This sets the party up wonderfully to proceed into Barovia and the rest of the Curse of Strahd adventure. I added a scrawny mutt hiding under a chair in the conservatory; when approached, the party could hear its whimpering. Stress the wrongdoings of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst, and plant the seed of putting the souls of these poor children to rest by placing their remains in the family crypts. All this can be achieved in 6-10 hours of playing. You made Rose and Thorn like Bianca and Nico DiAngelo! Use. Set in the realm of Barovia, a Domain Of Dread within Ravenloft, your players find themselves transported here and trapped. Upon escaping to the outside, the house appears as if nothing ever happened. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Quality content, cartography, and adventures for fantasy games. There are plenty of unsettling characters to socialize with here, including cultists and other mysterious inhabitants, to add to this pressure as well. This site works best with JavaScript enabled. Immediately afterward, a grinding noise (the sound of the secret passage) can be heard from the attic. As they reach the bottom landing they discern a dozen or so voices saying, over and over, "He is the Ancient. Did you like this guide? 5 Tips for Running the Death House One-Shot From Curse of Strahd, make thecombat encounter more interesting, Strahd Must Die Tonight! Not every spooky thing needs to have an explanation. Be careful when you use these, though. Add some emotion to the childrens request. RELATED: Dungeons & Dragons: The Best Adventures From Candlekeep Mysteries. Its the Durst Mansion or, if the kids are talking, our home. Nobodys going to eagerly go rushing into something called the Death House. The most vital regions are bolded. Absolutely do not show the party the image of the children in the book. Two ghosts can easily kill a level 1 party, however they are not aggressive and even if a fight starts, the two children are more likely to flee than to attack. New Movie News, Movie Trailers & upcoming Movie Reviews. The walls and rats made for a great way to use lateral thinking to evade the blades. Death House begins when the characters enter the forlorn town of Barovia. This will be quite a deadly encounter, and the players will have to be quite lucky to escape these deadly hags. However, that feels a little ham-fisted. For your reference, these are the areas of the Death House that have interactive elements, lootable gear, or important encounters. However, there is enough information provided to add your own spins to the Death House. Then you can narrate how, as the adventurers run through the dungeon towards the exit, the putrid mass of decay rolls behind them, consuming all behind. I added some handwriting font, put them on a parchment background, and they all came up well. How to D&D 29.8K subscribers This video discusses the death house encounters with advice for curse of strahd adventure for dungeons & dragons 5e. Dungeons & Dragons: The 8 Scariest Locations In Curse Of Strahd, Dungeons & Dragons: The Best Adventures From Candlekeep Mysteries, why Ravenloft is one of the best settings in D&D, just how unsettling the domains of dread can be, Story Hooks In D&D You Always See And Why They Work, Dungeons & Dragons: Ideas For Running A One-Shot, Dungeons & Dragons: The Best Online Tools For DMs. Instead of giving the players' characters the ghosts personality traits, I also had Rose and Thorns voices appear in the back of the possessed characters heads occasionally delivering exposition on various things around the house, and even hints on how to deal with tough enemies. The Dungeon Levels final encounter is with a Shambling Mound. Maybe as a specter, she now desires vengeance more than anything else and mourns for her son. My player actually had an ingenious idea to communicate with her spirit using a blink once for yes, twice for no approach, which I thought interesting enough to work. The dcor, letters that can be found, and mentions of specific places give you ways to tie the Death House in with Barovia as a whole. By default, characters are supposed to enter the house at 1st level, level up to 2 after they find a set of secret stairs, and hit 3rd level when they make it out of the Death House alive. According to the book that works, but you might rule otherwise. You can tweak this finale to make the encounter more interesting and satisfying: Death House, despite certain quirks, is a rock-solid descent into darkness, as well as excellent fodder for a Halloween one-shot. Darklords Shrine.