D&D 5E Do premade adventures save prep-time?

[fjw70]

Bare bones modules save time (at least for me). 4e adventures were relly good at this. Give me a few plot hooks, a few locations/maps, and stat up some big encounters. I can easily wing the rest.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Premade adventures probably don't save me a lot of time, but allow me to spread it better. I usually read an adventure completely long before running it. The, with the conceptual information in my head, I can do my preparations in small amounts whenever I want to and time permits. If the stuff is really interesting, I also think a lot about possible variations, extensions and hooks suitable to my game.

When the time comes to actually prepare the adventure, most of the brain work is already done and I have a pretty complete picture of my version of this adventure in my head.

 

[77IM]

Isolated Data Point:

It took me 3-4 hours to fully digest Lost Mines of Phandelver (not all at once; I revisited it several times over the course of a week or two).

It's given my gaming group 8 sessions of play, 5 hours each, and there's at least two sessions's worth of content remaining.

YMMV.