Death House provides an incredible introduction to the world of Barovia and offers the DM a chance to introduce your primary player to the major themes that Curse of Strahd explores.
The first time Beth and I played through Strahd we skipped Death House because we were over-leveled for it. For the Duet Revamp, I decided to take us through this iconic haunted house and I couldn’t be happier with the results.
Beware! Beyond this point there are tons of spoilers for Death House and even some for Curse of Strahd.
Getting There
I am going to present what I did for our duet game of Curse of Strahd. I’ll let you in on the tweaks and adjustments I made. Additionally, I’ll let you know how these things worked out in our game. I’ll make these sections gray, so you can skip them if you like.
For the Duet Revamp, I wanted to approach Barovia from a new direction. Literally. The Duet Revamp starts on the opposite side of the map from the town named after Strahd’s father. This means that Death House needs to change locations as well. I made Death House a free standing structure with a carriage house and a barn on the outside as opposed to a rowhouse as described in the book. It’s spooky, it’s remote, and it offers some shelter from the freezing rain that began falling on the party.
In our game, the primary character was fighting a vampire that I introduced early in our duet campaign. As she dealt the final blow, blood began gushing out and swirling. I described the vampire essentially escaping through the bood-nado which I predicted (correctly) would lead to the primary character leaping in. This blood tornado portal brought our characters to Barovia and deposited them alongside the road to the South and East of Krezk.
You certainly don’t have to do a blood tornado and could just use what’s in the book. But a blood tornado would do the trick.
On the porch of Death House stands a pair of children. A tall, thin girl beckons to the characters and seems visibly distressed.
DragnaCarta’s Death House Reloaded
As written, Death House is a fine, if somewhat straightforward haunted house crawl. However, I was delighted when I discovered u/DragnaCarta‘s excellent work on Death House Reloaded. For the actual mechanics of the duet, I ended up running things pretty closely to how he describes the sequence.
I did, however, make the following adjustments to ensure that the combat encounters more duet-friendly. We played this with one primary character, a level 5 Demon Hunter, and one level 5 Ghostsworn DMPC. Both classes are homebrew and may soon be available on Dungeon Master’s Guild.
With two level five characters, I didn’t tweak HP of combatants for this adventure that would typically span levels 1-3, just numbers of combatants in some instances.
Here are the tweaks to the combats.
Area 15. For the duet, run the “friendly” encounter with the Nursemaid specter as outline in Death House: Reloaded.
Area 29. 2x Ghouls
Area 31. 1x Shadow
Escape!
With fewer players available to pass the checks presented in the Escaping Death House Skill Challenge (which I highly recommend) you may need to be somewhat forgiving with the consequences of failed rolls. You want to push and challenge your player, but (probably) not eviscerate their primary character on the first day in Barovia.
After narrowly escaping Death House with the bodies (and spirits) of Rose and Thorn, our party was very shaken. The house destroyed itself behind them. They took shelter in one of the two out buildings before they were prompted by the kids to lay their bones to rest in the nearby town of Krezk, a place that the kids had heard of as being safe and devout.
The Duet Revamp picks up as the players approach Krezk!
Please let me know if there is anything more you need to know in order to run Death House with one player and one DM.
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Emmett F says
Did they end up fighting or fleeing the Mound in the ritual chamber? If I’m reading the CoS text as well as CoS Reloaded correctly, it seems like whether the players kill the Mound or flee from it, the outcome is the same (i.e. – they have to complete a series of skill challenges to escape the self-destructing house).
This seems slightly confusing to me, as it seems like there is no incentive/reward for beating the (very challenging) Mound. Unless of course, that *is* the point, and the players are supposed to flee from it rather than fighting it.
Personally, I feel like if the player decides they want to square off against the boss and somehow manage to beat it, they should receive some kind of “wow, that’s incredible!” reward, like a magic item, or a shorter/easier escape sequence.
Does that sound reasonable, or am I missing the point of CoS 😀
Jonathan says
It was a challenging fight, but they did end up beating the Flesh Mound and recovering the baby remains from inside in order to lay that spirit to rest as well. They knew that they were going to be facing something awful in the chamber and prepared well for the fight. We ended up having a nice scene in the Krezk cemetery as the party laid the remains of the three kids to rest. For Beth, that is reward enough, but having a magical item in the Flesh Mound (maybe a cool, but sinister sacrificial +1 dagger) would be totally appropriate.
I made on the fly adjustments to the escape sequence too in order to not kill/trap the party as they escaped. It ended up still feeling tense, but not overwhelming. The delivery sequence was especially memorable.
Michelle Goodacre says
Is there a link to the rest of the Curse of Strahd Revamp or was this series not finished? Really enjoy reading your posts.
Jonathan says
Heya! Thank you for the kind words. Our CoS Duet Revamp took an interesting turn. We ended up abandoning the CoS book and structure but keeping many of the themes. The result is our Land of Vampires full length duet campaign. You can check out the finished product in the shop or see more details here. Our amazing Patrons supported the development of Land of Vampires and we are so excited about how it turned out! You will even be able to get a print copy soon.
I hope that answers your question. Thanks for reading!
Dirk says
I’m sad to hear that you abanded the CoS Duet Revamp. Would have love to know and see more about how to run it with my wife.
Jonathan Ball says
Running the beginning of CoS inspired us to take things in a different direction and make a lot of the themes and “vibe” fit our style of play a little more. We found it way more fun to create the Land of Vampire full-length duet campaign which you should totally check out in the shop! And the first several adventures are available for free here on our website.