Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd Cover, Synopsis Revealed

The cover and synopsis for Penguin Random House's new Dungeons & Dragons novel has been revealed. This week, Penguin Random House revealed the official title and cover for Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd, a new novel by Delilah S. Dawson. The new novel is due for release in April 2025. The new novel follows a group of adventurers who arrive in Barovia under mysterious circumstances and are summoned to Castle Ravenloft to dine with the infamous Count Strahd. This marks the first Ravenloft novel released in 17 years.

Penguin Random House has slowly grown its line of novels over the past few years, with novels set in Spelljammer, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms released over the last year. Characters from The Fallbacks novel by Jaleigh Johnson also appears in art in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.

The full synopsis for Heir of Strahd can be found below:

Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.

After they barely survive a nightmarish welcome to the realm of Barovia, a carriage arrives bearing an invitation:

Fairest Friends,

I pray you accept my humble Hospitality and dine with me tonight at Castle Ravenloft. It is rare we receive Visitors, and I do so Endeavor to Make your Acquaintance. The Carriage shall bear you to the Castle safely, and I await your Arrival with Pleasure.

Your host,
Strahd von Zarovich

With no alternative, and determined to find their way home, the strangers accept the summons and travel to the forbidding manor of the mysterious count. But all is not well at Castle Ravenloft. To survive the twisted enigmas of Strahd and his haunted home, the adventurers must confront the dark secrets in their own hearts and find a way to shift from strangers to comrades—before the mists of Barovia claim them forever.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

This is just something we probably disagree on. I think Ravenloft work better because it drew on D&D. One of the reasons I loved it, is I loved D&D. What Ravenloft brings to the table is the strength of the D&D structure, which I think is sound. And as with all the settings they modified the core rules to fit the tone they were going for. There is nothing wrong with that. It is hard to do. But there are examples of success with it. Cthulhu d20 did a pretty good job of making that kind of change for example, and so did Masque of the Red Death.

Personally I think Ravenloft was wildly successful in achieving the tone and flavor it was going for. If you read those early 90s Ravenoft supplements, that is clearly horror and the modified rules clearly play as horror as well. Now, not everyone loves them. But I think what Ravenloft did here is not that much different from what you see a lot of OSR games doing (taking a genre and fitting the genre or concept to the core conceits of D&D, adjusting the rules as desired, etc).

Yeah I agree, Ravenloft worked well in play in 2E because the authors had the courage to have the ruleset be adjusted for the setting which 5E will not even contemplate.

5E could work fantastically with Ravenloft - if the developers would allow it (altered magic, powers checks, the rest - all doable, but not in line with "D&D is D&D" Crawfordisms.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

It wasn't. It was TSR's answer to World of Darkness.

No, it really wasn't. It came before any of that. It was a response to the initial popularity of CoC, particularly since it was the most popular RPG amongst TSR designers.

The classic blunder most people make about Ravenloft is assuming the players can't win. That has never been the case. Heroes win in horror all the time. Final Girl is a trope for a reason. And Ravenloft has always been fantasy inspired by horror rather than true horror. The players are supposed to defeat the vampire, even if the vampire will eventually return.

That's true, but not the point.

My rule of thumb is that if you are running Ravenloft as a meat grinder, you are missing the point.

Who is saying run it as a meatgrinder? I don't. But at the same time its not a superhero wish fulfillment fantasy either. The heroes should prevail, mostly, but they need to earn it.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Hmm.

Title ≠ Cover

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Title ≠ Cover

The cover had Strahd on it.

 

[Azzy]

So much ado about nothing.

 

[Autumnal]

That's where the disconnect between the old and the young is probably coming from. The Old know what the old Ravenloft was like, while the young have a different idea of what Ravenloft probably is or could be.

I figure 59 counts as old for this purpose. I certainly remember giving over the Ravenloft boxed set and many books after that. And I like this cover a lot. In my version of setting, lots of locals know that some things that look strange aren’t actually threats at all, while some things that seem to be entirely typical locals are actually very dangerous monsters. In a land of many predators, the only real test of friend or foe is what they actually do. Cautious hospitality is the only way to give possible friends a chance to show themselves; cautious hospitality gives possible enemies time to reveal themselves while there’s still opportunity to deal with them.

Nobody else has to run their game that way, but I like it.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I used Mos Eisley because the person replying to me used a Star Wars character themselves.

