Do you make your own adventures?

[Jolly Giant]

I'm curious about what the habits of the many DMs of ENWorld are when it comes to adventures. Do you prefer to make your own or use published material? Either way, I'd also like to hear why you do whatever it is you do.

 

[ChaosEvoker]

I liek to make my own, it works with the PCs better that way. Sometimes published stuff is too incompatible with your PCs.

 

[maddman75]

I make my own almost exclusively in the past, and totally exclusive now. My worst games are the ones using published materials. I don't even like using other people's campaign settings.

I do it because it makes for a better game. I know the material inside and out, and once I get everything set up the game pretty well runs itself.

 

[pogre]

I said 50/50 because I take a lot of encounters and even sections of adventures from published material. The plot hooks and overall story line remain mine. I usually create my own maps, but I'm not above swiping those too.

 

[Crothian]

Most I make up, and even when I do use a module I gut the thing and use just bits and pieces.

 

[Jolly Giant]

For my own part, I write the adventures I run myself. To me, the creative prosess of making them is almost as much fun as playing. I've tried running published modules a couple of times, but I found it took away alot of the fun for me.

I also use my own homebrew campaign world.

 

[Jdvn1]

I DM as a way to play out possibly stories and ideas from my head... I write my own stuff. But, occasionally, I'll read some published adventure and go, "... Hey, this seems cool/fun and fits in/can fit in really well in my game. *plug*"

 

[the Jester]

I mostly write my own adventures, but some of the time I run published stuff... and some of that stuff is long (Return to the Tomb of Horrors, I'm looking at you!).

I do pull a lot of stuff from 'what has gone before' in my campaign, and some of that relates to later plot threads.

Let's see- since 3e came out, I've run the following published stuff:

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (about 20% of it- the group just dabbled in it)
Of Sound Mind
Return to the Tomb of Horrors (skipped the first about 15%)
The Gates of Firestorm Peak

Now, figure that we've prolly averaged 2 games/week since 3e came out, and you get the idea that we've gamed an awful lot. So, given the quanitity of dnd in my group, that's not a lot of published work. (Most of it was significantly altered, too, with the exception of OSM and GoFSP.)

Edit: Oh, yeah- why do I prefer to write most of my own stuff?

To me much of the joy of dming is campaign construction. I love building monsters, I love weaving convoluted plot lines together, I love tying it all to the pcs. Modules both leave less room for this and also don't usually fit the setting quite as well either (in my experience and opinion).

 

[Doug McCrae]

100% homebrewed though I occasionally swipe ideas.

 

[derelictjay]

I usually write my own, though I'll run a publish module if I don't have time to write an adventure or I thought it fit perfectly (or close to) with my campaign.