My First Thoughts after Reading the Module

Death House is great as written, and I almost used it straight out of the book, but, like most DMs, I wanted to make it my own; you know, add a little twist of me into the mix. Besides, I have the feeling that my son doesn’t think I can be scary, so I took that as a personal challenge.

I love the idea of a haunted house – I have loved them since I was a kid – and to use one in D&D was a dream come true for me. The hidden details in the Durst house: the wood paneling everywhere in the house that reveals sinister secrets on closer inspection; the lack of encounters on the first two floors. All these things make for a terrific opportunity to build suspense and drama and just make the place creepier. The armor and jump scare of the broom are great little things to keep the players on their toes. It also gives new players a chance to get accustomed to role play and combat mechanics before getting into the real heavy stuff later in the module. It also sets the scene well and builds anticipation, dragging the characters along for the ride.

My Party

With the sole exception of my son, I have never played with any of the members of this group before. Two of the players, my son’s friend and his sister have never played before. Next is their dad who played many years ago in the AD&D era but hasn’t played fifth edition before. The last member is another daughter who, I understand, has played before.

Based on this information, I decided that I’m going to treat this as an introduction to D&D for everyone. My son won’t mind, he’ll be playing with his friend and, if I know him like I think I do, he’ll help by showing game mechanics to the others alongside me.

The Setup

There are a lot of tools out there today that make your job easier as a DM: D&D Beyond, Roll20, Dungeon Masters Guild, the list goes on and on, and in my other campaign, Voxels & Valor, I went in all-in on digital assets because we are playing with a remote group in another part of the country. Check out my article on what I use to manage remote sessions. For this short campaign I decided to keep it as simple as I could. Also, the theme for Death House is gothic horror and I think that it requires a more intimate setting to help set that theme and all those screens would ruin the atmosphere.

We’ve scheduled the sessions for Friday evenings, so I’m going to turn the lights off, light a bunch of candles to give that gothic, haunted feeling. Minimal screens, eerie soundtrack – I found this playlist on Spotify created just for Death House that I think will work well.

I also plan on asking if one of the players would volunteer to be the party’s cartographer so they can create a map as they go. I like this idea because I found in my other campaign where we use digital maps, the players treat it more like a video game – moving their characters around the screen, waiting for the next piece of the map to be uncovered – than a reference point. I think this method will be better for player immersion.

I will be using printed paper maps for combat. I don’t own any minis, so I will not be using them in this campaign. I think I’ll wind up using 1-inch washers with printed pictures taped or glued to them. Check out my tutorial on how to make these tokens for your game.

I also do not plan to use a DM screen for this group. I think that the horror genre needs to be more intimate and throwing up the screen defeats that purpose. Fortunately, I have a countertop behind me where I can keep additional notes and stuff, but, on the table in front of me I intend to only have a dice tray, and a notebook. I’ve also learned that I like to be mobile when I talk. If I’m playing an NPC, I’ll stand up and walk to a character I’m talking to; in combat I’ll act out an attack.

I’ll let you know how this works out.

The Changes I Did Make

First, like I said in my post about choosing this adventure: who in their right mind would enter a place called Death House? The haunted manse that is the subject of the adventure is (was?) owned by the Durst family. This is Durst Manor, a much less foreboding name for a place that the party is being asked to enter and save a child.

The Hook

Next, I needed to pick an adventure hook, a way to get my players from Faerûn to Barovia. After reading them all, I chose the Mysterious Visitors hook, primarily because it sounded like a fun way to introduce the players to each other and give them a chance to stretch their wings with roleplay. I plan to hand each of them an invitation to dine with the Duchess when they arrive for the session. Once we begin, I will describe their entry to the Keep and seat them at dinner. I’ll give them a chance to make some small talk at dinner, hopefully get them to roleplay a little, go around the dinner table and make introductions, describe their characters, normal icebreaker stuff.

Dinner

After dinner, the Duchess will ask them to follow her to the drawing room where she will deliver her request to evict the visitors from their campsite outside of town.

The Dancing Fire

As far as the Vistani camp goes, I made a few minor adjustments. When Stanimir tells the story about Strahd and the curse that has befallen him, I will have him gesturing and throwing things into the fire to cause it to flare-up and make the shadows dance. What he’s really doing is casting a ritual teleportation spell that will take the party to Barovia while they sleep. While narrating the story, I plan to have the party make a group wisdom saving throw (DC 20), more for dramatic reasons than anything else, to see whether they fall under the effects of Stanimir’s suggestion spell.

Stanimir suggests that the party stay and celebrate with them for the remainder of the evening. I plan to imply to the party that they feel compelled to stay in the wake of delivering Lady Morwen’s message. When they bed down for the night the spell will take effect and transport them to Barovia by the time they wake up.

The House Location

It didn’t make sense to me to have the house in the village on a street that the party might not even go down, so I decided to place the house outside of the village of Barovia, but inside the Gates, along the Svalich Road. This way I can all but guarantee that the party will pass it on their journey.

I’ll have the party wake up in their camp on the side of Old Svalich Road outside the Gates. Regardless of which way they choose to go, they will wind up heading west toward the Gates of Barovia. I know this sounds like a railroad-y (and it kind of is) but using the mists and dim light that is characteristic of Barovia, I feel that it is safe enough to say that they don’t really know which way is which and/or that they got turned around in the fog.

After they pass through the gates, I’ll let them wander along the Road using the Wolves to keep them loosely there if I need to, for an hour or two (three or four random encounter checks) until the come upon the corpse of Dalvan Olensky and find Kolyan Indirovich’s Letter which should hopefully give them the sense that something is amiss.

After finding Dalvan, I’ll have the wolves continue to herd them west along the Road until dusk when I’ll have Rose and Thorn appear out of the mist behind them and ask for help.

Check out the session notes for the Death House campaign.