D&D 5E I can’t seem to DM written adventures.

[dave2008]

Another good system neutral OSR-style module to check out is Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It’s free as a PDF on DriveThru.

Tomb of the Serpent Kings - Deluxe Print Edition - Skerples | DriveThruRPG.com

Tomb of the Serpent Kings - Deluxe Print Edition - People keep asking for "beginner" dungeons. Everyone can name "classic" dungeons - Tomb of Horrors, Barrier Peaks, The T

www.drivethrurpg.com

The draw of the style is the succinct descriptions, use of bullet points, maps on the same page or spread as the descriptions of the rooms, and other minor quality of life improvements in layout and design. This makes them wildly easier to use than modules with walls of text for everything. Much faster to read, prep, and run.

Thanks! I have it in may cart now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Just curious if I am alone here or does this chime with anyone else?

I have very mixed experiences with written adventures.

Either they vibe with me, and I'm like "Yeah, that's what I'd have done" or better yet "Oh that's like what I'd have done if I was way smarter!", and I'm quite into the adventure and know I will have a good time running it. Or they don't vibe with me - particularly if they're "written to read", rather than being presented as an adventure/scenario, if they're a story, they almost never work for me. And if they don't vibe with me, I just bounce off them hard.

The vast majority of WotC adventures, for 3E, 4E and 5E, I just bounce off. That'd probably be true for 3PPs as well, but with 3PPs I can pick and choose so I'm able to find ones that do work for me (though I've largely avoided buying prewritten adventures for 5E). WotC's writers, for whatever reason, are particularly good at cooking up scenarios in adventures that I personally find incredibly contrived and anti-resonant. A lot of them also don't fit with the vibe of fantasy I tend to run, which is both a bit more heroic and bit lower-magic than WotC tends to go. Strahd was good though.

 

[Stormonu]

I can’t DM written adventures.

Not complaining. It's not a problem. Just curious if I am alone here or does this chime with anyone else?

You're not alone, but I can say pre-written adventures for me are both a goldmine and a godsend. I can run them as published, but I'll usually tweak or add here and there to make the experience unique. I also plunder old adventures for plot, mechanics and encounters. Last of all, after 3E I was pretty burned out making my own content as it had gotten too complex to spend hours on the math to make stuff, and I didn't have the time I once did back in my 1E/2E glory days. By 5th, using prewritten content took a lot of burden off my shoulders. Lately, as I've gotten more comfortable homebrewing 5E content, I'm back to making my adventures - though I won't begrudge using something already built for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I also plunder old adventures for plot, mechanics and encounters.

I have to admit I am fascinated that so many people do this, as I've been running RPGs for 34 years now and never done this. I'm probably "doing it wrong" lol.

 

[iserith]

I have to admit I am fascinated that so many people do this, as I've been running RPGs for 34 years now and never done this. I'm probably "doing it wrong" lol.

I have a fun time looking at old Dungeon Magazine adventures (YIKES) and trying to think through how I'd restructure them to do a better job of what the author may have been trying to accomplish. Get rid of all this crap here, move this part over there, beef up this section, my god was this dude paid by the paragraph of boxed text delete, and so on. It's a useful exercise, I believe. I did this the other day with this one adventure where the PCs are hired to go find some dinosaur eggs in a sewer. As written, it was pretty bad in my opinion. But in a discussion with another DM on Discord we actually made it into something pretty great, and I may write it up and run it for my group.

One thing I wish I could do was also examine some of these old AD&D 2e adventures within the context of those rules because, despite playing it in high school, I can't remember anything about it. I wonder sometimes through that lens maybe the adventure makes a great deal more sense as designed. (Though I doubt it. Some design is just bad in any context.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One thing I wish I could do was also examine some of these old AD&D 2e adventures within the context of those rules because, despite playing it in high school, I can't remember anything about it. I wonder sometimes through that lens maybe the adventure makes a great deal more sense as designed. (Though I doubt it. Some design is just bad in any context.)