- Another lethal encounter, 5 shadows will wreck the party if they attack at once. Copyright However they are not the real Durst children, they real ones are dead in area 20 (page 215) along with their real ghosts. They become caught in the mists and can't travel to the afterlife. Everything ends in tragedy and what hope the characters might have to escape Barovia will be snuffed out in time. The Count's Crypt. Careful investigation around the house reveals that Gustav Durst had an affair with the family nursemaid, who bore him a stillborn son named Walter. If you start at level 2, Id say have them level up to 3 before they proceed into the Dungeon Level. Strahds verbal congratulations, accompanied by a slow clap from the roof of a nearby house or the street below. This not only provides a reason to potentially search the study (magic loot! What is it? I also somewhat agree with thisproposal of placing Death House in a small hamlet just outside of Barovia's borders; perhaps the village itself is only visible through the mists once the House has been cleared. From gaming trends to the latest blockbuster anime, DualShockers keeps you ahead of the curve. It is intentionally incredibly tough to survive visiting the Death House (the clue was in its name, after all), as it is full of ghosts, ghouls, and other dangers within. Awesome article! Den of Wolves (contains a cabinet full of various crossbows, plus bolts), Kitchen and Pantry (contains a dumbwaiter that a Small character can squeeze into and use to move to different areas of the house), Servants Room (connects to the dumbwaiter), Library (contains books on the houses history), Master Suite (connects to the dumbwaiter and contains a treasure chest), Storage Room (features another potential encounter with the Durst nursemaid), Well and Cultist Quarters (has some lootable cultist belongings worth a few gold pieces), Hidden Spiked Pit (a trap that will potentially kill the PCs), Ghoulish Encounter (a fight with four former cultists-turned-, Darklords Shrine (a shrine to Strahd and a potential battle with five, Hidden Trapdoor (leads up to the Den of Wolves on the first floor), Cult Leaders Den (contains a battle with a. Honestly, few spooky things should have an explanation. However, youd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesnt put the gothic horror adventure, Curse of Strahd, at the top of their list. Set in the realm of Barovia, a Domain Of Dread within Ravenloft, your players find themselves transported here and trapped. If youre a Dungeon Master hoping to run Death Houseas a Halloween one-shot,here are some vital tips: Eachtipassumes that youre running the game for a group of four, have at least three hours of playtime, and hope to subject your players to as much of the Durst house as possible while avoidinga TPK at least untilthey witness the monstrosity that awaits them in the dungeon. Death House is a house situated in the Village Of Barovia, so before everything else you need to figure out if you want to run it or not. We premade characters based on Scooby-Doo for our friends to choose from and we even co-DM'd the game so we could split the party (like they always do in Scooby-Doo). Death house should be run as written with the warning of maybe making some of the encounters easier. Press J to jump to the feed. From the moment the party steps into the town, they'll get a great sense that nothing is right here. Please enable JavaScript to get the best experience from this site. You can have Rosavalda point that out, that they want to be where their parents are. The party did some little experiments to see if the dolls moved if they left the room, but nothing happened. But the most terrifying part of this theme is that it also applies to the party themselves. Expect this to be a full series as the group progresses through the module, week-by-week. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[728,90],'tabletopjoab_com-medrectangle-3','ezslot_19',125,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-tabletopjoab_com-medrectangle-3-0');At least in the top 3! Your email address will not be published. If/when the PCs try to leave, the children will try to possess them, not out of aggression but out of fear of abandonment. The Death House has become something of a modern classic for 5e players. What you get is impressive hi-def versions of my maps to be used in your RPG games (these have lower resolution), and the satisfaction of helping the rpg community grow bigger and stronger. Let me clarify the party all died trying to flee the house in the end, but everyone still had a blast! It is designed to introduce Curse Of Strahd, exploring its themes on a miniature scale, and is intended for level one players. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[336,280],'tabletopjoab_com-leader-3','ezslot_23',152,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-tabletopjoab_com-leader-3-0');This is a dungeon that doesnt pull punches and makes for quite the introduction to the land of Barovia! Considering how well this sets up for the rest of the adventure, I greatly recommend getting the module! Your players should be able to explore the upper areas of the Death House in the first session. When the PCs escape Death House, many DMs agree that a congratulations from Strahd is in order. . Nothing will prepare your players for what lurks inside. Thank you for this. Or an evil PC could finish off a severely hurt ally. If you already have level 3 players you can jump right into the action of Barovias encounters. Where the Death House really stands out is its use of theme. It is better to describe this monster like this: