D&D 5E Rejecting the Premise in a Module

[Scott Christian]

Sorry, I left the entire Skull & Shackles AP. Did it have logic holes? Yup. Did we fill in the gaps? Yup. Did we have a blast playing it - yup!

 

[Stormdale]

@Stormdale - that chart looks so much like one of my storyboards I thought for a moment you'd stolen it from my notes!

My question is, how flexible are you with it? Or, put another way, roughly what percentage of that chart do you expect you'll actually end up running; and how much of it will be in the same order as shown?

It's funny for me now, looking back at the storyboard ideas from the early days of my current campaign and seeing how little resemblance there is between what I obviously had in mind then and what I ended up running since.

@ Lanefan. The blue arrows indicate the choices they've made so far in my flow diagram but the storyboard developed organically over time (I noted it down a while ago simply to see how the campaign had developed for my own personal interest). I had a vague idea of what next as they neared the end of an adventure, other times I located a couple of adventures I thought might be fun/interesting to choose from. No overarching storyline just a vague idea of what I thought might happen- originally I had intended for a Sahuagin conspiracy series weaving the 2e Evil Tide series with Saltmarsh.

We are currently in the middle of "Tsojcanth" and that whole arc happened when they rebelled against continuing adventures vs Sahuagin- I was about fo run U3 as an infiltrate and kill the BBEG mission but the party headed inland instead. Been trying to get them to delve into the tower of Zeonopus but one player can smell a set up for Rappan Athuk a mile away.

For some jumping ship (literally in this case) from the apparent adventure arc/path is the players choosing not to engage with the material and somehow disrespecting the DMs wishes but as far as I am concerned my role is to create the set up and then develop things based on the players choices. We coud have continued with the 2e Sahuagin series but how engaged would the players be if I "forced" them too choose to continue? When they decided against continuing to pursue the sahuagin to U3 I could have (and actually hoped to) continue with adventures from the GoSS series after a short interlude. I thew part of forge of fury in as I sensed they wanted a change- and they still talk about going and clearng out the lower levels of that for the dwarves...

Grudd Haug was thrown in on a whim to add another location to a wilderness exploration and they chose to bite after meeting/befriending a lonely hill giantess in the forest... As a 5th-6th level party they decided to assassinate the hill giantess in the stronghold, realised the location was above their paygrade and were lucky to survive that one, ending up fleeing after managing to kill their target before the whole fortress came down on them

I have wanted to run Lost Caverns again for long, long time with this group and when they decided to head inland it seemed a good chance to spring to on them. The campaign has now turned into a sort of homage to the classics at present. I am hoping to continue the 1e theme with GDQ and placed the steading of G1 in one of the valley's explored on their way to Tsojcanth. The players have encountered G1 before in another game and after running into a couple of hill giants and spotting the steading in the distance they got the hell out of Dodge... for now. I've also heard good things about Kingdom of the Ghouls and have the Dungeon mag since it came out so am keen for that as an option too. However Tsojcanth can be pretty deadly so they have to survive that one first.

For interests sake the campaign started in Jan 2019, runs most weeks and this past week the first pc hit level 8 amd they are abot half way though the upper level of Tsojcanth.

Stormdale

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I say this, not as a strawman, but as a matter of dynamics. I simply am referring to your words. In this text, you won't run something so bad, but how do you know if you haven't read it? Seems impossible. You might glance through it and think it is unimaginative. That's possible and maybe even probable for most here. But you don't know if something is bad unless you run it. It's the person who says they won't watch the terrible movie, but hasn't seen it. The person who disses a book without having read. The person who hates a sport, but never played it. It's all the same.

This is a false representation of what I'm saying. I've played this sport. I've read books by this author. So you've gone too far in this argument. I had tons of the 3.XE and 4E modules, and they were pretty consistent in that an awful lot of them (like 30%+ - hell, more like 100% with the 4E ones) were really a pain to run and badly written, and with massive logic-holes.

Yes, sometimes there are exceptions - prior to The Leftovers and Watchmen, all available evidence was that Damon Lindelof was a pretty terrible writer, for example. But you just need to keep awareness to find out about that kind of turnaround.

