Here's the announcement from White-Wolf - Monday August 15th :
Arthaus Reverts Rights to RAVENLOFT and GAMMA WORLD to Wizards of the Coast
Sword & Sorcery Studios to release electronic manuscript for VAN RICHTEN’S GUIDE TO THE MISTS
Atlanta, GA and Renton, WA; August 15, 2005 — Arthaus Publishing, Inc. and Wizards of the Coast, Inc. today announced that they have reached an agreement for the reversion of rights to the RAVENLOFT and GAMMA WORLD campaign settings. Wizards of the Coast has tentatively agreed to allow White Wolf, which solicits and sells all Arthaus products, to continue to sell back stock in both lines under its Sword & Sorcery umbrella brand through June of 2006.
This reversion means that the RAVENLOFT supplement Van Richten's Guide to the Mists will not see print. Sword & Sorcery Studios will release the unproofed manuscript (by authors Carla Hollar and Rucht Lilavivat and outgoing developers Jackie Cassada and Nicky Rea) as a free download available at [url]http://www.swordsorcery.com[/url]. The manuscript will be available this September.
"It has been a pleasure to publish and work on these two classic properties," said Stewart Wieck, Managing Editor of Sword & Sorcery Studios. "These are icons of the RPG culture, and I think we did them justice, added to their lore, and gave them a fresh treatment for this generation of gamers."
Arthaus Publishing licensed the rights to RAVENLOFT, the gothic horror brand of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, in 2001 and—under the Sword & Sorcery banner—has released 19 different products in the line over the last four years. Van Richten's Guide to the Mists was to be the twentieth product in the line. Arthaus licensed GAMMA WORLD in 2002 and released six products in the line.
"Sword & Sorcery has done a great job with both lines," said Rich Redman, Wizards of the Coast's Assistant Brand Manager for Licensing. "We never had any doubts that these lines were in good hands."
You can read it here: [url]http://www.white-wolf.com/arthaus/index.php?line=news&articleid=276[/url]
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Esteemed and honoured members of the Fraternity,
You probably have heard the news by now – Ravenloft’s license with White Wolf has come to an end. After VRGttMists September PDF free release, no more new Ravenloft books will appear in the near (or foreseeable) future. We share with you the concerns of this change…
However, we will turn this energy toward keeping the Ravenloft setting alive through our presence on the Internet. From the Black Box to the present moment, Ravenloft has had a brilliant past and had even seen death, which was cheated by the setting coming back to life again. You can trust us that we will work hard to continue to keep this setting alive, which the Kargatane brilliantly proved could be done.
The setting won’t die until there are Ravenloft fans actively sharing ideas and new material. Ravenloft always will have an audience as many D&D fans look for something different in horror RPG.
In the future, you can trust the FoS work closely with WotC to see what they will do for Ravenloft, and then, what we can do in this new context. We will continue to inform you of theses developments as soon as possible.
Our overall objective? This great community will remain alive and well (or perhaps undead, depending on who's raising it)!
Let’s lift our glasses to Ravenloft! To the fans! To the authors!
To everybody still fighting to keep this light in the darkness!
Sincerely,
David, Dion, Eddy, Jason, Joël and Stephen
And a question to the Mighty Dragon editors: With the Ravenloft setting rights back in the WotC family, can we expect more Ravenloft stuff in Dragon and Dungeon?
I remember some of you are Ravenloft fans :)
Joël
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Aaahhh! I have such fond memories of Ravenloft. I loved playing that setting. Since my Dm from the time was already PURE EVIL (and I say that with the utmost respect and love), it wasn't to much of a stretch for him to portray the villains as they were meant to be. My character for that campaign was an oriental dwarf (I think they were called Korobukuru?). If I remember correctly, one of our players even became a were-bat. Damn, those were fun times.
And a question to the Mighty Dragon editors: With the Ravenloft setting rights back in the WotC family, can we expect more Ravenloft stuff in Dragon and Dungeon?
I'm guessing we may see some stuff in the annual campaign issues, but I have a feeling that WotC would rather bury these settings rather than have them compete with their newer products. This may not be a good thing for the small number of Ravenloft fans, but what's good for WotC is good for Paizo. The more campaign settings you have, the smaller the market for any individual setting. As fans we fight for attention and new products for our favorite setting, but there are only so many resources WotC can focus on. The last thing WotC wants is to end up like TSR.
Well, I hate to see it go. For as much as I hate White Wolf (and their tendency to waste pages on unreadable fluff... And unreadable crunch...), I was quite happy that a nugget like Ravenloft wasn't allowed to fade away in the fury that was the upgrade to 3e. Happier still was I that they apparently got the Kargatane to write for it.
Really, love them or hate them, it's hard to imagine a sublicence being handled better than White Wolf did on Ravenloft.
Of course, this means that Ravenloft is probably dead in the water. We might see Campaign Classics upgrades, but not much else.
On the bright side, there already was a sickening ammount of fan support for the setting online (for many settings, it would seem), and there will continue to be a fan presence.
Still. I'd like to congratulate White Wolf on making Arthaus/Sword And Sorcery, who in turn made the few products by WW that I wanted to buy... At least, after that Demon fiasco...
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I'm guessing we may see some stuff in the annual campaign issues, but I have a feeling that WotC would rather bury these settings rather than have them compete with their newer products.
If the sales for Ravenloft were good, and there is a lot of demand for it, I don't see why WotC wouldn't keep it alive. After all, it would be bad business to ignore a potentially high selling product. At the saem time, however, if the sales aren't there, don't expect much. Ahhh, the joys of capitalism descend upon the world of D&D.
what having a loyal fan base that supports/sticks with them through the troubled times?
and support is not always in the form of monetary conpensation unbeknowst to those in Renton, WA.
