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<blockquote data-quote="timbannock" data-source="post: 8667156" data-attributes="member: 17913">I didn't run published D&amp;D adventures for the first 20 odd years I've been gaming, just stole the maps or a plot point here or there. Didn't miss it then.I then spent about 10 years solely trying to run published D&amp;D adventures. It was extremely difficult to change my ways (significantly changing them), but illuminating when I did. Unfortunately, most of what I learned was that when I ran the same adventure for multiple groups, almost no published adventures were great. They often had boring settings, boring set piece encounters, poor balance, and either not enough background to fill gaping plot holes, or so much background that I spent too much game time flipping through paragraphs of text to find important motivations or past activities that mattered. It was awful, with very few exceptions (Curse of Strahd, Caverns of Thracia, Goodman Games Into the Borderlands take on B1 and B2, and some of the Rolled &amp; Told adventures stood out as mostly working).Because of that, the shared experience thing matters zero to me EXCEPT for Curse of Strahd because of it's built in replayable random placement aspect. I also discovered that most of the highest rated adventures are nostalgia based and don't stand on their own at all: Tomb of Horrors is the worst offender, but Temple of Elemental Evil and so many more are just trash. Yes they were pillars at the time, understandably, and deserve praise for that, but they are not good adventures after 40 years of improving game play, layout, etc. So I can't even trust recommendations. :: shrug::</blockquote>

[QUOTE="timbannock, post: 8667156, member: 17913"] I didn't run published D&D adventures for the first 20 odd years I've been gaming, just stole the maps or a plot point here or there. Didn't miss it then. I then spent about 10 years solely trying to run published D&D adventures. It was extremely difficult to change my ways (significantly changing them), but illuminating when I did. Unfortunately, most of what I learned was that when I ran the same adventure for multiple groups, almost no published adventures were great. They often had boring settings, boring set piece encounters, poor balance, and either not enough background to fill gaping plot holes, or so much background that I spent too much game time flipping through paragraphs of text to find important motivations or past activities that mattered. It was awful, with very few exceptions (Curse of Strahd, Caverns of Thracia, Goodman Games Into the Borderlands take on B1 and B2, and some of the Rolled & Told adventures stood out as mostly working). Because of that, the shared experience thing matters zero to me EXCEPT for Curse of Strahd because of it's built in replayable random placement aspect. I also discovered that most of the highest rated adventures are nostalgia based and don't stand on their own at all: Tomb of Horrors is the worst offender, but Temple of Elemental Evil and so many more are just trash. Yes they were pillars at the time, understandably, and deserve praise for that, but they are not good adventures after 40 years of improving game play, layout, etc. So I can't even trust recommendations. :: shrug:: [/QUOTE]

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