But you don't know if something is bad unless you run it.

This is false. Not logical, not reasonable. You can absolutely know something is bad by reading it. You do not have to run it. You present no argument or rationale for why you would have to run it. You just handwave a bit.

It all goes back to what I stated earlier. There is no professional published AP from Pathfinder or D&D that can't be fun. And not in a sarcastic way, but fun. It all depends on the DM, the players and the chemistry between everyone. That's it. The material is professionally written, and it shows.

You've produced no evidence to support this, and it's a very extreme claim - a laughable one actually. There's no argument you're presenting here. Just a baseless and extreme claim. Ok, you've made that claim. Congrats? But it has no substance as you've presented it.

One session, yes. Heck, the time to make the maps and print them or build the Dwarven Forge and find all the miniatures takes a few hours.

Why does it take you so long? For me, it takes like, 30 seconds to print something. An properly-written professional AP should not require any time for me to "make the maps". That's one of the major things I was looking for in APs - maps. Because they do take a while to make. An AP with missing or bad maps is a rip-off, frankly.

We don't play with minis, but back when we did, it took, seconds for me to empty out the counters and draw the map as the players could see it onto the battlemap.

Why does it take you hours to do actions which an normal person could do in single-digit minutes?

(You capitalize "Dwarven Forge" - is this a reference to the brand-name physical dungeon-building stuff? If you're claiming you need to use that stuff to be a good DM, that's outright an unacceptable opinion. That's just gatekeeping of the worst kind.)

Aside from that, reading my notes and glancing at the relevant bits of the AP to refresh my memory will take 5-30 minutes. Not sure if that takes longer for you, but it sounds like it, and I'm not sure why.

The vibe I give is consistent: professionally written AP's are very well done.

Yeah, and that's what you have there - a "vibe". Not an argument. Not a rationale. Not logic. Not reason. A vibe. This is why I don't want to argue with you. You can't argue rationally with someone who treats a "vibe" as the same as logic. I've bloody tried, believe me (my FIL believes telekinesis built the pyramids, for example). Nothing you're saying is an actual logical argument, it's just like a bunch of claims with no evidence or rationale to support them.

They are good, if not great. I even compared them to Shakespeare.

Oooookay and I'm out lol. You do you! Because now you're away with the faeries from my perspective.

 

[Oofta]

Fair question - what I'm saying is - if using a module/AP/etc. is more work than a home campaign, why on earth do it? It's literally perverse.

The guy I'm responding to seems to think it's some sort of Herculean task, and seems not to enjoy it, but is apparently willingly doing it (?!?!). So I think it's fair to ask "But why?".



You and this other guy seem to be working on this bizarre binary thing, where there are exactly two ways to run a module:

1) Obsessively memorize the entire thing, and try and run it as close to how it is written as possible, even if this means 2+ hours before every single session.

2) Don't even glance at it, and just read through it as you get to stuff, probably in a bored voice whilst checking your phone.

I mean, I'll be real - I have played with both types of DM! They definitely exist! I'm not sure I've been either, but whatever. But neither of those ways looks like good DMing to me, and people who do 1 often are terrible DMs in my experience, because they're among the worst railroaders, tantrum throwers, and so on. I've literally see Type 1 DMs stop a campaign because the PCs didn't choose the right thing, and the campaign didn't allow for it. Literally. More than once actually. For balance, let me say also that I've seen Type 2 DMs turn extremely good modules into extremely boring and bad ones, just by being extremely lazy.

But I think it's a false dichotomy, and both these kinds are freaks, and not great at DMing. Most DMs aren't much like either.

