Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd Review

Like many Ravenloft tabletop adventures, five adventurers are plucked from the realms by the mists to find themselves in Barovia. As usual, Strahd sends one of his minions to invite the newcomers to his castle to enjoy his hospitality, a.k.a. for Strahd to mess with their minds and tempt them.

The characters are:

• Rotrog: An arrogant Orc wizard apprentice
• Kah: A shy Kenku cleric from Waterdeep
• Fielle: A cheerful human artificer from Baldur’s Gate
• Alishai: A moody, hot-tempered Tiefling paladin to Selune
• Chivarion: A good-natured Drow barbarian with a hairless tressym named “Murder” as his pet.

Over the course of the novel, you discover that each one was taken when they were faced with a terrible choice or were poised to take an awful action. That sets the stage for the crux of the novel—which character(s) will succumb to either Strahd’s temptations and/or the malevolent energy of Barovia, embracing their darkest impulses.

Should You Buy It?​

I found Heir to Strahd interesting because while it presented elements of Barovia that Ravenloft players and DMs will be very familiar with, not everything was what I had expected, even though I’ve GM’d Ravenloft adventures. The spirit of Tatyana most notably was presented in a way I did not expect based on the prior information I had read.

I don’t want to explain too much about Tatyana, and how she factors into the plot because it could ruin the mystery of who falls prey to the darkness to become the titular character. I will say that I suspected the doomed character at first, then talked myself out of it, assuming it was a feint to distract from another option. A later character reveal reinforced my original suspicion, but I still thought there might be a twist to go in the another direction. There wasn’t but instead of being unsatisfying, the ending makes me eager for a sequel.

Regardless of how one feels about the mystery and certain aspects of the ending, this Ravenloft novel can be very useful for anyone thinking of DMing an adventure set in Barovia. Dawson, the author of a few Star Wars novels and several fantasy novels, not only sets the tone very well for Barovia but also shows how Strahd could be played by a DM. The audiobook in particular showcased how even a simple conversation with Strahd can be equal parts charming and sinister.

For those who like or prefer audiobooks, the narration by Ellie Gossage was very good. It’s also available in hardcover and ebook editions.

Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd: B+.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I really don’t like the party composition and really think it reflects a lack of understanding in the Ravenloft setting. Most domains in Ravenloft aside from Sithicus were very human centric. This party would be viewed as a band of monsters that would be barred entry everywhere. It’s so slapstick with no forethought for party composition in any real way. That might work for a typical D&D game where you are playing with friends but it doesn’t make any
sense in a realistic way.

Oh, you are mistaking WotC for an organisation that likes setting flavour, or fidelity to past settings. They don't care about that anymore. Now it's just the several different types of bland, flavourless goop.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oh, you are mistaking WotC for an organisation that likes setting flavour, or fidelity to past settings. They don't care about that anymore. Now it's just the several different types of bland, flavourless goop.

WotC is an organisation which cares about maximising profits, just like TSR before them (but marginally less incompetently). They cater to new and current players, not old relics.

 

[Afroconan]

Oh, you are mistaking WotC for an organisation that likes setting flavour, or fidelity to past settings.

Nooo!! The Sacred Texts!!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nooo!! The Sacred Texts!

 

[Prof_Dogg]

How is 5E horrific?

Ravenloft is horrific in the same way that the Haunted Mansion is: It's a fun theming atop D&D's heroic fantasy.

If you want a truly horrific RPG experience, Ravenloft/D&D is a bad place to look.

Now, Ravenloft and the Haunted Mansion are both popular and fun, but expecting either to be a horror experience is unrealistic.

I'm running a Ravenloft campaign right now. I would like to say it's got the right edge (but admittedly I do see it from my side of the screen so I may be biased). Last session, the players had to decide how to tackle villagers who were trying to hang a 10 year old girl because they believed she was the cause of their supernatural problems. Do they kill them? They are acting out of fear after all, not malice. Do they allow it? (obviosly not the latter but the question hangs when you consider she might be the cause). I had to pull a deux ex machina for "reasons" and took away their choice (got a longer plot i have to feed into) but it put just enough strain on them to see they were looking at the hard choices.

 

[Afroconan]

I'm running a Ravenloft campaign right now. I would like to say it's got the right edge (but admittedly I do see it from my side of the screen so I may be biased). Last session, the players had to decide how to tackle villagers who were trying to hang a 10 year old girl because they believed she was the cause of their supernatural problems. Do they kill them? They are acting out of fear after all, not malice. Do they allow it? (obviosly not the latter but the question hangs when you consider she might be the cause). I had to pull a deux ex machina for "reasons" and took away their choice (got a longer plot i have to feed into) but it put just enough strain on them to see they were looking at the hard choices.

Yeah, and I don't mean this in any "derogatory" way but, Ravenloft can easily be "baby's first horror game".

