Do you make your own adventures?

[Wombat]

Part of the problem with pre-published adventures for me is that I still have to do tons of work on them to make them even semi-viable for my campaigns; in the end, they are just not worth the combined cost and effort.

Since I don't use pre-published settings, since I have cut out over 2/3 of the basic monsters, since I have very specific ideas for my game worlds as to what kinds of treasures are appropriate, since I dislike most logic puzzles and mechanically-unsound traps, there ends up being very little in most adventure books that is of any use to me.

One person's journey, I suppose.

 

[Americano]

I've only used published adventures since my return to the game about a year ago. However, I have modified several of those extensively (Heart of Nightfang Spire, I'm looking at you).

I'm not against creating my own, it's just that to date I've not had the need.

 

[cybertalus]

I used to write my own all the time. In fact I used to be like some of the other posters who've said running published adventures was always a bad experience. But I took a long break from D&D during the last few years of 2nd Edition, and ever since I came back I've found adventure creation to be so much more difficult than it was before. I know that part of it is that I've gotten lazier at the same time that making stats became more work, but there's something else there too that I haven't figured out yet.

Whatever the underlying reason, I find these days that whenever I DM (and it's not a regular thing at all) I just about always use a published adventure, usually from Dungeon. I almost always toss the suggested adventure hooks in favor of ones I customize to the characters and players though, and I'm still prone to improvising based on what the players do or seem to be interested in.

 

[Ibram]

I've never actualy used a prepublished adventure, though i have used one as kind of an adventure seed (keeping some of the basics but mostly rewriting the adventure). I've just never seen any that would fit into my campaigns without more work then i was willing to give.

 

[Breakstone]

For my own part, I write the adventures I run myself. To me, the creative prosess of making them is almost as much fun as playing. I've tried running published modules a couple of times, but I found it took away alot of the fun for me.

I also use my own homebrew campaign world.

Quoted for the truth. I really enjoy making adventures. Creating interweaving story lines, crafting interesting NPCs, and brewing up really nasty monsters is just about as fun as actually running the adventures themselves.

 

[Li Shenron]

I used to write the adventures myself, but it is quite time-consuming and the results are not better than what I can take from published adventures. Nowadays I mostly take a ready adventure and modify the encounters to my taste.

 

[Sejs]

I make my own, these days. Easier to customize things to the group's composition and play styles, and there's no chance of someone already being familiar with the material. In the past I have run a few published adventures; a couple for D&D, but most were for Shadowrun.

That got just a wee tad annoying when running, say, Celtic Doublecross, and even though the players havn't read the adventure or anything, are constantly asking "So... is this the part where we get double-crossed?" "So, have we been double-crossed yet?" "Man, that double-cross sure is taking its sweet time in getting here." So on and so forth. And that's just an example.

These days if I were to do something with published adventure material, the most I would likely do with it would be to gut it thoughly and drape its hide over my own creature that had roughly the same shape. Sunless Citadel? Let's see... sunken fortress? Check. Kids? Check. Tree? Check. Everything else is subject to change.

 

[The Shaman]

For my own part, I write the adventures I run myself. To me, the creative prosess of making them is almost as much fun as playing. I've tried running published modules a couple of times, but I found it took away alot of the fun for me.

I also use my own homebrew campaign world.

Quoted (again) for truthery.

This is an interesting poll: makes me wonder (again) why Dungeon felt the need to drop Polyhedron - to satisfy the <7% of gamers who rely exclusively on modules?*

*Yes, I know it's not a representative sample - just let me grind my teeth a bit, please?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I'm about 70/30. I have a subscription [now] to Dungeon Magazine as well as Dragon and I tend to use the adventures there. However, I do like creating my own, but it takes me roughly amonth to write it up and put it in the format I desire. Only about 4 adventures in a year I run I make myself.

 

[dekrass]

My players tend to be too freeform and off-the-wall for me to do anything but run things on the fly.
If the adventure assumes the PCs make a deal with a seedy merchant there is a 50/50 chance they'll kill him instead.
These players don' really have a set pattern, so I'm always surprised.