This Week in RPGs: Ravenloft Returns, Shadowdark Goes Big, and Horror Is Everywhere

Gothic horror is having a moment. Between Wizards dropping their biggest horror release since Van Richten’s Guide, Dimension 20 running a full Vampire: The Masquerade series, and a new Dark Pictures Anthology entry hitting consoles this week, it’s a good time to be a fan of things that go bump in the night — at the table or on screen.

Beyond the horror wave, there’s a lot to dig into: Pathfinder 2E’s intrigue-heavy Hellfire Crisis is fully in circulation, Shadowdark just announced a landmark expansion, and UK convention season is about to kick off in a big way. Let’s get into it.

Headline News

Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Leads D&D’s Season of Horror

Wizards of the Coast’s Ravenloft: The Horrors Within is the flagship release of D&D’s current “Season of Horror” push, and it’s clearly meant to set the tone for how D&D 2024 handles darker campaigns. The standard edition sits at $59.99, with a deluxe bundle running closer to $150 for those who want the full horror collector experience.

The book revamps the Ravenloft domains, introduces new horror-flavoured tools for Dungeon Masters, and leans hard into Gothic atmosphere rather than treating horror as a mechanical afterthought. What makes this significant isn’t just the content — it’s the signal. This is effectively the first major post-2024 horror release, and it suggests WotC is comfortable pushing D&D’s tone into grimmer territory than the core rulebooks occupy. If your table has been waiting for official support to run something genuinely unsettling, this is the book that’s been written for you.

For a sense of how the 2024 edition compares to what came before it, our D&D 5E vs. D&D 2024 breakdown covers the major mechanical shifts worth knowing about before you buy.

Pathfinder 2E’s Hellfire Crisis Is Fully in the Wild

Paizo’s Hellfire Crisis — a Lost Omens sourcebook built around faction conflict and political tension — is now fully in circulation at most retailers, typically in the $39.99–$59.99 range depending on format. Where many sourcebooks lean on bestiaries and encounter tables, this one leans into intrigue: organizations, power struggles, and the kind of campaign material that rewards roleplaying over rollplaying.

It’s worth noting for GMs running any system, not just PF2E. The Lost Omens line has always been good at delivering dense setting detail you can lift wholesale, and Hellfire Crisis continues that tradition. If you’ve been thinking about running something with political stakes or faction play, this is solid source material regardless of what dice sit on your table. Our Pathfinder 2E vs. D&D 5E guide is a good starting point if you’re weighing whether the full PF2E switch is worth making.

New This Week

Ravenloft: The Horrors Within — Wizards of the Coast | $59.99 (standard) / ~$150 (deluxe) Gothic horror sourcebook for D&D 2024. Revamped domains, new DM tools for horror campaigns, and a serious tonal shift toward darker play. Available at game stores and online retailers now.

Pathfinder 2E: Hellfire Crisis — Paizo | $39.99–$59.99 Lost Omens sourcebook focused on faction conflict and political intrigue. Strong setting material for GMs running investigation-heavy or politically charged campaigns in any system. Fully available at most retailers.

Directive 8020 — Bandai Namco / Supermassive Games | PS5, Xbox Series, PC | $49.99 (estimated) The latest Dark Pictures Anthology entry shifts from teen-slasher horror to sci-fi survival: the crew of the Cassiopeia stranded on an uninhabited planet. Launched May 12. Not a CRPG, but its branching narrative and pacing under pressure make it genuinely useful reference material for horror GMs.

Wardrum — PC (Steam) | Early Access pricing Released May 7, this tactical roguelite blends turn-based combat with rhythm-based timing. Interesting for the buildcraft and synergy systems, which echo the kind of card-driven subsystems tabletop designers are increasingly experimenting with.

Actual Play Corner

Critical Role: Campaign 3 Episode 101

Campaign 3 Episode 101 landed on YouTube and the podcast feed on May 12, and the show continues to find its stride in the back half of the campaign. For viewers who’ve fallen behind, the Abridged series on Beacon remains the most efficient catch-up option — it’s become a genuinely useful companion to the main show rather than just a highlight reel.

Beacon is increasingly where Critical Role is putting experimental and exclusive content, so if you’re only following the free feeds, it’s worth knowing that the ecosystem has expanded considerably. The mainline campaigns are still free; the supplemental layer is where the subscription earns its keep.

Dimension 20: City Council of Darkness (Dropout)

Dimension 20’s City Council of Darkness — a Vampire: The Masquerade series produced with White Wolf — is running through May on Dropout, and it’s a strong example of what political horror looks like in actual play. The show leans into faction dynamics and social manoeuvring over combat, which makes it a useful model if you’re thinking about running VtM, Delta Green, or any system where the threats are mostly human.

If you’re curious about how Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green handle similar tonal territory from a different angle, our comparison of the two systems is a good companion read while you’re watching the series.

Crowdfunding Watch

The broader Q1 picture is worth flagging even though it covers more than this specific week: TTRPG crowdfunding grew 25% year-over-year in Q1 2026 for campaigns that cleared the $100k mark, with projects like Gates of Krystalia – Lumina, Gallows Corner, and Tainted Grail TTRPG each hitting that threshold and contributing to over $8 million raised in the quarter. The pattern is interesting — the market isn’t just producing mega-hits anymore. More mid-tier projects are reaching sustainable funding levels, which is a healthier sign for the hobby than a landscape dominated entirely by critical role tie-ins and nostalgia IP.

