Do you make your own adventures?

[shilsen]

I make my own. Even the most freeform published adventure requires me to make substantial changes to fit my needs and that of my players, so it's just easier to make my own. Plus it's way more fun to do them on my own. Lastly, I like to do things on the fly, and I usually build the adventure around the PCs' choices and actions, so I usually build up the adventure as we go along, rather than having something set up in advance.

 

[Ryltar]

50/50

I, too, used to write everything myself, because published adventures seldom fit my group's playing style and characters, but it has become too time-consuming. Nowadays I use published stuff for the basic idea of how the adventure's gonna play out, and then modify it to my tastes, using lots of ideas swiped from books, movies and/or storyhours. This has proven to be the most efficient, and for my players, the most satisfactory way of designing adventures.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I typically write my own unless I find something that really catches my attention. Though I read lots of moduals and will shamelessly steal ideas or scenes from them when I design my own.

 

[MerricB]

Quoted (again) for truthery.

This is an interesting poll: makes me wonder (again) why Dungeon felt the need to drop Polyhedron - to satisfy the <7% of gamers who rely exclusively on modules?*

*Yes, I know it's not a representative sample - just let me grind my teeth a bit, please?

Because the people who liked Polyhedron were <0.7% of gamers.

Polyhedron (with its minigames) was aiming to the people who played a few sessions of a game before moving to a new system or genre. It was not aiming to the people who know what they want (fantasy Role-playing in the style of D&D).

Dungeon aims for a stable audience - people who want new adventures. Polyhedron aimed at an unstable audience (because as soon as someone started enjoying a minigame, the rest of the minigames became useless...)

Cheers!

 

[diaglo]

i write a lot of my own adventures.

and rewrite the published ones so they fit in the campaign

 

[Maggan]

I blend and mix

Most of the adventures I run are modified published adventures. That is, I use plots and locations and NPC's from different adventures together, and add my own stuff to make it fit my style and the PCs and the storyline. Since my players have a habit of not sticking to a storyline, making stuff up as you go along is important to me, but I also have to have something to fall back on.

Cheers!

Maggan

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Most of the time I use published adventures. On occasion, however, I get inspired and create my own.

 

[Buttercup]

Every time I have used a published adventure, I've been disappointed in the quality of the resulting game sessions. My players never do what the adventure expects them to, so I either have to railroad them, or make something up on the fly. I won't railroad, so I punt. But since it's not my material, I don't punt very well.

If I've made up the adventure on my own, then it doesn't matter what the players choose to do, because I know the material inside and out, and I can easily adjust. So from now on, I'll just do it myself. That doesn't mean I won't lift the odd encounter, NPC or map from a published product, but for the most part, everything needs to come from my head.

Here's the thing. I and all of my players lead extremely busy lives. It's sometimes a major deal for us to come up with regular times to play. After we all go to that trouble, why would I want to provide anything less than the best gaming experience possible? Other people might be able to do that with published adventures, but sadly, it doesn't work that way for me.

 

[TerraDave]

I like to spend time on my home brew world (sig), way too much time, and hence am more dependent on published adventures then I used to be back in student days.

And, there are good adventures out there (EN World is a great resource), and I can generally adapt them pretty easily, with most changes being of the flavour variety. Of course the PCs may not go along with what the module writer had in mind, but they rarely went along with what I had in mind...

 

[Psion]

I usually write my own.

As has been stated by several others, I find that many adventures just don't fit my campaign situations or characters.

A further conundrum is I find most published adventures, which are firmly pressing into the 96+ page territory, too long to resolve. If I spend more than 2 or 3 sessions doing the same activity, I get antsy.

I often mine adventures for ideas or morph them to act as stepping stones. I find shorter adventures (such as those in AEG's Adventure I and II) best for this purpose.