Who doesn’t love a Halloween one-shot? Players get to roll up fun, monster-hunting characters and Dungeon Masters get to try to scare the living bejeesus out of their players. It’s a win-win! But, writing a one-shot can be a significant commitment, what with conceptualizing the story, fleshing out the locations and characters, finding monsters to run, and creating maps.

So, in order to expedite your Halloween one-shot, here’s a homebrew one-shot crafted from four chapters of fifth edition’s famous gothic horror adventure, Curse of Strahd!

• Adventure Introduction
• Werewolves in the Mist
• Van Richten’s Tower
• Werewolf Den

Trigger warning: This Werewolves in the Mist storyline of Curse of Strahd contains implied violence against children and traumatized children.

Make Prep Easier With Maps!

All maps and creatures from Curse of Strahd are now in Maps, and a new top-down layout of Castle Ravenloft is also available!

With D&D Beyond’s Maps tool, Master-tier subscribers can quickly create in-game maps from the sourcebooks they own on D&D Beyond and populate them with creature and player tokens.

Adventure Introduction

Artist: Jedd Chevrier

In this homebrew adventure, the players will be tasked with dealing with a pack of werewolves that have been attacking a village and stealing children. While it uses information from Curse of Strahd, it is meant to be self-contained. So, for the sake of brevity, details surrounding the domain of Barovia and its ruler, Count Strahd von Zarovich, are ignored.

This adventure takes 3-4 hours and mainly focuses on the Van Richten’s Tower and Werewolf Den locations presented in Curse of Strahd. It is appropriate for a 6th- or 7th-level party of 4-5 players. 6th-level parties may find this adventure particularly hard, but it's the suggested level if you want to have a real risk of a character death.

Werewolves in the Mist

Artist: Conceptopolis

This adventure starts by using the Werewolves in the Mist hook from Chapter 1. This gives characters everything they need to frame the adventure:

• What’s going on? Werewolves are emerging from the mist, attacking villagers, and kidnapping children.
• What’s the mission? Stop the werewolves and save the kids.
• Where do they go? To the Misty Forest 30 miles east of Daggerford (or whatever city they’re currently nearby).

The only thing that remains is, “What’s the reward?” You can tailor this specifically to the characters, keeping in mind that Daggerford is a small farming village, but who doesn’t like rolling for a good, old-fashioned treasure hoard?

Faction and Non-Faction Characters

This hook assumes your players belong to one of the five Forgotten Realms factions featured in Adventurers League: Harpers, Order of the Gauntlet, Emerald Enclave, Lord’s Alliance, and Zhentarim. Feel free to cut any faction-specific information bogging down the introduction to the one-shot.

One thing to include is the bulleted list under the Lord’s Alliance and the silvered weapons provided by the Harpers. You can make the bulleted list more applicable to the one-shot with this adjusted version instead of the one presented in Curse of Strahd:

• The werewolf pack has almost a dozen members. The leader of the pack is a man named Kiril.
• The werewolves worship a deity called Mother Night.
• A legendary monster hunter resides in a tower through the Misty Forest who will have more information on where to find and how to kill the beasts, though he hasn’t been heard from in some time.

The players are now set to leave! Read them the boxed text under Welcome to Barovia, and let’s get to some monster hunting!

A Note on Scale

Because this adventure trims down the contents of Curse of Strahd so drastically, the Map of Barovia included with the adventure will be too big for your purposes. Seeing as the adventure primarily takes place in the northwestern portion, you could crop out a section with the locations V and Z.

Van Richten’s Tower

Artist: Francois Beauregard

Now that the party has been presented with their mission and entered the quest area, the players will be headed to Van Richten’s Tower to find more information on the werewolves.

Travel to the Tower

The Areas of Barovia (A-I) section in Chapter 2 has some great tools to help establish the atmosphere as your players travel to the tower. The boxed text in areas A and C is recommended to be used, and the dire wolves in Svalich Woods are a good encounter to break up travel and exposition with some combat.

If the players investigate Dalvan’s body, exclude the letter he’s carrying or make it say something about getting help from other towns with the werewolf situation.