I did not use Darth Vader out of nowhere, I did it because Soth is clealry BASED off Vader. And my entire point was to illustrate you cannot judge a book by its cover - because just by the cover of Black Rose Knight...let's be honest, it doesn't say "horror", it says "generic fantasy book about famboy off to slay the Dark Lord #9382547". If you don't recognize Soth's design, there is nothing interesting on it.

then again, I am arguing you cannot judge a book by its cover in a thread of peole who do exactly that and then try to rationalize it.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Maybe, or thinking that this group of adventurers would last less than 12 hours in Ravenloft. One trip to the village and they'd either have to slaughter the entire village as the villagers take them (most rightly) for the monsters they are and want to execute them on the spot, or they die from a dozen other means.

Either they are killed by the actual monsters of Ravenloft (due to having no experience with true dark and grim monsters) or killed by the inhabitants that suffer under the grip of these monsters and instinctively kill anything remotely resembling a monster that comes their way if they feel they can kill it.

OR, this is not actually Ravenloft (possibility, as this is an heir scenario...maybe some heir to Ravenloft???) and everyone is happy and dory. Orcs are not monsters anymore afterall, and don't go out eating human flesh (or their favorite...elf flesh...or even that tender halfling flesh)...tieflings are not the children of the damned anymore (though still have that reminiscent reminder that they may have that outsider blood flowing in them...somehow), and Dark Elves are just normal elves with half of them worshiping a good deity these days...so...just a misunderstood branch of elves who have no chaotic or evil tendencies, don't go murder-hoboing to the surface and hate spiders...so...

Maybe it's that Heir to Ravenloft thing that's going on instead.

Things have changed in D&D (many would say for the better). Perhaps it has also changed in this Heir to Ravenloft (I know, it says Strahd, but the Ravenloft, even from a few years ago in the campaign setting would probably have murdered this group within said 12 hours stated above...so it can't be that campaign...can it???) as well.

That's where the disconnect between the old and the young is probably coming from. The Old know what the old Ravenloft was like, while the young have a different idea of what Ravenloft probably is or could be.

I laugh at the idea a party with Cleric and Paladin has anything to fear in world full of "real monsters"...that these two classes are basically natural predators of. In my own Ravenlfot experience, the game with either of them isn't scary because they steamroll all those undead. My own campaign got much harder and scarier when those two players left.

I will also point out that if you lament the division between old and new fans of A Thing, do not go around making labels that inherently say new fans of A Thing are not REAL fans of A Thing but fans of Inferior Copy of A Thing That Is NOT a TRUE Thing, which is how "Heir to Ravenloft" label comes off.

Orcs as monsters were always a mistake, Tolkien himself regretted that decision and in his letters said if he had to write LotR again, he would make Orcs not real people but demons you don't kill, just banish to another dimension. Similairly the idea of Drow being always Evil...you complain about what the Drizzt is. And I was under the impression everyone hated how he was a UwU Special Mary Sue Who Is Only One Of A Kind And So Perfect He Was Born With "INNATE GOODNESS" So His Soul Will Always Be Pure Beacon Of Light That Makes Lolth Cry (TM). The idea of there being different Drow cultures solves that problem. And let's be honest, the "whole race of people is BORN INHERENTLY AND IRREDEEMABLY EVIL" concept always was lazy and stupid.

And Tieflings were NEVER "children of the damned". If you mean children of demons or devils, you are thinking of cambions. They were Planetouched, people infused with energy of the lower planes, the idea they could be descendants of devils or demons came later. The idea they are directly children of those, however, is fanon. I accept and use that fanon, but it is still not official WotC position.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Do you have difficulty understanding subtext in people's posts or do you truly think he meant "not Ravenloft" in the literal sense of "I can't see the word Ravenloft."?

hmmm

just to contrast it with the expectation that the TSR era novels set for me, these are what typical 2E Ravenloft novel art looked like:

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These ones have a variety of colors, and subjects but they all manage to be sinister in some way. There is atmosphere I don't get from the new novel cover

None of these covers has anything that inherently says Ravenloft. If you removed the title and just hsowed people the pictures, maybe the last two would get people to say gothic horror, thought I doubt it, I'm getting Umberto Eco and Rumpelstintskin respectively. First cover especially looks like generic "high fantasy farmboy off on a quest to stop the dark lord, we put nazgul/darth vader of the story on the cover to look scary".

But then again, in my country some genius put Elric of Melnibone on a cover of a Black Company book and Caramon Majere on a cover of a ASoaIaF book. Shows you how little the "iconic brand ip" means in book publishing.

 

[Bedrockgames]

hmmm

None of these covers has anything that inherently says Ravenloft. If you removed the title and just hsowed people the pictures, maybe the last two would get people to say gothic horror, thought I doubt it, I'm getting Umberto Eco and Rumpelstintskin respectively. First cover especially looks like generic "high fantasy farmboy off on a quest to stop the dark lord, we put nazgul/darth vader of the story on the cover to look scary".

We are definitely not on the same page on these