Adventure Utilization Poll

[DM Howard]

How do you utilize adventures? The two that I have purchased "Against the Giants" and "Scourge of the Sword Coast" were both bought for inspiration for my own campaigns and settings, and I also enjoyed reading them for the pure pleasure of it. The poll is open, choose all that apply to you.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't use them in any way. Never even read an entire adventure.

I try to draw from as many diverse sources of inspiration when preparing a game as I can, and I try to leave as much as I can to improvisation at the table.

 

[Ichneumon]

I use them as-is, while reserving the right to tweak if desired.

 

[Shiroiken]

Other:
I used adventures as a guideline, but I adapt them as needed to fit my group and campaign. Basically between time saver monster stats and changing only the setting. I regularly change more than just the setting, but I always keep the concept of the adventure intact.

 

[Wangalade]

most of my games are completely homebrew. I have/do run modules as is just for fun sometimes or when introducing a new group to dnd. I also use them for inspiration in my own campaigns sometimes, sometimes I run them with a varying degree of changes because I don't have time to read and study every inerlinking factor within them. this usually happens when I'm in a pinch and hit a blank wall for adventure ideas. I also run them with some adaptation when they just don't fit the campaign as is.

 

[Kinak]

I don't have a ton of experience with modules, mostly just reading them for enjoyment. I took about a twenty year break using them between the first printed one I ran (Jacob's Well from Dungeon #43) and the next I remember running (Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition).

In the intervening decades, I learned that the same story elements tended to show up. So playing in more than, say, a half-dozen of my campaigns would get repetitive.

So, now I use published adventures to change the flavor a bit and push me outside my comfort zone. As such, one of my votes was "other" because I'll lightly tweak the story elements but often end up completely redesigning monsters.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[MerricB]

Using published adventures is one of main ways I manage to run three campaigns a week.

Well, I'm not running that many *just* at the moment, but it's close!

I tend to have one campaign that I use more homebrew stuff in, and the other campaigns are made up of published adventures (Adventure Paths, stand-alones, that sort of thing).

Cheers!

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Other:
I used adventures as a guideline, but I adapt them as needed to fit my group and campaign. Basically between time saver monster stats and changing only the setting. I regularly change more than just the setting, but I always keep the concept of the adventure intact.

This is similar to me. Where possible, I'll run adventures as-is, purely to save prep time. However, a lot of the time there is a part of the adventure that doesn't fit with my campaign setting, or my players or PC's. Other times I make changes to the adventure based on feedback from other forum posters on EN World or Paizo, replacing some bits, adding in other stuff, taking out stuff that doesn’t work well.

For example, in the adventure “The Encounter at Blackwall Keep” in the Age of Worms AP, the opening encounter with the lizardmen was underwhelming, so I changed a lot of it around to make it more challenging. Secondly, the proposed set-up didn’t make a lot of sense (the party is travelling with a high level Wizard who teleports away to get help upon encountering the lizardmen, rather than sticking around for a few rounds to drop some fireballs on the lizardmen and help the PC’s), so I completely revised that. There was also plot information in the adventure that the PC’s had almost no chance of being able to find out, so I revised some of the lizardmen’s actions to give the players a chance to find this information out.

Finally, a poster on the Paizo forums came up with a cool way for the players to first come across the Spawn of Kyuss indirectly by having the players take control of some NPC guards for an encounter as they find the Spawn. How well or how badly the players do in that encounter determines just how many Spawn there are in the keep when the PC’s return. The encounter was a great change of pace and the players really enjoyed it.

So while I generally keep the overall plot of the adventure the same, I will often change a lot of the moving parts within the adventure to make it a better experience for my group. Sometimes the changes will be small, other times they will be quite large.

 

[Lanefan]

I use canned adventures mostly to save time and effort; the heavy lifting of mapping, statting, etc. is all done leaving just the slotting in (or stripping out) of backstory and maybe some tweaks here and there.

I can't remember the last time - if ever - I ran a canned adventure (or even a homebrew!) exactly as written.

Lan-"if 5e is going to be all about adventures, I'm in"-efan

 

[Stormonu]

In my early years, I used them as sources of inspirations and "how-to"s for my own homebrew. As I've gotten older, I've found myself actually using them - more or less - as written. I always throw in something to "make them my own", and I often use events, escaped enemies or circumstances from adventures my groups have gone through for ideas for further adventures.