History YMMV / Ravenloft

** Hazlik is a non-heterosexual man who was framed for raping another man, punished with stigmatic tattoos that denounce him as effeminate, and is plotting to avoid being caught in his spell that will commit genocide on his own race by switching bodies with his ''female'' apprentice. The writers were wise enough to make sure that his depravity and his homosexuality aren't connected, being forcibly tattooed was meant to be a hate-crime by his fellow Red Wizards and [[CryForTheDevil a terrible injustice that Hazlik did not deserve, regardless of his other crimes]], and he's a rare inversion of the TransEqualsGay trope, but still, a lot of people find him rather uncomfortable. In 5e, the rape, tattoos, and bodyswap are all retconned - he's still gay, but he explicitly betrayed his lover and subjected him to a FateWorseThanDeath, and that's what condemned him; the tattoos simply mark him as a traitor and kinslayer.

** Falkovnia is one of the biggest domains, being an important part of the Core, but is also one of the most contentious in the entire setting. The reason is its combination of HumansAreTheRealMonsters and Military Horror, which some fans find admirable -- emphasizing that one does not have to have dark powers to be a complete and utter ''bastard'' -- and other fans loathe. Haters of the domain derisively describe Falkovnia as a ham-fisted medieval-flavored land of NaziCommies being run by a one-dimensional UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler rip-off dusted with bits of 20th century evil dictators for spice. 5th edition attempts to amend this by theming the "military horror" of the domain after a zombie apocalypse, with the fascism being as much a result of the circumstances as Vladeska's own evil.

** Falkovnia is one of the biggest domains, being an important part of the Core, but is also one of the most contentious in the entire setting. The reason is its combination of HumansAreTheRealMonsters and Military Horror, which some fans find admirable -- emphasizing that one does not have to have dark powers to be a complete and utter ''bastard'' -- and other fans loathe. Haters of the domain derisively describe Falkovnia as a ham-fisted medieval-flavored land of NaziCommies being run by a one-dimensional UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler rip-off. 5th edition attempts to amend this by making the domained themed after a zombie apocalypse, with the fascism being as much a result of the circumstances as Vladeska's own evil.

** The various changes to spells in an attempt to preserve the ability to offer mysteries and moral ambiguities (as well as to aid in {{railroading}}) are either loved or hated.

** ''Many'' of the Darklords are blatantly ripped off from Gothic Horror novel characters. Dr. Mordenheim and Adam are Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster, Tristan Hiregaard and Malken are Jekyll and Hyde, Markov is Dr. Moreau, Dr. Dominiani is Dr. Caligari... Bluebeard is ''literally'' the same Bluebeard as in the fairy tale.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks:
** As with any edition war, but taken to a new level in 5e due to the drastic changes made, with several notable domains being so heavily edited they literally have nothing but a name in common with their original iterations.
** The lesser focus on the peculiar flavor of Ravenloft can also be disappointing.
*** Previous editions noted there were no orcs in Ravenloft, feeling they just didn't fit with Gothic Horror aesthetic, and downplayed other non-human races. In [=5e=], not only are orcs and drow mentioned as things that exist to no particular noteworthiness, there's art of an orc in doublet, longcoat, high-collar shirt, slacks, and dress shoes, perhaps highlighting just how out of place an orc in Ravenloft looks.
*** Previous editions established several different languages being spoken, some shared by a few Domains and others largely specific to one (High and Low Mordentish were pretty common, Balok, the language of Barovia, less so). [=5e=] Gives the option to have Domains have specific languages, but defaults to the assumption that Common is the common tongue in Ravenloft as it is in any other setting.
*** Domains no longer have set "Cultural Levels," a handy detail to tell you roughly what period in real life Earth history the Domain reflects, and thus what level of technology (and often correspondingly, disbelief in magic) exists there. It's noted Domains have different cultures and levels of technology and magic, but this is left largely to the DM to decide specifically what is and is not common or available there.
*** Finally, Ezra is the only religion given any detail, and not much of that, simply stating that she can be worshiped in many ways and provide different domains to her clerics based on the Domain she's worshiped in (it's appropriate in, say, Mordent to go full CrystalDragonJesus and have Ezra worship largely indistinguishable from Roman Catholicism). There's a note that gods from other settings might have worshipers in Ravenloft, and while deities from previous editions like the Morninglord and the Lawgiver were very clearly Lathander and Bane respectively with their SerialNumbersFiledOff, filing off those serial numbers still gave them some unique character and ways their worshipers might interact with the setting, which might be lost by straight importing them.
** While these changes make the setting more accessible for players familiar with other D&D settings, they might annoy players who were really invested in Ravenloft's unique character and aesthetic.

