I don’t get all this fascination with halloween here in the UK.

When I was a wee nipper it was penny for the guy, and fire works night. Halloween was not a thing.

Like proms, halloween some how got bought over from the US, and caught on. I blame corporations for this. They needed another way to exploit money out of folks.

I wrote “Trying a fantasy horror d&d adventure for free” and “Some late Halloween RPG suggestions” a couple of years ago now. And I feel they are still relevant today for those looking to run a horror themed one shot as part of the commercial exploitation at the end of the month.

In the later post that I link to are links to D&D Beyond posts about running Curse of Strahd as a one shot.

However these are not the only resources out there for doing this.

The first ones to look at are from one of my usual sources that I keep mentioning on here Sly Flourish. Mike wrote the following post “Running Ravenloft / Curse of Strahd in a Single Session”. This is also backed up with a YouTube video (embedded below for those that would prefer to watch instead of read!).

Another YouTuber/Author I like is Seth Skorkowsky. I particularly like his in-depth reviews that also contain advice on running the adventure being reviewed.

Although Seth’s review is for the 1e Ravenloft adventure it’s still worth considering. As Seth points out in the video you can pick this up on DriveThruRPG as a pdf only or as a print on demand physical copy. It’s very cheap considering. A lot cheaper than trying to get an original copy off eBay. And I may or may not have gone this route!

Another good YouTube video to look at is from the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel.

Don’t forget you can always come up with your own one shot set in the Ravenloft universe. You can use the Curse of Strahd as your source book or this years Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.

You can find some “inspiration” for your own one shot here.