I think a good DM, unless they genuinely have memory problems (which sucks, I admit, and you need to find workarounds if so, or consider being a player), reads through a module/AP once, cover to cover, makes notes somewhere (depending on the format and technological era - things were very different in 1990 to 2020!), maybe literally highlights a real document or PDF (I don't buy fancy expensive adventures - if it's too expensive to write on, it's inappropriate as a module imho - it's just a collectible) for stuff that's easily missed. You take quick notes after a session (like, if this takes you more than 10 minutes, something is wrong), sometimes you don't even need to do that. Then before the session, you flick through the module/AP and check your notes. If you're me, or my brother, or at least one of the other DMs I play with, who I've talked to about this, this takes about 5-20 minutes with a module/AP (totally different if you're running a home campaign ofc).

Now, if it's me, and the campaign has problems - like a badly-written or boring bit, or terrible encounter design, I may need to put in a few hours, or even a lot of hours, fixing that. But I do that after I read it, not before a session - this is why I stopped using modules. Too many of them were so bad I had to spend more time revising them than it would take me to write something more personalized and engaging for the PCs.

So when I hear someone finds just reading a module/AP to be an "enormous effort" and that they maybe put in 2-4 hours before every session just to understand it - especially if, like you, they find it far easier to do home campaigns, then I don't know what hell is going on with them. Why would you ever do that? It's like saying you get intense leg pains when you play tennis, and you don't enjoy tennis, but you keep playing tennis. What's going on to make that happen?

And I'll be honest, I have no comprehension of how you even could spend 2-4 hours/session (assuming 3-5 hour sessions) on a module/AP, every session (and maybe he didn't mean that, but it kinda seemed like he maybe did). I don't even know what you'd be doing. Reading an entire AP segment (which is likely a six to a dozen or more actual sessions of material) cover-to-cover is usually like 1-3 hours, and much less for a lot of modules (some are under 5-10 minutes at a normal reading/comprehension speed). Do you re-read the entire AP every time or something?

EDIT - Apologies for the wall of text. I feel like I could make myself understood better if I could edit this down a lot, but it would take a while.

I'll keep this short. If I run a mod I'm going to spend the time to understand it. I'm also going figure out how to tweak problematic areas or figure out how to inject fun into boring bits. The printed module is frequently just the framework. Yes, that takes significantly more time than running a home game for me because in my home game I never have to flowchart or plan ahead that much. But even when I just run it as is, it still takes significantly more time because I do such minimal prep work for my home games (not that anyone can tell).

To imply that if someone takes time to really understand a module in order to maximize player's experience means they have "memory issues" is insulting.

I'm done.

 

[Helldritch]

If you take an AP and play it as is without adjustment, you are extremely lucky or this AP was specifically designed for your group. In every AP that I have DMed, I have always adapted them to the specific group that would be playing it. This requires a minimal amount of work (in general, but there are exceptions) and the pay off is really big.

As for our topic, It did happened to me that a whole group rejected an adventure that I had written. I stopped the game immediately and talked about it. After a heated debate, a charismatic player conviced the others to wholy reject the premisses and the adventure itself without even trying it. The player in question was about to divorce and was bringing his personnal problems to the game (this fact was unknown to all at that time). But he was charismatic, very much. Long story short, the group dissolved through no fault of my own. I had done a lot of work to make this adventure but because of one player it fell short. I went on with the second group and they had a blast doing the adventure that was designed for the other group.

After 2 months, the guy finally divorced and him and his group asked to come back. They were regretting their decision as the other groups were retelling their adventures and it was evident that they were enjoying it. Unfortunately, I had already built a second group. It took them nine years to come back because there was a waiting list to get in my games and when the factory closed, I left for an other area in order to work. When the factory reopened in 2012, I came back and called back previous players. Many had moved as I had done and were not available. I had enough players for two groups including the one that had left before ( including the charismatic one).

When a DM prepares adventures, bought or otherwise, that DM puts a lot of work into it. This is something that many players forget. All this work should bring a small dose of lattitude to the DM and players should get along at least for a while. Players should indulge in the adventure for a few sessions to get an idea of what the adventure is about. If after a few sessions, it is evident that it is not their cup of tea, then a discussion should occur. A good DM will listen and adjust to the complains and adjust. A better DM will adjust way before such a discussion has to happen. But the players should at least give it a try. It is a question of mutual respect.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To imply that if someone takes time to really understand a module in order to maximize player's experience means they have "memory issues" is insulting.

