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.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That is not to undersell the importance of tone and theme, but anyone who somehow thinks Ravenloft radically redefines D&D is making mountains out of molehills. Its still D&D at the core.

This is somewhat subjective. Does Ravenloft turn D&D into Hillfolk? No. But I think how much it alters the D&D experience is something people probably won't all agree on. I find the mechanics to be a very large shift in the core game. Again YMMV

 

[Remathilis]

This feels a bit reductive to me. But even if we stick with this core notion of a loop, Ravenloft definitely shifts it around a lot. And that wasn't exclusive to Ravenloft. Many of the 2E settings did a good job of tweaking mechanics to make for a very different feel (just look at how different a Dark Sun campaign feels for example). But in Ravneloft take treasure, that is pretty much cut in half, sometimes it is not even a thing (in my Ravenloft campaigns players hardly ever got treasure the way they would in my fantasy campaigns). And take fighting monsters. In a more typical fantasy campaign, there might be a large number of fights with multiple monsters, and random encounters. But Ravenloft was more about the planned encounters, and when it came to fighting the big bad, it was always a much more involved prospect (the way Ravenloft customizes monsters has a substantial impact on how the game plays in that respect). There is just a lot more emphasis on an adventure as a story than as a dungeon crawl.

Still though, I think just focusing on this idea of a play loop really misses a lot of what goes on in D&D. That play loop is largely just about the progression and reward. But Ravenloft radically reshapes characters with powers checks when they commit evil deeds, or evil just cast a necromantic spell, it alters the classes, magic items, spells, etc. It has fear and horror effects (and later madness effects). It incorporates fortune telling mechanics. Pretty much all the major monsters have a Van Richten book. Those also have a substantial impact on play. Obviously it depends on whether you are running the first two boxed sets or DoD. But I would say the mechanical changes make for a very different experience. Just look at how the game suggests handling encounters.

YMMV, but Ravenloft always felt extremely different from running something like Forgotten Realms. Just to go back to vampires. A forgotten realms vampire is going to be a much more predictable affair, and not nearly as difficult. You can still have run of the mill vampires in Ravenloft. But Ravenloft really focuses on making monsters into puzzles (which I would say, if we are looking for a core game loop, it has more to do with that than treasure and leveling)----though I have never found the idea of game loops useful myself

See everything you've brought up is stuff I would call tone and theme. What makes a Ravenloft PC different from a Realms hero isn't a penalty to turn undead or the inability to detect evil, it's the fact they have fatal flaw that the Dark Powers use to torment them. The vampire isn't just a corrupted monster, they have a tragic backstory that guides them towards villainy while still making them sympathetic. But at the end of the day, it's still PC fighting a vampire. It's a D&D cake with a heavy layer of horror icing, but it's still cake.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Need I remind people that Ravenloft has multiple zombie apocalypse domains?

zombie apocalypse is 'murder all the human shaped things you want free of guilt while living out your survivalist fantasy' which is so far from gothic horror as D&D art arguments are from interactions between people who are okay.

 

[Bedrockgames]

See everything you've brought up is stuff I would call tone and theme. What makes a Ravenloft PC different from a Realms hero isn't a penalty to turn undead or the inability to detect evil, it's the fact they have fatal flaw that the Dark Powers use to torment them.

I would say you are minimizing the role of mechanics. The mechanics reinforce the themes and the mechanics lead to a different a totally different game. The presence of powers checks, massively alters what this all means. The presence of curses massively alter this as well. A character in Ravenloft doesn't just have a fatal flaw the DP use to torment them, there are mechanics for the process of corruption, there are mechanics for tormenting them. None of this is to minimize the importance of tone and flavor. Those matter a great deal as well. But there is something fundamentally different about a game with powers checks, where spells can't be used to detect good or evil, where a paladin attracts the attention of the dark lord, etc.

The vampire isn't just a corrupted monster, they have a tragic backstory that guides them towards villainy while still making them sympathetic. But at the end of the day, it's still PC fighting a vampire. It's a D&D cake with a heavy layer of horror icing, but it's still cake.

