The Ravenloft gazetteer combines alot of esoteric trivia from countless supplements and adventures and compiles them into a single sourcebook. I've just only gotten a chance to skim through the Barovia chapter, and it's packed with material from the old boxed sets, the adventures House of Strahd and Roots of Evil, and the Monstrous Compendium appendices. It's terrific! For the old-school DM like me who just wants 3E stats of the older material, it's exactly what I needed. I run an I6 game every year, and this year I'll finally be able to do it in 3E without having to dedicate a week or two to converting the module. Great job, Sword & Sorcery Studios!

So why only 4 stars? Two major reasons. The artwork isn't exactly the most gothic in the world, I miss the older illustrations with alot of blackness in the illustrations and alot of shadows and darkness. The new art is mostly line drawings with alot of "white space." Secondly, the book has no maps of the towns it discusses. A rather crude pencil sketch on page 37 shows the area around Castle Ravenloft itself, but maps of the towns really should have been included. SSS makes great maps, as anyone who has seens the Scarred Lands Campaign Setting: Ghelspad hardcover can attest to. If such maps of the towns had been included, the book would be a straight 5.

But it's still a great buy, even essential I would say, to run canon adventures in Barovia.


An essential Ravenloft Book!   August 14, 2004
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book is one of the Best Books you can buy for Ravenloft. In it are some cleaverly created domains full of lycanthropes (including a newly edited werepanther), banshees, undead treants, and all the other terrors of Ravenloft. This book gives incredible detail about groups of people living in the domains and also the the rulers (darklords) over these domains.
This book itself contains Alfred Timothy and Baron Urik von Kharkov and many more. The domains it primaryly focuses on are Borca, Invidia, Verbrek, Valachan, and Sithicus. While each of them are unique and full of terror I think that the forest of Verbrek make the book the most. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys Ravenloft, Werewolfs, Vampires, or Roleplaying in a heartbeat.


Gave me what I wanted   June 12, 2003
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Some people are bashing this book. It gave me what I expected plus some nice extra tidbits. The only valid complaint is it gives an unfair amount of space to one domain while shortchanging the other two. It still does the job of giving you a lot of flavor to add to whatever you do in these domains.

Bottom line: I bought it and got what I wanted out of it. It could have been better, but so can all the other books.


A Good Buy   January 29, 2004
 1 out of 4 found this review helpful

I've been waiting eagerly for details on the new darklord of Sithicus ever since I read "Spectre of the Black Rose." My only problem with the book was that the elven vampire Lady Adeline, who was mentioned in the section on Valachan, wasn't given an entry of her own in the DM's Notes section. Her entry in the old 2nd Edition accessory "Children of the Night: Vampires" made her out to be a generic elf vampire -- no class specified, just a summary of the old Ravenloft Mostrous Compendium stats. In third edition, *no* vampire who's more powerful than a vampire spawn (or minion, to use a term from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has no character class. Based on her background, I could see Adeline as a ranger, probably at least seventh- or eighth-level. After all, in third edition being undead doesn't mean you can't be a ranger anymore. I mean, considering she's Urik von Kharkov's tax collector, she's one of the most likely evil NPC's for PC's to butt heads with in Valachan after they've finished trashing a few Black Leopards.