D&D 5E I can’t seem to DM written adventures.

[dave2008]

Another good system neutral OSR-style module to check out is Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It’s free as a PDF on DriveThru.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

The draw of the style is the succinct descriptions, use of bullet points, maps on the same page or spread as the descriptions of the rooms, and other minor quality of life improvements in layout and design. This makes them wildly easier to use than modules with walls of text for everything. Much faster to read, prep, and run.

Thanks! I have it in may cart now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Just curious if I am alone here or does this chime with anyone else?

I have very mixed experiences with written adventures.

Either they vibe with me, and I'm like "Yeah, that's what I'd have done" or better yet "Oh that's like what I'd have done if I was way smarter!", and I'm quite into the adventure and know I will have a good time running it. Or they don't vibe with me - particularly if they're "written to read", rather than being presented as an adventure/scenario, if they're a story, they almost never work for me. And if they don't vibe with me, I just bounce off them hard.

The vast majority of WotC adventures, for 3E, 4E and 5E, I just bounce off. That'd probably be true for 3PPs as well, but with 3PPs I can pick and choose so I'm able to find ones that do work for me (though I've largely avoided buying prewritten adventures for 5E). WotC's writers, for whatever reason, are particularly good at cooking up scenarios in adventures that I personally find incredibly contrived and anti-resonant. A lot of them also don't fit with the vibe of fantasy I tend to run, which is both a bit more heroic and bit lower-magic than WotC tends to go. Strahd was good though.

 

[Stormonu]

I can’t DM written adventures.

Not complaining. It's not a problem. Just curious if I am alone here or does this chime with anyone else?

You're not alone, but I can say pre-written adventures for me are both a goldmine and a godsend. I can run them as published, but I'll usually tweak or add here and there to make the experience unique. I also plunder old adventures for plot, mechanics and encounters. Last of all, after 3E I was pretty burned out making my own content as it had gotten too complex to spend hours on the math to make stuff, and I didn't have the time I once did back in my 1E/2E glory days. By 5th, using prewritten content took a lot of burden off my shoulders. Lately, as I've gotten more comfortable homebrewing 5E content, I'm back to making my adventures - though I won't begrudge using something already built for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I also plunder old adventures for plot, mechanics and encounters.

I have to admit I am fascinated that so many people do this, as I've been running RPGs for 34 years now and never done this. I'm probably "doing it wrong" lol.

 

[iserith]

I have to admit I am fascinated that so many people do this, as I've been running RPGs for 34 years now and never done this. I'm probably "doing it wrong" lol.

I have a fun time looking at old Dungeon Magazine adventures (YIKES) and trying to think through how I'd restructure them to do a better job of what the author may have been trying to accomplish. Get rid of all this crap here, move this part over there, beef up this section, my god was this dude paid by the paragraph of boxed text delete, and so on. It's a useful exercise, I believe. I did this the other day with this one adventure where the PCs are hired to go find some dinosaur eggs in a sewer. As written, it was pretty bad in my opinion. But in a discussion with another DM on Discord we actually made it into something pretty great, and I may write it up and run it for my group.

One thing I wish I could do was also examine some of these old AD&D 2e adventures within the context of those rules because, despite playing it in high school, I can't remember anything about it. I wonder sometimes through that lens maybe the adventure makes a great deal more sense as designed. (Though I doubt it. Some design is just bad in any context.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One thing I wish I could do was also examine some of these old AD&D 2e adventures within the context of those rules because, despite playing it in high school, I can't remember anything about it. I wonder sometimes through that lens maybe the adventure makes a great deal more sense as designed. (Though I doubt it. Some design is just bad in any context.)

I would say bad adventures were probably bad under the original rules - in some cases I've run the same adventure under 2E, 4E, Dungeon World, and 5E, and it held up as a solid adventure (despite having to be more or less re-written, encounter-details-wise for 4E and 5E). I haven't seen any cases where good ones suddenly sucked in different editions, which I'd expect if edition mattered that much.

I have definitely gone through Dungeon and other adventures and thought about what I'd change. I always kind of liked Dungeon because it was rare that an issue didn't have at least one decent adventure in it, which for the price wasn't too bad.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I struggle with pre-published adventures too. For a variety of reasons.

Poor presentation is right up there. Flipping back and forth through books/pdfs to find what you need at any given time is a real mood killer at the table.

Over written back stories. I (vaguely) remember a 2e adventure from a Dungeon magazine. The first 2-3, densely written, pages were a 2000 or so year history of the dungeon, complete with some very detailed events. None of which came up in the adventure. Why do I care X betrayed Y 1000 years ago? If their ghosts were still hanging around, sure. But no.

Inconsistent style and or plots. I've only run one AP, Reign of Winter. There was no real consistency from one part to the other. There were some good parts (parts 2&5 stand out.) But apart from snow and a vague stop the baddie plot, there was no real feeling of consistency.

So I prefer to write my own stuff. Which has the added advantage of being tailored to my PCs.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I can’t DM written adventures. Just curious if I am alone here or does this chime with anyone else?

You're definitely not alone. I didn't do it at all (I couldn't stand them!) for my first 20 years as a DM. I run them now, but often with a lot of frustration.

One of the tricks I'm thinking of trying is to do this:
1) Read the Adventure.
2) Put the book away.
3) Run my own adventure based loosely on that.

If I can't remember (or didn't like) something, I'll make it up.

 

[overgeeked]

You're definitely not alone. I didn't do it at all (I couldn't stand them!) for my first 20 years as a DM. I run them now, but often with a lot of frustration.

One of the tricks I'm thinking of trying is to do this:
1) Read the Adventure.
2) Put the book away.
3) Run my own adventure based loosely on that.

If I can't remember (or didn't like) something, I'll make it up.

As others have said, stripping the module for parts is usually much easier for me to do. Use the maps. Some of the encounters or NPCs. But I do find it a lot easier to run OSR modules. Mostly because they pare down the useless info and only give you what you need and present it in a useable way.

Long modules, APs, and story-focused modules are the worst. You either railroad or toss the module 5 minutes into the game. Location- or event-based modules are a bit easier. And the shorter the better.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

As others have said, stripping the module for parts is usually much easier for me to do. Use the maps. Some of the encounters or NPCs. But I do find it a lot easier to run OSR modules. Mostly because they pare down the useless info and only give you what you need and present it in a useable way.

Long modules, APs, and story-focused modules are the worst. You either railroad or toss the module 5 minutes into the game. Location- or event-based modules are a bit easier. And the shorter the better.

I run a lot of play-by-post here on ENWorld, and the thing I lament the most is offering to run a few of the 5e Hardcovers. At the pace of PBP, I estimate the average 5e HC will take me 10 years to complete. I'm already 6 years into Tomb of Annihilation, which I started just before that book came out (with an intro adventure).

This is me, in a long way, trying to say: I am 100% with you that "shorter is better".

Location and event-based modules would be perfect for PBP. I won't make that mistake again (I hope).