D&D General The Best Parts of Pre Written Adventurers Are What You Leave Behind

[Burnside]

This is very much true of Out of the Abyss. Although it's not a great adventure, it is a wonderful source for set-piece encounters, locations, creatures, and characters.

 

[GMMichael]

Somewhere along the line I realized I did not have to run the adventure as written or keep everything in it. Again, it feels silly after running D&D for so long but I guess you can't have experience doing anything if you don't actually do it.

Yep get rid of anyhting you don't like (usually this includes the plot in my case- especially with regards to the adventure paths) and keep the bits that work for you has always been the mantra of DMing style.

Sound advice - I based an RPG on it. Come to think of it, it works for RPGs and setting books too. Hell, you could just cut the setting out of Numenera if you don't like the rules, and play it in D&D 5e!

I really didn’t like the variable path chapter of
Dragon Heist. Then I realized they were handing me a slew of city based encounters and who cares if I only used 3 of them at that point. For anyone playing higher levels in the campaign it’s a great resource.

I haven't read Dragon Heist, but I'm thinking there's a chance that, probably in the first chapter or introduction, the designers say something like "hey, here's a city-adventure sandbox, just in case you don't like main quest. Have fun!" Any truth to that?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The key to that success? Throwing stuff out.

Definitely agree, but the issue I've found in a lot of modules/APs (especially longer ones) is that you're basically ending up throwing out more than you're keeping, and in a lot of cases, it's actually more effort to write stuff to fit into an adventure framework someone else came up with, rather than just write your own adventures from scratch (albeit I will always steal maps where I can - I love the idea of making maps, but my hate for actually doing it is pretty extreme - even though I'm not terrible at it).

In 4E it's why I switched - The first three "official" APs are dreadful, and I was just vastly re-writing them to get around some of the worst idiocy. On the upside, it renewed my confidence as a DM, especially in my own encounter-building and so on.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Yup.

The 5E adventure paths are GREAT for looting, reskinning, and just generally making them your own.

I just finished doing that with Storm King's Thunder in one campaign (it was the core of levels 10 through 15) and am currently doing it with both Dragon Heist and Dragon of Icespire Peak.

But this isn't an approach I stumbled on. It's something I'm compelled to do. Not sure why, exactly, but my style is to take a published adventure...and then change everything. For some reason that's easier for me than starting from scratch.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I haven't read Dragon Heist, but I'm thinking there's a chance that, probably in the first chapter or introduction, the designers say something like "hey, here's a city-adventure sandbox, just in case you don't like main quest. Have fun!" Any truth to that?

No, not that I recall. I'm pretty sure that in interviews the designers positioned the product as having sandbox elements, but it's not stated in print. Before the product was released, I was hoping that it would be more sandboxy that it actually is. But it didn't really go that way.

 

[Reynard]

No, not that I recall. I'm pretty sure that in interviews the designers positioned the product as having sandbox elements, but it's not stated in print. Before the product was released, I was hoping that it would be more sandboxy that it actually is. But it didn't really go that way.

I seem to recall there being an explicit touting of its replayability.

I actually used 3 of the 4 bad guys concurrently when I ran it (I ignored the drow dude) complete with a good old mexican standoff at the end.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The mistake I made when running modules when I was younger was that everything got included as written. As a consequence, I didn't have a particularly high opinion of modules until I learned the trick of knowing what to add and what to remove and what to change on the fly.

I riffed heavily on Out of the Abyss, adding in the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, removing other parts, playing up others. Hoard of the Dragon Queen I added a whole new introduction to give them a reason to brave the opening bandit raid and not revealing the blue dragon until they were in the thick of it.

Everyone's group is different, and DMs should always be looking at things from a perspective of "are they going to have fun with this?" Tweaking a module is a part of running it.

 

[Bupp]

That's all that published adventures are. A bunch of ideas that you get to choose what works for you.

Pick and choose, and add random bits from other places.

I getting ready to run Ghosts of Saltmarsh with the Slavers series mixed in. Probably going to add in the city of Stormhaven from Mongoose Press.

 

[RangerWickett]

But, like, it's still possible for the story and design of an adventure to be good, right?

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I seem to recall there being an explicit touting of its replayability.

I actually used 3 of the 4 bad guys concurrently when I ran it (I ignored the drow dude) complete with a good old mexican standoff at the end.

Yes, there was touting of replayability. I consider an adventure with replayable elements to be different than a sandbox. But you might not.

I agree that multiple factions is a great way to run Dragon Heist. It's what I'm doing right now, in fact.