You can certainly tune in some aspects of horror with hard moral choices, body horror, general spookiness... It will never be Kult or Delta Green but you can certainly ride the edge of horror. With how much mechanical agency characters have you may not be able to push aspects of helplessness or mental trauma, but you can certainly ramp up the tension.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Merlin the Wizard was also a half-demon so that trope is much older than Gandalf

No, that is only one of many version of the Arthurian myth AND amounts to character image as little as Gandalf being an angel - no one thinks of that when trying to invoke common image of a "wise old wizard", the stereotype Merlin or Gandalf created. In fact, I recall when D&D 5e 2024 player's handbook had an Aasimar lady as a wizard, some people called it a weird choice and wonder why would anyone play a half-angel as a wizard.

and how is it better having a party that all have beaks, horns, tusks or scales but who all behave like humans anyway and are all treated like 'normal people' because prejudice doesn't exist even if your granddaddy is a soul stealing demon from hell?.

How is this different to 5E? Every player just plays tieflings as red-skinned horned queers humans. And so forth.

Sometimes I feel I get roleplaying from an all human party, to be honest.

I am of opinion that humans are incapable of creating a perspective that is not fundamentally human, so every playable species is just going to be "humans with aesthetic trait x". I even beleive that humans are not capable of truly imagining so-called "eldritch" perspective - mind flayers, aboleths, beholders are not "alien", they're just medeival fair idea of "eldritch" - a human perspective dressed up in human ideas what an eldritch being could think like. It's why the desperate clinging to the idea there must be some sort of "other" is fundamentally flawed, especially when, if you think about it, Elves' immortality should make them way more alien, and yet they are among "default" for looking human. At the end of day everyone is a human in an aesthetic and stories of "alien" perspective are just metaphors for stories of human perspective. Even characters whose deal is supposed to be 'alien" and don't get human culture, like Starfire or Miss Martian, you end in a "technicolor people come to white people's city and act the way white tourist do in non-white countries".

Regarding the "daddy is a soul-sucking demon from hell" thing. Let me use it to demosntrate, using DC Comics (which I beleive stands for Batman Comics Comics) characters as an example. Raven is a superheroine, empath/witch daughter of Trigon the Terrible, a demon who either spawned himself from accumulated human evil, or is son of Lucifer himself. Most of her struggle is about that legacy. Most of stories dealing with it, however, are not different from stories dealing with herritage of characters like Rose and Joey Wilson, children of assassin and mercenary and geniuelly a person that makes Joker look nice, Deathstroke the Terminator. Or from Emiko Queen, daughter of assassin Shado. Or from Cassandra Cain, whose father, David Cain, is an assassin and whose mother, Lady Shiva, is a supervillain and greatest martial artist in the world. Or from orion, son of Darkseid, space god of fascism. In at least one continuity they outright make her bond with Damian Wayne, who comes from lineage of ecofascist assassins because it was fundamentally the same struggle.

As for the prejudice - that is entierly depending on the table and whenever they are interested in that kind of game. I, however, have too many times seen toxic players use in-universe prejudice as an excuse to just bully other players, something I think we can all agree is not needed.

Age of Worms, they're there for service to Vecna. I happen to be running that campaign so it was an easy answer

Great, that makes it two adventures where they are antagonists and in one they're misguided and in other you could replace them with human cultists.

 

[Scribe]

Then about time this changes.

 

[Dire Bare]

Maybe answer in a −spoiler− if the Human is lost in the end?

Fielle (the human) comes across as an innocent and becomes the focus of the party, they all coalesce to protect her from Strahd. Turns out, she is an incarnation of Tatyana. All of the characters, including Fielle, have dark secrets and were on the cusp of making a dark choice before being whisked away to Barovia by the mists. The party leaves Castle Ravenloft, and Fielle, on a quest from Van Richten to find a macguffin to save Fielle . . . but by the time they get back Strahd has turned Fielle into a vampire and she "adapts" to her new condition rather quickly. Each party member seems to move past their dark choices . . . except for Fielle, who embraces them. Turns out, because of her abusive family background, she really enjoys the power of being a vampire!

 

[Distracted DM]

Great, that makes it two adventures where they are antagonists and in one they're misguided and in other you could replace them with human cultists.

I mean.. I do have a more exhaustive list, but here are some:

Forsaken Arch
A City on the Edge
Once in Waterdeep
The Howling Void
Three Faces of Evil
Cloak and Shadows
Stormcrow Tor
Princes of the Apocalypse

BTW I provided these just as a fact-check, because someone else above said kenku had never been evil and your comment suggested that they've never been used as villains. They don't have an evil alignment in the books but their monster entries, which I quoted some of a little further back in the thread, sure have them doing some bad stuff (literally) 95% of the time.

I literally cannot think of single adventure where Kenku were ever used as villains. Closest is opening adventure in 2e's A Hero's Tale, and even then they're more doing dumb stuff in hope of getting their curse lifted.