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

[Warpiglet-7]

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.

Precisely this.

Since I have a campaign world of my design with factions and religions and such I can have a donjon dungeon produced and quickly devise a backstory.

When things happen in the adventure I already understand why and can improvise without it feeling like mere whim at the moment.

Some things take longer—-but I really struggle with the ‘adventure paths.’

The difference is “knowing” vs. learning and remembering.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can’t DM written adventures.

Not sure why but when I get my hands on an adventure that someone else has written, it turns me off DM’ing. It’s not that I can’t understand the writing (although some could do with an editor’s clean-up), and it’s not that I haven’t bought a lot of material/adventures, but when it’s someone else’s words and style and creative imagination, I just can’t seem to do it. Something doesn’t work for me. So I’m just doing homebrew little one-shots or three-shots before another DM takes the next big adventure on. Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy to play and I just chip in sometimes when a DM needs a break.

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

I’m the same way. I just can’t keep to someone else’s script, which means two sessions in if I’m lucky I’m having to remember what I’ve changed via improvisation, and the adventure becomes basically a description of maps and rooms and critters.

 

[dave2008]

Neverland is amazing.

Also check out Kelsey Dionne’s two Skyhorn adventures.

Kelsey has several adventures on DriveThru, is there something that sets those two apart? And do you know the names of those adventures? As far as I can find, none of her adventures have Skyhorn in the title.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

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?

That's a pretty good rule of thumb. Sometimes it's faster, but it can also be slower (a fight can often be one week per round).

OTOH, by nature of it being written rather than spoken, you can get into character's heads more, and reread (or rewrite) the details of a flowery description, so it has its perks!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

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).

I like that part about it. It's why I bother running them. I am the same when it comes to reading ahead, which can sometimes cause problems when the published adventure only tells you much later what the point of something is, and you had to make up something on the fly that contradicts it.

 

[Retreater]

To the OP: You're not alone. I have had far more failures running pre-written adventures than successes. And what I create myself typically goes over better than the pre-written stuff.

I think this is because adventures are actually poorly crafted for what they are intended to do. While there are factors like individual group interests and character abilities that cannot be controlled, here are some avoidable common traits that I think make them failures:

Long, narrative backstories.
Most of the time these are irrelevant to the adventure and serve to confuse DMs and players. It doesn't matter how the villain rose to power 1000 years ago. Stop telling me this story.

Pointless railroad.
Sometimes to keep a story going, you have to adhere to a general plot structure. But then there's stuff that doesn't matter. Recently I was running a PF2e adventure path that wanted a pretty despised villain from the first book to survive. In the climactic encounter, it was all "no matter what - this guy has to survive! If you let him die, everything is ruined!" and then it proceeded to give a completely scripted climax the party could do nothing about. I flipped through the rest of the AP, and wouldn't you know it, by the last book that villain had been killed off screen and came back as an undead. WTH? Not only did it not matter, it would've been better writing to let the party kill the guy.

Confusing room descriptions.
Scores of pointless descriptions, a backstory about a guy who appears in one room, cluttered details that mask the important parts of a room. All this makes it difficult for a DM to parse the important details and relay them to characters.

For the reason why this happens? I think many module writers think they're writing a story. They're wrong. What unfolds at the table during play is the story.

 

[Oofta]

Precisely this.

Since I have a campaign world of my design with factions and religions and such I can have a donjon dungeon produced and quickly devise a backstory.

When things happen in the adventure I already understand why and can improvise without it feeling like mere whim at the moment.

Some things take longer—-but I really struggle with the ‘adventure paths.’

The difference is “knowing” vs. learning and remembering.

I agree. The other thing I forgot to mention is that there is simply too much variation of party makeup and options to just use the combat encounters in published mods as written for me. For some groups I've DMed for every encounter would be a cakewalk, others would be threatening a TPK every other encounter. I've gotten pretty good over the years at creating combat encounters for my group (even if some still surprise me), but every group is different so I always have to tweak the difficulty of published mods.

So longer to read through the mod to understand what's going on, flipping through pages to find details, and I still need to review all of the combat encounters. Heck, even some non-combat encounters are going to be a breeze for some groups and a virtually insurmountable obstacle for others just depending on what character options people have chosen.

 

[Arilyn]

Confusing room descriptions.
Scores of pointless descriptions, a backstory about a guy who appears in one room, cluttered details that mask the important parts of a room. All this makes it difficult for a DM to parse the important details and relay them to characters.

My pet peeve as well. Long flowery room descriptions, listing absolutely everything, with a btw, there's a snarling monster leaping at you, tucked in at the end, almost as an after thought.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I have come to understand that what I enjoy GMing and making is very character driven stuff with a focus on intrigue, conspiracies and heavy roleplaying. Plots and campaign frames are there, but in a more poststructuralistic sense, dynamic and ever changing, leaning on the characters actions and shenanigans.

So I'm not the prime target for prewritten adventures and campaigns. But WotC stuff is simply bad, with gigantic holes for the GM to fill, and what's usable is meager. Paizo APs, especially for PF2e, are imho very good and playable, even if they take an unproportional amount of prep time (at least for me) to internalize so I can run them smoothly.

But the most glaring problem with pre-written adventures and campaigns for me is that they are boring to run - they rob me of the ad hoc improvisation and fast creativity that are the most fun part of GMing to me. So I'm not incapable to run pre-written stuff, it's more that it's boring and I lose motivation.

If I had absolutely zero prep time, I would probably run Paizo APs just to keep gaming. But it would be dull.

 

[Retreater]

I remember when D&D first got alterations to the standard formatting conventions that originated in 1970s tournament modules, there was a backlash. This was the "Delve Format" of late day 3.5 (which carried over into 4e). It broke down room descriptions, had everything you needed to run it on a two-page spread whenever possible. DMs complained that it "ruined the story" and made D&D "a tactical skirmish game."

IMO, I think the better way of doing it is to present a bullet list of creatures and a few memorable details at the start of the room description, with other details in a paragraph that can be read for more information following. This is similar to the adventure formatting of Old School Essentials.