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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But could you say these are Ravenloft without huge RAVENLOFT on the cover?

The style is gothic romance, and there is a constant style with regards to title placement that indicates they are part of the same series.

But not really relevant, this novel is clearly not part of that series, which ended decades ago.

 

[Jadeite]

Astarion lives in the Forgotten Realms and says hi.

So did Jander Sunstar and he still ended up in Ravenloft.

 

[humble minion]

I actually am pro-tieflings for Ravenloft campaigns, I think they work for the atmosphere. But they shouldn't have a uniform appearance and be the sort of 5E Draenei ripoff that they have become. It should be more like 2E Planescape tieflings, complete with the wide variety of appearances.

Dragonborn, on the other hand, not without heavy modification.

I've lost the link now, but i remember someone actually asked one of the 4e designers (4e being when tieflings were visually homogenised, after being extremely varied in Planescape 2e and largely ignored in 3e) why tieflings got their now-familiar uniform 'look', and was told it was a mandate from legal in order to make them trademarkable (/copyrightable, IANAL). So that change in particular was probaly inevitable. Hell, I suppose we should be marginally grateful that sometimes we get tieflings with skin colours other than red in art these days...

Dragonborn in Ravenloft ... would depend on the circumstance. I've thought for a long time that there was legit horror-story potential in dragons that he Ravenloft line almost completely neglected. You could certainly do something cool there. As for dragonborn in particular - I'd be tempted to go back to the old 3.5e Races of the Dragon lore where they were created from other humanoids BY a dragon rather than being a self-sustaining race of their own. Plenty of horror story potential there, especially if the transformation is not entirely voluntary...

 

[Bedrockgames]

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

If what you are doing works for you, that is great. I find the 2E rules work best for me

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I've lost the link now, but i remember someone actually asked one of the 4e designers (4e being when tieflings were visually homogenised, after being extremely varied in Planescape 2e and largely ignored in 3e) why tieflings got their now-familiar uniform 'look', and was told it was a mandate from legal in order to make them trademarkable (/copyrightable, IANAL). So that change in particular was probaly inevitable. Hell, I suppose we should be marginally grateful that sometimes we get tieflings with skin colours other than red in art these days...

Dragonborn in Ravenloft ... would depend on the circumstance. I've thought for a long time that there was legit horror-story potential in dragons that he Ravenloft line almost completely neglected. You could certainly do something cool there. As for dragonborn in particular - I'd be tempted to go back to the old 3.5e Races of the Dragon lore where they were created from other humanoids BY a dragon rather than being a self-sustaining race of their own. Plenty of horror story potential there, especially if the transformation is not entirely voluntary...

I've always preferred that origin for Dragonborn - its what I use in my own homebrew.

I think having Dragonborn in Darkon being tied to Ebb (Azalin's shadow dragon) might work on a thematic level. Darkon really being the only realm I can see them honestly fitting into. (Maybe Nidala, if you believe Banemaw actually exists...)

 

[QuentinGeorge]

That was a 4e idiocy, and is being rolled back somewhat. But "tieflings should have a wide range of appearences" is true of any D&D, not specific to Ravenloft.

Ravenloft has a wide range of domains. Barovia is human dominated, but other domains are not, and in the days of the core, inter-domain trade should have made other races a familiar sight.

What are you talking about? In the "days of the core", all the domains bar Darkon and Sithicus were almost entirely human, and only Sithicus had a non-human majority.

And I see no reason to treat "Tolkienesque" races any different from other non-humans. And elf is just as non-human as a tabaxi, and as for warforged, "don't mind him, he is from Lamordia".

I'm pretty sure "walking cat-man" is more obviously non-human that "person with pointed ears".

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I've lost the link now, but i remember someone actually asked one of the 4e designers (4e being when tieflings were visually homogenised, after being extremely varied in Planescape 2e and largely ignored in 3e) why tieflings got their now-familiar uniform 'look', and was told it was a mandate from legal in order to make them trademarkable (/copyrightable, IANAL). So that change in particular was probaly inevitable. Hell, I suppose we should be marginally grateful that sometimes we get tieflings with skin colours other than red in art these days...

Weirdly we may have got purple tieflings due to a colouring error in the 2014 PHB...

 

[humble minion]

I think having Dragonborn in Darkon being tied to Ebb (Azalin's shadow dragon) might work on a thematic level. Darkon really being the only realm I can see them honestly fitting into. (Maybe Nidala, if you believe Banemaw actually exists...)

I still think there should have been a dragon in Sithicus. It's the Dragonlance domain, after all. A dragon darklord (or at least a dragon presence) would have been a far better option than that silliness with Magda's daughter as replacement Darklord after Soth got yanked out of the domain for use elsewhere.

But there's all sorts of myth/story.legend about evil dragons, from St George to Fafnir to Beowulf to the Lair of the White Worm in more classically Gothic times. I assume it was a deliberate design choice to distance Ravenloft from 'conventional' D&D monsters, but it seems odd that all the horror potential there was never really explored at the time.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

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.




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


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Yes, I really think people underestimate how much Ravenloft was about taking the player out of their comfort zone. You shouldn't expect reality to run the same way it did on Oerth, Toril, etc. It was part of the fun of it.

But now fighting Strahd in Barovia is no different to fighting him in Cormyr.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I still think there should have been a dragon in Sithicus. It's the Dragonlance domain, after all. A dragon darklord (or at least a dragon presence) would have been a far better option than that silliness with Magda's daughter as replacement Darklord after Soth got yanked out of the domain for use elsewhere.

I did like where the Gazetteers broadly hinted at the mention of dragon gods potentially being able to be brought to life in post-Soth Sithicus (although as with a lot of hooks, the Arthaus line died before anyone did anything interesting with it).