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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 5731998" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya. Honestly? To write B2 into a format that would be able to be run at a home game...10 hours, tops. To then flesh it out with more stuff that you (the writer) would have just ad-libbed and filled in as you played...probably two or three times that. So, yeah, call it 40 hours over a 7 day period. What people are forgetting is that earlier "adventure modules" had *stuff* in them. The stuff that made a DM's life easy. You know, encounter charts, maps, a *quick* background, and a handful of bare-bones NPC's who were behind/involved directly. In those days, the major NPC BBEG of a module *might* have a half-page dedicated to him (that includes combat stats, spells, equipment, etc.). Compare that with todays adventures where you have, at most, two or three 4 to 8 room 'locations' and two or three key NPC's...each with a full write up usually taking an entire page or two...and then, for some gods-forsaken reason, pages and pages and pages of "story crap" that all fits together...and you have a recipe for multi-week creation. The maps that you see in B2 probably took all of a day to draw, key and finalize. The maps in something 'nowadays'...days and days, I'd imagine. Anyway, the bottom line...modules in the good old days were adventures that DM's had written for their home games. They were loose, quick and packed with tid-bits for DM's to use, ignore or build on...*as the game was played*. The new stuff lately (post-2e, basically), seems to be written as if it was some kind of "creative endevour with artistic focus"; more like they are meant to be used as-is...and if you try and use it as if you would use an older 1e style adventure, well, lets just say the DM is in for a whole new world of hurt. EDIT: I just re-read my post...I'm not trying to come accross as condescending to the 'new-age' stuff, honestly. I guess the expectation of what a 'module' is supposed to be used for is quite different now than it used to be. The bottom line is that comming up with a few plot lines, a story arc and a few sub-plots...is all dirt simple, easy, and usually better left up to an individual DM. What takes time? Drawing a 6-level tower with 3 levels of dungeons, filling it with traps, tricks, treasures and monsters, and writing up a couple of random encounter tables. Thats where the time-sink comes in. Story? Plots? Easy. A story and couple of plots as a backdrop to a tower with a 3-level dungeon? Really easy. [Story Time Test]Tower of Bones"A century ago the mad necromancer Thrumlak raised an army of undead. He set them to build his abode from which he could carry out subjugation of the surrounding countryside. He did this in record time, as undead need to sleep or rest. Thurmlak, is is surmised, also utilized the aid of a fanatical follower named Breezbol, a half-orc warrior-priest. Breezbol had found the legendary Spade of Excavation in his previous adventures, but didn't know its value. Thrumlak showed him, and with Breezbol's help added to the tireless efforts of the undead, the complex was finished quickly. Thrumlak secreted his most valuable treasures within the dungeons, and carried out vile experiments. Eventually, activity around the Tower of Bones, as it was nicknamed, died down. It has been over 6 years since anyone has heard or seen Thrumlak or his half-orc lacky. And the nearby townsfolk are happy for it. The mayor of Thistlethorp needs to quickly re-build the towns rampart and moat to protect it against the undead the still roam the land, years after Thrumlak as last seen. He has an offer for the PC's; if they venture into the tower and ascertain weather or not Thrumlak still lives, he will pay them handsomly. If they recover the Space of Excavation, and use it to rebuild the towns defenses, he will pay them more and they can obviously keep the spade...or sell it to the town, as they see fit." ---Just a test to see how much time it would take for me to get a base story down for something. Ten minutes. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> There are a lot of unanswered questions in the above story; where is it all? What did Thrumlak do to 'subjugate' the surrounding countryside? What did he do with his 'army'? What actually *did* happen to Thrumlak and Beezbol?  ...those aren't, IMHO, "flaws" in the story; those are bonuses. This allowes individual DM's to fill in the gaps with their own campaigns flavor. In short, a DM gets to add in his/her own spices, he/she gets to be creative and really get into a module and make it their own. With the newer style adventures...the DM has to take stuff out usually. --- ^_^ Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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