Yeah, and if I had remotely implied that, that would be a reasonable response. As I didn't, it's a pretty silly thing to pull out and get upset about. Also, as I'm a real person who actually has ADHD, and has to work to manage it, I find this sort of "acknowledging that someone may have disability and may need to manage it is an insult" thing pretty hard to take, frankly. Especially when people toss around my disability as literally a joke.

I'm also going figure out how to tweak problematic areas or figure out how to inject fun into boring bits. The printed module is frequently just the framework.

Yeah, and this is why I question why run them at all, a question no-one has answered yet. Or even like, hinted at an answer. Why do something that's both harder work and, it seems less rewarding?

I guess we will never know!

For me it's also disappointing to pay money for something that is lacking in this way. And what's sad is, not all modules/APs are lacking like that. Very often single-adventure modules are pretty complete. It's really the APs and multi-adventure modules and stuff where I see a lot of this framework-instead-of-actual-writing.

On top of that sometimes you have issues that don't pop out on a read-through. Whilst I maintain that you can tell if something is basically kind of crummy on a read through, you can still miss certain issues, particularly if the AP is badly organised, as quite a lot of them are.

When a DM prepares adventures, bought or otherwise, that DM puts a lot of work into it. This is something that many players forget.

I guess I'm lucky, because I've never played with players who behave like this, well, above the age of 20. If you're really having this problem in your 30s and 40s, not remembering something that happened decades ago, that is quite shocking to me.

 

[Helldritch]

I guess I'm lucky, because I've never played with players who behave like this, well, above the age of 20. If you're really having this problem in your 30s and 40s, not remembering something that happened decades ago, that is quite shocking to me.

Yep, it happened once, and it was in very specific circumstances. That man should've been a politician or a salesman. He is really good to convince other people to see things his way. Not working on me though. He is a childhood friend. We did not know at the time but he was about to divorce and he was bringing his problems at his work (which he nearly lost), at our games and just about everywhere. We knew he had problems. We tried to talk to him to know what was going on, but he was (and still is) also quite the machoman...

Fortunately, we are still friends, it's a game after all. But with the player backlog that wanted in; he and my other friends were at the bottom and I had no places for a third, fourth and fifth group (even today, if I wanted, I could make about 1 group of 6 players for each day of the week. If the hobby was a work, I'd be on burn out in no time...). We were 33 years old at that time. He was in distress and did not wanted to admit it. Fortunately, it's all behind us now. They're playing with me again along with an other group (former students of mine). So everything is ok.

Edit: And I have an excellent memory... The comment was about players forgetting the amount of work a DM is doing. Not that I have trouble with my memory (if that was the point of your last sentence that is)

 

[Lanefan]

I simply am referring to your words. In this text, you won't run something so bad, but how do you know if you haven't read it?

I'll take that a step further and say how do you know if you haven't run it.

I say this because oftentimes I've found modules either read better than they run or run better than they read; meaning I truly don't know if it's any good until after I've run it, by which time of course it's too late if it does turn out to be a dog.

I feel like half the problem people have with AP's is due to lack of prep.

Except that's half of a problem that shouldn't exist.

Why?

Because the usual reason behind running a canned module instead of a homebrew is the canned module in theory does 95% of that work for you! Thus, the DM shouldn't really have to prep anything to just run the module as written. (IME almost all the prep I ever have to do when running a canned module revolves around fitting it into my homebrew campaign and-or story line; i.e. work I've brought upon myself that isn't the module's fault)

If I'm expected to prep for a canned module just like I do a homebrew why would I waste my money buying it?

 

[Rdm]

This is a false representation of what I'm saying. I've played this sport. I've read books by this author. So you've gone too far in this argument. I had tons of the 3.XE and 4E modules, and they were pretty consistent in that an awful lot of them (like 30%+ - hell, more like 100% with the 4E ones) were really a pain to run and badly written, and with massive logic-holes.

