each inhabited Domain is based on a real-world historical or literary country, as summed up on [[http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/FAQs.html this webpage]]. Scattered throughout the realm are the Vistani, who are fantasy counterpart gypsies.

* {{Expy}}: Though they're not direct analogues, many of the darklords take direct inspiration from popular gothic literary figures. Strahd is {{Dracula}}, Mordenheim is Literature/{{Frankenstein}} and Adam his Monster, Tristan Hiregaard and his alter ego Malken are [[Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde Jekyll and Hyde]], Markov is [[Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau Dr. Moreau]], Rudolph Van Richten is based on Van Helsing, and so on. As well as [[SherlockHolmes Alanik Ray and Doctor Arthur Sedgewick]].

* AssholeVictim: Fifth Edition Ravenloft adds a variety of crippling curses to the Domains of Dread that cannot be cured by a Remove Curse spell or even Greater Restoration, only suppressed for an hour or day respectively. These curses allow no saving throw. Thankfully, Van Richten's Guide also specifies that every curse should arise from a clear act of wrong doing, so if someone is suffering from a Ravenloft curse, they probably deserve it.

** In Barovia, the feuding Barovian and Gundarkite ethnicities both share a tradition of women wearing headscarves to show their marital status... the problem is that Barovian women wear it to show they're ''married'' and Gundarkite women wear it to show they are ''unattached''. This is noted by the in-universe narrator to be a recurring source of brawls.
** S, the in-universe narrator of the Gazetteers, notes that when she discussed the Church of Hala with the leader of the Tepest inquisition, she couldn't convince him that the Halans were a harmless, peaceful religion interested in minstering to the sick and needy, becausse the Halans title their practitioners "witches", which in Tepest are regarded as unrepentant agents of evil.