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]

Exactly. Ravenloft was TSR's answer to the rise of Call of Cthulhu RPG, expecting it to be a similar experience to vanilla D&D defeats the purpose in my view, but Crawford and his "D&D is D&D" philosophy leads to the commodification and flavourless goop that are 5E settings.

It wasn't. It was TSR's answer to World of Darkness.

The classic blunder most people make about Ravenloft is assuming the players can't win. That has never been the case. Heroes win in horror all the time. Final Girl is a trope for a reason. And Ravenloft has always been fantasy inspired by horror rather than true horror. The players are supposed to defeat the vampire, even if the vampire will eventually return.

My rule of thumb is that if you are running Ravenloft as a meat grinder, you are missing the point.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes, that's why there were rule variations, something the designers of 5E resolutely refuse to consider. Playing a Ravenloft campaign should feel different to playing a Forgotten Realms campaign. It doesn't. That's the problem.

D&D is the same game regardless of setting, not a variety of different games. Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms should play similar and the difference is in tone and theme, not rules.

If you want a game where the PCs are made of tissue paper and the monsters are impossible to destroy, find another game. D&D, even Ravenloft, is about heroes fighting villains and winning, most of the time.

 

[M.L. Martin]

It wasn't. It was TSR's answer to World of Darkness.

Interesting, considering that Ravenloft launched a year before the World of Darkness.

The classic blunder most people make about Ravenloft is assuming the players can't win. That has never been the case. Heroes win in horror all the time. Final Girl is a trope for a reason. And Ravenloft has always been fantasy inspired by horror rather than true horror. The players are supposed to defeat the vampire, even if the vampire will eventually return.

My rule of thumb is that if you are running Ravenloft as a meat grinder, you are missing the point.

This is true. I can't lay hands on it, but there's a line in one of the vintage Ravenloft products about how PCs, for all their trials and tribulations, should be able to win in the end.

 

[TiQuinn]

D&D is the same game regardless of setting, not a variety of different games. Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms should play similar and the difference is in tone and theme, not rules.

If you want a game where the PCs are made of tissue paper and the monsters are impossible to destroy, find another game. D&D, even Ravenloft, is about heroes fighting villains and winning, most of the time.

Right, many horror RPGs are about making single shot PCs where level advancement or skill advancement is not a focus because PCs are more likely to die anyways because it fits the horror of that game. Ravenloft wasn’t like that. There were more intricate fear and madness rules but they weren’t supposed to be used in a way that characters couldn’t eventually defeat the Darklord.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It wasn't. It was TSR's answer to World of Darkness.

The classic blunder most people make about Ravenloft is assuming the players can't win. That has never been the case. Heroes win in horror all the time. Final Girl is a trope for a reason. And Ravenloft has always been fantasy inspired by horror rather than true horror. The players are supposed to defeat the vampire, even if the vampire will eventually return.

My rule of thumb is that if you are running Ravenloft as a meat grinder, you are missing the point.

Well D&D could be pretty deadly still, depending on on the group's style. But I get your point. I would say how deadly a Ravenloft campaign was, varied (which was true of any 2E campaign really). Not usually a meat grinder though. Even if it was a deadly adventure the GM was expected to draw things out, not handle it like a Friday the 13th film. And some parts of Ravenloft were as deadly as anything in D&D (Bluetspur, especially in the Thoughts of Darkness Module was quite harrowing in that respect). But I agree Ravenloft is not meant to be something like World of Darkness. This is why I was saying Ravenloft was not cool. White Wolf was the cool new kid in town, and Ravenloft was doing stuff that would have been considered out of fashion horror at the time.

D&D was always kind of a funky game when it comes to lethality. A lot of it boils down to what the GM throws at the party, what kind of spoken or unspoken agreement the players all have on character death, etc. In the 2E era the official rule was still that you died at 0 HP. This often meant low level PCs could get killed quite easily. I remember a ravenloft campaign where a splinter killed a mage. Obviously this wasn't an especially deadly adventure, but at that level, a character with 1 HP can be killed by just about anything (as could a severely wounded character). I also remember an AD&D session where my PC was killed by a stirge on the first round of combat in his very first fight:

 

[Bedrockgames]

Interesting, considering that Ravenloft launched a year before the World of Darkness.

