When I was a kid some of the first novels I read were from Poe, Melville, and Dickens. My great grandfather at some point had acquired this "great works of literature" set of books. Published in the early 1900's, they were sold in a sort of Columbia Records style service model.
I am pretty sure it was some sort of scam.
I got lucky that when my great grandmother died that the shitty relatives that raided her house left these behind. The books ended up with my mom and not that many years later, I discovered them.
I was mesmerized. I read my way through what used to be called the "canon" of great literature. Before I discovered the Sad Texan, the Repressed Racist, the Professor, and Saint Le Guin, I was well versed in the works that influenced them.
It is probably why I have been continuously drawn to and disappointed by Ravenloft.
The very idea of it is wonderful. A gothic horror RPG using the most well known RPG on the planet. Unfortunately gothic horror and D&D work like Malört and...
Well, pretty much everything...
Honestly, the best version of a gothic horror RPG is Annalise. We should all just go play that instead of both with this nonsense...
But as I am glutton for literary punishment, I dug out yet another Ravenloft product to poke and prod at. This time I reached for the Forbidden Lore boxed set to see if my memories are as faulty as I think they are.
What's in the Box?
I personally don't have the box anymore, but I do still have the contents. It was a strange boxed set I remember getting from Waldenbooks way back when. If I am not mistaken, I bought it before I got the core Ravenloft boxed set.
My early exploration TSR setting material was haphazard at best. I often found myself with material that clearly required some other material to be of any use.
Forbidden Lore was one of those purchases. I remember getting it and thinking, "D&D has psionics? What the fuck are psionics?"
The best part of all this mess. Five slim booklets. Some blank dice with stickers. Some beautiful cards. Not one piece inside the box of introductory information. Nothing that is a basic, "Hey you, this is what this is for."
Maybe it was on the back of the box and I missed it. Who knows?
Nova Arcanum
The Necromancies of Strahd Von Zarovich
I am just going to say it now, this book makes no sense. The title implies that this thing is a bunch of magic that the Devil Strahd has put together. You have this amazing Stephan Fabian black and white cover image in Roy Parker's classic red and black trade dress for the line at this time frame...
Fuck yes! Buckle the fuck up!
You open it up to a brief diary of the man, which is good, but then some shit on how magic is always changing in Ravenloft followed by a whole lot of pages about how certain wizard spells, priest spells, and magic items work differently...
I mean, seriously? The book is 32 pages, and you don't get to the vampire's personal spells until page 20? And the new magic items are just the very last page?
This is why no one invites Ravenloft to parties...
The worst part, the Strahd spells are cool as hell. I mean, I forgot how nasty they could be. The nasty little fog plus vampire mist form combo is the kind of shit you would use in a video game.
The inclusion of priest spells is dumb, but whatever. TSR is going to TSR.
Cryptic Allegiances
The Secret Societies of Ravenloft
I kinda hate it when I read something and the author drags a movie quote from my mind. I am going to refuse to quote the damn movie here, but I will say this, these are not secret societies!
I mean, I guess two of them kind of are. One of them is a sort of club. One of them is basically a vampire spy ring. One is more a cult than anything else. I am not sure any of them are really all that secret though.
All of that aside, the greatest sin in this particular book is the fact that there are literally no hooks for any of these little cabals. It was a common problem of TSR back then. Thousands of words on some subject or another, but not one sentence about how to easily use the thing in your game.
It was such a different time. Now I look at the book and see these opportunities. Then I likely put the material away, maybe snagging a nugget here or there, but never really using it.
Oaths of Evil
An Account of the Roads to Darkness
Curses are a part of Ravenloft that I have personally never believed worked at all. This book tries valiantly to give you a mechanism to make it function mechanically with D&D but it never really tackles the main issue...
Curses are a personal thing, and D&D is game played with a group of people.
In fact, curses are really a literary device that has its roots in prophecy. It is a driver for narrative, not something well suited for the mechanical needs of a game like D&D. It is the kind of thing that transforms a game into someone's unwritten novel, which isn't a lot of fun to play in.
The booklet goes on to expand the rules for powers checks. I am not sure why. The rules in the original set were fine. It doesn't add much.
However, it does end with two cursed objects, which are the most interesting things in this book. They could easily have been the centerpiece of two halves of this book outlining how to use them as MacGuffins for a game.
They are wild and horrible and exactly the kind of cursed thing you want to center play around.
Dark Recesses
Peering into the Depths of Madness
In some other timeline, instead of the Marvelverse movies, we had the D&Dverse movies. You know, twenty plus years of shoehorning a bunch of nonsense together following the same formula to put buts into seats. This booklet is a reflection of that mirror universe.
Psionics in Ravenloft... I mean why?
I can't. I am not going to even try.
I will say this. There are madness rules. They suck like all mental illness rules do. This was the 90's so people used them a lot in games. Like a lot of things, we should leave them to the dustbin of history. Remember them and study them, but never use them again.
The Waking Dream
Harbingers, Omens, and Portents of the Vistani
If you didn't know, the Vistani are TSR's version of the Romani stereotype from, I would say the Hammer era horror films. That is the vibe they have at this point in Ravenloft's history. In Ravenloft 83, the GM portraying Madame Eva, the Vistani leader, used playing cards to determine certain aspects of the adventure.
Well, with this boxed set you now have your own tarot deck, cleverly renamed tarroka for some reason. You also get dikesha dice from the fake Egypt Ravenloft realm. Both of these names leave much to be desired...
The booklet though is mostly descriptions of the card deck, not dissimilar to what you would get if you bought a tarot deck. There is a much shorter section on the dice as well.
Honestly, the cards are beautiful. They are all done by Stephan Fabian in his haunting black and white style. It is effectively modeled on the traditional tarot deck and I don't see why you couldn't use them that way. The only downside is that they are playing card size.
As to their purpose, well to quote the book itself,
The tarokka deck is a simple way to add ambience and feeling to a RAVENLOFT game. It is a technique, like those discussed in the first boxed set or in a number of other products, for generating mystery and horror. And in Ravenloft, that's the name of the game.
It's honestly a shame that the best part of this boxed set is the least useful for playing games.
I do know that I can draw a direct line from buying this boxed set to creating my own invented tarot card project 23 years later. I remember pulling out the deck of cards in 2015 and starting to plan out what became The Deck of Dooms, which I sent to supporters on my old Patreon a year later.
The difference being I actually create a game you could use the cards with...
