Free Halloween Adventure: Night of Samhain

So…uh…surprise! I guess…

I wrote an adventure! For Halloween! And, uh, here it is! Seriously, wow. I had the plan to do this at the start of October, and didn’t know if I’d be able to bust it out. But I did. It’s Tuesday night, and I did it! I finally finished the adventure! So, if you’re wondering why this is such a surprise, and why I didn’t talk about it earlier…it’s basically because I didn’t have any idea whether or not I’d actually finish the damn thing in time. If I didn’t I was going to post it next week, since I’m running it for my group this weekend. As it stands, I’m still going to do a post-mortem, but now I can actually present it to all of you!

And it’s pretty impressive! For me, anyway. It comes with 3 custom monsters (one of which is brand new to this blog!), two new magic items, and a fun mystery to solve! I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you have a lot of fun playing it.

The title of the adventure is Night of Samhain. For those of you who aren’t up on their wiccan, or those of you who learned the word from that one really terrible episode of Supernatural, that’s pronounced “SAH-win,” not “Sam-HANE.”

Which…actually brings me to the very first topic I wanted to bring up. I want to apologize up front to any and all of my wiccan readers. Because this is a spooky mystery adventure with a villain who is named after a cherished holiday in your tradition. It features zombies, vampires, a demon, and a Frankenstein, and overall does not paint your holiday in a fair light. My only hope is that you can find the spirit and the fun of the season in my adventure and embrace some of the silliness of Halloween. If you cannot, then please send me hate mail. I probably deserve it.

A Short Description

The small town of Owen’s Mire has existed in peace for hundreds of years, but someone has opened the old crypt outside of town. Undead prowl the streets, and a deadly secret is keeping Mayor Ethan Burke up at night. Can you stop the undead rising from their graves? Can you solve the mystery of the Blood Guard’s crypt? Can you save these people, before they are consumed by the Blood Moon? Take on the challenge and face your fears in Night of Samhain.

A Quick Legal Note

Every monster, spell, and magic item that is not customized for this adventure was taken from the D&D Basic Rules PDF. This was done for two reasons. First, because I wanted to create an adventure that anyone could run, so long as they have access to their local library’s internet connection and can download the Basic Rules.  Except for the goliath, which can be located in the free Elemental Evil Player’s Companion.

Second, because I don’t want this taken down. Therefore, nothing exclusive to the Core Rulebooks is re-printed in this document. Everything that I re-printed here is free to use on the internet. I don’t know if that puts me in the right, but I see no reason for anyone to take the adventure down due to copyright infringement.

A Short Node-Based Adventure

Night of Samhain is node-based. What does that mean? It means that instead of being a dungeon crawl, where things are divided into rooms, it is instead divided into nodes, or scenes, where things take place. I give no particular order in which these scenes need to be completed. And, in fact, one of the nodes can be completely left out if the PCs find a way to go without it.

It is also a very short adventure. It clocks in at 8 pages, including a page of background, enemy stat blocks, and a couple new magic items at the end. That makes it about 5 ½ to 6 pages overall. It’s short, and it’s intended to be run in one night. For me, that’s going to be Halloween night. For you, I hope it’s the same, or sometime before if you can.

No Maps

I have not provided any maps with this adventure. This is because I am a really terrible map artist and didn’t have time or money to commission maps to be made. I provide basic descriptions for every combat zone in the adventure, and that should hopefully give you an idea of what to draw yourself. I apologize, but it’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Hopefully, the next one will be more professional.

Level 5 Adventurers

I can tell you straight-up that the numbers in this adventure aren’t perfect. There are a couple of encounters that will probably be easy, and a couple that might get a bit hairy. Overall, though, I think it’s appropriate for a group of level 5 adventurers. It’d be an easy adventure for level 6 characters, and a particularly difficult one for level 4s, but I figure a skilled DM can make those adjustments and still have fun with it. I’m writing up some pre-generated PCs that my players will use this Saturday, and I’ll post them on the blog between now and then. You can use them if you want, or you can just insert this into your ongoing campaign!

Read the Background!

This might seem like me fellating my ego a bit, but please do read the background to the adventure. It’s only a page long, and it really does inform a lot of what’s going on in the next 5-6 pages.

Have Fun and make it your own!

I honestly have no idea whether this adventure will be fun. I certainly hope so, but I’m not really a great gauge. I also haven’t written an adventurer for other people before, so this is kind of a big deal for me. I will say that the adventure is vague. There’s no boxed text and NPCs are only light sketches. I hope that it’s organized enough for you to use, and that you’re able to use what I’ve written to make the game your own and have a great time.

The Damn Adventure, Already!

All right, enough delaying the issue. Here it is, for all of you to enjoy:

Night of Samhain