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.

 

[Remathilis]

You see, here is an issue - a common criticism of Ravenloft 2e campaigns that they swung too much for the "doom and gloom at all times" to the point the games would become railroads where nothing PCs can do can really affect the world. Pretty much all the Darklords became beyond repproach for vast majority of the parties until levels so late most games never reached them, and even if PCs did manage to get rid of one of them...no they didn't, we cannot allow the players to ruin the world, after all. The criticism may be exagerrated for comedy, and likely the whole view is colored by similiar issue popping in multiple games from 80's and 90's, but it is sitll valid criticism. And reacting to "the DM didn't nerf half of the party into oblivion" with "DC doesn't understand how a REAL Ravenloft campaign is played" is a very poor argument and quite condescending.

The running joke amongst my friend group in high school was that you ran Ravenloft when you wanted to kill your players slowly and Dark Sun when you wanted to do it quickly. Both those settings got reputations as grim dark settings where your PCs can't affect anything positively.

 

[Remathilis]

I am not saying they were all winners lol. I am just saying there were some good books in the line and writers with talent. I honestly don't remember Enemy Within enough to even evaluate it right now. I do recall feeling like they didn't need to do books like that since Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is already a masterpiece. The book on Mordenheim was also kind of weird for that reason. I like having the "Not Doctor Frankenstein" characters in the setting. Not sure they needed novels. In Knight of the Black Rose I thought Strahd's presence worked because of the monster rally angle

That was part of my problem with the older domains: there were too many that hewed too close to their source material. So close that they just felt like Good Value brand replacements. I don't necessarily like all the changes they made in 5e to all the Dark Lords, but kudos for them to try something different than "not-Frankenstein" and "not-Mr Hyde"

 

[Not a Decepticon]

The stone castle arch with it's guttering torch are pretty gothic tropes, so I would say yes. And the font "Ravenloft" is written in is actually called Gothic.

Soth's burning eyes mark it out as horror rather than romance.

Thise are so incredibly shallow. There is a castle on the new book's cover, very gothic-looking (as in: gothic ficiton, not gothic architecture). A scary-looking guy in armor isn't automatically pushing something to horror, every other book has one. Lifetake on this cover seems to have burning eyes, does it make Black Company a horror?

And it is my opinion if you need the title to tell you the book is something, then the cover is not evocative of that something.

Knight of the Black Rose was my introduction to the setting. So I really didn't know about the whole gothic horror thing going in. I came to the setting by way of Dragonlance. What I did know was it looked brooding and sinister, and Soth was such a dark and terrifying character that it had my interest as a horror fan. The other issue was, I was simply not as into fantasy as a lot of my other D&D friends. I read plenty of that stuff, but my interest was always more on the horror side of things. So I bought the book having heard of Ravenloft and being sold by the cover that taking the plunge into it looked promising.

But you see, you have heard of Ravenloft beforehand and you recognized it from the name. If there was no name on the cover and just "knight of the Black Rose", would you think it was gothic horror? If you recognized Soth you'd think it's Dragonlance. If you didn't, it's just a generic cover for a fantasy story.

 

[Scribe]

Both those settings got reputations as grim dark settings where your PCs can't affect anything positively.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There is a scene with a ghostly knight in the Castle of Otranto, that takes place in a castle. I may be hazy on the details, but I would agree very in keeping with the genre. Moody landscape that instills awe and gothic architecture are part of the genre.

Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.[2][3] The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past, especially through ruined buildings which stand as proof of a previously thriving world which is decaying in the present.[4] Characteristic settings in the 18th and 19th centuries include castles, religious buildings such as monasteries and convents, and crypts.

-Wikipeadia

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Thise are so incredibly shallow. There is a castle on the new book's cover, very gothic-looking (as in: gothic ficiton, not gothic architecture).

Yes there is - indeed it's recognisably Castle Ravenloft. And I'm certainly not saying that part of the cover isn't gothic. It's just - not very good art, especially the bottom half, which has a completely different style.

It might be worth noting that the new Dragonlance novel covers also have a very photoshopped copy-paste look to them. As I keep saying, for digital sales, the cover doesn't matter, it's not worth spending much money on.

But, as I said earlier, we do not know this new book is supposed to be horror, but we do know it isn't a continuation of the original Ravenloft novel series (different publisher for a start). It's intentionally in a different style.

A scary-looking guy in armor isn't automatically pushing something to horror

No it isn't, but it makes it not a romance, which is the other main gothic subgenre. But some of those other old Ravenloft covers could pass as Mills & Boon.

Black Rose

Black roses are pretty gothic!

If you want to pick this apart, you picked the wrong novel!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

On this topic, this is interesting:

 

[Remathilis]

Eh. I found it leads to players who become as apathetic and cruel as the world they live in. Dark Sun moreso since Powers checks tended to turn truly evil PCs into NPC monsters before they can really do much damage.

 

[Scribe]

Eh. I found it leads to players who become as apathetic and cruel as the world they live in. Dark Sun moreso since Powers checks tended to turn truly evil PCs into NPC monsters before they can really do much damage.

I'm unapologetically a huge fan of grimdark, so YMMV.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Black roses are pretty gothic!

If you want to pick this apart, you picked the wrong novel!

Knight of the Black Rose is title wielded by Lord Soth, who is the iconci Dragonlance villain. The title itself is embedded in Dragonlance history as he was a member of Solamnic Knights of Rose, and wore symbol of rose on his armor. It has darkened when he died in fire, hence why this is his title now that he is an undead. This may say "gothic" but it doesn't say Ravenloft - it says Dragonlance.

Yes there is - indeed it's recognisably Castle Ravenloft. And I'm certainly not saying that part of the cover isn't gothic. It's just - not very good art, especially the bottom half, which has a completely different style.

Well that makes it perfect for a story it is telling about group of characters from moder D&D being dragged to Ravenloft, right?

No it isn't, but it makes it not a romance, which is the other main gothic subgenre. But some of those other old Ravenloft covers could pass as Mills & Boon.

But again, I don't see how you get gothic part of it at all - what makes it different from any other fantasy cover with armored scary guy on it. What makes it more "horror" than say this picture?

Same guy, argurably even more horror-adjecent by scenery and the hands of the undead reaching to grasp the living. Yet it is not Ravenloft, it's Dragonlance.

Or this one, which I beleive was a homage to og Knight of the Black Rose cover

And yet it is not Ravenloft either, it's Dragonlance again.