Curse of Strahd Top 3 Reuse

Adventures present many opportunities for reuse, though some adventures produce more opportunities than others. With the release of Curse of Strahd recently, I want to go over the top 3 things from the adventure that can be reused as well as some honourable mentions.

Maps

I find that I cannot have enough maps. As such, adventures like this are a good source of reusable maps. You already bought it, why not get some more mileage out of it? Some are very situation and as such aren't as useful for reuse. In the case of Curse of Strahd, there is a mix of situational and reusable maps. There are towers and villages that can easily be reused as needed. There are also some harder to reuse examples like Castle Ravenloft. Reusing Castle Ravenloft in its entirety, while possible, isn't that practical in my opinion. However, floors can be reused in order to get a basic floor plan of a keep or a castle. Some staircases may need to be removed or lead to completely different maps though. If you are doing theatre of mind and forcing players to sketch the rooms as they go through, it'll be even easier. A large portion of the maps from the adventure detail Castle Ravenloft. There are some more generic maps as well, such as the general layout of a church, camp, shop and winery that can easily be reused. The werewolf den can also be easily used to create a personalized dungeon.

Scares and False Scares

Curse of Strahd is the only adventure out of all of those published by Wizards of the Coast for D&D 5^th edition that embraces horror. As a result, there are some scares and false scares that can be lifted, converted or be used as inspiration to create brand new scares (K10 and K27 are two of my favourites, though K27 is easier to reuse). Most of the scares will need some level of conversation or only be inspiration since they tend to be closely tied to a location or idea. However, it's still a good resource to have and if needed, entire rooms can be lifted along with the scare inside. The ones that are located in Castle Ravenloft are very similar or exactly the same as in I6:Ravenloft and as such I6:Ravenloft can be consulted if you have it. I think the ones that occur outside of Castle Ravenloft are unique to Curse of Strahd (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Amber Temple

Some locations in Curse of Strahd can be easily lifted and reused with some minor tweaks such as Argynvostholt and the Krezk Abbey. However, my favourite is the Amber Temple. The sarcophagi are very well done. The descriptions and the trade that is purposed is something that has a great amount of atmosphere. I also find that a place of forbidden knowledge, or a place of evil and power comes up often when playing D&D. As a result, such a location becomes easy to reuse. It's very easy to make it smaller if needed and to add a revelation for a campaign that isn't related to Strahd. Even if the entire map is changed, the sarcophagi are very intriguing. The idea of a place made to house evil things to keep them from the wrong hands being misused is also a great concept. Out of all of the locations in the adventure, this is the one I am most likely to lift.

Honourable Mentions

I also want to give an honourable mention to the phantom warrior. Some of the NPCs are very specific to the adventure (Strahd) but the phantom warrior is really easy to reuse. The Barovian witch is also quite easy to reuse and due to its low challenge rating is a good possibility even at level 1. Removing the claws and changing their appearance, they can easily be turned into a wizard that a level 1 party could comfortably face. The guardian portrait, Strahd zombie, broom of animated attack, tree blight, animated halberds, and wereravens are easily converted and used in other adventures.