D&D 5E challenge: rewrite Death House to avoid a key feature (spoilers)

[evilbob]

Spoiler alert.

TL;not gonna R: Suggestions for rewriting Death House to remove all the dead children?

Our group loves Ravenloft; we've played multiple multi-year campaigns in the setting in different systems. We are excited to go back and start again. Looking over Death House, the (free online) intro adventure, I love the setting and the atmosphere. But. Our group is not going to play a game with dead children. (Lots of good reasons; immaterial.) Everything else is something I can dial back as necessary to suit our tastes - demon worship, ritual murder, torture, etc. are all really window dressing that can be adjusted - but the dead children are central to the plot. Anyone have suggestions to salvage this otherwise atmospheric adventure?

More spoilers ahead.

Best I've come up with is to make the starting encounter with a young adult, maybe someone who stayed for the night? But what is their motivation to stay in the house? (Were they never allowed to leave? Then why do they want to go back in?) Unless they are related to the owners, but it would be weird to have a young adult living at home in this era. It also ruins entirely the reason for the nanny to be there - who is also central to the plot. Unless the young adult from the first encounter was merged with the nanny character and got involved that way? But then why would they have such an amazingly ornate room so close to the master bedroom? What was the original purpose of that room?

Second, what do you do with the attic? I can change the contents of the rooms easily enough, but the railroading that happens up there forces the plot along a certain path that might otherwise be trickier to move along. The story is sort of overly linear (fine for an intro) and if you want to hit all the set pieces the party needs to follow the path. Do you just leave the pieces where they are and hope they stumble into the right places? Do you have other inhabitants who are not dead children push them along?

I can always wing it but I'd like a few good ideas to a) get them started, b) move it along. Once you get to the basement the rest of the adventure needs little modification (the tombs can easily be changed). The adventure also provides so much backstory that I'd like something I can hang onto that is similarly thought-out but obviously omits that one key feature. Ideas welcome.

 

[CapnZapp]

But wouldn't it be helpful it you told us about WHY you don't want dead children?

I mean, if you dislike dead people a suggestion to age them into adults won't be useful.

Just as an example.

 

[evilbob]

More ideas:

Part of the cleverness of the initial hook is that children aren't really expected to know much about what's going on, and they instantly elicit sympathy from nearly any character (especially with talk of a monster - i.e. XP). It's harder to do that with someone who is, say, a maid who is really the master's mistress. She should both know what's going on AND want to go back in the house. Maybe she tells the group something that implies there's a domestic disturbance? That would give her reason to be both tight-lipped and not want to go back in, and give the party some reason to go in. Although less chivalrous members might simply say, "who cares?" (Or more neutral-y: "this isn't our concern.") In that case maybe she could offer them a reward? Like information about a "treasure in the basement" - she knows they keep valuable things down there, just not all the other stuff. Or maybe she was a part of the original cult and this is how they lured others in, with a fake damsel? Although I think I like it better if she just got swept up in it all instead - it also makes more sense why they would turn on her and just dump her body in the attic; she was found out (maybe the Mrs. killed her). Then again, it's hard to imagine even the original nanny not being a part of the cult; at the very least she'd know about all the people coming and going (or not going). Still, I sort of like her as the maid being found out by the Mrs. and then killed, and then her ghost reporting the domestic argument that she continued to hear without believing she was dead. (And when you find her body, she turns on you in madness? That's kind of meh.)

Thinking the attic through, the doll house could actually just be a miniature house and still work; it's more like a Beetlejuice vibe. There could even be most of a model of the town, just to carry that theme - plus it would make more sense why that room was locked (it's just a weird hobby in a house full of weird hobbies). That would draw anyone in (at least in our group) and you could just remove the search DC so that they're going to find the clue (the original plot forces you to find it anyway, so no reason to have a roll). Maybe even reward the group for avoiding fighting the specter and have the maid explain things if they make it this far without disturbing her remains? Nah, that's sort of hit or miss and it doesn't follow well. I not really sure how to recreate the "punch" of the ghosts just wanting not to be abandoned; that's a nice bit and I hate to lose it, though.