I would say bad adventures were probably bad under the original rules - in some cases I've run the same adventure under 2E, 4E, Dungeon World, and 5E, and it held up as a solid adventure (despite having to be more or less re-written, encounter-details-wise for 4E and 5E). I haven't seen any cases where good ones suddenly sucked in different editions, which I'd expect if edition mattered that much.

I have definitely gone through Dungeon and other adventures and thought about what I'd change. I always kind of liked Dungeon because it was rare that an issue didn't have at least one decent adventure in it, which for the price wasn't too bad.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I struggle with pre-published adventures too. For a variety of reasons.

Poor presentation is right up there. Flipping back and forth through books/pdfs to find what you need at any given time is a real mood killer at the table.

Over written back stories. I (vaguely) remember a 2e adventure from a Dungeon magazine. The first 2-3, densely written, pages were a 2000 or so year history of the dungeon, complete with some very detailed events. None of which came up in the adventure. Why do I care X betrayed Y 1000 years ago? If their ghosts were still hanging around, sure. But no.

Inconsistent style and or plots. I've only run one AP, Reign of Winter. There was no real consistency from one part to the other. There were some good parts (parts 2&5 stand out.) But apart from snow and a vague stop the baddie plot, there was no real feeling of consistency.

So I prefer to write my own stuff. Which has the added advantage of being tailored to my PCs.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I can’t DM written adventures. Just curious if I am alone here or does this chime with anyone else?

You're definitely not alone. I didn't do it at all (I couldn't stand them!) for my first 20 years as a DM. I run them now, but often with a lot of frustration.

One of the tricks I'm thinking of trying is to do this:
1) Read the Adventure.
2) Put the book away.
3) Run my own adventure based loosely on that.

If I can't remember (or didn't like) something, I'll make it up.

 

[overgeeked]

You're definitely not alone. I didn't do it at all (I couldn't stand them!) for my first 20 years as a DM. I run them now, but often with a lot of frustration.

One of the tricks I'm thinking of trying is to do this:
1) Read the Adventure.
2) Put the book away.
3) Run my own adventure based loosely on that.

If I can't remember (or didn't like) something, I'll make it up.

As others have said, stripping the module for parts is usually much easier for me to do. Use the maps. Some of the encounters or NPCs. But I do find it a lot easier to run OSR modules. Mostly because they pare down the useless info and only give you what you need and present it in a useable way.

Long modules, APs, and story-focused modules are the worst. You either railroad or toss the module 5 minutes into the game. Location- or event-based modules are a bit easier. And the shorter the better.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

As others have said, stripping the module for parts is usually much easier for me to do. Use the maps. Some of the encounters or NPCs. But I do find it a lot easier to run OSR modules. Mostly because they pare down the useless info and only give you what you need and present it in a useable way.

Long modules, APs, and story-focused modules are the worst. You either railroad or toss the module 5 minutes into the game. Location- or event-based modules are a bit easier. And the shorter the better.

I run a lot of play-by-post here on ENWorld, and the thing I lament the most is offering to run a few of the 5e Hardcovers. At the pace of PBP, I estimate the average 5e HC will take me 10 years to complete. I'm already 6 years into Tomb of Annihilation, which I started just before that book came out (with an intro adventure).

This is me, in a long way, trying to say: I am 100% with you that "shorter is better".

Location and event-based modules would be perfect for PBP. I won't make that mistake again (I hope).

 

[overgeeked]

I run a lot of play-by-post here on ENWorld, and the thing I lament the most is offering to run a few of the 5e Hardcovers. At the pace of PBP, I estimate the average 5e HC will take me 10 years to complete. I'm already 6 years into Tomb of Annihilation, which I started just before that book came out (with an intro adventure).

This is me, in a long way, trying to say: I am 100% with you that "shorter is better".

Location and event-based modules would be perfect for PBP. I won't make that mistake again (I hope).

