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]

Ravenloft wasn't created to be 100% gothic horror but a mixture of fantasy adventure with touchs of gothic horror. The 5e Ravenloft has been redesigned to can include also other different subgenres.

I would say it is more accurate to say this has been a point of contention throughout the line. The Black Box leaned heavily into Gothic, and the DoD book tried to bring in more fantasy elements. Both had a mixture but the former was weighted towards the Gothic while the latter was a more even mix

 

[Autumnal]

And as I’ve said before, as an old school Ravenloft fan, I think it’s great.

As a 59-year-old longtime but lowkey Ravenloft fan, I like the cover and blurb. I’m guessing that the cover represents the characters very shortly after their arrival in Barovia. A comparable Lord of the Rings scene would be a mix of Bilbo’s birthday part and the Council at Rivendell. Frodo with all ten fingers, Boromir alive, neither Merry nor Pippin mourning a liege lord, Gandalf in gray, and so on. I can’t figure out why almost nobody else is guessing the same except a preexisting animus to put everything in the least charitable or even useful light.

I love the current D&D mix of species and classes and all. Feels more like a bunch of the stuff I was reading in the ‘70s and definitely more to my taste than old-time fantasy RPG norms.

I’m not very likely to read it. But that’s just because I have a very long backlog of new-to-me books and some desired rereading. I’m seldom interested in YA characters just because sick not young to anybody except 94-year-old Mom these days. I’m significantly more likely to read it than J. Random YA Fantasy, and I wish it well.

 

[SteveC]

On the other hand, there are multiple cool Dracula-derived novels that have come out in recent years, including several where Mina goes on to be a vampire herself. Other than the fact that I don't think anyone is an elf or plays a cleric, that scratches a lot of the same itches for me.

Oh sure! I just have a particular soft spot for Ravenloft novels. It's a weakness. Maybe my equivalent to getting an invite to Hogwartz is to get an invitation to dinner with Strahd.

 

[Libertad]

I kind of like how 3 out of the 5 races are the kinds typically chosen by players who want an edgy PC with a dark past. May not be classically gothic, but on the other hand they are close to choices I'd see for people hearing that the DM wants to run a horror/dark fantasy campaign.

 

[humble minion]

This looks bad, as have all of the recent D&D tie-in novels. I will admit I haven't read any of them so I could be wrong. Am I secretly missing out?

I'm part-way through the Spelljammer one. It's ok, but it's a bit on the younger side of young adult for my personal preference.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

The recent Spelljammer novel has a free audiobook preview if anyone's interested. Here's a link, reading starts at 17 seconds in:

Spelljammer: Memory's Wake free preview

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There is a thing we also should remember. One of the most important elements of the D&D franchise is the spirit of camaraderie, about a group with radically different traits and personalities but working together like a team. Here this a clear difference comparing with other previous Ravenloft, or most of horror, novels.

Stephen King's "It" whose main characters are "the losers club" is a example of a group with a relatively high survival rate to be horror fiction.

* Now I am thinking after the "shatering" of the core domains (you can blame Rex Azalin's machinations, or Vecna) some domains weren't really disintigrated but "sent" to other site, creating something like a reboot of "Ghostwalk" setting. It would be like dark domains without a dark lord, a mixture of post-apocalypse and failed state.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I haven’t (of course) read this, and to be honest I’m unlikely to. But I’m going to offer an old-ish school defence of it from a ravenloft point of view.

First, we have a group of PCs pulled into Ravenloft by the Mists. This is of course classic Ravenloft, none of that stuff with native inhabitants of the Core (which I loved and was my preferred way of doing things, btw). There is absolutely nothing inconsistent with even old-school Ravenloft here. Even back in the old days, PCs were assumed to be pulled into the mists from another setting. These days that setting is quite likely to be tiefling-heavy Exandria or similar, but back in the day, you reckon Ravenloft parties weren’t filled with overpowered bladesinger elves from FRs ‘mooooore elf sub races!!!’ phase, or annoying kender or weirdos from Spelljammer? Hell, TSR themselves forcibly shoved Dark Sun into ravenloft, so you could play a mul or thri-keen there too!

Secondly, I kinda like how the blurb calls out the main character’s character flaws. Prideful, embittered, etc. Experiencing the consequences of your own flaws, your own sins is of course CLASSIC Gothic and classic Ravenloft, an aspect that the 5e iteration completely abandoned, to my sorrow. But I have hope that this book may indeed explore that aspect a little. Of course, at least one of the party needs to die or turn evil for it to be really Ravenlofty, and I suspect that won’t happen.

But I think this might not quite be as much of a desecration as some are perhaps expecting.

Ravenloft novels were always in a bit of a weird place, canon-wise, with the RPG writers never seemingly doing much with anything revealed within (except the Kargatane), but this doesn't look any different to the general mishandling of the setting under Wizards of the Coast so I'm not going to really worry about it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I kind of like how 3 out of the 5 races are the kinds typically chosen by players who want an edgy PC with a dark past. May not be classically gothic, but on the other hand they are close to choices I'd see for people hearing that the DM wants to run a horror/dark fantasy campaign.

Which no doubt means the Sunny Human is the real Anakin.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I am remembering an old TV serie from the end of 80s, Friday 13th: the Serie (without any link to Jasoon Voorhees's saga) where the main characters had to recover a collection of cursed objects. There were victims in each episode, but not too violent, I guess +13y rating. I mean it was relatively close to Ravenloft style.

Friday the 13th: The Series - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

* Ravenloft is the land of curses, but we should avoid te abuse of undeads and these will stop to be so dreadful. It is not a Call of Duty zombies mode.

* Today the manga franchises, for example Dandadan or Tokyo Ghoul, may be a too strong influence for the new generation of players. And some players could want "exotic" crunch like simbiont crafts.

* Ravenloft can't be only killing the monster of the week, or breaking the curse of the week.

* It would be fun if some players wanted to reuse the "crunch" of Ghostwalk for their Ravenloft game.