Adventure design has a lot of moving parts, so using a pre-written module can make things a lot easier. Additionally, your party might be excited to take on iconic D&D villains like the fearsome Tiamat in the “Tyranny of Dragons” storyline, the deadly Acererak of Tomb of Annihilation, the cunning Count Strahd in Curse of Strahd, and so on.

As the Dungeon Master, you get to bring these (and many other) characters to life—an opportunity that can be both exhilarating and intimidating. Running NPCs from a module feels a little different than running NPCs of your own creation, so let’s talk about how you can prepare to run them!

I’ve been running Curse of Strahd for a bit, and I’ve run the introductory adventure “Death House” a couple of times now. Here’s how I’ve prepared to run these NPCs and what I’ve found helpful!

Finding the information you need

This step takes place during high-level campaign prep, or once you’ve locked in which adventure you’re going to run. Ideally, you have plenty of time before the session.

Even if you’ve read the adventure over before, it’s worth scanning back over it again. This scan allows you to mark areas that talk about NPC behavior (especially important NPCs). In a large adventure, there might be information about one NPC in their introduction, in sections that describe certain events involving them, and near their stat block in an appendix. You can take note of important (or challenging) NPCs and mark sections that describe them. These NPCs are generally more complex than the simple sketches we talked about in a previous post about making NPCs— they have a lot more written about them.

For example, there are a few sections in “Death House” that mention Rose and Thorn, two of the characters in the adventure. The first few pages have a section titled “Rose and Thorn” that give most of the details, but the information for room 20, the “Children’s Room,” also has information about their behavior.

Character art from the Death House adventure.
Rose and Thorn from “Death House”

Rereading the adventure is going to give you context for these characters and the situations where they’ll be interacting with the party. It’ll also remind you of what you want to customize (if anything), so you can start thinking about those alterations—for example, if you wanted to change an NPC’s identity, power level, or role in the story.

Prepping for a session

This part is during your normal session prep. You can probably estimate which of those important NPCs the party might run into in a session, so you can use the information you’ve gathered to refresh your memory.

Make sure you understand what’s going on in their stat block (if they have one)—look up any obscure rules you might need to run the NPC. If you can’t find the answers you’re looking for, chances are that other DMs running the adventure might have had similar discussions online, especially for well-known adventure modules.

Go ahead and change whatever you might want to change about the character beforehand and note where that might change their behavior (in combat or otherwise) in your notes.

In “Death House,” Rose and Thorn have a modified version of the ghost statistics, and the rules for their possession are different than other cases. This information would be great to highlight or paste into DM notes, since this alters the standard stat block.

You know your players, and now you know this NPC, so you can anticipate how those elements might interact when put together. So, you can prepare any dialogue or actions this NPC will need when interacting with the party. For example, the bard in my Curse of Strahd campaign has the detect thoughts spell, so I can jot down what an NPC might be thinking should she use that spell.

Running the adventure

Right before you run the adventure, make sure you have what you need in your notes! This goes double if you’ve customized part of the adventure. Just the act of writing something down can help you remember it.

While running the adventure, I’ve found it helpful to keep in mind that:

  • It’s okay to refer back to the text of the module

I used to feel bad for having to check the adventure for information. I felt like I had to have everything relevant memorized or easily accessible, or else I’d really slow the game down. Of course, it would be ideal if we could just absorb the entire adventure into our brains through osmosis. We haven’t gotten there yet, so your players will understand if you have to flip through to find some specific detail. Feeling pressure does weird things to our sense of time, so looking up an NPC’s statistics probably isn’t taking as long as you think it is.

At the same time,

  • It’s okay to change aspects of the adventure

You don’t have to have a good reason besides “I think it would be more fun for everyone if this part was different.” The module is supposed to make your life easier. It presents prewritten scenarios for you to use as you please. There’s no D&D inquisition to bust down your door should you diverge from the “canon” of the adventure.

You’re free to make an NPC’s personality, powers, or role different in your version of this adventure. Every DM’s Strahd is different, because you and your group are making a unique version of this story. Actually, every time I’ve run “Death House,” the house and the NPCs within have turned out differently.

I hope that was helpful! If you’ve run a module before, who are your favorite NPCs to run? How do you prepare to run them? Anything you’d like to add? Let’s have a conversation—drop a comment below!