Damn. That’s…wow. Good for you for being committed to completing the module.

I’ve heard people say it’s about one month of PbP to equal one hour of real-time play. Would you say that’s true?

 

[Bill Zebub]

There's a bunch, but check out Hot Springs Island, Neverland, or even smaller adventures like Winter's Daughter. If you watch the Questing Beast YouTube channel, he does reviews of a ton of adventures and you can see which ones you prefer.

Neverland is amazing.

Also check out Kelsey Dionne’s two Skyhorn adventures.

 

[Redwizard007]

So it's not just me. That's good to know.

I still find value in published modules, but its usually just ripping out the main plot and structure. Everything else gets tossed right in the garbage can. Sometimes it's because my parties tend to be a little overpowered, or the encounters are a littleto vanilla, other times the monsters or locations don't fit my setting, but I can't remember ever using an adventurer as written, and every time I try it goes off the rails pretty quickly.

 

[rgoodbb]

So, some good OSR stuff to look at listed here so far:

• Dark of Hot Springs Island
• Neverland
• Winter’s Daughter
• Kelsey Dionne’s 2 Skyhorn adventures

Also to watch the Questing Beast youtube for adventures

While we are here, anything else spring to mind or is there already another good list somewhere?

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I pretty much exclusively DM official modules. For me it's just interesting to experience the story together with the others (I also never read much ahead).

Though I probably would never DM a third party campaign.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have to admit I am fascinated that so many people do this, as I've been running RPGs for 34 years now and never done this. I'm probably "doing it wrong" lol.

It just feels like too much effort to keep reinventing the wheel. But then I've always been a bit lazy!

But I have had issues, especially with longer WotC adventures, in understanding the authorial intent. Just why have they done it that way, and how do the expect it to play out? I called some of that out in my commentary on CotN. WotC tend to describe the what, but leave out the why. I was re-reading an old Gygax adventure a couple of months ago, and that was full of authorial voice, usually along the lines of "this should cause the PCs to die horribly, mua ha ha".

What I do like in published adventures is when they are drawing on a cultural databank that is different to my own, as in Radiant Citadel.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But I have had issues, especially with longer WotC adventures, in understanding the authorial intent.

I think this is often my issue with WotC stuff - sometimes it seems it was written by space aliens re: intent.

 

[dave2008]

Neverland is amazing.

Also check out Kelsey Dionne’s two Skyhorn adventures.

I've heard good things about her work (and I backed Shadowdark) so I will add those to my list

 

[M_Natas]

You are definitely not alone. The official adventures are ... not my taste as well.
And I can't see why a lot of people praise like the lost mines of phandelver. I played that as a player but it was quite obvious it gave our Newbie DM a lot of trouble. Stuff was disconnected and random and not well thought out. And definitely deadly in the hands of inexperienced DMs.
Stormwreck Isle seems the way better introductory Module. It looks easy to run in comparison to all the other adventures. And I got a lot of the adventure books. But even the anthology books... it always feels like homework trying to run them. I'm way faster if I homebrew the adventure and world from scratch.

 

[Oofta]

It just feels like too much effort to keep reinventing the wheel. But then I've always been a bit lazy!

Which is funny, because I don't run mods because I'm too lazy! I run the same campaign world, reusing locales and old lore modified by previous campaigns because it's easier. I can think up different overall factions and goals while I'm taking a shower, jot down some notes and spend a few minutes with a random name/NPC generator and I'm most of the way there. I never get too worried about detailed maps because exploration is mostly TotM and the most work is flipping through the MM (or DDB, now) to find the appropriate monsters that would be a challenge.

Meanwhile running a mod I have to actually understand the whole thing, write notes, remember where references are. It's far, far more work to run someone else's stuff than my own. There are only a handful of plots for campaign arcs. Off the top of my head there's rescue, escort, loot, defend, investigation/mystery, the hunt. As a DM I just change the set dressing so I'm not really reinventing much of anything.