Sure flavor is important. Having a tragic backstory can enhance an NPC considerably and you should look to the gothic sources for inspiration. I wouldn't question that. But that doesn't mean mechanics aren't also a huge part of the equation. Vampires in Ravenloft are different from Vampires in other settings. It isn't just a PC fighting a vampire. In ravenloft you don't know what a vampire's achilles heal is going to be. You have to figure it out. This changes everything and it is supported by the mechanics. You also don't know what a vampire's powers are, and there are an endless variety of them in Ravenloft. The reason the Van Richten guide books are so important is they give you a massively expanded list of tools to make vampires more than what they would be in a standard setting

And the horror isn't just icing. It has mechanical support. All of the things above (the changes to classes, the powers checks, etc), lycanthropy being more contagious, types of monsters coming in greater variety with more powers and weaknesses that often have to be puzzled out, characters having less ability to turn undead, characters being susceptible to fear and horror effects, etc. These all work toward making PCs more vulnerable and create a sense of the unknown. Things like the attached list from the black box, make an encounter with a vampire a lot less certain. Certainly not every vampire is unique in Ravenloft. They will encounter standard ones but if you are facing a big villain in a campaign, this is the sort of unknown a Ravenloft vampire can pose. And domain lords are an entirely other story. Their connection to the land, their transformation into evil, means their powers aren't even necessarily governed by the the rules of the book (any monster that is the result of powers checks can have pretty much whatever ability the GM wants). Part of the point of Ravenloft is this is a world where the standard expectations don't apply, where even Lord Soth can get frustrated by his ability to deal with a pesky little vampire like Strahd.

The thing I find great about the rules changes and tools Ravenloft gives the GM is it really is a magic formula for horror if you use them well

 

[Remathilis]

I would say you are minimizing the role of mechanics.

Mechanics aren't needed. I'm running Ravenloft in 5e right now without a single rule modification. And it's working perfectly fine.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Need I remind people that Ravenloft has multiple zombie apocalypse domains?

zombie apocalypse is 'murder all the human shaped things you want free of guilt while living out your survivalist fantasy' which is so far from gothic horror as D&D art arguments are from interactions between people who are okay.

Of course...


...but it didn't have any "zombie apocalypse domains" until the 5E gutting of the setting and ridiculous reimagining of Falkovnia. The only "zombie" domain in pre-5E was the New Orleans inspired Souragne, and that wasn't "zombie apocalypse" at all.

So are you agreeing with me that 5E Ravenloft is incredibly badly handled and wrongheaded take on the setting then?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Of course...


...but it didn't have any "zombie apocalypse domains" until the 5E gutting of the setting and ridiculous reimagining of Falkovnia. The only "zombie" domain in pre-5E was the New Orleans inspired Souragne, and that wasn't "zombie apocalypse" at all.

So are you agreeing with me that 5E Ravenloft is incredibly badly handled and wrongheaded take on the setting then?

No, because that's only one example of Ravenloft not being as real serious and look at my scars emo as people are remembering it through their nostalgia goggles.

My introduction to the setting was an official novel about and evil cat man in a hilarious swing and a miss at both Jekyll and Hyde and Beauty and the Beast.

The entire premise is a bunch of DM expies torturing the villains from other settings or implied setting for funsies. It was D&D fanfiction: the setting. 'dude, what if Lord Soth hung out and was sad at people in a time loop?'

It was never a 'serious' setting. There were never any 'serious' settings* in D&D because D&D is goofy as hell.

Maybe some people played it serious (or the kind of 'serious' high schoolers think they're being when they're being cringefully hilarious), but that was thier problem and it'd be nice to not have it made the rest of the world's problem when they're trying to enjoy their weekend in ironic hell.

*yes, even that one. Especially that one. Cannibal halflings indeed.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I suspect there is other reason because WotC doesn't want Ravenloft to be 100% classic gothic horror and it is because this style could be imitated by rival companies creating new IPs.

Ravenloft is not Castlevania or Capcom's Darkstalkers. It is not only about killing the monster of the weak but also suffering (and trying to break) curses and political intrigues among (neighbour) dark lords, and resolving mysteries. In Ravenloft like the classic horror genre "sin leads to punishment".

Ravenloft can't be only a Jurasik Park for monsters from Hammer Films. It is algo the wicked mental games by the Dark Powers. These using the temptation to cause the fall in the "dark side" but also their punishments.

* Some players want Ravenloft to be the (not necessarialy evil) monsters, like in the "Teen Wolf" serie.

* Some 3PPs created their own horror setting, for example "Obsidian Apocalypse" or "Grimm Hollow".

 

[TiQuinn]

I’m reaching the conclusion that we’re reading a lot into the cover and synopsis of this one book.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The vampire isn't just a corrupted monster, they have a tragic backstory that guides them towards villainy while still making them sympathetic.

Astarion lives in the Forgotten Realms and says hi.