Astarion Makes Another Cameo Appearance in 2025 Monster Manual

Astarion, the beloved vampire spawn rogue in Baldur's Gate 3, makes another appearance in Dungeons & Dragons' new Monster Manual. A few months ago, we reported on Astarion making a surprise cameo appearance in the Player's Handbook and how the rogue popped up in the artwork. Now, the character makes a second cameo appearance of sorts in the 2025 Monster Manual. In the entry for Vampires, Astarion is featured in a flavor quote (pun unintended.) The quote reads "Darling, you are simply delicious...," and specifies Astarion as a Vampire Spawn.

While Baldur's Gate 3 references are relatively rare in the new Core Rulebooks, players can expect to see more references to the popular video game franchise in the upcoming Forgotten Realms Adventurer's Guide, which features an entire section on Baldur's Gate. During a press event last month, D&D rules designer Jeremy Crawford noted that the upcoming Forgotten Realms books would serve as the best bridge yet for Baldur's Gate 3 players looking for a familiar entry point into the D&D tabletop game.

Wizards of the Coast has leaned on the Baldur's Gate 3 cast to promote D&D in recent months, with multiple cast members making appearances at various D&D Live shows. The next show will take place at MagicCon in March and will feature four BG3 cast members (including Astarion's voice actor Neil Newbon) playing their characters in an adventure run by Aabria Iyengar.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's just an easter egg man, relax.

It's really not.

If they're being pushed to squeeze more money out of D&D, I'd prefer it that they squeeze more money out in a way that benefits the fans, including bringing in excited BG3 players who've never played tabletop before and maybe sell them some more new products that echo a lot of the good stuff about BG3.

If they instead just flail around and monetize through strange licensing deals, that has a good chance of devaluing the game in the eyes of potential players and actually driving them away rather than drawing them in.

And if they don't bring in more revenue, that means more layoffs.

So doing this right is good for players and staff. Doing a bad job is potentially bad news for both groups.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

To your point the marketing opportunity is simply: please, for the love of god, make a "like BG3? Here's how to play D&D online with friends!" guide. That's all they need. I'm doing my best to find them groups to play with but it's astonishing how many general fans of the CONCEPT of D&D there are. They are the future player and customer base, we just need to nudge them in the right direction!

I did something less ambitious for DADHAT, but yes, a great guide to playing D&D online -- with good SEO to help people find it -- is a great idea. I will work on something like that in the near future. (Also, I should update the DADHAT guide to the 2024 rules.)

 

[michaeljpastor]

Interesting datapoint: On Bluesky, the algorithm absolutely believes BG3, Baldurs Gate, and any variant thereof = Dungeons & Dragons, and therefore places all their posts in the D&D feed even when that person does not post anything to do with the tabletop version of the game.

Another interesting datapoint: May of my followers are "fans of D&D." Most of those have never played D&D, came to this fandom via BG3, want to play tabletop someday, but for a lot of reasons aren't sure how to get there.

To your point the marketing opportunity is simply: please, for the love of god, make a "like BG3? Here's how to play D&D online with friends!" guide. That's all they need. I'm doing my best to find them groups to play with but it's astonishing how many general fans of the CONCEPT of D&D there are. They are the future player and customer base, we just need to nudge them in the right direction!

That, and the D&D movie - which, by all the views it eventually got in streaming, was a freakin' success.

If they hadn't been working on 5.24, these recent media-adjacent successes in and around the 50th anniversary could have been more strategically leveraged. BUT I am hopeful and look at it with a long view. They can mine these new IPs for the next ten years.

As for starter sets - they're still celebrating the 50th anniversary, so playing tribute to Keep on the Borderlands is an obvious choice. They're also debuting a new form factor with the starter sets, with tiles for options to build your character - which sounds awesome - but best to do it with something that they're familiar with, rather than going through the trouble of ALSO translating everything from another medium. They've had media tie-in starter sets in the past, there's nothing stopping them from doing more in the future. Baby steps with a new project.

We also have Project Sigil coming, and aren't the avatars for the BG3 characters already confirmed?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As for starter sets - they're still celebrating the 50th anniversary, so playing tribute to Keep on the Borderlands is an obvious choice.

The time to do a BG3 or DADHAT starter set was when they did the starter set refresh (apparently requested by Target) that ended up being Stormwrack Isle.

But yes, there's always a chance we'll see one or both of these at some point in the future, although WotC's track record so far suggests they're pretty ambivalent about these two properties that were largely developed out of house.

 

[talien]

That, and the D&D movie - which, by all the views it eventually got in streaming, was a freakin' success.

If they hadn't been working on 5.24, these recent media-adjacent successes in and around the 50th anniversary could have been more strategically leveraged. BUT I am hopeful and look at it with a long view. They can mine these new IPs for the next ten years.

As for starter sets - they're still celebrating the 50th anniversary, so playing tribute to Keep on the Borderlands is an obvious choice. They're also debuting a new form factor with the starter sets, with tiles for options to build your character - which sounds awesome - but best to do it with something that they're familiar with, rather than going through the trouble of ALSO translating everything from another medium. They've had media tie-in starter sets in the past, there's nothing stopping them from doing more in the future. Baby steps with a new project.

We also have Project Sigil coming, and aren't the avatars for the BG3 characters already confirmed?

The movie is definitely in there, but the secret sauce of BG3 is it's training future players. There are so, so many elements of BG3 that just teach you how to play D&D. Not quite like "regular" D&D certainly as it's a video game, but pretty darn close, close enough to make a BG3 player playing D&D for the first time WAY more comfortable with the terminology than someone coming in cold.

 

[talien]

I did something less ambitious for DADHAT, but yes, a great guide to playing D&D online -- with good SEO to help people find it -- is a great idea. I will work on something like that in the near future. (Also, I should update the DADHAT guide to the 2024 rules.)

You do that and I will share it with my Blueskylings for sure!

 

[sevenbastard]

they're still celebrating the 50th anniversary, so playing tribute to Keep on the Borderlands is an obvious choice. They're also debuting a new form factor with the starter sets, with tiles for options to build your character - which sounds awesome - but best to do it with something that they're familiar

I'm 100% down with The Keep, but I think a box with BG3 sells better. Outside of our hobby the Keep doest have a fan base.

 

[sevenbastard]

The movie is definitely in there, but the secret sauce of BG3 is it's training future players. There are so, so many elements of BG3 that just teach you how to play D&D. Not quite like "regular" D&D certainly as it's a video game, but pretty darn close, close enough to make a BG3 player playing D&D for the first time WAY more comfortable with the terminology than someone coming in cold.

I've never played BG3 but it would be pretty sweet if they built a way to send your character from BG3 to D&D Beyond. Then BG3 players could build a first level PC in BG3 and use it in a table top game.

Offcourse BG3 is now a edition behind.

 

[michaeljpastor]

I've never played BG3 but it would be pretty sweet if they built a way to send your character from BG3 to D&D Beyond. Then BG3 players could build a first level PC in BG3 and use it in a table top game.

Offcourse BG3 is now a edition behind.

New players won't be able to tell the difference really. To them, it'll just be 'that's how this translates to tabletop.'

 

[Zardnaar]

The movie is definitely in there, but the secret sauce of BG3 is it's training future players. There are so, so many elements of BG3 that just teach you how to play D&D. Not quite like "regular" D&D certainly as it's a video game, but pretty darn close, close enough to make a BG3 player playing D&D for the first time WAY more comfortable with the terminology than someone coming in cold.

I'm running 3 groups now. Two of them are heavily newbie friendly.
Anecdotal over half the new players have played BG3 or are familiar with it.