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.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Ravenloft runs differently to Ravenloft.

There are many ways to run a game of D&D, irrespective of setting.

Yes. I find it weird Ravenloft fans are so up the arms to preserve this nebulous ONE TRUE WAY to play Ravenloft, that I'm begining to think never existed, meanwhile Planescape fans will identify how different the setting is in various editions and then say these can all be run even next to one another, because "Sigil is a big city".

I have mixed feelings about KotBR, but Soth in the original Dragonlance Chronicles was absolutely 100% classic Gothic horror character, even though he happened to appear in a high-fantasy romantic melodrama.

Considering who is he directly based off, is Darth Vader now a gothic horror character?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Considering who is he directly based off, is Darth Vader now a gothic horror character

It wouldn’t be difficult to write a gothic horror novel featuring Darth Vader. It’s about atmosphere and tone, you can do it with pretty much any setting or characters. Alien is widely considered gothic horror.

Vader has the tragic backstory sorted.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ironically, the rules of D&D do not reflect that vibe in any iteration of the game. Ravenloft is humanocentric but puts no restrictions on race selections, indeed since it pulls from many different D&D worlds it has a high chance of pulling anything and everything. It's lower magic, but aside from some moderations to specific schools and a few class feature alerted, the game is as magical as any other D&D setting. You still have wizards throwing fireballs and cleric's healing hit points. That is as true in the Black Box as it is in VRGR.

I have a feeling we are probably not going to see eye to eye on this front. These things are both handled by mechanics and setting to different extents. It is still the D&D magic system, but I find the changes greatly impact the level of magic in the campaign and the feel of play (especially if you compare it to Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance). And the humancentric aspect is baked into the setting details and into the mechanical modifiers to demi-humans reaction rolls and CHR.

The low magic is also part of the game, as treasure is cut in half and it is specifically says magical items are less frequent. I would also argue that changes to spells are significant, particularly how it impacts things like divination and summoning and necromancy (which also applies to magic items). I wouldn't be quick to dismiss these changes. And the lists of changes aren't comprehensive, the GM is expected to extrapolate from those listed changes. Yes you do have fireballs and healing. I never said it was no magic, just low magic when compared to forgotten realms or dragonlance.

On frequency of treasure and magic items are handled very differently as well:

So right away, the possibility of hiring a healer or going to a magic shop is just not as present in the setting. And even magic items from encounters are rare and expected to fit the situation. They still exist and it is up to the GM ultimately how this is handled, but I have played in and run enough Ravenloft campaigns to say, in all the ones I have been in it feels much lower magic than the standard D&D fantasy settings. Again, I am not saying it isn't D&D or that it deals with magic the way Call of Cthulhu. They are creating a version of D&D that does gothic horror (and this is really the source of a lot of debate you have over how much fantasy to have in the setting during its initial run).

Ironically, Domains of Dread tried the hardest to enforce those flavor points in chargen with higher stat requirements to playing a demihuman, the banning of paladin, bard and druid, and the introduction of four new classes (avenger, anchorite, arcanist, g*psy) that were way toned down magically. (The problem was, they were presented next to fairly unchanged fighters, clerics, mages and thieves which were all more powerful than the Ravenloft specific classes. And it takes a lot to say a 2e thief is powerful compared to anything!). But even still, you could play a dwarf cleric or elf mage in Ravenloft natively and you would be 98% equal to a Greyhawk character of the same race and class.

The point about races is less about mechanical enforcements. But honestly the changes to racial requirements in DoD was one of the things it did well (I may prefer the black box but DoD did have its strengths and excelled in some areas: though personally I wasn't a big fan of the new classes).

But again it is largely the setting and the reaction rolls. There is incentive to not play demihumans, people can choose to do so. However they will be doing so in a world where demihumans are rare and in a world that doesn't look like your standard fantasy setting when it comes to races. So whether you feel the mechanics sufficiently encourage it or not, the setting is described as human centric and that is what the players will see as they explore it.