Shadowdark: The Western Reaches — The Arcane Library Not a currently live campaign, but the biggest upcoming OSR news of the year: The Western Reaches is a large setting and rules expansion for Shadowdark, arriving later in 2026 after a nearly $3 million Kickstarter in 2025. It transforms Shadowdark from a lean dungeon-crawl system into a full campaign platform with expanded regions, factions, and character options. If you haven’t looked at Shadowdark yet, it’s one of the OSR-adjacent systems getting genuinely mainstream traction — worth a look if you want classic dungeon-crawl play without D&D’s full rules weight. Our fantasy RPG systems ranked guide puts it in context alongside the other major players.

Community Spotlight

The ongoing “best TTRPG 2026” conversations across r/rpg are worth paying attention to, not because they produce definitive answers, but because of what they reveal about where the community’s head is at. Pathfinder 2E, The One Ring, and Shadowdark keep appearing alongside D&D as recommendations for groups with lapsed players returning to the hobby. The consistent thread is ease of onboarding: people want crunch they can grow into, not crunch they have to master on day one. If you’re pitching a non-D&D campaign to your group, that context is useful — most players are more open to alternatives than they were five years ago.

On the convention front, UK tabletop season is opening up fast. Chaosium Con UK runs May 21–24 in Cranfield, and UK Games Expo 2026 hits Birmingham’s NEC on May 29–31. Tickets are moving quickly for both. For GMs in the UK, these are among the best opportunities to demo new systems, sit in on designer seminars, and get your hands on books before they hit wide release.

Media and Entertainment

Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition is scheduled for October 2026. The original Vaarn zines built a reputation for weird science-fantasy — a setting where ancient technology, alien biology, and mutant weirdness replace standard fantasy tropes. The second edition consolidates that material into a proper core book and refines the rules. For GMs who want something genuinely different to run, it’s one to watch.

The Dark Pictures Anthology’s Directive 8020 (mentioned above in releases) is the most notable digital release this week for horror-adjacent GMs. The franchise has always had an eye for branching narrative and tension management, and the sci-fi setting gives it a different texture than the haunted-house and wartime entries that preceded it.

GM Toolkit: The “One Big Thing” Session Prep Framework

The tip this week comes directly out of a session prep method that’s been circulating widely — and it’s the one discussed in our own 30-minute session prep guide, which has been getting renewed attention this week alongside the Ravenloft release and the general horror-campaign energy in the community.

The tip: Before you prep anything else, write one sentence at the top of your notes that completes this prompt: “Tonight, the players will have to decide whether to…” That sentence is your session’s spine. Everything else is optional.

Why it works: Horror campaigns fail most often not because the GM ran out of monster stats, but because the session had no clear stakes for the players to respond to. Ravenloft and Vampire both work as actual play because the central conflicts are decisions, not encounters. A ticking clock and a difficult choice are more frightening than any stat block.

How to use it: Once you have your “one big thing” sentence, sketch three scenes that could plausibly lead to that decision point — and then stop prepping. Players will route around your scenes anyway; what they can’t route around is a meaningful choice waiting for them. If you want to see this applied to a full prep workflow, the 30-minute prep guide walks through exactly how to structure those scenes without overbuilding them.

This week’s bonus: If you’re prepping a horror session specifically, try framing your “one big thing” as a moral cost rather than a tactical challenge. “Tonight, the players will have to decide whether to sacrifice one NPC to save the rest” lands harder than “tonight, the players will fight the vampire lord.” The Hellfire Crisis faction material works the same way — the book’s best content puts political costs in front of players, not just combat encounters.

Coming Next Week

UK Games Expo kicks off May 29, so expect announcements from publishers who are holding reveals for the show floor. Chaosium Con UK (May 21–24) will likely surface new Call of Cthulhu content and organized play news. Critical Role Campaign 3 continues with Episode 102, and Dimension 20’s City Council of Darkness has more episodes incoming on Dropout. If any Ravenloft actual play coverage from major creators drops, that’s worth tracking — the book is new enough that first-impression coverage will start appearing across YouTube and podcasts over the next fortnight.

What’s on Your Table?

The horror theme is hard to ignore this week — between Ravenloft, City Council of Darkness, Directive 8020, and the general Season of Horror energy, it feels like the whole hobby is going gothic at once. Are you planning a horror campaign, or does your table run in a different direction entirely? Drop a comment below — and if you’ve used the one-big-thing prep method at your table, I’d genuinely like to know how it landed.

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Continue Your Journey

• D&D 5E vs. D&D 2024: What Actually Changed? — Essential context before picking up the new Ravenloft book
• Call of Cthulhu vs. Delta Green: Same Universe, Very Different Tone — For GMs drawn in by the horror wave this week
• Session Prep in 30 Minutes: Quick GM Preparation Guide — The full framework behind this week’s GM Toolkit tip
• Pathfinder 2E vs. D&D 5E: Which Should New Players Choose? — Worth revisiting with Hellfire Crisis now fully available
• This Week in RPGs: Horror Season Hits Full Stride — Last week’s roundup for anything you missed