Hugs, kisses and well wishes will not stave off bankruptcy.
While I don't enjoy the concept of hyper-commercialism any more than the next man, money IS required to run a business, and unless WotC DOES want to end up like TSR- Flooded in non-perfmorning products- It is best for them to do what makes them the most money, and then concentrate on trying to please everyone.
Which, incidentally, is where licencing out their older settings comes in, I would think.
Which, incidentally, is where licencing out their older settings comes in, I would think.
Apparently this isn't the case.
IMO the more settings you have the more you segment gamers into further niches. I think publishing a "Heroes of Horror" supplement is far better for business than publishing a new Ravenloft book. Even if Ravenloft has concepts that are great for porting over to home campaigns, a lot of people are going to look at the cover and say "my campaign is not in Ravenloft" and skip over it. Those who do pick it up might begin a year long campaign in Ravenloft instead of choosing a FR or Eberron, decreasing sales for those settings.
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With Ravenloft back in the hands of WotC does this mean that Dragon and Dungeon will maybe include articles on the setting in the October horror issue? Maybe you could do a feature similiar to the Demonomicon, but have the various Lords of Ravenloft as the subjects instead. The Lordomicon! he he he...
I wouldn't mind WOTC taking a "halfway" approach here, like they did with DragonLance. It would be great for WOTC to make a hardcover campaign setting one shot, and licence the setting to a 3rd party, to make any other expansions and the like. It would also be great to see the novel like start up again. This way they don't overcommit to the project, but they set the standard to begin with. And then the Raveloft books could have the "official D&D logo" instead of that "Sword and Sorcery" logo on it.
While I don't enjoy the concept of hyper-commercialism any more than the next man, money IS required to run a business, and unless WotC DOES want to end up like TSR- Flooded in non-perfmorning products- It is best for them to do what makes them the most money, and then concentrate on trying to please everyone.
Indeed, WotC must makes money, or the game industry's future isn't bright. People opposing this concept are not realistic.
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To see more Ravenloft in the October issue or January issue would be cool indeed. If we forget the fun issue 315, the last Ravenloft article for Dragon was in issue # 273 (July 2000)! :)
There are plenty of themes or NPCs built for Ravenloft that could inspire horrors adventure not only based in Ravenloft. At my Ravenloft web site, we see plenty of people downloading Ravenloft netbooks for horror adventures for other settings.
Joël
I fear this may be the end for ravenloft, WOTC seems to think that the fewer settings it supports, the more people will be forced to switch to its newer setting, while instead this just forces more people into creating homebrew campaign worlds. This approach would seem to actually limit WOTC sales, and therefor be counterproductive.
As the end is near, I feverently wish to acess the last ravenloft product. I have downloaded the pdf, but when I try to access it I get the error message:
There was an error opening this document.This viewer cannot decrypt this document.
suggestions please
Vostok, You might need to update your Acrobat Reader. Go to Adobe.com and download and install the latest version if you don't already have it. Then try openning it again.
Hope that helps,
GGG
Ravenloft back to WOTC huh? Not at all a good development, I think.
I always loved the Ravenloft setting, especially the black box, which is the one my DM had used yeeeears ago. A bit kitsch sometimes, a bit too generic others, but the background and its themes had a certain flair which I have always enjoyed. Not being a great fan of White Wolf, the very high quality of their remake of the Ravenloft setting has been a big, nice surprise for me. The contents are of the highest quality, even though the design, artwork, and maps are very much substandard. In fact, I have liked their stuff so much that I am going to start a Ravenloft campaign next week! Shame that so many people like me will be stuck in a kind of limbo again.
BTW, White Wolf has most of the prices for the d20 Ravenloft books cut really low on their online store right now. If you want to pick them up, this would be the time...
BTW, White Wolf has most of the prices for the d20 Ravenloft books cut really low on their online store right now. If you want to pick them up, this would be the time...
Yes indeed!
Allow me to quote myself from another board:
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I think the 3e Ravenloft line is very good. The best books of the Ravenloft line have been released with 3rd edition.
Want a proof of it? The last book of the line - Van Richten's Guide to the Mists - was released as a free downloadable PDF. Get it here: http://download.white-wolf.com/down...php?file_id=410
The quality of the book is excellent, IMHO. But do not take only my word, read the PDF!
Then, if you like what you see, then let me assure you the rest is as good (minus one or two). Particularly good are:
Van Richten's Arsenal (2002) - new tools to hunt undead and monsters. Very cool tools and spells, close to the flavor of Ravenloft and making Ravenloft different from the other settings.
Gazetteer Volume 1 (2002), Volume 2 (2003), Volume 3 (2003), Volume 4 (2003) and Volume 5 (2004) - a large section devoted to all the Core's domain.
VRG to the Walking Dead (2003) and VRG to the Shadow Fey (2004) - one of the writer of these books was involved in VRG to the Mists. New stuff on lower undead and on fey.
Dungeon Master's Guide (2003) - highly suggested - a lot of flavor ideas for a RL DM.
Legacy of Blood (2004) - new family secrets. Do you want to play a Boritsi or another grand family member?
Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends (2005) - new cool adventure hooks.
Also, don't just take my word again: there are plenty of fan reviews you can read on Ravenloft books at EnWord, or at the FoS site (www.FraternityOfShadows.com, reviews area).
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Have fun and good gaming! :)
Joël
Im more excited to hear that they have Gamma World back. I LOVE gamma world! The new books are pretty cool but the character creation is kind of dry. I would be happy to see new products and adventures be released for it.