Shadowloft '24

This October I got a chance to cross off an RPG bucket-list for myself, running a one-night Ravenloft in my new OSR crawler of choice: Shadowdark.

Credit where credit is due

This isn’t a new concept. While I first heard of it from James Haek , my understanding is that Ravenloft actually originates as a re-occurring Halloween game at the home of Tracy and Laura Hickman (source). More recently the idea of running a one-night Ravenloft in Shadowdark has been popularized by Sly Flourish who runs in the full castle and Deficient Master who, like me, found it better to simplify the Castle itself to make it more navigable. I’m sure there are many more. Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd are probably the most written about and customized modules in all of D&D’s history.

One-Night Strahd basics

• Fortunes of Ravenloft: I randomize the castle with Taroka deck. I randomize the location of the classic four locations: 1) the sunsword hilt 2) the holy symbol 3) Strahd’s journal and 4) Strahd himself.
• Playing Strahd as a narcisist and starting with a dinner / pipe organ scene
• The Strahd timer: I let the players know that Strahd will return 45 minutes before the end of the time slot for a boss fight. They have limited time to explore the castle
• Meta-game Stakes: I let the players know that when Strahd returns I will be playing for a TPK. He fully intends to murder the party: Good Luck.
• Monsters you can’t hurt: without finding silvered weapons, the players are ill equipped to fight many of the wandering monsters in the dungeon
• Monsters that can life drain you: I utilized the CON draining to represent the lingering danger of classic energy and level draining of AD&D monsters
• Random Magic Items: I gave the players a random magical item at the start of the game. Going for items that have interesting creative uses or interactions with undead lead to the most interesting results

playing shadowloft at Hawkland Gaming festival in September

Simplified Map vs. Point Crawl

While SlyFlourish goes for letting players do their own mapping of the big original I6 map and DeficientMaster turns the map into a point crawl, I instead went for a simplified map drawn onto pages of my trusty 3M easel-sized gridded post-it notes. I made sure the dungeon had multiple looping paths but stuck with the classic single entrance approach.

What Worked Well

• Shadowdark torch timers are a perfect thematic match to Ravenloft castle. I had all the lights in the castle go out after the first encounter with Strahd’s illusory projection.
• Throwing wandering monsters at the players rather than having each room demand a 5e feeling set piece battle. Hell-hounds frying wandering peasants, and role playing encounters with the various spirits were a fun break from yet-another simple combat.
• The castle has a sense of architecture and layout that makes exploration more fun than a randomized and unintuitive underground labyrinth

happily both of my runs got to the roof to see the squeeze toy heart

What could have gone better

• Against Strahd, who had the damage output to drop players in a single hit, there was a fair amount of yo-yo-ing - when a player is repeatedly dropped and then revived by a cleric.
• In a one-shot setting the Tome had little value if the players don’t chose to approach the Strahd encounter with role playing. It’s GM only lore in this one-night format.
• I could have made sure every enemy monster felt unique and different. The ghouls, wights, and spectres were too interchangeable
• There were no traps to challenge thieves
• I needed to telegraph in some way where silvered weapons could be found in the castle