I think published adventures require MORE prep, not less.

[billd91]

I run a lot from modules and I find them a lot easier to prepare than homebrew stuff too. That's not to say that I don't do a lot of preparation. For one thing, I usually transcribe the stat blocks so I have them all in one place, to say nothing about how doing so forces me to read all of the stat block carefully which helps me learn and retain it. But that's something I can do over my lunch hour during the week between game sessions that affords me a break from work. A nice change of intellectual gears.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Preparing to run a module is akin to cramming for a test. Making up my own stuff is coming up with a test for someone else. Both require work from me, and both offer different kinds of rewards and pitfalls.

AR

 

[Arnwyn]

Just my $0.02, of course, but I've come to the conclusion that the idea that published adventures save the DM work is largely a myth.

Anyone else find this too? That it's actually *easier* for them to run their own adventure than a prefab?

I can understand that some people might find your position true for them.

But I do not find that to be the case at all. Not even remotely close. It is no "myth" at all - in fact, it is demonstrably true for me.

 

[Heselbine]

Have you actually run it? This is way off being my experience. I hardly had to do any prep at all when running Keep on the Shadowfell.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Clearly different DMs have different experiences with the utility of published adventures. So what predicts whether or not using one will save you time as a DM?

I can think of two possibilities. First, if a DM tends to do very little prep work, than even reading through a published adventure takes more time than allowing spontaneity and the players' input to drive the content of each session. Personally, I'm not nearly good enough at improvisation to pull off this approach to running a campaign.

The other possibility is that the adventure as published is not immediately useable for some DMs: it requires work to "finish". Perhaps the content of the adventure book isn't what a given DM would have included in their own notes if they had started from scratch. For example, H1 is full of monster stats, tactics, and terrain, but it gives little guidance on how to imbue NPCs and individual monsters with personality. From an adventure design perspective, perhaps a DM would never have made the dungeon so large, so he or she must invest time in pruning encounters while maintaining the overall story and while adjusting the later encounters for characters who won't have gained as much experience. In the most uncharitable sense, it could take more work to "clean up somebody else's mess" than to do it yourself.

This second possibility is closer to the truth for me, although I still find that using a published adventure is much faster. It's just the case that I personally can't just open the book and run it without preparation.

 

[lin_fusan]

Hybrid method

I use premade modules to supplement my weaknesses as a DM. For example, I'm crap at dungeon design, so I'd rather use a premade dungeon. I'm also crap at instant throwaway side quests so short Dungeon magazine adventures fill that niche easily.

Ideally, stories, plots, and NPCs are all in my head, whereas I extract the crunchy bits, maps, and stat blocks from premades.

 

[Desdichado]

100% agree with the OP. Running anything other than something I came up with is a guarantee that I'll spend 200-300% more time on it.

What I really can't understand is running prefab campaign settings. I love reading them and cribbing ideas from them, but the idea of running an adventure in one, where I have to keep all the detail of the setting in the front of my head throughoug... wow, that's overwhelming in terms of workload. Absolutely impossible for me to seriously consider.

 

[Simon Atavax]

What I really can't understand is running prefab campaign settings. I love reading them and cribbing ideas from them, but the idea of running an adventure in one, where I have to keep all the detail of the setting in the front of my head throughoug... wow, that's overwhelming in terms of workload. Absolutely impossible for me to seriously consider.

That's what I love about the whole points of light concept. It's a believable way of limiting setting information. (By believable I mean--> it makes sense that the PCs in a "dark ages" fantasy world wouldn't know a great deal about their world.)

 

[Simon Atavax]

I can understand that some people might find your position true for them.

But I do not find that to be the case at all. Not even remotely close. It is no "myth" at all - in fact, it is demonstrably true for me.

Perhaps I didn't add enough disclaimers to my original post, but I meant that it *is* a myth for me. Not necessarily for others, of course.

ICBW, YMMV, IMHO, all that kind of stuff can be freely sprinkled in as required.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't use pre-maid adventures for the stats or the system it's written for, I use them for the plots. I only buy modules if they have a really good or unique storyline or plot.

This is my attitude. Especially now that 4E is out, whipping up a combat encounter off the cuff is the easiest thing in the world. I don't put much prep work into that part of things as a rule, with the exception of the big boss fights (or homebrewing monsters). It's plots and NPCs that I have to work at, and if I were going to run a prefab, it would be the plot and NPCs I'd want it for.