Which is why I felt mechanics don't matter nearly as much as some people say. If Ravenloft was supposed to be a humanocentric, low magic world, it would have looked more like Masque of the Red Death where humanity was the only option and magic was heavily nerfed (limited options, long casting times, chance of corruption). But it's just normal D&D options, most unaltered, save for a few gotcha changes to make sure magic doesn't solve the plot instantly. Everything else is tone and world building.

Not everything requires mechanical buttressing. I think by and large, issues around race in the setting can be handled well in setting. I don't mind a player here or there being an elf, as long as the overall feel of the setting is this a place where you don't generally have the wide assortment of Tolkien races everywhere. But on the other stuff, I think the mechanics are huge. Powers Checks, Altered Magic, Fear and Horror Checks, Curses, The way monsters are handled, the way domain lords function, etc these all massively impact feel and tone of play. Again no one here is not saying Ravenloft isn't D&D. Part of why I like Ravenloft and even though I enjoyed Masque of the Red Death didn't play it as much as teh demiplane, is D&D has a very fucntional and gameable core chassis. What the 2E settings showed us was you can tweak that chassis without losing its essence, to make other genres of play possible. I would say both Ravenloft and Dark Sun are excellent examples of that. Now YMMV. But I played Ravenloft to death so I know how well it works for me, and how different the setting ends up feeling because of the mechanics (and I was reading a ton of gothic literature during that period so I think I had a good sense of how well it was achieving its gothic aims: obviously they may not have done that for you or to your taste, but I felt it was just the right balance of the core D&D system and gothic)

 

[Not a Decepticon]

It wouldn’t be difficult to write a gothic horror novel featuring Darth Vader. It’s about atmosphere and tone, you can do it with pretty much any setting or characters. Alien is widely considered gothic horror.

Vader has the tragic backstory sorted.

I'm pretty sure no one would take it seriously if you tried to put out a gothic horror book with Vader. Nor would Vader's presence on the cover indicate it's a gothic horror.

I have a feeling we are probably not going to see eye to eye on this front. These things are both handled by mechanics and setting to different extents. It is still the D&D magic system, but I find the changes greatly impact the level of magic in the campaign and the feel of play (especially if you compare it to Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance). And the humancentric aspect is baked into the setting details and into the mechanical modifiers to demi-humans reaction rolls and CHR.

The low magic is also part of the game, as treasure is cut in half and it is specifically says magical items are less frequent. I would also argue that changes to spells are significant, particularly how it impacts things like divination and summoning and necromancy (which also applies to magic items). I wouldn't be quick to dismiss these changes. And the lists of changes aren't comprehensive, the GM is expected to extrapolate from those listed changes. Yes you do have fireballs and healing. I never said it was no magic, just low magic when compared to forgotten realms or dragonlance.

On frequency of treasure and magic items are handled very differently as well:

View attachment 385337

View attachment 385338

So right away, the possibility of hiring a healer or going to a magic shop is just not as present in the setting. And even magic items from encounters are rare and expected to fit the situation. They still exist and it is up to the GM ultimately how this is handled, but I have played in and run enough Ravenloft campaigns to say, in all the ones I have been in it feels much lower magic than the standard D&D fantasy settings. Again, I am not saying it isn't D&D or that it deals with magic the way Call of Cthulhu. They are creating a version of D&D that does gothic horror (and this is really the source of a lot of debate you have over how much fantasy to have in the setting during its initial run).



The point about races is less about mechanical enforcements. But honestly the changes to racial requirements in DoD was one of the things it did well (I may prefer the black box but DoD did have its strengths and excelled in some areas: though personally I wasn't a big fan of the new classes).

But again it is largely the setting and the reaction rolls. There is incentive to not play demihumans, people can choose to do so. However they will be doing so in a world where demihumans are rare and in a world that doesn't look like your standard fantasy setting when it comes to races. So whether you feel the mechanics sufficiently encourage it or not, the setting is described as human centric and that is what the players will see as they explore it.