 

[Mercule]

I've only done a simple read-through, but nothing seemed like it required their age. Depending on the group, a couple (or even one) hot gal/guy could get the attention. If they were neighbors (of a house that ends up being deserted, after the fact), that gives them the outsider/ignorant status. Replace with a mentally challenged person, and the child relationship is still there. Maybe a homeless person.

What's in the attic could be a pet, the homeless guy's cup of money, a family heirloom, or something else -- it doesn't really exist.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Make it so that there are just the illusion children outside and there are no ghosts of them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Our group is not going to play a game with dead children. (Lots of good reasons; immaterial.) Everything else is something I can dial back as necessary to suit our tastes - demon worship, ritual murder, torture, etc. are all really window dressing that can be adjusted - but the dead children are central to the plot. Anyone have suggestions to salvage this otherwise atmospheric adventure?

You could replace them with the ghost of Gustav Durst's sweet/clueless/senile old Mother in Law, and change very little else. She could still be afraid of a monster in the basement, concerned for the baby in the nursery, and died in the attic under similar circumstances. If you don't want even the suggestion of a dead baby, the nurse could have been caring for the old lady, replace the crib with a rocking chair, or Walter could be her cat.

Best I've come up with is to make the starting encounter with a young adult, maybe someone who stayed for the night? But what is their motivation to stay in the house? (Were they never allowed to leave? Then why do they want to go back in?) Unless they are related to the owners, but it would be weird to have a young adult living at home in this era.

It could be a Durst heir (real or fake, living or ghost) come to claim the family fortune, but needing the house cleared of monsters by a band of adventurers (who'll be promised a cut of the proceeds, of course).

It also ruins entirely the reason for the nanny to be there - who is also central to the plot.

The imaginary baby Walter could still be there. Or the nurse could be replaced with a mistress for Gustav (and Walter is her baby) or a lady's maid or companion for Elisabeth. Or she could be a spinster aunt and Walter could be a cat.

 

[evilbob]

Good ideas, thank you!

I like the old lady and the cat because it doesn't take much adjustment and it's pretty similar. You could also change the main hall painting to be Mr. holding the cat with the Mrs. cutting her eyes at it. You could even confuse the situation by having it so that the mom - his mom, perhaps - showed up uninvited and just started living there with her personal assistant which led to trouble, but the mother refused to see it or believe her son could do such things. Also, the cat is still living there... somehow... and it's never explained.

 

[evilbob]

Any other ideas? The MIL one is a good one. I could see her ghost "explaining" things that indirectly give insights into what happened - like how her son explained to her that it would be better for her health if she had to walk all the way up to the attic each day, so that's why they were moving her up there and moving her assistant down to the nice plush room near the master suite. Also she could exclusively refer to the cat as her baby, and not allow the characters to leave until they've agreed to look after it. It starts getting into a silly vibe instead of a "dead children" vibe, but it's still the best salvage so far.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I hadn't even thought of calling the cat 'baby Walter,' that's perfect.

If the cat's still alive, it could be a former familiar granted by whatever the evil cult have a pact with, waiting to make a pact with an infernal warlock - or anyone who might like to MC into Warlock...

If you want to make the MIL less silly, you could make her more coherent, but deceitful, in on the cult, in the role of luring victims. She could have died of natural causes, and been put in the attic instead of given a proper burial so she would continue to serve in that capacity after death. Stat her as a full-on ghost to replace the two lesser ghosts of the children.

 

[Sunseeker]

Not sure why there's an objection to it. But beyond getting silly, it's mentioned the Mr Durst slept with another woman, you could easily write the ghost to be that woman, perhaps killed by a vengeful wife, or the wife, killed by her husband. Kids could have ran off (since this was all hundreds of years ago) never to be seen again or are actually living in Barovia still and never visit their parents haunted mansion. Or just a random person killed by Dust in one of his dark experiments seeking revenge/rest/etc....