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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1447704" data-attributes="member: 13654">What is a sourcebook except a guide to use for writing your own adventures?I see three circumstances in which a module will be successful. <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The module presents places and events that do not seem to exist for the purpose of DRIVING the PC's through them to a conclusion.  It can be merged with ongoing events from a wide variety of campaigns without unduly affecting either one.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The module is SO well-written that DM's will BEND their campaigns as much as they will adapt the module trying to make the two fit together.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The module is geared specifically (or by dumb luck fits perfectly anyway) for the campaign setting and events you ARE running - which is damned unlikely.</li> </ol>That's a tough job.  Even if you do everything right - just enough plot to keep the module together but no so much that it's anything but a breeze to adapt; it's nonetheless NOT filled with statblocks but with descriptions of people, places and events that will constitute the adventure with the PC's; it doesn't rely on rules, places, or events that are specific to a given setting - you still aren't going to sell it to someone who doesn't need or want the particular murder mystery, kidnap & ransom, save-the-world or scavenger hunt you've concocted.  Even if they DO want or need it they have to FIND it by sifting the wheat from the chaff that's out there and when it's all said and done they've expended as much effort as simply making it up themselves.In the heyday of 1E the game was not being driven by modules on the shelves - it was being driven by the imaginations of the participants themselves.  When a new module came out it wasn't a continuation of a storyline from the same setting that everyone was playing - it was a welcome break from otherwise having to invent this weeks game from whole cloth.  The fact that there were a few cool people, places, events, and widgets in there was a SPARK to the imagination, not a crutch.I'm really a big believer in this notion.  People just don't realize that their nostalgia for 1E derives less from the official product than what they themselves then did with what they had available.  Yes, I remember fondly the giants/underdark/drow series, the slavers modules, temple of elemental evil, etc.  I remember MORE fondly the assassinations of the Emperor of Lankhmar, the PC kidnappings and murders by the Red Brigade, the evil betrayal by Bored Flak, the Intercontinental Magic Missile Silo, THE lich, the OTHER lich, Grond the Antipaladin, Zichnoid the anticleric and his undead army, Fort Blood, Ogrehelm, the evil PC brothers Feric and Remmler Jeager, the recurring NPC Alfredo Garcia, the fight to kill Tiamat, the fight to destroy the egg being hatched to replace her (and the subsequent eternal enslavement of Durnwe, a dwarf PC, by Asmodeus before the party retreated), exploring The Portals, Durnwe's Folly (aka Nomelin's bracers), Misty Boots of Silent Speed and the Hasted Mithral Plate of Amazing Agility, The Castle Timeless, Ghallanger heavy crossbows and the doubly-deadly Scarlet Angel Express, and week after week after WEEK of other adventures.  THAT is the 1E "feel".  The GDQ series and Gygax's writing style in the DMG helped, but weren't the defining characteristics of 1E - they were simply common elements in the MUCH larger, but very individual pictures everyone was looking at.</blockquote>

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