** Hazlik is a non-heterosexual man who was framed for raping another man, punished with stigmatic tattoos that denounce him as effeminate, and is plotting to avoid being caught in his spell that will commit genocide on his own race by switching bodies with his ''female'' apprentice. The writers were wise enough to make sure that his depravity and his homosexuality aren't connected, and he's a rare inversion of the TransEqualsGay trope, but still, a lot of people find him rather uncomfortable. (In 5e, the rape, tattoos, and bodyswap are all retconned - he's still gay, but he explicitly betrayed his lover and subjected him to a FateWorseThanDeath, and that's what condemned him, the tattoos he has simply mark him as a traitor and kinslayer.)

** Hazlik is a non-heterosexual man who was framed for raping another man, punished with stigmatic tattoos that denounce him as effeminate, and is plotting to avoid being caught in his spell that will commit genocide on his own race by switching bodies with his ''female'' apprentice. His depravity and his homosexuality aren't connected, and he's a rare inversion of the TransEqualsGay trope, but still, a lot of people find him rather uncomfortable. (In 5e, the rape, tattoos, and bodyswap are all retconned - he's still gay, but he explicitly betrayed his lover and subjected him to a FateWorseThanDeath, and that's what condemned him, the tattoos he has simply mark him as a traitor and kinslayer.)

** The Class Weaknesses mechanics introduced in the 3.5 Ravenloft Player's Handbook are such a strong example of this that they have universally been rendered FanonDiscontinuity. Except for a handful of classes[[note]]Barbarians are more vulnerable to Horror & Madness checks, especially if provoked by arcane magic; Bards have a 50% failure rate on healing spells that decreases as they level up[[/note]], all of these weaknesses revolve around an increased vulnerability to Powers Checks in some way -- Clerics and Paladins double their chances of failing Powers Checks; Druids, Fighters, Monks, Rangers and Rogues have a chance of automatically having to take a Powers Check whenever they level up, and Sorcerers & Wizards have to make Powers Checks whenever they learn a spell from the Enchantment, Evocation or Necromancy school.

** Many of the 5e "replacement" Darklords have gotten a mixed reception. Even setting aside the arguments between those who feel the changes are needlessly politically correct, those who like Gothic fiction but prefer the game to move on a bit past the century when it was written, and those who feel that a bunch of {{Gender Flip}}s and {{Race Lift}}s isn't doing much more than paying lip-service to the idea of progress, there is disagreement over whether or not the new Darklords are good ideas and their critics are just [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks resistant to change]], bad ideas that narrow and flatten complicated characters, or good ideas in their own right that are nonetheless [[ReplacementScrappy unnecessarily destroying and removing other perfectly good ideas when there was room enough in the world for both, and were always going to catch flak for replacing stuff people liked]].

* TruerToTheText: 5E making [[MadScientist Viktra Mordenheim]] the darklord of Mordenheim, and Malken/Malkin an entirely intentional alternate identity to commit evil deeds that became a genuine SuperPoweredEvilSide are both a lot more accurate to ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'' and ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'', respectively.

** Falkovnia is one of the biggest domains, being an important part of the Core, but is also one of the most contentious in the entire setting. The reason is its combination of HumansAreTheRealMonsters and Military Horror, which some fans find admirable -- emphasizing that one does not have to have dark powers to be a complete and utter ''bastard'' -- and other fans loathe. Haters of the domain derisively describe Falkovnia as a ham-fisted medieval-flavored land of NaziCommies being run by a one-dimensional UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler rip-off. [[spoiler:Well, [[ZombieApocalypse until 5E]], at least.]]

** Tsien Chiang, Darklord of I'Cath, is a bland, super-powerful villainess with no curse, no ability to seal her tiny three-building realm, and no reason for the [=PC=]s to remain once it becomes clear it's a dangerous place. Her backstory is weak, her motivations unexplained, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking her write-up requires a lot of supplementary books for Asian and Middle Eastern expansions to play]]. To wit, her Ravenloft-based writeups are almost entirely based on metaphor. For instance, her home tower is described as having been constructed [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs 'from the broken promises of men']], with very little clear historical information about her. The information from her TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms sources is little better, as she was a very minor bit player even there.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** In response to growing controversy over certain elements of the Ravenloft setting that [[ValuesDissonance haven't aged well over the years separating editions]], ''Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft'' made an effort to update most of the lore that's been highlighted as potentially problematic in TheNewTwenties.
** After the overwhelmingly negative reception to Jander Sunstar's cameo in ''TabletopGame/BaldursGateDescentIntoAvernus'', the 5e campaign setting also retconned that version of him into some kind of clone.

** The Vistani are heavily stereotypical UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} straight out of black and white horror film. They're enigmatic, mysterious, mystical beings who hold truck with dark powers and are connected to supernatural forces beyond the comprehension of outsiders, who have a reputation as thieves, kidnappers and willing agents of evil. Add in that being half-Vistani is treated as being as inhuman as being, say, a half-elf, complete with traits like going mad on nights of the full moon, and they are just ''full'' of problematic elements. To their credit, Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast have realized this and are taking steps to avoid it in the future by hiring Romani consultants (in 5E, they are a slightly weird but entirely normal and scrupulously honest ProudMerchantRace who simply are good at Mist navigation and are clued in to the existence of darklords).

