The Perfect Halloween Romp?

It’s September, the leaves are thinking about turning colors here in New England, the Patriots are starting another mediocre season of football without Tom Brady, and we are all starting to think about Halloween! Spooky season: time to scare up the ghosts, brew up a potion and scare up a party to do run through D&D’s penultimate haunted house, Death House.

Death House: the first-level mini-adventure introduction for the Curse of Strahd campaign is designed to introduce players to the Ravenloft setting, set the tone for the rest of the story and advance players from level 1 to the recommended level 3 to start Curse of Strahd.

One of the first questions I asked myself when looking at this module was: “Who in their right mind would go into a place called Death House?” The answer, obviously, is nobody! Unless it’s Halloween and it fits the theme of the season. Right?

Honestly, though, if you’re planning to run Death House, the first thing I would recommend that you do is stop calling it Death House in front of your players. From now on, it’s Durst Manor. The Durst family are (or were?) the owners of the famed haunted house on the eastern edge of town and it is their legacy that haunts the home and makes for such a great adventure. And your players are more likely to go into a house called Durst Manor than a place called Death House, right?

Finding a Party

My son has taken a shine to playing D&D recently – we started a long-term remote campaign we’re calling Voxels & Valor with his out-of-state cousins earlier this year – and has been excited to play with some of his classmates, sixth graders, who have recently also started showing interest in playing. I recently had a conversation with one of the dads and it turns out he played a bit back in the 1980s but hadn’t rolled dice in several years. He expressed that he and his kids might be interested in throwing something together in the future.

Just this week I was thinking about a good one-shot campaign to maybe do with the out-of-staters – something to break out of the current campaign for a bit. I wanted something themed for Halloween but didn’t want something that would take us away from the main campaign for too long. I was looking at Curse of Strahd thinking I could maybe do the first bit of it, but with the non-linear way it’s written, it would be difficult to make a short jaunt to Barovia enjoyable. In my reading, though, I saw Death House in the Appendix and loved it!

After reading it I decided that it lends itself better to an in-person setting than a remote one and, so, I reached out to see of my son’s friend’s dad was still interested in playing. I said I had a cool Halloween-themed short campaign – three or four sessions, depending on how fast they moved through it). I quickly had a five-player party – my son, of course, him and his three children. I warned him regarding the content to make sure the kids wouldn’t have any issues and now they’re ready to be terrorized by the Dursts in Barovia.

Next, read my post about how I adapted Death House to fit my campaign.