Do you make your own adventures?

[Davelozzi]

In the past (2nd edition era and before) I used almost all original adventures, but set most of my games in published campaign worlds (mostly Forgotten Realms with a couple of Dark Sun mini-campaigns).

But in my 3e campaign, it's the opposite -- I use a homebrewed world, but so far have used only published adventures. I didn't intend it that way, I just happened to have a bunch of modules and Dungeon adventures that seemed to fit together one after the other (though I do change them quite a bit). But I don't have anything lined up after the current adventure (a modified Forge of Fury), so it looks like I'll be returning to originals for a while.

 

[Breakdaddy]

I usually manufacture my own adventures between sessions and keep a flowchart of the Campaign structure so that I can keep it cohesive. I disdain blatant railroading so I have to be prepared to change the course of the campaign on the fly to suit the direction the PCs are taking it in.

 

[barsoomcore]

I find published adventures a great resource for ideas, developed creatures, maps, traps and all kinds of good stuff. It's pretty rare that I just run one as is, but Dungeon is the most useful DMing aid I know of by a very large degree.

I don't buy modules, ever, but I've gotten use out of almost every issue of Dungeon I've ever bought.

 

[EricNoah]

I do my own adventures mostly. I sometimes hack up a published adventure and use parts of it. Only occasionally do I run a published adventure whole cloth or with minor changes. That's about to change in a new campaign I'm in -- I'm basically going to run nothing but modules as one-shots or mini-campaigns.

 

[Imret]

Excepting Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (because it's simply iconic of D&D culture, really), about 80% of the adventures I run are mine. That other 20% represents useful information or ideas stripped from published modules like a stereo from an unlocked Jaguar.

 

[Jolly Giant]

Seems I'm pretty much on the same page as the majority of ENWorld DMs in prefering to write my own stuff. The reasons for this vary a bit, but one thing seem to be recurring:

If you write your own material, you are intimately familiar with it. This makes it easier to do stuff on the fly when you don't have to follow somebody elses resipe (in other words, you don't have to railroad the PCs into following the script).

Also, making adventures is fun!

For me, there's a third reason and I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned it. Maybe I shouldn't either, for it might just possibly offend some of the regulars here. Specifically, the ones who actually have published adventures themselves. So before I voice my third reason for writing my own adventures, let me just go on the record as saying that I mean no disrespect and the following is certainly not meant as criticism of adventure-authors! This is just me talking of my own likes and dislikes.

Ok, here goes: I find running a store-bought adventure is very, very boring! Admittedly, I've only ever made one serious attempt at it (RttToEE). This was in a fit of desperation after having 4 -four- campaigns end in TPK during a total of 5 -five- sessions...

(Yeah, I know how that sounds! Sounds like I shouldn't be allowed to make a single encounter myself, doesn't it? I can only hope you believe me when I say it wasn't my fault! It was just a long streak of extremely "lucky" rolls from me and nothing but bad rolls from the players (all rolls made in the open in our group). It was like I could never roll lower than 17 and the players never higher than 4! 2 lvl 1 orc warriors against 4 (fully healed and rested!) lvl 2 PCs and it's a TPK, and before a single PC got to make a single action... It just shouldn't be possible.)

So I was rather burned out in the coming-up-with-new-campaign-ideas department, RttToEE was just out and I'm a fan of Monte's work, so I decided to give it try. Great story, cool characters, nasty monsters (except the rather silly giant toad)... Yet I was bored stiff. It felt like I wasn't even part of the game, my job was reduced to being the guy who looks up things in the book to see what happens next, and it was the least fun gaming experinece I've ever had. I had been looking forward to a break of sorts, to not having to come up with new stuff for every session, but it was huge disappointment and I've stuck to writing my own adventures ever since.

Am I alone in this or have others felt the same way, trying to run published adventures?

Spoiler! The RttToEE campaign also ended with a TPK, in the very first session. The PCs had been scouting around the orcish base, killing a few orc guards. They then decided to withdraw and rest for the night. They built a camp, complete with campfire, less than a mile from the orc stronghold. They talked about camping further away, but figured the orcs wouldn't be able to track them anyway. Completely forgetting about the kennels full of dogs the orcs had...

We started over; with each player playing a friend or relative of their original character, coming to look for the last party. Those characters lasted all of 3 sessions. By then I was frankly relieved to see yet another TPK, since it meant I could start a new campaign of my own design.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Currently, it's roughly 50/50, as I've run two full modules (Mad God's Key and Maiden Voyage), but it's all framed within a context of my own design. I find creating adventures, while best suited for my campaign and good creative exercise, tedious and time-consuming. But still, I must.

 

[Gilladian]

I picked 50/50, but I'm not sure that's true. I feel as if I write most of my own adventures, but then when I really look back, I'm not sure that's true.

Much of the stuff I write for myself is PC or campaign-world specific. For example, I designed a large ruined city based on an ancient culture of flying folk. The city was almost road-less, substantially different in architecture, and very odd. It was also a crashed floating city, which the PCs never discovered.

But several of the (underground) locations they found were based on slightly modified published adventures. And whole segments of the rest of the campaign were pulled from a module, broken into pieces, re-written and used to create one entire story-arc. The pieces appeared over the entire ten levels the campaign covered.

So perhaps 80% of the adventures were at least partly pre-written, but all were modified in some way or other. Only 2 that I can remember were used whole-cloth, and they were the least effective, now that I think back on it.

And yet, my current campaign (being built) is going to consist entirely of pre-selected and written adventures, dropped into the world with a rough timeline and lots of leading tidbits for the PCs to experience at their own discretion. I hope to have to spend much less time writing adventures and more time on NPC and character development/interaction.

We'll see...

Gilladian