*** Finally, Ezra is the only religion given any detail, and not much of that, simply stating that she can be worshipped in many ways and provide different domains to her clerics based on the Domain she's worshiped in (it's appropriate in, say, Mordent to go full CrystalDragonJesus and have Ezra worship largely indistinguishable from Roman Catholicism). There's a note that gods from other settings might have worshipers in Ravenloft, and while deities from previous editions like the Morninglord and the Lawgiver were very clearly Lathander and Bane respectively with their SerialNumbersFiledOff, filing off those serial numbers still gave them some unique character and ways their worshipers might interact with the setting, which might be lost by straight importing them.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: As with any edition war, but taken to a new level in 5e due to the drastic changes made, with several notable domains being so heavily edited they literally have nothing but a name in common with their original iterations.

** The Vistani are heavily stereotypical UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} straight out of black and white horror film. They're enigmatic, mysterious, mystical beings who hold truck with dark powers and are connected to supernatural forces beyond the comprehension of outsiders, who have a reputation as thieves, kidnappers and willing agents of evil. Add in that being half-Vistani is treated as being as inhuman as being, say, a half-elf, complete with traits like going mad on nights of the full moon, and they are just ''full'' of problematic elements. To their credit, Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast have realized this and are taking steps to avoid it in the future by hiring Romani consultants (in 5E, they are a slightly weird but entirely normal and scrupulously honest ProudMerchantRace who simply are good at Mist navigation and have clued in to the existence of darklords).

* ReplacementScrappy: In general, any Darklord either created by 5th edition to "take over" a pre-existing domain or very drastically retconned by 5th edition is hugely controversial amongst older fans. The running theme is that, for "replacement" Darklords at least, they tend to be competently designed characters, but there was no need to remove a pre-existing Darklord for them, resulting in domains that are "in name only" continuations of their previous lore.

** Saidra D'Honaire is a decent enough character as a kind of twisted "Cinderalla gone bad" character. But she isn't exactly overlapping with the original Dementlieu darklord, Dominic D'Honaire, who was a master manipulator who used PsychicPowers to serve as the ShadowDictator for his domain. Her revamped Dementlieu being reduced to a single city-state centered on the theme of everyone trying to desperately fake being wealthier and more powerful than they are also plays into the general discontent with the setting's changes.

** Ivana Boritsi, surprisingly, gets this with the 5th edition rewrite. While she's a fair bit prone to MurderIsTheBestSolution, it's hard to not sympathize with her anger at her father for completely passing over her in the line of succession, ignoring her extreme competence in favor of the incompetent cousin Ivan Dilisnya, and at the rest of Borcan society, who constantly dismisses her victories as the schemes of Ivan, since there is no way a young girl like Ivana could accomplish anything great without a man's help.

** Tristen [=ApBlanc=] isn't too well regarded by fans, who regard him as one of the most ridiculous and stupidly complicated of the Darklords[[note]]He was born a vampire, but drinking his adopted druid mother's blood after she drank holy water turned him into a ''living'' vampire by day and a ghost by night. He's also bound to stay within 100 feet of the tree where his birth mother was murdered, though this somehow didn't stop him from getting rich and building three separate castles.[[/note]]. The fact that his domain is almost solely empty of everything besides goblyns and beasts (as well as being conveniently small and out-of-the-way) means most simply avoid Forlorn, in universe and out.

** Tsien Chiang, Darklord of I'Cath, is a bland, super-powerful villainess with no curse, no ability to seal her tiny three-building realm, and no reason for the [=PC=]s to remain once it becomes clear it's a dangerous place. Her backstory is weak, her motivations unexplained, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking her write-up requires a lot of supplementary books for Asian and Middle Eastern expansions to play]].
*** To wit, her Ravenloft-based writeups are almost entirely based on metaphor. For instance, her home tower is described as having been constructed [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs 'from the broken promises of men']], with very little clear historical information about her. The information from her TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms sources is little better, as she was a very minor bit player even there.

** After the overwhelmingly negative reception to his cameo in ''TabletopGame/BaldursGateDescentIntoAvernus'', the 5e campaign setting also retconned that version of him into some kind of clone.

** Many of the 5e "replacement" Darklords have gotten a mixed reception. Even setting aside the arguments between those who feel the changes are PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad, those who like Gothic fiction but prefer the game to move on a bit past the century when it was written, and those who feel that a bunch of {{Gender Flip}}s and {{Race Lift}}s isn't doing much more than paying lip-service to the idea of progress, there is disagreement over whether or not the new Darklords are good ideas and their critics are just [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks resistant to change]], bad ideas that narrow and flatten complicated characters, or good ideas in their own right that are nonetheless [[ReplacementScrappy unnecessarily destroying and removing other perfectly good ideas when there was room enough in the world for both, and were always going to catch flak for replacing stuff people liked]].