Hey there! As Halloween is around the corner I want to run a Halloween one shot with my friends and I found the story and world of Curse of Strahd perfect for a theme. Is it possible to take elements and some story from CoS and play a one shot or should just home brew an adventure? I’m only asking because this might be a good transition point as a DM to move from one shots into a campaign. Thanks again!
It depends on what you are looking for. CoS by itself is a large campaign. However, you could draw on various pieces if you want to run them as a one shot.
Some options could be -
All of these will need some modifications or player motivation to complete in one session ...
For low level 1-3 - run the Death House starting adventure. Maybe modify it to add some more spookiness but it already has ghosts, animated armor and some other stuff in the basement (though you could change the basement creatures to be more Halloween related.
For high levels you could run Castle Ravenloft. However, this is large and if you want to do it as a one shot you would have to give the players motivation to speed run it and ignore various areas. The Castle can have a lot of encounters and just clearing the catacombs in a campaign can take several sessions so you'd have to structure it to keep the players focused on taking out the head vampire and not investigating every part of the castle.
There are several other pieces that can be used as independent adventures though it is hard to say if they would fit as a "one-shot". The werewolf tribe (werewolves), Baba Lysaga (witch and animated hut - very nasty), Argynvostholt (undead revenants) could all be options - adjust the encounters to fit the party and the theme - add more horror related creatures as needed for the Halloween theme.
There are a few articles that have been published that have this very thing in mind. I cannot find the links right now, but IIRC the names are Strahd Must Die Tonight, Strahd Must Die Again and Again and Again, and Strahd Must Die IN SPACE.
Each of these is effectively a dungeon crawl of Castle Ravenloft with a real world timer dictating how long the party has to find and defeat Strahd (usually 4 hours).
The only issue is if your goal is to transition into eventually running this campaign, the one shot risks spoiling parts of the biggest dungeon of the entire module
Edit: Found a link to Strahd Must Die in Space which includes links to the other two that I mentioned
Hey there! As Halloween is around the corner I want to run a Halloween one shot with my friends and I found the story and world of Curse of Strahd perfect for a theme. Is it possible to take elements and some story from CoS and play a one shot or should just home brew an adventure? I’m only asking because this might be a good transition point as a DM to move from one shots into a campaign. Thanks again!
It depends on what you are looking for. CoS by itself is a large campaign. However, you could draw on various pieces if you want to run them as a one shot.
Some options could be -
All of these will need some modifications or player motivation to complete in one session ...
For low level 1-3 - run the Death House starting adventure. Maybe modify it to add some more spookiness but it already has ghosts, animated armor and some other stuff in the basement (though you could change the basement creatures to be more Halloween related.
For high levels you could run Castle Ravenloft. However, this is large and if you want to do it as a one shot you would have to give the players motivation to speed run it and ignore various areas. The Castle can have a lot of encounters and just clearing the catacombs in a campaign can take several sessions so you'd have to structure it to keep the players focused on taking out the head vampire and not investigating every part of the castle.
There are several other pieces that can be used as independent adventures though it is hard to say if they would fit as a "one-shot". The werewolf tribe (werewolves), Baba Lysaga (witch and animated hut - very nasty), Argynvostholt (undead revenants) could all be options - adjust the encounters to fit the party and the theme - add more horror related creatures as needed for the Halloween theme.
There are a few articles that have been published that have this very thing in mind. I cannot find the links right now, but IIRC the names are Strahd Must Die Tonight, Strahd Must Die Again and Again and Again, and Strahd Must Die IN SPACE.
Each of these is effectively a dungeon crawl of Castle Ravenloft with a real world timer dictating how long the party has to find and defeat Strahd (usually 4 hours).
The only issue is if your goal is to transition into eventually running this campaign, the one shot risks spoiling parts of the biggest dungeon of the entire module
Edit: Found a link to Strahd Must Die in Space which includes links to the other two that I mentioned
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