I’ve talked often about my love of kit-bashing, taking published material and cobbling it together to serve my purposes in my own homebrew world. Following the Heroes of the Mist’s final confrontation with Strahd in our Curse of Strahd campaign (and the subsequent completion of the book), I can say without hesitation that I love running published adventures just as much. This is being meted out in the all-girl group I’m currently running through Rime of the Frostmaiden.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks with using published materials for many DMs is their own investment in it. With our own completely original worlds and stories, it’s easy to be incredibly invested – it’s yours! And while it can be fun to run your group through a classic adventure, like Curse of Strahd, the fear is often that it will feel like you’re on autopilot for the storyline or feel boxed in by having to run the adventure “the way it was written.”
What follows is a great example from Curse of Strahd of where the writers understood this concern and crafted things within the adventure to prompt DMs running it to begin creating storylines and plot points of their own within the established world. This is a great primer for DMs to start playing with any published material in the same way.
The Megaliths
The four ancient stones near the windmill were erected centuries ago by the valley’s original human inhabitants. Each moss-covered stone bears a crude carving of a city, each of which is associated with a different season. The city of winter is shown covered in snow. The city of spring is arrayed in flowers. The city of summer has a sunburst overhead, and the city of autumn is covered in leaves. If the characters ask any of the priests or scholarly NPCs in Barovia about the stones, the characters are told that ancient legends tell of the Four Cities, said to be the cities of Paradise where the Morninglord, Mother Night, and the other ancient gods first dwelled.
Curse of Strahd
In Chapter Four, Old Bonegrinder, this short paragraph describes a set of standing stones that lie behind the windmill that has become the home of a coven of hags. This is it. This is the entire explanation of these strange standing stones erected outside of an old windmill in the middle of the most infamous Demiplane of Dread.
Other locations have good amounts of plot points, adventure hooks and lore that tie to the adventure, but this one gets all of a single paragraph. As Chris Perkins pointed out on Twitter, that was the whole point. The Megaliths were specifically placed within the story by game designer Jeremy Crawford for the DM running the adventure to develop.
So, what is a DM to do with this? For my group, an idea began to form of the Megaliths being some form of ancient transport system (ala Stargate) that the PCs could discover and unlock. I think I had been catching up on the Stargate: SG1 series from the mid-90s, to be honest.
The Ways
Beginning early on in the adventure (session five, to be exact), I developed the idea that the Megaliths were some form of portal that could act like the Plane Shift spell. That was it. I did not yet have any idea where I would take it from there, but the seed was planted. So, in keeping with my use of Secrets & Clues, I wrote in my session notes: “The Megaliths are an ancient magic protection circle/plane shift portal. Old Mill one currently desecrated through rituals by the hags.”
Additionally, I knew that the adventure placed another set of stones in the Ruins of Berez. This led me to begin conceptualizing the idea that there were four sets of these Megaliths, located at the cardinal directions within Barovia. By session 14, I had solidified where the last two Megaliths were to be found (outside of Krezk and at the foot of Mount Baratok to the north.)
This led immediately into session 15, our first Christmas game in the Curse of Strahd adventure. This is where I introduced the PCs to my version of Christmasland from the television series and Joe Hill novel, NOS4A2. Continuing with my inspiration (aka stealing), I began to refer to the portals that could be opened as The Ways. It was here that I gifted DM Thorin’s warlock, Finneas, with the Staff of the Four Seasons, which was meant to tie into the mystery of the Four Cities detailed on the Megaliths.
At this point, I knew that whatever it developed into, it had to hold the concept of the “Four Cities,” but I still hadn’t fully fleshed out what that looked like – and this was a year and a half into the campaign!
One more year passed until our second Christmas game, where I finalized my idea for the Megaliths. Having just defeated Strahd, the players had a choice to make, retire their characters or continue on. They chose to continue on, and this is where the seed I planted back in session five bore fruit. Being gifted an Amulet of the Planes, Finneas was able to complete the Staff and open the Ways.
“As you enter the Standing Stones, the Staff of the Four Seasons begins to hum and the Amulet begins to glow. Vines grow out from the ground, wrapping around the Stones and reaching between them, enclosing the circle. The vines begin to harden off in places as a staircase begins to be formed within the center of the circle. They transform the circle into a small, wood-paneled room with four doors to the North (Winter), West (Autumn), East (Spring), and South (Summer). Each door is embossed with a symbol for one of the four seasons. A grand staircase of wood and ivy ascends through the ceiling while a trapdoor rests in the floor.”
The PCs now had access to the “Four Cities”, which were access points within the Elemental Planes. I threw in access to the Feywild and Shadowfell for good measure, and we now had the jumping-off point for their plane-hopping second half … but that’s a story for another day.
Final Thoughts
By placing a mysterious location with a single paragraph describing it, the writers of Curse of Strahd set the scene and showed the way for DMs who are unsure of how to develop ideas or those who might feel reined in by running published material.
As I described, all I began with was an idea, a single sentence. With that, the players’ actions within the world and their goals and objectives could help me morph that simple idea into a multi-level, epic-tier adventure.
Maybe you run published material exclusively. Maybe you only homebrew your own worlds and adventures. Maybe you’re like me and you take a little bit from everything. However you want to play, play it. But always plan one session at a time and always let the story unfold as it wants to.
Bruce Lee said it best: “Absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless. Add what is essentially your own.”
Until next time, Heroes … LIVE THE ADVENTURE!