D&D 5E Buying Adventures

[Ruin Explorer]

IME GMs are much more heavily invested in the game. Most of my players don't go to forums or read RPG news or anything. They also purchase next to nothing and often don't read the rules enough. Thus, along with gaming with my kids, I have turned to simpler and/or OSR rules. I personally still love more crunchy systems, but that is mostly just reading.

I'd agree except for the bolded part - my experience differs quite a bit there - when the players are enjoying the game and actually understand the rules on a basic level, and the rules are accessible to them (i.e. online or in a portable, easy-to-read book), they often know them very well - sometimes better than me! Also, whilst some players never buy anything ever, quite a few others do buy player-oriented books, from what I've seen.

 

[absolution]

I like to buy adventures when I can. It saves me a lot of time. I have bought at least 10 modules.

 

[howandwhy99]

Maybe another poll is in order with different poll options?

I've bought (and sold again) and read literally 100s. Most are simply bad designs or stories waiting to be told, but there are always useful bits to steal.

 

[Crothian]

If that 11+ was instead 110+ I'd still have clicked it. I love adventures and one needs a lot of them to have the right one for any given situation.

 

[Hussar]

When you think about it, anyone who has had a single year subscription to Dungeon, at any point in time, has bought far more than 11 modules. While Dungeon might not have been as popular as Dragon, it still has done pretty darn well for itself for a lot of years. Just Dungeon alone, you've got some 800 adventures over the years. And that's just print Dungeon.

For myself, module support has always been one of my big draws for D&D. There are bazillions of systems out there, but, very, very few that I could run for the next decade without doing more than just reading modules. The support for the game in D&D in module form is huge.

I honestly never understand the negativity about modules. Over the years, I've seen lots of people turn up their noses at modules as if it were somehow beneath them. I've never felt that way. Some of my greatest gaming experiences have come from modules. Actually, I'd take that a step farther, most of the best gaming I've run or played over the years, has come from modules.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I honestly never understand the negativity about modules. Over the years, I've seen lots of people turn up their noses at modules as if it were somehow beneath them. I've never felt that way. Some of my greatest gaming experiences have come from modules. Actually, I'd take that a step farther, most of the best gaming I've run or played over the years, has come from modules.

To me, it's the equivalent of a singer lip-syncing. The aesthetic qualities of the sound may be good (and very possibly better than what the singer would have generated by performing live), but there's something fundamentally dishonest about presenting content that someone else wrote beforehand as a living world that you are creating improvisationally and interactively in real time.

At which point, it becomes a question of whether you expected that in the first place (apparently, if you don't have that expectation, there's no problem), which probably has a great deal to do with when and how you entered the hobby. I was doing improvisational storytelling long before D&D, so I look at it that way.

And of course, as with lip-syncing, many people will defend using prewritten content on pragmatic grounds as well. To me, it really isn't pragmatic (it wouldn't save me any effort at all), but others may have different perspectives.

 

[the Jester]

(@Mouseferatu and I were going through the original D&D books the other day, trying to work out when Tiamat and demons were first considered gods...)

The first reference I remember to demons as gods was in the 1e Deities & Demigods, in the Nonhumans section.

 

[Crothian]

To me, it's the equivalent of a singer lip-syncing. The aesthetic qualities of the sound may be good (and very possibly better than what the singer would have generated by performing live), but there's something fundamentally dishonest about presenting content that someone else wrote beforehand as a living world that you are creating improvisationally and interactively in real time.

Sure, if I sit down at my gaming table and tell my players that everything they are about to experience comes from my own imagination and then I secretly run Keep on the Borderlands then that would be dishonest. But if they know ahead of time I am using Keep on the Borders as a launching point for the adventure and some of what we will be doing comes from that and some will be improved then that's just fine. Everyone knows what is going on and what the expectations are.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Everyone knows what is going on and what the expectations are.

True. To me, the expectations are universally set at what these boards would term as homebrew. I never heard of anyone using a published adventure (other than once as a failed experiment) in my high school community, my college gaming clubs, or even my local WotC store. If some DM showed up and told his players he was running Keep on the Borderlands, they very possibly wouldn't understand what he was talking about. If (hypothetically) he explained it and everyone was on board and on the same page, then sure, no problem.

For my part, my one experience was a DM who did run something published and told us, but didn't really explain it, and I don't think I did understand the implications. It wasn't until several years later that I picked up on the idea through ENW. "Oh, that's what that was".

I suspect (don't know) that there was a culture shift over time, because some of our D&D-playing parents did have some of these strange old things and did seemingly consider adventures to be at least some part of the gaming experience. There may be other factors as well. It sure is a stark contrast in this area what I see on ENW vs on the street (in this and occasionally in other areas).

 

[Crothian]

True. To me, the expectations are universally set at what these boards would term as homebrew. I never heard of anyone using a published adventure (other than once as a failed experiment) in my high school community, my college gaming clubs, or even my local WotC store. If some DM showed up and told his players he was running Keep on the Borderlands, they very possibly wouldn't understand what he was talking about. If (hypothetically) he explained it and everyone was on board and on the same page, then sure, no problem.

In 1980 when I started we only used modules. We were kids and no one taught us we just read the books and used what we had. As we played and experience grew we made up stuff and used modules. If I ever ran into someone that played D&D and did not understand what a module was or how it was used I would think that they were either pulling my leg or missing an important part of the game. The shared experience is something that is very difficult to get with these games if we are not at the same table and no one ever wants to hear about characters or home brew campaigns. I have seen that people sometimes do enjoy talking about going through the same modules and talking about how different rooms, encounters, etc were handled.