What kind of adventures do you run?

[Alexander123]

Do you create your own adventures or do you use published adventures or a mix of both? Do you find published adventures to be superior to adventures you create yourself?

 

[Armando]

Your own adventures are always more fun. They force you to be creative and allow the other players to get crazy with their problem solutions. It also allows you a bit more versatility as DM. You are only constrained by what you want to be constrained by, and can make changes to your plan on the fly.

 

[CuRoi]

Entirely my own adventures, borrowing things from modules as I go if necessary. I've TRIED to use modules before and usually somewhere around page one, a player wants to do something the module doesn't cover and I gladly deviate and the entire thing goes off the tracks

My players typically don't like the dungeon crawl adventures. They've gotten used to broad scale epic campaigning which I prefer anyway. My adventures are pretty heavy on planning, roleplaying and campaign exploration. I usually have an overaching "plot" always in motion regardless what the PCs pursue and several threads dangling which may or may not tied into the big plot. Most of my "adventures" consist of the following:

Cast of NPCs/Monsters

A map (I've either created or stolen from a historical source online)

A bunch of "contingency" notes. Mainly brainstorming so I have different ways to react to the many different things players might do.

I also try to tie many of these adventures into the main plot so the PCs are slowly collecting info regarding that, but this isn't necessary. I also have several of the above skeletons for adventures outlined for every session, just in case players decide to head some other direction.

Oh - and I keep advancing the big plot whether the PCs do anything about it or not.

The bulk of any of my "adventures" then consists of Seat o' My Pants (TM) DMing wherein my players do everything I didn't think they would do and I react accordingly.

 

[Jhaelen]

I almost always use published modules as a starting point but after I'm done customizing them, I doubt anyone would recognize much. I enjoy mixing and matching encounters from different modules and almost always have to adjust encounter levels, backstory and npcs to fit into my campaign and work well for my current group of players.

Actually, that's one of the first things I note when reading a published module: Does the adventure work equally well if you replace the entire cast of monsters and npcs and translate the location somewhere completely different?

 

[Sekhmet]

Actually, that's one of the first things I note when reading a published module: Does the adventure work equally well if you replace the entire cast of monsters and npcs and translate the location somewhere completely different?

[sblock]This reads terribly like "Does X work if it were actually Q and not X at all?"
Deep philosophical questions like that don't really have a place on the board (outside of alignment shifts) in my opinion.

For instance, that paragraph could read "If I took a Ravenloft module and changed it to use fluffy little bunnies and keeeeeeyute little kitty cats, would it still work?"

I think the answer will always be a resounding NO.[/sblock]


I like to make my own modules to fit more securely into the overall campaign idea, but I have also been known to grab a published piece to fill a gap. I once had a very complete (or so I thought) campaign "path" set up for the PC's to go along with (many options with a few key plot points), but they ended up missing one of the earlier moments through a hole I hadn't seen, and I had to find a way to get them up to strength to meet the next plot challenge.

Grabbed a quickie from a bookstore and went to work with it. Didn't fit perfectly, but it wasn't so far off as to be unbelievable.

 

[Gilladian]

I frequently use published adventures, but not usually for more than half the campaign. The higher the level the PCs, the more I cut and paste, shift, retailor and resculpt adventures.

I find that if I ONLY run my own adventures, I fall into a rut; things are always just so hard, challenges have too much of the same shape, and NPCs become too predictable. By having another person's imagination and vision of "how things are" in the design, I get more variety and creativity injected.

However, I almost always rewrite the intro, some of the history, and certain scenes (usually the villain) to retrofit to my world. What's the fun of having a villainous knightly order in the world if the great warrior-king of a previous generation wasn't one of its historical leaders?

I also like to give my PCs plenty of scope to run around and do things like build orphanages, get married, found temples, and other stuff that modules don't "allow for." All of that has to be "written" by me (in the sense that I have to have some idea of what the obstacles they'll face will be).

So mix and match is my strategy. I never plan more than about 2 adventures "out" from where my party is. Although this latest campaign I am using a megadungeon (dungeonaday.com) and am hoping they "stick with it" for at least a few levels!

 

[Alexander123]

I find that if I ONLY run my own adventures, I fall into a rut; things are always just so hard, challenges have too much of the same shape, and NPCs become too predictable. By having another person's imagination and vision of "how things are" in the design, I get more variety and creativity injected.

I also like to give my PCs plenty of scope to run around and do things like build orphanages, get married, found temples, and other stuff that modules don't "allow for." All of that has to be "written" by me (in the sense that I have to have some idea of what the obstacles they'll face will be).

Yes, published material certainly does help inject creativity.

And the second part is also true, there are things which the module doesn't allow for but which is very fun to do requiring writing the material yourself.

 

[Greg K]

I have only run one published adventure (well, it was free on a company website) since first edition AD&D and it was for Savage Worlds to give my friends and I a feel for the system.

I prefer creating my own adventures. I can take into account my players and their characters. For fantasy, I tend to set up an initial adventure. After that, I tend to base adventures on hooks the players pursue, "story lines" they initiate via characters, ideas from character backgrounds and goals, and follow-ups to past actions.

 

[Jhaelen]

[sblock]This reads terribly like "Does X work if it were actually Q and not X at all?"
Deep philosophical questions like that don't really have a place on the board (outside of alignment shifts) in my opinion.

For instance, that paragraph could read "If I took a Ravenloft module and changed it to use fluffy little bunnies and keeeeeeyute little kitty cats, would it still work?"

I think the answer will always be a resounding NO.[/sblock]

Umm, is there any particular reason why you put this part in an sblock?
[sblock]Then you'd be surprised! Actually, most adventure modules are written in a way to be easily relocated. It's the exception rather than the rule that every 'ingredient' of an adventure has been carefully chosen to make sense only in that particular composition.

From a business perspective it makes sense to write adventures in a way that they are useful to the largest possible audience.

I also don't quite understand your comment about these kind of thoughts 'having no place on the board'. What board? ENWorld?
Anyway, I'm using this to analyze modules and figure out how much thought the author actually put into writing the module. If it's possible to replace everything without negatively affecting the adventure in any way that's either
a) a good thing - if the module was supposed to be generic
b) a bad thing - if the module was supposed to showcase a particular setting

It might be worth noting that I immensely enjoy _reading_ modules that would not really work if you modified them in any way. However, it's unfortunately extremely unlikely I will ever actually _play_ them, except as a one-shot.
[/sblock]

 

[Empirate]

I'm running my first ever published module right now (Red Hand of Doom). Normally, I only DM campaigns I make up myself, sometimes in published settings (we were running around Faerûn quite a while), sometimes in my own worlds. However, I wanted the "challenge" of running a published module for once - see how it goes, see how much more (or less) work it'll be, see how other gamers' design philosophy works out for me, stuff like that.
I must say I changed a lot in the details, fluff, and atmosphere, but not much in the actual campaign structure. At some point, I'll put up a monster thread 'DMing the Red Hand of Doom' and tell you how it went.