Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Not because I think I can do better, but because I have ideas and I think I can do well enough to get them on paper in DM-able form.
How Do You Feel About Published Adventures as a GM?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
And often they are also not the same people that love designing monsters, or doing the world building.
Man, I have never felt like a published adventure has ever saved me prep time, but that is probably because my prep when running off the cuff is about 15-30 minutes for a 2 or 3 hour session. With a written adventure, it gets closer to 1:1 unless I pad with unnecessary combat (which I totally admit to doing if I have not done my module prep).
Meech17
WotC President Runner-Up.
When I started playing in the early 2000's I didn't know there was such a thing as published adventures. We bought all of our books from Borders, which is a now defunct chain bookstore, similar to a Barnes and Noble. It was cool that they carried these books, but they didn't carry a wide variety. The core 3, and then we did get occasional supplements like the 3.Xe Complete Books. I wish I had known that we had a decent LGS in our town, but at the time, we weren't aware that Comic Shops were also often Game Stores. I did end up frequenting that store later and the owner was a great dude, and they stocked toooooons of old books/modules. Hindsight 20/20.. You don't know what you've got, til it's gone.. and all that.
Regardless we never used adventures/modules. As far as I know my brother ran everything off the dome. I did once find a short murder mystery type adventure on a forum online. I paid like a dollar to print it off at the library and I tried to run it.. But it immediately fell apart when the players didn't do what the adventure expected them to do, and I was not at all prepared to handle a train derailment.
Fast forward ~15 years and I'm not really playing any D&D but I'm really hungry for it, so I was consuming a lot of content, and learning a lot about the history of the game. I really wish I had known then what I know now. I could have run some modules and probably had a lot of fun.
Thus far with my current group I ran a lightly modified version of "Them Apples" from Dungeon Magazine #48. I really only modified the house where the adventure takes place. I dislike how old adventures will do weird stuff to thwart the players from doing things that are pretty obvious. (For instance, assume that a above-average intelligence giant would build a log cabin with no windows, and light it with torches, so that he had to live in a smoky smoggy hell box, and then you players couldn't perhaps climb through a window. )
I'm prepping to run Sunless Citadel this weekend, and I'm doing A LOT of modification. For one thing, I'm streamlining the dungeon. Cutting out empty rooms, and gratuitous random encounters. If I wanted this adventure to last a lot longer I might run it as is, but I'm hoping for two sessions..
I've got to say.. Drawing big dungeons is freaking hard.
Regardless we never used adventures/modules. As far as I know my brother ran everything off the dome. I did once find a short murder mystery type adventure on a forum online. I paid like a dollar to print it off at the library and I tried to run it.. But it immediately fell apart when the players didn't do what the adventure expected them to do, and I was not at all prepared to handle a train derailment.
Fast forward ~15 years and I'm not really playing any D&D but I'm really hungry for it, so I was consuming a lot of content, and learning a lot about the history of the game. I really wish I had known then what I know now. I could have run some modules and probably had a lot of fun.
Thus far with my current group I ran a lightly modified version of "Them Apples" from Dungeon Magazine #48. I really only modified the house where the adventure takes place. I dislike how old adventures will do weird stuff to thwart the players from doing things that are pretty obvious. (For instance, assume that a above-average intelligence giant would build a log cabin with no windows, and light it with torches, so that he had to live in a smoky smoggy hell box, and then you players couldn't perhaps climb through a window. )
I'm prepping to run Sunless Citadel this weekend, and I'm doing A LOT of modification. For one thing, I'm streamlining the dungeon. Cutting out empty rooms, and gratuitous random encounters. If I wanted this adventure to last a lot longer I might run it as is, but I'm hoping for two sessions..
I've got to say.. Drawing big dungeons is freaking hard.
JediSoth
Voice Over Artist & Author
Generally, I think they're fine. Conceptually, I think they're fine. I used them all the time growing up with D&D (B/X and BECMI) and AD&D 1e and 2e. Even the 3rd edition stuff was OK.
My main problem with published adventures these days, is that many of them (particularly the ones from WotC that I have purchased) are not laid out with ease-of-use for the GM in mind.
I do not have time to read through the entire book and study it before I start running it. Now, maybe this issue has been solved in more recent adventure, but I remember a specific instance from one of the earlier adventure where the PCs encounter a specific NPC. In the NPCs statblock (in the back of the book), it lists what the NPC has. However, in ONE SENTENCE buried in a description in a later location which the PCs won't reach for several levels yet, it mentions that the NPC does NOT keep a particular item upon their person, but rather in a chest in that particular room (which again, the PCs won't reach for several levels and possible weeks or months of REAL time). Ergo, the NPC did NOT have the item when the PCs encountered them.
THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL INFORMATION TO PUT IN THE INITIAL ENCOUNTER WITH THE NPC
That kind of stuff was rampant in the WotC adventures I purchased and attempted to run. They assume an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire book before you even started session 1, because they provided no adventure outline, no synopsis (other than what was printed on the back of the book), nothing to make it easier for a GM to run the darn thing. There were DM's Guild purchases available to mitigate some of that, but in my view, those shouldn't be necessary to keep me from pulling out my hair.
I found out that it was much easier and LESS work for me to run my own, original adventures, than to use prepublished adventures from WotC. (To a lesser extent, I found this also true of Pathfinder's Adventure Paths, though at least those are broken up into chapters, of a sort, that are kind of self-contained.) In my opinion, a pre-written adventure you purchase should save the GM time and effort, not make the game harder and more like work. I play the game to escape from reality for a bit, not do a College Cram Session LARP.
I've heard people say that Paizo's Adventure Paths, and WotC big adventure books aren't really written to be run, per se, but rather to be read, like some kind of weird game lit fic. I'm not sure I can disagree with that.
My main problem with published adventures these days, is that many of them (particularly the ones from WotC that I have purchased) are not laid out with ease-of-use for the GM in mind.
I do not have time to read through the entire book and study it before I start running it. Now, maybe this issue has been solved in more recent adventure, but I remember a specific instance from one of the earlier adventure where the PCs encounter a specific NPC. In the NPCs statblock (in the back of the book), it lists what the NPC has. However, in ONE SENTENCE buried in a description in a later location which the PCs won't reach for several levels yet, it mentions that the NPC does NOT keep a particular item upon their person, but rather in a chest in that particular room (which again, the PCs won't reach for several levels and possible weeks or months of REAL time). Ergo, the NPC did NOT have the item when the PCs encountered them.
THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL INFORMATION TO PUT IN THE INITIAL ENCOUNTER WITH THE NPC
That kind of stuff was rampant in the WotC adventures I purchased and attempted to run. They assume an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire book before you even started session 1, because they provided no adventure outline, no synopsis (other than what was printed on the back of the book), nothing to make it easier for a GM to run the darn thing. There were DM's Guild purchases available to mitigate some of that, but in my view, those shouldn't be necessary to keep me from pulling out my hair.
I found out that it was much easier and LESS work for me to run my own, original adventures, than to use prepublished adventures from WotC. (To a lesser extent, I found this also true of Pathfinder's Adventure Paths, though at least those are broken up into chapters, of a sort, that are kind of self-contained.) In my opinion, a pre-written adventure you purchase should save the GM time and effort, not make the game harder and more like work. I play the game to escape from reality for a bit, not do a College Cram Session LARP.
I've heard people say that Paizo's Adventure Paths, and WotC big adventure books aren't really written to be run, per se, but rather to be read, like some kind of weird game lit fic. I'm not sure I can disagree with that.
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JediSoth
Voice Over Artist & Author
I could also rant about how the set up in one of them (cough*Tomb of Annihilation*cough) is explicitly set up with an actual time limit, i.e. Do The Thing or Everyone* DIES OR WORSE, yet the adventure is written like a sandbox.
Well, my group, and they can't have been the only group, took that time limit SERIOUSLY. They ignored EVERYTHING that they thought was not pertinent to their goal. What a terrible, awful, ill-considered premise for a sandbox adventure. A "But Thou Must" Time Limit?
Had I studied the book like a college course, I might have thrown that premise out entirely (and many of the "How to run TOA" blogs/articles I've read since it came out suggest doing just that). But, I've ranted about that on my own blog at length.
* Not literally everyone, but a lot of folks
Well, my group, and they can't have been the only group, took that time limit SERIOUSLY. They ignored EVERYTHING that they thought was not pertinent to their goal. What a terrible, awful, ill-considered premise for a sandbox adventure. A "But Thou Must" Time Limit?
Had I studied the book like a college course, I might have thrown that premise out entirely (and many of the "How to run TOA" blogs/articles I've read since it came out suggest doing just that). But, I've ranted about that on my own blog at length.
* Not literally everyone, but a lot of folks
TheSword
Legend
Optional time limit. If you don’t like it, it is trivially easy to remove/amend.
aramis erak
Legend
For me, it was G1-2-3 D1-2 D3 Q1 and the lil' keep in Moldvay.
Now, i use them but adapt them slightly. I did run seasons 1-3 of DDAL by the book, but I was being compensated for it.
DragonLancer
Hero
Decades ago I loved published adventures and would often slot them into home brew scenarios in my campaigns. These days I don't have the time and I much prefer having a full published campaign. From the last 15 years GMing and playing Pathfinder 1st edition, I have come to love how Paizo do their adventure paths. Nice and simple, with the basic work done for me. These days I don't have time to come up and write my own campaigns as easy as I used to.
MichaelSomething
Legend
If you're sick and tired of low quality adventures, turn to ENpublishing for your adventure needs!
The same people who brought you the best TYRPG forum in the world also make adventures for the world's oldest role-playing game!
The same people who brought you the best TYRPG forum in the world also make adventures for the world's oldest role-playing game!
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