I think doing a horror setting was just an obvious choice for the 2E era, with its full press on varied settings. Regardless of which one came out first, there was a strong rivalry between those two lines (and there were moments in the 90s, where it felt like Ravenloft was trying to do things to keep up with white wolf). I remember having quite the chip on my shoulder towards White Wolf, even though I was in regular Vampire campaigns

 

[TiQuinn]

Well D&D could be pretty deadly still, depending on on the group's style. But I get your point. I would say how deadly a Ravenloft campaign was, varied (which was true of any 2E campaign really). Not usually a meat grinder though. Even if it was a deadly adventure the GM was expected to draw things out, not handle it like a Friday the 13th film. And some parts of Ravenloft were as deadly as anything in D&D (Bluetspur, especially in the Thoughts of Darkness Module was quite harrowing in that respect). But I agree Ravenloft is not meant to be something like World of Darkness. This is why I was saying Ravenloft was not cool. White Wolf was the cool new kid in town, and Ravenloft was doing stuff that would have been considered out of fashion horror at the time.

D&D was always kind of a funky game when it comes to lethality. A lot of it boils down to what the GM throws at the party, what kind of spoken or unspoken agreement the players all have on character death, etc. In the 2E era the official rule was still that you died at 0 HP. This often meant low level PCs could get killed quite easily. I remember a ravenloft campaign where a splinter killed a mage. Obviously this wasn't an especially deadly adventure, but at that level, a character with 1 HP can be killed by just about anything (as could a severely wounded character). I also remember an AD&D session where my PC was killed by a stirge on the first round of combat in his very first fight:

View attachment 384815

lol what module was that from?

 

[Remathilis]

Well D&D could be pretty deadly still, depending on on the group's style. But I get your point. I would say how deadly a Ravenloft campaign was, varied (which was true of any 2E campaign really). Not usually a meat grinder though. Even if it was a deadly adventure the GM was expected to draw things out, not handle it like a Friday the 13th film. And some parts of Ravenloft were as deadly as anything in D&D (Bluetspur, especially in the Thoughts of Darkness Module was quite harrowing in that respect). But I agree Ravenloft is not meant to be something like World of Darkness. This is why I was saying Ravenloft was not cool. White Wolf was the cool new kid in town, and Ravenloft was doing stuff that would have been considered out of fashion horror at the time.

D&D was always kind of a funky game when it comes to lethality. A lot of it boils down to what the GM throws at the party, what kind of spoken or unspoken agreement the players all have on character death, etc. In the 2E era the official rule was still that you died at 0 HP. This often meant low level PCs could get killed quite easily. I remember a ravenloft campaign where a splinter killed a mage. Obviously this wasn't an especially deadly adventure, but at that level, a character with 1 HP can be killed by just about anything (as could a severely wounded character). I also remember an AD&D session where my PC was killed by a stirge on the first round of combat in his very first fight:

View attachment 384815

This was one of the great issues with 2e: a mismatch of expectations between 1e style dungeon lethality and 2e's focus on metaplot and story driven adventures. They would put you on these incredibly intricate narratives and then kill you with splinters in a door. Which is why a 2e aged, more and more "help the PCs survive" mechanics were added.

 

[Remathilis]

Right, many horror RPGs are about making single shot PCs where level advancement or skill advancement is not a focus because PCs are more likely to die anyways because it fits the horror of that game. Ravenloft wasn’t like that. There were more intricate fear and madness rules but they weren’t supposed to be used in a way that characters couldn’t eventually defeat the Darklord.

The secret is that Ravenloft is not horror, it is horror-tinged dark fantasy. If you think of Ravenloft with an eye towards fantasy tropes mixed with elements of gothic (and other) horror rather than a horror RPG, Ravenloft works great.

 

[Parmandur]

The secret is that Ravenloft is not horror, it is horror-tinged dark fantasy. If you think of Ravenloft with an eye towards fantasy tropes mixed with elements of gothic (and other) horror rather than a horror RPG, Ravenloft works great.

Yeah, I6 is not a Call or Cthulu module...it's an AD&D dinfeon crawl wirh a certain pizzazz.