Van Richten's Guide

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The Van Richten's Guides are a series of monster-related sourcebooks written for Dungeons & Dragons and connected to the setting of Ravenloft.

From an in-universe perspective, the Guides are, as their title says, treatises on monster-hunting written by the esteemed Dr. Van Richten, the most prolific and well-educated monster hunter in all of the Demiplane of Dread. At some point, Van Richten disappeared, after which his legacy was taken up by the Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins. In addition to completing and publishing his own unfinished notes - the Guides to the Fiend, Vistani and Witch - they went on to create their own guides, which they published under the same name for legacy purposes and to ensure they would reach their target audience.

On the meta-level, each Guidebook examines a single creature type and expands upon it to make it both a better fit for Ravenloft's purported "Gothic Horror" goal (even if, in practice, it leans closer to Castlevania amongst most people who actually play it), providing an exhaustive examination of tactics that can be used to run that monster or fight that monster, variant "salient abilities", unique weaknesses, lore, and other aspects that flesh them out.

Van Richten wrote and published on his own the following books for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons system:

• Guide to Vampires
• Guide to Liches
• Guide to Ghosts
• Guide to Werebeasts
• Guide to Fiends
• Guide to the Ancient Dead
• Guide to the Created
• Guide to the Vistani

These books were later reprinted in "collected editions" by the Weathermay Twins, known as the Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendiums. The third and last of these volumes also included the otherwise unprinted "Van Richten's Guide to Witches", which, as the name suggests, examines Witches, Warlocks and Hags.

The Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins wrote two guides completely of their own for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition which saw print; one for the Walking Dead and a second for the Shadow Fey. A third guidebook, dedicated to "The Mists", which focused on anomalous and eerie entities born from the reality-binding vapors that wreathe the land, in addition to covering Outlanders (humanoids from other worlds brought amongst the ignorant natives of the Demiplane of Dread) and anomalous reality-zones that one might encounter whilst enveloped by the Mists, was completely written up... but, White Wolf lost the license before they could officially print and sell it. The PDF was set free onto the internet, and is now hosted on, amongst other things, the Fraternity of Shadows website.

Looking into adapting content found in these guides to later editions? Note that not everything written by White Wolf & Sword&Sorcery for 3-3.5e was converted entirely everything from the 2nd Edition, and- more intriguingly, the powers Liches are privy to in Guide to the Lich are still, 3.5 canon, such as the salient abilities Liches gain are in Monsters of Faerun, though only a small excerpt. Please note, that these make both liches and vampires essentially epic-level threats, whom are more dangerous depending on their personal holdings and age- a vampire patriarch for example, is essentially a demigod immune to sunlight, and probably only beatable if they gained additional weaknesses over their long-term existence, they can even fully heal themselves once per day through the use of their alternate form ability, which has an additional form of their choosing- essentially their second Castlevania Dracula Form- limited to no CR or cap or anything. They can even cheat themselves into becoming this strong. If you've ever heard of the epic-questline, the Quicksilver Hourglass in 3.5, a quest where you have to stop members of the Union of Eclipses using a deific artifact to age the world to death and rule the remainder, then failure would result in vampires like this popping up all over the material plane. Bullet dodged.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft

A book titled "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft" released on 18th May 2021, serving as the complete Ravenloft setting book for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

For players, this book offers mechanics for Dhampir, Hexblood and Reborn "races", new "horror-themed" Trinkets, tips on altering backgrounds to a more horror motif, the new (or possibly reprinted from Curse of Strahd) Haunted One and Investigator backgrounds, the College of Spirits subclass for bards and the Undead patron for warlocks. A new mechanic in the form of "Dark Gifts" is also offered, replacing the Powers Checks of old.

Most of the book is dedicated to DMs, however. The second chapter is devoted to the topic of Creating Domains of Dread, and provides advice on building darklords and their domains, and discusses the major genres of horror useful to a Ravenloft 5e game, which it breaks down as Body Horror, Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Folk Horror, Ghost Story, Gothic Horror and Other.

Chapter 3 is devoted to providing details on Domains of Ravenloft. Most of this is devoted to domains; seventeen of which are about four pages long, with most of that being Darklord related, and another dozen or so that are only a single paragraph long.

Still in chapter 3, it then provides major Ravenloft organizations (with particular emphasis on the Keepers of the Feather and the Vistani) and prominent NPCs native to the Demiplane of Dread:

• Alanik Ray & Arthur Sedgwick (the Ravenloftian Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson Wheels and the Legman)
• The Caller (obviously the Incubus known as the Gentleman Caller)
• Erasmus van Richten (Dr. van Richten's previously dead vampire son, now a ghost)
• Ez d'Avenir
• Firan Zal'honan
• Jander Sunstar (heroic elf vampire)
• Larissa Snowmane
• Dr. Rudolph van Richten (the iconic van Helsing expy)
• The Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins

Chapter 4 is short again, and is full of basic DM tricks, hence its title of Horror Adventures. Most of interest are new mechanics for curses, fear, stress, haunted traps, and survivors. There's also a short adventure set in the infamous House of Lament.

Finally, chapter 5 is all about the Monsters of Ravenloft. Whilst there are some new critters, most of these are actually returning beasties from old! A major detail, however, is that none of the entries bother to list the creature's alignments, so for all we know, that Relentless Killer could just be a Neutral Good softie! This decision was made following accusations from several prominent bloggers and hobby websites that DnD was "racist" for making some monsters inherently evil.

• Bodytaker Plant (originally called the Doppelganger Plant, an expy of the pods from Invasion of the body Snatchers)
• Boneless
• Brain in a Jar
• Carrion Stalker
• Carrionette
• Death's Head
• Dullahan
• Gallows Speaker
• Gremishka
• Jiangshi
• Loup Garou
• Necrichor
• Nosferatu
• Priests of Osybus
• Relentless Killer
• Star Spawn Emissary
• Strigoi
• Swarms (Maggots, Scarabs)
• Ulmist Inquisitors
• Unspeakable Horrors
• Vampiric Mind Flayer
• Wereraven
• Zombies (swarm of zombie limbs, zombie clot, zombie plague spreader)