Campaign Versus Adventurer

[weem]

I'm a DM most of the time but as such I have never (and I have been playing 21 years now) run a published module - I prefer to come up with my own stuff.

I have an overactive imagination though, so that helps

With that said, I was telling some of my players recently that it would be fun to go back and play some old stuff like Keep on the Borderlands (I have a ton of old books, even though many ever were used by me in a game) so I can say I have run them, hehe.

As a player, it doesn't bother me what is run - published, or original(ish) etc. I just enjoy playing

 

[Crothian]

Mostly we do indivdual adventures because it's easier. But I like the thought of being able to go through a full adventure path; so far we've not been able to complete one.

 

[Woas]

I like self encapsulating adventures with pretty liberal off-screen time between them to link them together into a larger campaign arc. The adventures don't necessarily even have to bleed into each other either. I've never played or GM'd an Adventure Path so not sure what column this would officially fall under. I guess looking at the question more closely I'd say I'm more in favor of Ported and Played.

I'm a GM mostly.

 

[Dedekind]

I'm a DM and I liked the fully connected Adventure Paths. I don't usually have enough time to do the work necessary to make a "great" campaign so use APs. I like that I can buy an AP and that is all I need.

 

[Morrus]

I love Adventure Paths! I've DMd all the way through one, and am partway through another. For me, they're the ideal way of playing D&D.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I definitely want to run campaigns and not just adventures.

My goal in running games is something akin to verisimilitude. With a campaign you have already worked out what individuals and groups are doing "behind the scenes" so it's much easier to bring the world alive particularly in response to character actions.

That said, I do like to include some sandbox elements in my campaigns. Again, part of it is verisimilitude: the players feel like it's a real world that their characters are interacting with. Not everything that is happening is (conveniently) part of the campaign that they're playing: there is more than one story being told in the world at a time.

I really enjoy adventure paths (real ones: not these two messes that WotC has produced for 4E) also because you can see how the pros put together a longer and larger story.

I typically mine them for ideas and have yet to run any of the 3.5E-era ones but I am using chunks of Savage Tide in my first 4E campaign set in the Forgotten Realms to fill almost all of the heroic tier, but there is a sandbox part inspired by the Red Hand of Doom as well. The paragon tier is going to be based, in part, on some of the plot of Revenge of the Giants... although I won't actually purchase it because it doesn't sound too good!

 

[JediSoth]

It depends on the constraints I have on my time. If I know the amount of time I'll have for game prep is very, very limited, I prefer campaign-style adventure paths.

Otherwise, I like stand-alone adventures with hook and suggestions on how to link them together so I can just drop them into my campaign, or use them as filler.

 

[WalterKovacs]

For my first legitimate foray into DM'ing, I went fullblown adventure path. It let me have a 1 to 30 campaign without the prep work, and it was fine for what it was.

I'm currently planning an actual campaign, and I likely won't be using much in the way of published adventures, although I did grab the Revenge of the Giants with the intent on using it. It worked out well for the context of the campaign concept (with only a few minor tweaks). One of the recurring themes involves taking down "sets" of related bad guys, and the format of the Giants adventure path fits that perfectly. There is also an encounter in there that is a perfect hook to tie it more deeply into the "big picture" of the campaign.

In general though, it's more rewarding to find a way to fit a one off adventure into your campaign world. The best of both worlds would be adventure paths that don't absolutely require every piece be taken. If the connecting thread is recurring themes, NPCs, locations, etc ... then you could likely use parts 1, 3, 4 and 7 ... and still have them be connected/related and thus feel like they are part of the same campaign. You may have to check if there are any "key moments" in other parts of the AP to bring over to whatever takes it's place, but it should be ok.

One good way of doing it for people making adventures as part of an AP that someone else may use, would be to have hooks for most of, if not all of the previous adventures, and hooks that go forward as well.

 

[delericho]

I'm a DM... and I like all of the above.

I like stand-alone adventures that I can slot into an ongoing homebrew campaign.

I like loosely connected adventures that I can string together into the core of a campaign, with bridging material I add myself.

I like tightly connected adventure paths that do the lion share of the campaign prep for me.

The only caveat to all of the above is this: regardless of the connections between the adventures, I require that they be well done adventures. I have no use for a deeply flawed adventure that I have to modify significantly to use - mostly because I now have enough really good adventure material to last me a lifetime; I can afford to be really choosy.

(Incidentally, my players seem to prefer homebrew campaigns to adventure paths, perhaps with the insertion of the occasional prepublished adventure. Sadly, my busy life doesn't always allow me to indulge them in this, especially with prep-heavy games like 3.5e.)

 

[delericho]

One thing I forgot to mention:

I have an occasional need for stand-alone one-shot adventures to use for test games and similar. (Low-prep or even no-prep adventures would be best for this.)

This appears to be an area of the market that is underserved - most prepublished adventures are considerably longer than a single session, and even Dungeon adventures tended to run 3-4 sessions (from the print era - I don't play 4e so haven't checked out eDungeon). I'm away that the RPGA and/or Pathfinder society have a number of adventures intended to run for a short duration, but my understanding is that these are of... distinctly mixed quality.

So, if someone were to publish a compilation of several short, low-prep adventures (generally of low level) for the games I play*, I would certainly be interested.

* Currently Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Edition), Star Wars (Saga Edition) and D&D (3.5 Edition). This is very likely to include Pathfinder in the near future, either as well as or instead of D&D.