D&D General Favorite Halloween One-Shots

With Halloween just around the corner, I imagine many of us are planning one-shot adventures. I figured I'd start this thread so people can post their recommendations for their favorites, and maybe it can become a resource for future use!

I'm not putting an edition tag on this thread because converting between editions isn't too difficult, and if a story is good, it's worth the effort. But please do specify which edition the adventure you're recommending is for. In fact, here's a suggested format to use for recommendations:

Title:
Edition:
Starting Level:
Link(s): (a link to where the full adventure can be found, and/or to any pages with further information)
Summary/Why it's Great:
(And any other information you want to add, of course!)

Looking forward to seeing what people recommend!

I'll start with the adventure I'm planning on running next weekend:

Title: The House of the Midnight Violet
Edition: 5th
Starting Level: 4-6, but includes scaling suggestions going up to 12
Links: DM's Guild, AdventureLookup page, fan-created maps: plain, with light effects
Summary/Why it's Great: The PCs are sent to retrieve a rare flower from a deserted house on an isolated island. Great atmosphere, and a mystery to unravel about what happened to the house's former inhabitants.

ETA: Someone even made a YouTube playlist for a soundtrack!

Title: The Laboratory-Tomb of Doctor Viktor Vampenstein
Edition: 5th
Starting Level: 5 (pre-gens included)
Links: Right here on enworld for free
Summary/Why It's Great: Put an end to a vampire's terror. It doesn't take itself too seriously and can be padded on the front end to take up a whole session. The maps can be thrown into Roll20 or drawn easily at the table.

What I had planned to be a one-shot ended up starting mid August and ending the week of Halloween, weekly sessions of about 3-ish hours each. It's a homebrew adventure based off one I read on the internet a few years ago. I ran this last year.

Title: Doesn't really have a title. Just "Halloween Adventure"
Edition: 5th
Starting Level: I went with 1st level, characters got to 4th by the end.
Links: No link, it's all in a notebook, at least the beginning of it.
Summary/Why it's Great: PCs respond to a request for help from a little village named "Pelts Farm" from an elven woman named Lohnzei Pelt (my elves have more German names in my setting). Her older brother Leineverr Pelt has been acting strange, and her younger brother Ertrah Pelt was found dead and his funeral is about to happen. Also, her friends have gone missing. The PCs attend the funeral, which is interrupted by attacking pumpkin monsters. Things happen, they confront Leineverr, and they are confronted by undead zombies with pumpkins embedded in their chests. One is a bald dwarf, a white-furred wolf, a rather large yellow falcon, and a few other zombies. As the PCs are occupied with these, Leineverr summons his Great Old One patron, the Great Pumpkin King. PCs dispatched the Pumpkin King, and as it was about to implode, Leineverr jumps at his patron, and vanishes. A female dwarf with long blonde hair cries as her lover (Leineverr) is no more.

The PCs fought Linus at the behest of his sister, Lucy. The dwarf was Charlie Brown, with Snoopy and Woodstock. The female dwarf was Sally Brown. The other zombies were Schroeder, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie. Linus was a Great Old One warlock with the Great Pumpkin for a patron. It was the Charlie Brown Halloween special. It's a modified adventure based on one I read years ago, that was for level 12 or so back in 3rd edition. Players had fun, and got a good laugh when they found out they just fought zombified Peanuts characters.

Edit: should have posted this elsewhere... and I don't seem to be able to remove my post..

We had/have on a Swedish rpg-site a competition on writing a complete rpg in 1 000 words or less, with the theme Autumn. I choose to make a game based on a town surrounded by impenetrable fog, and it is constantly dark with a full moon, and eternal Halloween... But some of the vampires/witches etc might be real, and not just persons in costumes. The characters would be kids/teens doing Halloween-stuff.

Link to the game,

No it isn't actual D&D, but if you want a more casual one-shot instead of using your normal campaign, have a look. =^_^=

The only Halloween themed one-shot I made was called Hydra Hallow-een. It involved a secret library located deep in Hydra Hallow where dead sages were kept so that people could speak with dead when needed. The outside is guarded by scarecrows and the PCs needed to help with the runaway zombie hydra before they could get the knowledge they came for.

Title: Secrets of the Blind Palace
Edition: 5
Starting Level: 1-4 (has AL-style scaling)
Link(s):
Full adventure: Secrets of the Blind Palace - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild
Video review: Summary/Why it's Great:
The wealthy Von Crofts hire a party of adventurers to find the body of their dead son in a haunted pleasure palace – and to bring him back to life. To aid in their quest, the resurrectionists are provided with a guide: the only survivor of the previous expedition, a bard who has been unable to speak a word or sing a note since she escaped from the Blind Palace.

Mystery, discovery, choices that matter, engaging role-playing, and exciting combat. Inspired in part by the poem The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allen Poe, and by the novels Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The Shining by Stephen King, and by the Evil Dead movies.

Ulfgeir said:

Edit: should have posted this elsewhere...

Click to expand...

Not at all--this is great! Thanks for posting it.

Here is another that I want to run for my group sometime:

Title: Betrayal at Monadhan (part of the Scales of War adventure path)
Edition: 4th, but there is also a fan conversion to 5th
Starting Level: 21 (14 for 5E)
Link(s): Dungeon Magazine #170 (5E conversion here)
Summary/Why it's Great: The PCs find themselves trapped in a Demiplane of Dread (TM) themed around betrayal, ruled by an undead dragon and his death giant minions. To get out, they must retrieve the sword of Kas the Betrayer. I like this adventure because it's more psychological than outright spooky--PCs get bonuses for damaging their allies (even accidentally), and the dragon is tormented by guilty secrets that the PCs can exploit in order to defeat him. Along the way, they may also fight vampires, devils, and a sentient desecrated graveyard. (Yes, you read that right--the graveyard itself is the monster.)

If I am allowed to do some self promotion.

Title: The Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var
Edition: System agnostic
Starting Level: 1-4
Link(s): The Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var - Wolfhill Entertainment | DriveThruRPG.com
Summary/Why it's Great: Plunged deep beneath forsaken swamplands centuries ago, the Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var now waits to be rediscovered. Untold fortune, magic, and ancient secrets await those brave enough to enter the Sunken Temple, but only if they can thwart the unrelenting evil which lurks within its dismal halls.

“The Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var” attempts to meet somewhere in the grey zone of a fully pre-written structured horror story, with the ability to explore and interact with 60 unique areas within the temple. In an attempt to make the adventure module more re-playable, secret room locations and specific treasures have been randomized, and a challenge based fear system determines how the main antagonist evolves throughout the game. Additionally, limited time and light resources pressure the players into making decisive decisions that affect the outcome of how they interact with the Temple. Finally, timekeeping and light resource worksheets, a detailed dungeon map, and themed artwork, create a shared adventure for players and the Game Master.

A low res sample of one of the encounters