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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

To be fair i wish the orc's face was more orcish and every time my initial visual impression of the Artificer is that she's a centaur with the kenku being her horse body. unfortunate composition, that.

If I could fix one thing in that pic it would be the (lol) Orc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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 didn't find this at all. Paladins are especially screwed in Ravenloft as they are singled it as attracting the ire of the place. Were you using the class changes and the altered turn undead tables?

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

I am not questioning the enthusiasm or interest of new fans. But older fans who grew up on the 90s setting material, are going to have a different set of expectations than newer ones (especially if WOTC radically changes core elements of the setting). We are still free to give our opinions and criticisms. To me, the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft looked very solidly made, but so many choices went against what I think of Ravenlnoft being. The biggest one would be the shift from Gothic horror to multi genre. Now people might prefer that, and people might see it as an improvement. That is fair. However it does mean the setting isn't a gothic horror setting anymore, it is now a much broader range of horror. Same with making lands into islands and not having the core. Technically it is all within cannon, but it does mean the setting is going to play very different and if you see the core as being essential, then it isn't same. It is possible for people to have different opinions on the same thing. Someone like me might find the new Ravenoft setting to be a pale imitation of the original, others might find the new version to be superior. Same with the art. I think this art is absolutely not in the spirit of Ravenloft or even a horror cover. To me it looks more like a horror comedy cover, or an urban fantasy cover. And the attitude of the characters feels completely wrong for a horror mood to me. But I am not the final say on those things. This is just my opinion. Me expressing it, isn't me passing judgment on people who like it (heck when I first got into Ravenloft fans of the original module used to crap on the setting all the time: it was their opinion, I understood where they were coming from but disagreed).

 

[TiQuinn]

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.

This has been the biggest hurdle for me with non-human races in Ravenloft at the game table. I can’t wrap my head around a story that makes vampires and fiends elicit horror or fear when you’ve got a Dragonborn or a tiefling right there, and I certainly don’t want to do the whole “the town thinks you’re a monster” bit.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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".

I mean if it showed an actual farm boy I suppose this would make sense. Don't get me wrong, Soth is Vader, I totally get the comparison. But I remember when this book came out and the cover instantly grabbed me. It came down to mood. And you don't need to know Soth to see a creepy knight in a helmet and get what it is going for. But for me why this works is the knight is portrayed in a sinister light, the composition really evokes a classic horror vibe, and I think the focus on one central figure in the image of this cover and the others, gives them all a little more heft (not saying all covers need to be that way, I've commissioned covers myself with multiple characters, but having several figures is often more risky for this sort of mood (especially if they come off with an attitude that doesn't fit the tone). Everything about Knight of the Black Rose fits the tone of the setting

 

[Vaalingrade]

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."?

Considering the level of sense any of these D&D art arguments or 'not D&D' ones make, I can never be too sure.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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.

Or like every other modern or updated D&D world, their species are no longer 'monsters' and are just people.

Even the people of Barovia might have managed to move on from a false vision of Tolkien faster than RL D&D fans.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

Ah yes, the peasants who can't handle a couple zombies in the graveyard and are begging for help suddenly become Seal Team Six when a group of non-Tokien adventurers enter the village. [emoji849]

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ah yes, the peasants who can't handle a couple zombies in the graveyard and are begging for help suddenly become Seal Team Six when a group of non-Tokien adventurers enter the village. [emoji849]

the power of the DM's spite is on power with the Power of Greyskull.

 

[Remathilis]

This has been the biggest hurdle for me with non-human races in Ravenloft at the game table. I can’t wrap my head around a story that makes vampires and fiends elicit horror or fear when you’ve got a Dragonborn or a tiefling right there, and I certainly don’t want to do the whole “the town thinks you’re a monster” bit.

I must admit for me, it's a stale trope that hurts a long term Ravenloft game. The players quickly figure out the people of the land hate them, so they are less inclined to help them. You might get a few bleeding heart X-Men types, but most players get tired of not being able to enter town for supplies or creature comforts like food and a warm bed and they decide that the peasants aren't worth helping, let them suffer with their dark lord, I'm looking for a way home. And once you've trained your players to ignore NPCs, you've lost a huge swath of adventure hooks.

Moreover, I have grown distasteful of every village and town being a Sundown town and leaning on the racist and xenophobic tropes that brings. I will occasionally use a community with that sort of viewpoint as an adventure seed, but the vast majority of people in Ravenloft aren't inherently afraid of elves or goliaths (or they don't immediately retreat to hate and violence, an elves gold spends like anyone else's, and sometimes you gotta go along to get along.)

Further, it matters what domain you're in. Barovia might be insular and superstitious, but I would assume the more cosmopolitan Dementlieu is less so. Darkon certainly isn't, and a domain like Valachan has more important things to worry about than the elves' skin color. If you aren't a panther or a vampire, you're ok in their eyes.

But mostly, I moved away from Ravenloft being hardcore xenophobic because that ruins the fun of the setting. It's what I meant about "meat grinder" mode: running Ravenloft where there is no respite, no victory larger than your immediate survival, nothing worth fighting for other than your own skin. For an evening of terror (pop in, pop out) that's fine, but for a long game that's exhausting. So I run my Ravenloft dark, but a little less grim. It helps keep my players engaged and wanting to explore the dark places when there are still points of light worth fighting for.