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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 7791525" data-attributes="member: 6669048">Except you aren't the only target audience for the book. There are people out there who don't know anything about Ravenloft or the deep lore on Forgotten Realms. Frankly, I didn't know who anyone on the Dragon Heist cover was until it was announced as the only one I knew was Jaraxl and that wasn't how I pictured Jaraxl in my head. I still wouldn't know who they were if researching this sort of thing wasn't part of my job.The same goes for Acererak on the ToA cover - I know who Acererak is, but that's just yet another in a long line of random liches as far as I know without reading it. Is it Acererak? Azalin? Asberdies? Venca? Hell, it could be Xykon for all I know in a surprise cross-license deal.You may know who all these people are just at a glance, but the vast majority of players right now who are out there buying books weren't even born when Tomb of Horrors or Castle Ravenloft were first printed. Hell, I barely was for the former. So to say "But these characters are iconic" is only meaningful to you.Oh, and to head this one off at the pass: The Eberron book is going to be a hybrid setting book and adventure the same way Curse of Strahd was for Ravenloft and Dragon Heist was for Waterdeep and so on. So most likely, as with all of those other books, the characters on the cover are important NPCs to the novel.</blockquote>