D&D 5E New DM Having Tough Time Relaxing with Published Adventures!

[robus]

I'm just finishing up HotDQ and I've found it quite stressful too. I've come to the realization that I need to just get the structure of the adventure in my head and the major NPCs with their primary motivations. Rely on the book when it comes to dungeon maps but I'm not sure about the encounters within those dungeons (I've found them to be generally very unrealistic/dead)

 

[Rod Staffwand]

If the party goes off track and can't find the adventure just tell them "Hey, guys, you went off track and the published adventure is over here." Then let them explore off track or get back on it--their choice. Honestly, its just easier, faster and less stressful if you're upfront with this stuff rather than doing narrative backflips trying to subtly influence them back to the adventure. Especially if you're a new DM. Your group should understand. Striving for some sort of perfect immersive experience is usually not worth the aggravation.

 

[The_Gneech]

My suggestions:

1) Never fall in love with any plot point, location, or NPC.

Players almost always zig when you expect them to zag. They'll negotiate with monsters you expect them to fight. They'll piss off NPCs you expect them to want to help. Let them do this. ENCOURAGE them to do this.

The best way to keep them from "going off the rails" is to think of the rails as chalk drawings on the ground that can easily be stepped over anyway.

"Following the book" completely negates the whole purpose of having a human GM there. You can play a computer game or read a book to have the whole story plotted out beforehand and the players just go through the motions. Embrace the fact that it's YOUR world, not the book's, and run with it! And as a corollary...

2) Never prep more than one or two sessions in advance.

You can have a general outline of where you expect things to go, and certainly feel free to drop in clues or foreshadowing if it pleases you. But don't waste a lot of time worrying about sessions that are far in the future and may not actually ever come. It is a sad fact of life that many game groups don't last more than a year before someone moves, or someone else has to drop the game because their life changes, or whatever.

The game happening TONIGHT is the one you need to worry about. Prep just as much as you need to make THIS session awesome. Then next week, do the same. Repeat until you run out of sessions.

3) You are the master, not the books.

If there's some problem down the road because players didn't pick up the Macguffin of Plot Point, that's a fault in the books, not in you or your players. But the great thing is, because you are in control, you can tell the book to bugger off and do what you want. The book says they can't Close the Portal of Doom without the Macguffin of Plot Point? Well the book is wrong. They can Close the Portal of Doom by smashing it with the fighter's magic hammer, or casting a custom spell the wizard can whip up with an Arcana check, or holding hands and using the Magic of Friendship, or whatever is cool.

Decide how they can close the Portal of Doom when doing the prep for the session that includes the Portal of Doom, and not before! See item 2) for details.

4) Kill the book and take its stuff.

Honestly? Most written adventures are pretty weak, even the best of them. This isn't a criticism– they have to be! The writer doesn't know your players, your GM style, your campaign world, etc. I used to write stuff for White Wolf back in the day, and the best I could do was write stuff that I thought would work at my table, then extrapolate to make it as generic as possible.

So any written adventure you get is going to be, at best, a series of guidelines. "This is how one writer thinks the adventure might go."

What they're really good for is ideas for NPCs (so you don't have to think up every person in the universe for your game), mechanically-sound encounters (hopefully), maps, and cool imagery. You'll be much better served by gutting the module, coming up with your own take on it, and then incorporating back in the parts from the written module you like.

It may sound like a lot of work, but remember that you're doing it one or two sessions at a time. You'll be fine!

5) Be lazy.

I highly recommend SlyFlourish's The Lazy Dungeon Master for everyone, but particularly for people who feel locked-in to written adventures and are being stressed by it. You can find it here:

http://slyflourish.com/lazydm/

Enjoy!

-The Gneech

 

[Jester David]

I ran Rise of the Runelords and found it was pretty easy to keep the group on track. I did warn my players that there was some elements of a railroad involved, and that they'd enjoy themselves most if they took the hooks. They joked about the rails a few times but I had no real issues keeping them on track.

As your players really wanted to play this, you should be fine. They know the rails are there and are incentivized to follow. Player buy in is the best aid you can have for a pre-published adventure. As a DM you just need to hint at the right direction and drop a clue, and you should be good.
If things go off the rails, that's okay too as you can just have a moment of freedom before trusting your improve skills (which you enjoy using) to guide things back. Going off the rails is your moment to shine. Don't be afraid to move the location of clues or information. Or invent new clues. Some times encounters just get skipped.
There are a few more Sandbox moments: the exploration of Sandpoint after the goblin raid, hunting for the Skinsaw Man, venturing into Magnamar, and the overland travel parts of books 3, 4, and 5. You can look forward to those as breaks in the planned action.

