D&D General I defend published adventures constantly then I spend two hours tweaking every one I run. At what point am I just homebrewing with extra steps?

[Jacob Lewis]

Huh. I just had a very unusual thought reading through this discussion so far. Several, actually. I don't know if I can articulate it properly, but... isn't the whole thing a little weird?

Think about it. You purchase a product that provides you with a script or an outline so your friends can play characters in a fictional setting or story. The product wasn't written explicitly for your players or their characters, but you choose to use it for the convenience or the promise of a quality experience crafted by "professionals".

During play, everyone is either following the script, or they're not. Only the GM knows for certain (and the unscrupulous players who pretend they didn't read it beforehand). But it is not up to one person, nor is it always intentional.

The text shows there are 4 kobolds and 100gp in room 43 of the dungeon. But the GM changes this by using orcs instead, and throws in a healing potion. Is that homebrewing? Did the value of the product diminish because someone didn't use everything as written? Will the players even notice or care?

Point is that a published adventure shouldn't be treated like a script; it's a blueprint. Use as much or as little as you like, but nobody should know the difference if you're telling their story, your story, or making it up as you go. The job of the GM is to entertain, not be original. Players should not care where inspiration comes from as long as they are having fun.

 

[tombowings]

Only one part of that fun. Some people don't enjoy world-building. (I love it far too much for my own good.) For some, it's the performance. For others, getting to see how the players respond. For others still, it's seeing whether the party can defeat the evil mastermind despite the complications.

My comment wasn't an insult. It was an honest question. I'm honestly not sure what the fun of DMing is except for world building.

All of the other aspects you've listed are possible from the players' perspective, not only the DM's side of the screen (acting, seeing how others respond to the in-game challenges, seeing if the party can defeat the mastermind). Maybe I'm missing something, but world-building and making rulings (I'd argue this is really world-building, but I could see where others might disagree, especially if they view the rules as primary and the world secondary) seem like the only core difference between DMing and playing a character in another DM's world.

 

[el-remmen]

I find it easier to adapt adventures in whole or part to my homebrew setting than to create adventures from scratch (though I do that some as well). Sometimes, an adventure premise will sound interesting but when I actually read it, it does not live up to my expectations, so I just take the premise and build my own thing around it. I am literally doing that currently with ToEE (the moathouse is basically all I have kept, and even that has been changed).

I do think the range of possibilities from “creating from scratch” to “running as written” is wide and varied, it is impossible to actually pick a spot on the spectrum that always holds true.

For example, someone creating 5-room dungeons from scratch might find it easy, while someone else doing a large Jaquaysian dungeon might need to put more work in. Someone doing an urban intrigue adventure in a city they’ve established is easy, while others may have to create the city whole cloth or make major changes to the adventure to make it fit. And this can change adventure to adventure or campaign to campaign or setting to setting for the same game master over time.

 

[jayoungr]

I don't see tweaking a published adventure as "homebrewing with extra steps" at all. It's a different process that requires a slightly different skillset.

This is the reason we have separate Oscar categories for "best original screenplay" and "best adapted screenplay."

 

[saviirkad]

The second sounds like an exercise in frustration.

If the process threatens to become frustrating, then that is the point in which I stop with the process. I am not beholden to the method, it is simply one tool among others that I enjoy to use. For however long I enjoy using it.

 

[Composer99]

In my estimation and experience, unless the players run their characters in a very "pawn"-like manner, you will at some point have to do at least some customisation of a pre-prepared adventure path to account for the way they bring their characters' individual backgrounds, personalities, and goals into play.

My comment wasn't an insult. It was an honest question. I'm honestly not sure what the fun of DMing is except for world building.

All of the other aspects you've listed are possible from the players' perspective, not only the DM's side of the screen (acting, seeing how others respond to the in-game challenges, seeing if the party can defeat the mastermind). Maybe I'm missing something, but world-building and making rulings (I'd argue this is really world-building, but I could see where others might disagree, especially if they view the rules as primary and the world secondary) seem like the only core difference between DMing and playing a character in another DM's world.

If the only "fun" of DMing is world-building, why would you be a DM at all? You can enjoy yourself world-building without the content you create ever seeing the light of day at a game table, after all. Likewise if you run published adventures in published settings, you can enjoy yourself as a DM while hardly needing do any world-building, as such.

I'd have to guess you're using a different operational definition of "world-building" than I am, though?

 

[payn]

In my estimation and experience, unless the players run their characters in a very "pawn"-like manner, you will at some point have to do at least some customisation of a pre-prepared adventure path to account for the way they bring their characters' individual backgrounds, personalities, and goals into play.

Which is why Player's guides like Paizo does are so important. I dont run any campaign anymore without one.

 

[chronoforce]

Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with published adventures even though they vary in quality and indeed even when you have to do a lot of the work yourself - in my view, it's what I sign up for when I decide to DM. While I'm occasionally harshly critical of WOTC books for some truly, truly baffling writing choices (such as the forever caravan in Tyranny of Dragons or the fact there's zero plot coherence in Rime of the Frostmaiden), I'm usually happy with what I end up using, which are the maps, setpieces, stat blocks and general story beats. Abandoning the occasionally weak overall structure to establish my own connective tissue between each part of the adventure is something that I'd probably be doing regardless of what I read in the book, because I like to fit in side adventures and small moments for my friends' characters between the big events.

I've taken some years to arrive at this opinion and I've ran fully custom campaigns, and eventually I just realized that sometimes it's not that bad to run something that players can feel excited for at a glance when you bring over the hard-cover book to the table. In fact, I find WOTC's new design style of putting together 7 loosely connected smaller adventures and calling it a campaign (Deadfall) to be dreadfully uninspired, because they went from making narrative mistakes to simply raising their hands up in surrender... Sure, I probably wouldn't run it as is, but there could've at least been something in between rather than nothing.

 

[Emerikol]

My comment wasn't an insult. It was an honest question. I'm honestly not sure what the fun of DMing is except for world building.

All of the other aspects you've listed are possible from the players' perspective, not only the DM's side of the screen (acting, seeing how others respond to the in-game challenges, seeing if the party can defeat the mastermind). Maybe I'm missing something, but world-building and making rulings (I'd argue this is really world-building, but I could see where others might disagree, especially if they view the rules as primary and the world secondary) seem like the only core difference between DMing and playing a character in another DM's world.

I agree the creative worldbuilding aspects of it are a great reward. I enjoy game time but balanced against the work if I didn't love the work I would pay that price for the game time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I always heavily adapt any published adventure that I use. It's part of the fun!

Yeah, there's an audience for adventures that are basically a LEGO kit with poorly documented instructions and the buyer gets to build something cool out of the pieces.

There's also an audience that says "I spent $50 on this thing; I shouldn't have to spend hours making it workable."

Neither one is wrong. It would be great if adventure publishers could have the self-awareness around what kind of adventure they're publishing and make it clear outside the shrink wrap which type their product is, so everyone could pair off with the stuff they are looking for.