Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (VRGR) as I mentioned in the previous post hit FLGS and online retailers last week.

Since then I’ve listened to a couple of podcasts reviewing the tome (The Tome Show and The RPG Academy). The consensus seems to be VRGR is a pretty good book.

Whilst listening to these shows and the odd skimming of pages, ideas started to flow through the ol’ noggin. Hence this post to capture them before I forget them.

The first was I’d love a party of adventurers in a horror/Ravenloft campaign/one shot to have an illrigger amongst them.

An illrigger is a new class created by Matt Colville for one of his players and released to the general public (you can buy the pdf on the MCDM webstore). Illriggers are “elite shock troops, the terror-commandos of Hell,… . Knights of Hell, they are high charisma counter-paladins who master devils and cast their own unique spells.” (https://mcdm.fandom.com/wiki/Illrigger) And yes it’s also crying out for use in an Avernus campaign.

The way the mists are described and used within the Domains of Dread had me instantly thinking of the small and big screen adaptations of Stephen Kings story The Mist (sorry not read the words themselves). So this is such an obvious source of inspiration for using the mists within a campaign. I like the idea of a Dark Lord using the mist to terrorise and subjugate the population of their Domain of Dread. But James Herbert’s The Fog could also be another influence here, along with John Carpenter’s The Fog (not the 2005 remake, ok if you are desperate to make it a teen horror story then maybe!)

Mist talismans, which are used to navigate through the mists to the Domain of Dread it is for/from, also present interesting opportunities for the adventurers. I see these allowing influences such as Stargate SG-1, The Fantastic Journey, The Time Tunnel, where the party are traveling from one Domain of Dread to another as part of some larger campaign story line. Whilst in the current location one of the party’s objectives is to find the next mist talisman, and possibly get the Dark Lord to open up the mists. Although I do like the idea of a generic mist talisman that works with any Domain of Dread, but its random which domain it guides them to. Or they can chose the domain but it’s “glitchy” and the majority of the time takes them elsewhere.

It’s hard to list or suggest inspiration for a campaign as it all depends on the horror genre(s) being used.

My teenage years were the Eighties. Which included the whole video nasty thing. I saw most of those movies that the moral minority had banned, and frankly the acting in most of them was awful. Worse than the actual plot of the movie. I particularly enjoyed zombie and slasher movies such as Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and the Living Dead movies.

So I know that they would influence my suggestions. But that session zero and the results of the content and themes questions (chapter 4 of VRGR) will have a major impact on suggestions for inspiration.

Although I’d love to do something based around Alice Coopers classic album Welcome to My Nightmare. Or even using Coopers The Last Temptation (along with the accompanying Neil Gaiman graphic novel) for the Carnival Domain of Dread.

Talking of graphic novels the classic Hellblazer comic and it’s antihero John Constantine would definitely be an influence. Although the dire Constantine movie and watered down single season tv series are best avoided.

I hope this brain dump given you some ideas for your own campaign in the Domains of Dread.