Yes, sometimes there are exceptions - prior to The Leftovers and Watchmen, all available evidence was that Damon Lindelof was a pretty terrible writer, for example. But you just need to keep awareness to find out about that kind of turnaround.



This is false. Not logical, not reasonable. You can absolutely know something is bad by reading it. You do not have to run it. You present no argument or rationale for why you would have to run it. You just handwave a bit.



You've produced no evidence to support this, and it's a very extreme claim - a laughable one actually. There's no argument you're presenting here. Just a baseless and extreme claim. Ok, you've made that claim. Congrats? But it has no substance as you've presented it.



Why does it take you so long? For me, it takes like, 30 seconds to print something. An properly-written professional AP should not require any time for me to "make the maps". That's one of the major things I was looking for in APs - maps. Because they do take a while to make. An AP with missing or bad maps is a rip-off, frankly.

We don't play with minis, but back when we did, it took, seconds for me to empty out the counters and draw the map as the players could see it onto the battlemap.

Why does it take you hours to do actions which an normal person could do in single-digit minutes?

(You capitalize "Dwarven Forge" - is this a reference to the brand-name physical dungeon-building stuff? If you're claiming you need to use that stuff to be a good DM, that's outright an unacceptable opinion. That's just gatekeeping of the worst kind.)

Aside from that, reading my notes and glancing at the relevant bits of the AP to refresh my memory will take 5-30 minutes. Not sure if that takes longer for you, but it sounds like it, and I'm not sure why.



Yeah, and that's what you have there - a "vibe". Not an argument. Not a rationale. Not logic. Not reason. A vibe. This is why I don't want to argue with you. You can't argue rationally with someone who treats a "vibe" as the same as logic. I've bloody tried, believe me (my FIL believes telekinesis built the pyramids, for example). Nothing you're saying is an actual logical argument, it's just like a bunch of claims with no evidence or rationale to support them.



Oooookay and I'm out lol. You do you! Because now you're away with the faeries from my perspective.

It’s “extreme“ to claim that any published AP can be fun? Seriously?

 

[Lanefan]

@ Lanefan. The blue arrows indicate the choices they've made so far in my flow diagram but the storyboard developed organically over time (I noted it down a while ago simply to see how the campaign had developed for my own personal interest).

Ah - so much of it's a timeline of what's already occurred. Gotcha.

I had a vague idea of what next as they neared the end of an adventure, other times I located a couple of adventures I thought might be fun/interesting to choose from. No overarching storyline just a vague idea of what I thought might happen- originally I had intended for a Sahuagin conspiracy series weaving the 2e Evil Tide series with Saltmarsh.

Yep - this all sounds very familiar, except the names are changed.

We are currently in the middle of "Tsojcanth" .... The campaign has now turned into a sort of homage to the classics at present.

Funny, I'm also in the middle of running Tsojcanth, and also as part of a 'tour of the classics'. My wife has never been in a bunch of old adventures that my other usual players know like the backs of their hands; and so during lockdown it seemed like a great opportunity to run her through some of these solo. Started with Castle Amber, now Tsojcanth; and next up will probably be an old homebrew adventure (by another DM, not me) that's become a classic within our crew. Or Isle of Dread; and in any case it'll mean a new party as the Tsojcanth crew are way too high level for what's next.

She's been through G1 and G3 at different times, and when I ran D1-2-3 and Q1 in the past I came away rather unimpressed; so that series is out.

I am hoping to continue the 1e theme with GDQ and placed the steading of G1 in one of the valley's explored on their way to Tsojcanth. The players have encountered G1 before in another game and after running into a couple of hill giants and spotting the steading in the distance they got the hell out of Dodge... for now.

That's one of the great things about those modules: you can drop 'em in anywhere and they fit right in.

For interests sake the campaign started in Jan 2019, runs most weeks and this past week the first pc hit level 8 amd they are abot half way though the upper level of Tsojcanth.

The upper level had been partly done earlier by a different party (including one of her PCs, who has come back to finish). She got about 1/3 of the way through the lower level then ran aground on room 9 down there; and is only just now getting back to town to revive some dead and more or less start over.