Not everything requires mechanical buttressing. I think by and large, issues around race in the setting can be handled well in setting. I don't mind a player here or there being an elf, as long as the overall feel of the setting is this a place where you don't generally have the wide assortment of Tolkien races everywhere. But on the other stuff, I think the mechanics are huge. Powers Checks, Altered Magic, Fear and Horror Checks, Curses, The way monsters are handled, the way domain lords function, etc these all massively impact feel and tone of play. Again no one here is not saying Ravenloft isn't D&D. Part of why I like Ravenloft and even though I enjoyed Masque of the Red Death didn't play it as much as teh demiplane, is D&D has a very fucntional and gameable core chassis. What the 2E settings showed us was you can tweak that chassis without losing its essence, to make other genres of play possible. I would say both Ravenloft and Dark Sun are excellent examples of that. Now YMMV. But I played Ravenloft to death so I know how well it works for me, and how different the setting ends up feeling because of the mechanics (and I was reading a ton of gothic literature during that period so I think I had a good sense of how well it was achieving its gothic aims: obviously they may not have done that for you or to your taste, but I felt it was just the right balance of the core D&D system and gothic)

If you have to put out so much work into forcing d&d to be the grimdark setting you want it to be, you should really just play Warhammer Fantasy, which is built for this from the bottoms up.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It wouldn’t be difficult to write a gothic horror novel featuring Darth Vader. It’s about atmosphere and tone, you can do it with pretty much any setting or characters. Alien is widely considered gothic horror.

Vader has the tragic backstory sorted.

Vader definitely has a haunting presence. I always get Don Giovanni vibes from Vader for some reason (that might just be the way Amadeus handled it makes me make that connection). Interestingly George Lucas said not too long ago he had intended the original trilogy to be shot like a silent movie. I know he says a lot of things, so take with a grain of salt. But I can kind of see his physical mannerisms resembling old silent horror movies like Phantom of the Opera or Nosferatu. However he is also a space samurai so a bit of a mixed bag of tropes.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I


If you have to put out so much work into forcing d&d to be the grimdark setting you want it to be, you should really just play Warhammer Fantasy, which is built for this from the bottoms up.

1) I don't like warhammer and I am not a fan of grim dark. 2) I like ravenloft because it blends D&D with gothic and I think it doesn an exceptional job with its mechanical choices. My go-tos when I didn't want that were usually Call of Cthulhu or Orrorsh for TORG. These days I tend to play Ravenloft once a year as a special treat in a short campaign and run my own horror games (which are themselves built from the ground up for the kind of horror I want).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm pretty sure no one would take it seriously if you tried to put out a gothic horror book with Vader. Nor would Vader's presence on the cover indicate it's a gothic horror.

They have already released zombie horror with stormtroopers on the cover, and it was pretty successful. No one struggled to take it seriously.

And you are either completely missing the point of what makes something gothic horror or being deliberately contrary. Put Vader in a dark shadowy geigeresque spaceship and all but the most obtuse would get the idea.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Somebody wants to feel Ravenlof like when you are listening Nightwish, but others would rather Within Temptation.


The lore wants the magic to be nerfed, but the players would rather to be overpowered.


I swear to you, the first time I listened "Ice of Queen" by Within Temptation I thought in Ravenloft, because there is a character, Jezra Wagner, "the ice queen" from my Ravenloft monster compedium.

The demography of the different species has changed with the new edition. Now there are dragonborns, tielflings, goliaths..

* Darth Vader and lord Sorth share the trope of fallen knight.

 

[Remathilis]

They have already released zombie horror with stormtroopers on the cover, and it was pretty successful. No one struggled to take it seriously.

I read Death Troopers and it's (prequel). I struggled to take them seriously, but they were still fun.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Considering who is he directly based off, is Darth Vader now a gothic horror character?

Anakin absolutely is from his point of view, thought not in the stories he appears in.

A man corrupted by a mentor into obsessing so hard over the love of his life that his action lead to her dramatic death, separates him from his children, and turns him into a monster his son must then defeat.