 Howdy how's it going? My name's Dabby Shappy and it's time to get spooky because a new book just dropped and I want to talk about it. So today we're going to be going over Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft as I detail the new lineages and subclasses as well as go over the dozens of characters, locations, and adventures that you can have in the Demi-Playing of Dread. As always keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion so if you want to avoid what is easily the edgiest book in 5e history feel free to play your games however you want. But with that out of the way let's begin. So let's start with what you're here for. Old Rick DV's guidebook comes with three new races referred to as lineages due to their inherent nature of not actually being races but instead being afflictions that happen to races. These being Dampere, the half vampire, half middle school fantasy, the hexblood, a hag that hasn't hit prime haggitude yet, and the reborn, a person afflicted with dye who had good enough health care for it to not be a serious condition. The Dampere gains the limited powers of their vampire forebears, giving them the suck without giving them extreme sunburn. In addition to show how they used to be a normal person they can forego the two proficiencies offered by the Dampere to instead take the proficiencies of a specific race. Their speed also becomes 35, they get dark vision, they don't need to breathe, only suck, and their skin becomes so sticky that they can suddenly climb along any surface they'd like. Finally the star feature of the Dampere is their neck romance. Get it? Cause vampires bite the neck? Dampere get a bite attack that actually scales off of constitution of all things and it can be used to heal them, give them a bonus on their next attack roll, and their hunger for a positive experience gives them advantage on their bite if they're below half health. All these traits work together really well to make sure that in a world full of monsters, you will always suck the hardest. The Hexblood is most commonly a person who has been influenced by a hag, and if you know your hag, Laura, might be on their way to becoming one. But if hagetry isn't your thing, the Hexblood can also be thought of as somebody who tampered with magic until that magic hit back. Either way, magic isn't separately infused into their nature, and it's turned them into the worst thing of all, a fey. Ancestral Legacy from before makes a play here, and you join the dark vision club with half of the races in the game. But then things start to get weird. Hexbloods can gift somebody else a token in the form of their hair, teeth, skin, and use that token to slide into the recipient's telepathic DMs, or go into a trance that destroys the token but lets them view the token's surroundings. And of course, Hexbloods wouldn't be complete without the Hex Spell, which they get for free along with Disguise Self, and it scales off of any mental stat you'd like. There's even a passage on how Hexbloods can eventually transform into full-blown hags, but that's a story for your adventures to tell. The folk who don't survive said adventures, but really want to play their character again anyway, could potentially rise back up as a reborn. Crawling out of the afterlife to take the form of a ghost, a zombie, a Frankenstein monster, a creepy child with a teddy bear that's holding a knife. As long as it's dead-themed, it's fair game, despite reborn not actually being considered undead. The actual stats are reminiscent of the Warforged, giving you the same ancestral skills as the others, anti-poison resistances you don't need to eat, sleep, breathe, and you can recall your past life to add a D6 to your skill checks. Also, being dead for a while has really soured you on the whole experience, so you can now make Death Saves at advantage to the envy of all your party members. In addition to the lineages provided, the Ravenloft book also comes with two spooky subclasses for the Bard and the Warlock. The Bard can evoke the power of a haunted item as their spellcasting focus, and from that focus they call forth the ghosts of stories told and then forgotten, whispered into the mind of the Bard for one last oratory tale. These stories manifest in a lot of different ways, and stay in the Bard's mind until they're ready to replay them in the real world, such as the Tale of the Avenger, which deals extra damage for a full minute to a target of their choice. The connection to the haunted item gets stronger over time, emboldening spells and giving the Bard more control over the stories that they tell, and the power of the spirits also gives them the power to perform a ritual with their allies, giving them access to spells from any spell list up to a certain level dependent on the number of people who took part in the ritual. The College of Spirits doesn't have a lot to it, but the spirit's tales are powerful enough to be useful, although having to roll a d12 every time means that there's a very low chance of predicting what ability you're gonna get, devoting this subclass to players who really enjoy gambling. The Warlock, however, is a lot more upfront. Having made a deal with the ancient powers of liches, vampires, and dark lords, the power of the undead can be channeled through the Warlock to create a dreadful form that gives them temporary HP and frightens enemies all around them. As their power grows, they lose the need to eat and breathe, their spells turn twisted, necrotic, and more powerful, the necrotic plague no longer rots them, they can stave off death and respond by exploding in necrotic energy, and they can eventually learn the powers of astral projection, allowing their spirit to exit the body and inflict its will upon the world. The undead Warlock doesn't change the nature of the class, it enhances it by having all the other abilities draw upon the dread form to buff them up. So, as long as you don't immediately throw up your vampire cloak every chance you get, you will feel like an undead powerhouse when it counts. The races and subclasses are probably why most people want to buy the book, but they sure aren't the end of it. Vizze Rees' guide also dives deep into the domains of dread, a concept born out of the Ravenloft setting where individual people are trapped and then tortured for all eternity, in a unique hell crafted specifically for them. The most famous prisoner being Strahd von Zarovich, the vampire wizard who rules over Barovia, constantly simping for love and trying in vain to find a replacement that will never be good enough for him. Obviously, if you want Barovia, you can just buy Curse of Strahd, but beyond the mists are countless other realms of dread, each surrounded by the same mist and keeping its own lord imprisoned. Seventeen realms are presented in detail, with twenty-two more realms presented, more as concepts for you to just do what you like with. Two in particular that I was drawn to were the Carnival, an eerie, lifeless circus owned by the grumpiest eladrin you've ever seen, where freak accidents just keep happening to murderous results, as well as Sire 1313 the Morning Rail, a train that was set up to evacuate citizens during the morning of Sire, but got held up by one influential VIP and ended up caught in the blast. Now it barrels through the mists of Ravenloft, trying to outpace an explosion that it doesn't know it already succumbed to. And if you don't like those, there's an entire chapter dedicated to creating your own domain, including its own Dark Lord, and a helper on what specific brand of horror you want to subject your party to. There's also a catalogue of NPCs that you're liable to run into during your travels, both the heroic kind and the eat your face kind. My favorite is The Bag Man, a horror that climbs out of one random bag of holding each night and pulls its victim inside, where they're lost forever. The mythos surrounding The Bag Man is great to imagine, and the book does a good job of explaining what makes a creature actually scary besides just ooo big number. Finally, the Raven book has a small adventure from levels 1 to 3 titled The House of Lament. I don't want to spoil anything, just look at this picture. Honestly, if you wanted to, you could replace Death House from Curse of Strahd with this instead, although the vibe will be a little bit different since Curse of Strahd plays off of classic monster movies so it has a bit of a 1930s black and white buckets of blood vibe, whereas The House of Lament seems to pull more from modern ghost stories where a team of investigators go romping through a spooky house. I know it's a subtle difference, but it still might be noticed. That said, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is a great book for any DM or player that wants to run through a horror slash mystery campaign, and even if you want to run a traditional adventure, I'm sure that the DM won't mind if you take elements from this book and monster mash them together. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, check out all my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can finally make enough money to get out of my own Demiplane of Dread. But yeah, Daffy out.