 

[Aenghus]

I use a lot of modules and adventure paths because I find it difficult to come up with adventure concepts myself. However, I like having a framework to work within, and am good at rewriting and editing material which doesn't suit my game. I've got a lot better at improvising in recent years as well, but it's not my strong suit, I prefer to improvise within a framework so I know where the game is going.

Running an adventure path generally requires player buy-in. Adventure paths often have plot holes, failures in logic, misprints, and just sloppy writing. They are often created by multiple people who don't agree with each other on everything and so include contradictions and disagreements. Clues and maps go missing, single points of failure are far too common etc etc.

So it's much easier to just get general out-of-character agreement from the players that they are going to play through this adventure path, and accept nudges back to the main plot when they wander off too far.

My own referee mantra is "Play to your strengths, downplay your weaknesses". Emphasise the content in your game that you are good at and enjoy yourself, as well as content that you are good at and can appeciate or at least tolerate. Downplay content you don't like or are less good at. If players are demanding content in the latter category, maybe a compromise is possible, or maybe those players would prefer a different game.

With adventure paths being uneven, I do major rewrites to customise the path to my own setting and my PCs. Sometimes I leave out an entire adventure or arc that doesn't appeal to me, or harvest it for parts which I drop in elsewhere along the adventure path.

Adventure paths are primarily useful for referees and players who are willing to go along with the plot, and not stress test the adventures along the way. Referees who like to improvise wildly and players who like to poke the weak spots in the adventures until they collapse mightn't find adventure paths to be worthwhile. Time management can be a big problem, many adventure paths envisage a headlong rush to the ultimate module, with little time to ponder, research, make magic items, go shopping, have a PC life. This can work well for old-fashioned play which treats the game like a wargame but with simple PC characterisation, but often combines badly when the PCs have more complex personalities, or personal drives and ambitions which don't align comfortably with the adventure path.

 

[Shiroiken]

When I am a player in an adventure path, I take the hooks. I don't "go off the rails." I find a reason for my character to care about whatever quest is put before him or her.

You could ask your players to do the same. I do, when I run a plot-based adventure like an adventure path.

I think most players already do this (unless the assumed path sounds insane), but sometimes the "rails" are well hidden and it's easy to step over them without realizing it.

 

[aco175]

When in doubt, throw a fight at them with a big bow tied to it. Some hired thugs or cultists with a note telling them to kill the PCs before they get to X or find out about Y works. It is a bit cheesy, but it works.

 

[Sloblock]

I'm just finishing up HotDQ and I've found it quite stressful too. I've come to the realization that I need to just get the structure of the adventure in my head and the major NPCs with their primary motivations. Rely on the book when it comes to dungeon maps but I'm not sure about the encounters within those dungeons (I've found them to be generally very unrealistic/dead)

I also found that with HotDQ that the maps/encounters were a bit stale, so I read ahead and then decided to keep the main points and then fluff the rest. Players enjoyed what we did so that was a plus

 

[Sloblock]

I like others on here, find coming up with a campaign plot from scratch quite hard and time consuming. And I much prefer taking a published module and then deconstructing the encounters so that they flow better for my group.

in RoT one of the dungeons felt very Indiana Jones so I used that as theme and updated a couple of the rooms ( yes at one point there was a boulder chasing the group )

Whilst I can't create whole things off the cuff I am getting better at handling situations when a PC suddenly wants to take a left turn instead of a right one

 

[GMMichael]

I'd write down the major points and themes on a note card for each section/area, so that you can reference it during the session (so that you don't forget something important). I'd then make notes on the adventure of what you don't like and want to change. If you prefer improv, then don't change it immediately, but during the game. Whatever you do, write down changes you made at the end of each session, so that you don't forget!

This. Don't run the adventure out of the book. Take some notes, and as long as you use each of your note cards before the end of the session, you'll be fine. Then spend your prep time tying the end of the previous session to where you need the next session to begin.

Also, don't present hooks that don't come from the book, or you'll need a net and a man-catcher to get those characters back on track.