NOTE: This is a review of Domains of Dread, a Ravenloft rule book for use with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, second edition. I am going to try to do  series of reviews on 2nd edition Ravenloft material I revisited  this year.  I haven't written too many reviews so feel free to critique my format.

Domains of Dread was a significant addition to the Ravenloft line. Regardless of my own opinions about its content, it is hard to deny it filled in major gaps in the setting and established Ravenloft as more of a home base than as weekend in hell. It was essentially an attempt to make Ravenloft a complete campaign world. On the whole, I think it succeeded in this aim. However it didn't please all Ravenloft fans, myself included. So this review is somewhat critical of the book. Just keep in mind the broader reception to it has generally been more positive and embracing than my own.

The book itself is well organized and contains all the major chapters a product of this kind requires. There are thirteen chapters in all, plus five beefy appendices (largely material reprinted from the Player's Handbook but some new stuff as well).  It begins with a simple overview, followed by a chapters on the domains (the core, islands and clusters). After these there is a chapter on Secret Societies (more on this below). The remaining chapters are largely devoted to unique Ravenloft Mechanics (Powers Checks, Fear and Horror, Wizard Magic in Ravenloft, etc), with a final chapter for the Gamemaster called Tenets of Terror.  There are then five appendices that cover ability scores, alignment, races, classes, and proficiencies.

My memories of the book were better than the reality. While I have never been a major fan of Domains of Dread (I am more of a Realms of Terror kind of guy), I always felt it at least contained tons of useful information. Revisiting it, I found this not to be the case. Yes it opens up Ravenloft as a full setting, but in a very incomplete manner. For example it doesn't provide much of an overview in the way of Ravenloft Languages (something I believed it had done, but it turns out the d20 Ravenloft core books were what I had in mind). It also fails to cover religion in any depth and leaves out a great deal of information from previous boxed sets and books.

The Chapter on Secret Societies commits this offense in several places. However the worst offender is the Vistani entry (which is in this chapter of the book). The original Realms of Terror boxed set at least explained what the Vistani are and gave some insight into their culture so GMs could run them. The Van Richten Guide to the Vistani went into even more detail. But this entry looks like it was written around all previous material so readers would be forced to buy other books in the line. You literally could read the Vistani section and have no idea what the Vistani are:

"These Ravenloft Gypsies are described in great detail in Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani. Still, many mysteries remain unsolved in the wake of that text, for this reason, the Vistani can certainly be considered a secret society." (page 135)

The text that follows isn't much more helpful. Apart from mentioning that Vistani travel in Vardos and that "The Vistani do what the Vistani do" it doesn't offer any clues about their social structure, their activities, their place in the setting. To be fair some of the tribes are covered in the half-vistani entry in the appendix, but I found the information on the gypsies entirely inadequate for a campaign setting book.

Another part of the book that troubled me was the tone. The older boxed sets were written in a style that evoked the mood of the setting. This book is written in a much more straightforward manner, something that would work great for Dragonlance but not for a gothic horror campaign book.  

Along the same line, it appears this book tries to shift the flavor of Ravenloft as well, bringing it more in line with other setting material. This is very clear in Chapter 13: Tenets of Terror. The chapter itself is a mere five pages and does little to inspire the gamemaster. I may be remembering things incorrectly (because it has been some time since I've read the Realm of Terror boxed set) but it appears they tried to increase the fantasy elements of the game. Something I didn't quite understand. I always felt what set Ravenloft apart was the gothic horror focus. If I wanted to slay a dragon or rescue the princess I'd play Grey Hawk or Forgotten Realms. Granted the role of fantasy was mentioned in prior rule books, this just gave it more space and focus in my opinion.

The art rubbed me the wrong way as well. The older Ravenloft books leaned heavily on black and white art by Stephen Fabian. I felt he captured the tone of the setting perfectly and I love his style. The Domains of Dread book has art that is alright but just doesn't inspire me the way Fabian's art does. The layout is also much less evocative than previous layouts. This book looks bare and lacks the borders that gave the Red and Black boxed sets a sharp appearance.

Much of the book of course provides descriptions of various Ravenloft domains and their lords. Most of the flaws in these chapters cannot be pinned to Domains of Dread itself (as a lot of the material was simply clipped from the red and black boxed sets). Pretty much every Domain Lord receives a complete entry (a very good thing) and the book introduces a handy innovation: Cultural Level.


For those who don't know, Ravenloft domains (even those quite close to one another) often have large differences in technology and culture. Before this was something you had to pick up by reading the text, and it wasn't always very clear. But Domains of Dread gives the Cultural Level of each domain, broken up into the following categories: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Classical, Dark Age, Early Medieval, Medieval, Chivalric, and Renaissance. Personally I found this very useful.

Another  innovation (at least I believe it was introduced in this book) is Magnitudes of Evil for the Dark Lords. Before all Dark Lords were treated the same (though some were clearly more powerful than others). In Domains of Dread they are broken up into Demilords, Lords, Overlords, and Darklords. These were pretty handy distinctions (especially for making your own domains).

Something else I found interesting (which I missed before) was the cross-over with Gothic Earth (which is Ravenloft imported into 19th century earth). For instance the Island Domain of Odiare, which is terrorized by an evil Pinocchio stand-in named Maligno, now comes from Gothic Earth Italy (apparently  pulled into Ravenloft sometime during the Renaissance). I thought this was very interesting and they do mention that the language spoken in the Domain is Italian. Unfortunately they don't address religion at all (are they still Catholic or have the inhabitants forgotten their faith and made up something new in its place?).  This last part would have been good information to include. When I ran a module set in Odiare, I just made the religion a corruption of Catholicism (with Mary as the prime deity), but it wish they had gone into this.

Basically I felt the Domains chapters were adequate, even great in some places, but could have used more additional information.  There were also some noticeably absent domains. Sri Raji (which appeared in other rule books) was missing, for example.

The chapters for mechanics were all basically fine (they never presented any issue during the course of my recent campaign). I like how Domains of Dread deals with Powers Checks and I think the chapter on Fear, Horror and Madness were was well executed.  Chapter Eleven: Forged of Darkness explains how to incorporate existing magical items (mostly from the Dungeon Master's Guide) into Ravenloft, but it doesn't offer any new items or relics. This was a major oversight in my view. I really could have used some Ravenloft specific items in my game. Chapter Twelve addresses curses and I think it does a very nice job of it.

The Appendices deserve some praise. While they do repeat a lot of information from the Player's Handbook (I don't think I need to have Strength of Constitution explained to me) they also include enough new material on character creation to make this a genuine setting book. I also like that they explain in detail how Elves, Gnomes and Dwarves fit into the setting (this was mentioned briefly the Red and Black boxed sets but not at this length). The addition of Half-vistani is welcome as well.

One other thing the appendices add is material on class. This is actually kind of important for Ravenloft, especially when it comes to Fear and Horror Checks. In older Ravenloft books Fear and Horror were just the same as your character's save versus Paralysis. But Domains of Dread provides new Fear, Horror and Madness saves for each class. A very big improvement. This chapter also includes new classes like the Arcanist and Anchorite of Ezra. Honestly I believe the appendices are the best sections of the book.

So in general I have always been somewhat critical of Domains of Dread, and found I had even more to criticize than I remembered when I re-read it and tried to use the material in my 2nd edition Ravenloft campaign. At the same time, it did present some innovations that are undeniable and I think most people didn't have the negative reaction to it that I did.

Rating: 6 (Mistakenly rated it a 1 in the heading).