Arriving at the Tower

The tower environment can be run pretty much as-is with one exception: In this one-shot, we’re working under the assumption that Ezmerelda isn’t in the picture. Though, you can reflavor her wagon to be van Richten’s stash of monster hunting gear.

If the party manages to get inside the wagon without being blown up, exclude the map of Barovia and give the players the werewolf’s stat block and accompanying information instead of a charred page from van Richten’s journal.

If the party destroys the tower (either by the lightning trap or some other way), they can find the information they’re looking for in 1d8 + 2 hours of digging.

Exploring the Tower

As the tower looks abandoned, the party should be encouraged to infiltrate and explore the tower, looking for any helpful information van Richten would have left behind.

When they reach the top of the tower, the players will find a map that notes the location of the werewolf den (a couple of miles to the west).

Ignore the Fortunes of Ravenloft section and Ezmerelda’s Retreat in this chapter. You can also decide whether to include the severed head of Yan, but if you do, adjust what he knows to fit the contained nature of the one-shot.

Pack Attack

This is another good encounter to run, as it presents the werewolves as a threat. Regardless of what happens at the tower, when the party is getting ready to leave, have the werewolf pack approach them with hostile intent.

Seeing as the number of enemies in this encounter is a bit excessive for a 6th- or 7th-level party, I’d tone it down to:

• 6th-Level Party: 3 werewolves and 4 wolves
• 7th-Level Party: 4 werewolves and 6 wolves

I’d also exclude Kiril (the werewolves’ leader) from this encounter and instead have him waiting back at the den. The werewolves in this encounter could say things like, “Let’s bring this fresh meat back to Kiril,” to reaffirm the name of their leader to the party.

If, for some reason, the party missed the location of the werewolf den in the tower, a captured werewolf can provide the location.

Werewolf Den

Artist: Olga Drebas

With the location of the werewolf den and some monster slaying under their belt, it’s time to head off for the final location of the one-shot: A mini dungeon crawl through the werewolves' hideout.

Whether you want to include the pack’s politics in this chapter is up to you. It could provide an interesting way to allow the players to talk their way into an advantageous scenario, but it also might make the session draw on longer.

Approaching the Den

If the party still feels fresh after their adventures, you could throw the remaining werewolves and wolves from the Pack Attack encounter at them as they roll up to the den. Otherwise, just have them arrive at the Cave Mouth without further harassment.

Navigating the Den

The den can be run pretty much as-is, depending on what you want to do with Kiril and the pack’s politics.

Depending on whether your player’s characters are long-term or one-off characters, you may want to exclude the treasure in Z7. If they are long-term characters and you want to introduce an exciting curveball to your campaign, Mother Night’s curse is a delightfully evil way to inflict lasting ramifications on any greedy pilferers.

You can also ignore the Leader of the Pack event, as Kiril will be in the den.

If you feel like your party is having too easy of a time or if you want Kiril to be a formidable final boss, consider pulling traits or legendary actions from the loup garou stat block.

Rescuing the Children

Rescuing Kellen and the kids in Z7 is easy once the werewolves have been dealt with. But curing Kellen of his lycanthropy might be more difficult if your party doesn’t have access to greater restoration or remove curse.

Once the kids have been rescued from the cave, they can be taken back to Daggerford (or the city where the characters were given the quest). If the party dealt with the werewolves, this trip is uneventful. But, if Kiril and the werewolves are still alive, you can use the applicable information in the Die Kinder event to help resolve what happens.

Happy Hunting!

There you have it! A spooky one-shot that can make your players feel like bodacious monster hunters while providing you the opportunity to rip them to shreds.

Curse of Strahd is a sprawling adventure that requires commitment from both the Dungeon Master and the players to complete. But, with a few tweaks, you can easily split it up into multiple episodic adventures that can be run at your leisure.

For more one-shots based on Curse of Strahd, check out Strahd Must Die Tonight!, which goes really well with the new top-down view of Castle Ravenloft available to Master-tier subscribers in D&D Beyond’s Maps tool!

Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his girlfriend, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.