The Curse of Strahd module for D&D 5e has manœuvred itself into the realm of classic modules, and with good reason. I still run Expedition to Castle Ravenloft myself, but I've played parts of Curse of Strahd and it's a good update of the story and setting. It starts at Level 3 though, and so the designers made an introductory adventure, called Death House, free to download. It's a haunted house adventure, and is among one of the best of its kind. I've run Death House several times, because it's that good, and this is my review of it from a games master's perspective.
This post contains spoilers for Death House as well as Curse of Strahd and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Read my review as a player if you want a spoiler-free review.
The story of Death House seems simple at first. Player characters come upon a spooky house with 2 young children standing outside its gate. The children tell the player characters that there's a monster in the basement of their house, and they ask the player characters to get rid of it. The chidren refuse to go into the house until the monster is gone.
Of course, when the player characters inevitably enter the house, they find that room after room is haunted with all manner of undead or magical monsters. To make matters worse, they find themselves somehow locked in the house.
What makes it fun to run as a module, aside from it being an irresistably classic haunted house setup, are the expert design choices.
Here are 6 reasons that Death House is a great module to run as a game master.
The inciting incident of the Death House adventure is the clear identification of a problem. It's on the first page of the module, in the text you read aloud to players:
...the girl turns to you and says, “There’s a monster in our house!”
Couldn't be simpler or clearer.
You don't get confirmation that there is a monster in the house until, I think, room 11 (on the first story balcony), but there are plenty of opportunities for jump scares up until then. It's a spooky house, devoid of life, and full of conflicting implications.
As a game master, I feel I'm usually compelled to throw in a few monsters earlier than scripted, if only to meet player character expectation (when they start beating stuffed wolves with a fireplace poker because they're convinced the wolves are going to spring to life, the only way to save them from embarrassment is to make the wolves spring to life.)
There are lots of little mysteries to solve in the house, and they all hint (some more than others) at the true horror awaiting the player characters in the basement. There's a rich story in Death House, and it's all revealed incidentally through exploration.
The model is truly one of the best implementations of exploration-as-storytelling I can think of. You don't go into the house to find out why these poor kids are stood outside in the cold, too afraid of a monster to live in their house. You don't go in to locate their parents, or to ask why the parents have locked a monster in the basement. You go in to rid the house of the monster first and foremost. That's the immediate threat, so it takes top priority. Kill the monster, save the world.
Obviously the other concerns are in the back of your mind. And sure enough, as you explore you uncover what's really been going on. The parents haven't locked a monster in the basement. The monster isn't in the house, it is the house, and the basement is a summoning circle. A story emerges not from nothing but from your own suspicions. Maybe you suspect the parents are up to no good from the start, or maybe you think they're victims of the monster in the basement, or maybe you think it's all a trap. Whatever your gut instinct is, it's the hypothesis you go into the house with. And through exploration, you test your hypothesis, and change it, and change it again, and on and on until you piece together the complete story.
If all RPG adventures were this elegantly told, we'd all have to give up our day jobs, because we wouldn't have time for anything but roleplay.
I'm as much a fan of dungeon crawls as anybody (witness my board game collection.) But I do admit that an interesting dungeon crawl is more fun than just a dungeon crawl.
For example, HeroQuest is a perfect board game but it gets even more perfect with its expansions, like Crypt of Perpectual Darkness or Keller's Keep, many of which tell a specific story that you must navigate, beat by beat, by playing through the quests. You're still kicking down doors and killing monsters, but this time you're doing it to piece together the plot.
Ignoring the story in Death House, the location itself is packed with interesting things. It doesn't fall back to magic items or silly gimmicks, it's just an actually interesting house. There's a parlour and a conservatory and bedrooms and servant quarters, and each one tells its very own story. Death House somewhat has an unfair advantage over other modules, because it's obviously a setup for an adventure in Ravenloft, so it can allude and foreshadow to Strahd, Bonegrinder, the Vistani, and whatever else. But even without those references, it's a perfectly respectable haunted house. There are minor threats, there are spectral inhabitants, tragedy, evil, and it all ramps up in the end at a supremely satisfying pace.
There are some designer tricks in this module that are highly debatable. There are at least 2 secret doors that are just magically hidden until player characters reach a specific point in the narrative. It's a classically dirty trick to prevent player characters from stumbling into areas of the dungeon that you don't want them to see yet. And you know what? I support it 100% because it works.
I know there's a camp of dungeon design that asserts everything should be available to players at all times. If players can open the locked door that leads to the big boss, and they end up having the final encounter within the first 5 minutes, then that's just how the game went. If they lost the battle, they can roll up new characters and play again. If they won the battle, then they reap the rewards and you move on to the next adventure.
But for my gaming style, and the people I play with, that's not the game. The game for us is the plot arc. If you beat every dungeon by skipping past the dungeon, then why bother dungeon crawling? Why not just set some miniatures on a battle mat and play a wargame?
Death House enforces pacing by delaying one or two key reveals to make sure that the players get to play the adventure. It's an inelegant solution to a common problem that works perfectly. I'm sure it could be abused elsewhere, but Death House is a place where it does exactly the job it needs to do.
Blatant references to Strahd and Barovia notwithstanding, the titular house very cleverly foreshadows the ultimate destination of most adventures in Ravenloft. Castle Ravenloft is itself a haunted location, both [fictionally] literally and figuratively. There are spectres and monsters in Castle Ravenloft, and there are plenty of tragic stories of familial dysfunction and abuse and betrayal hiding in its chambers and halls.
And of course, like in Death House, Castle Ravenloft has a basement (and a basement to the basement) and an attic of sorts, and hidden doors, and so on.
Death House sets the stage for Ravenloft by echoing features in Ravenloft's central location. Barovia is a gothic horror setting, so you have to expect generational stories behind the stories, and doors behind walls (or fireplaces), and passages to places meant to be forgotten.
Finally, Death House serves as a transitional space. For experienced players used to Toril or Krynn or Midgard, Death House unveils softly a gradual change in setting. For new players with only a passing knowledge of roleplaying and fantasy settings, Death House sets the stage through expert world-building and polite introductions to the types of monsters that'll be trying to kill their character for the next year.
Too often, the only obvious option for getting to Ravenloft is the mists overtake you and you wake up in Ravenloft. That works sometimes, but it's a little bit Twilight Zone. You know you're in a Dark Domain because the narrator said so in the 30 seconds leading up to the adventure—Go!
Death House is a more gradual introduction. You walk through mist. You see an old house in the distance. You become aware of two small children standing by the gate to the estate.
It's the wardrobe that leads to Narnia, if Narnia was populated by demons and animated broomsticks looking to bash your head in.
I hadn't bothered reading the credits to Death House until I was writing this review. I'm glad I hadn't, because I'd have perpetually suspected my opinion was biased.
Here are the relevant credits:
It was the golden age of 5e, plus Tracy and Laura Hickman (creators of Ravenloft). Am I angry that Ravenloft, and not Dragonlance, got the golden age magic? Maybe a little, but that's a whole other discussion.
The point here is that this was a powerful team, and it shows. Ravenloft feels as foreboding as ever, and your only real glimpse of it is through artefacts in a mystery house. The plot is nearly invisible but thick. The adventure is easy to run because its pace is forced by the magic of the house itself.
It's a modern classic, and you should run it as either an introductory adventure into Curse of Strahd or Expedition to Castle Ravenloft or any other adventure within the Dark Domains.
Header image from Unsplash License.LICENSE.