Before you, coming out of the southernmost alcove is a rolling mass of decay and rot. This is all really helpful and wish I'd seen this before I'd run DH. The mists will dictate the places the party can visit. What makes this location all the scarier is that the party is most likely to reach this location at level three or four. The nature of D&D 5e is that it is almost hilariously easier to die at lower levels than it is at higher levels even as tougher enemies appear. (If youre feeling generous, or really want your players to see the entirety of the house in a quick Halloween night of gaming, you could even run it at 3rd level.). There, in the attic of the model, were 4 dolls: each depicting the various party members. You are also setting the scene for a probably unwinnable fight. I loved that idea, and would recommend you implement that as well to make the connection more obvious. He is the Land." Its possible to have been a good person who now lives a life of fear and misery as a result of another persons evil actions. Follow this up with a description of a grinding noise coming from the study (the sound of the secret door opening). Death House is a modern Dungeons & Dragons horror classic. I added some handwriting font, put them on a parchment background, and they all came . Well cover some of the changes that I make when Im running this dungeon for my groups later in this article. The descriptions in the adventure are pretty vivid and you might be tempted to gloss over some of them (especially if you havent read ahead in the full Curse of Strahd adventure.). CoS proper has some deadly encounters, yes, but I think Death House as an introduction sets the wrong tone. Nursemaids Suite and Storage Room.- The nursemaids specter can be found in either of these locations. Secret Room.- Theres a letter by Strahd here. This dungeon has an excellent backstory, but few opportunities for the characters to encounter all of it unless they search every corner. The most important is the silvered shortsword in 25E (page 218). Their ghosts are here. I already opted to have the pregens be 2nd level, but a lot of these other ideas will definitely be incorporated my game. The true horror of this location comes from a specific event that can take place if the players are not careful. Even just traveling around Barovia can be a spooky experience. Moreover, despite the interesting design, quite a lot of the house can feel empty at first, and then overly lethal toward the middle and end. When I ran the adventure in October 2018 for Halloween, I quickly found my anxiety spiking as my unsuspecting group of 1st-leveladventurers proceeded to nearly get massacred at least five times in a row. Im really loving the halloween content this year! If you already have level 3 players you can jump right into the action of Barovia's encounters. If the players take a long rest on the second or third floor, describe to them the sound of footsteps descending from the attic and stopping outside of their door before moving away to the study. Death House is a classic haunted house tale, starting with two ghostly children pleading for help outside. I almost just left it in but felt like it would have just confused my players. Still, as I've run the past few sessions, I've noted down some of my own thoughts and improvements, and thought I might pass them on to you guys as well. Or just go to r/curseofstrahd (unless you are my players). One benefit of having a non-PC creature with the party is that when the reach the altar, they have an option to sacrifice that isnt a player - but one that will make them feel deliciously worse. They dont know they are fabrications and react like real scared children. How to Play Ravenloft in a Single Night. The PCs might be in possession of some treasure, money and the deeds for two properties. Theres a third baby in the picture in the fathers arms, Mrs. Durst looks at the baby with scorn. This kept them panicked, tense, and on their toes. Required fields are marked *. Balcony.- The animated armor can be challenging if PCs dont react properly. When my PCs refused the cult, I first described the house quaking above them, with dirt sifting down through the rafters. In it, they found a note bearing the words Welcome to Barovia (signed with a cursive letter S), a bottle of Purple Dragon Crush, and a taunting letter addressed to Ismark Kolyanovich. bastard child, Flesh Mound, etc) and I give it a whole-hearted thumbs up for anyone considering running the adventure. Perhaps she legitimately loved Gustav and hoped to free him from the cults influence. Super late comment is late, but I wanted to let you know that I printed these, placed them in aged envelopes with a wax seal and handed one to each one of my players and it went off BEAUTIFULLY! Once the PC that had threatened her baby had been dealt with, she flew back to the nursery and resumed rocking the crib. The best was when the team with Scooby, Velma, Shaggy and Fred ended up down stairs and came across a table covered in a Thanksgiving dinner and the turkey was a mimic. 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