Pre-published or self-written modules?

[pemerton]

I use a mix of encounters of my own design, and encounters taken from published modules (though I will often tweak these in various ways - adding or subtracing monsters, changing maps, combining multiple encounters into one, etc).

For scenario ideas I will sometimes be inspired by published modules but always link them into an overarching scenario or story framework that is my own. I tend to find that many published modules have interesting premises or suggest interesting antagonists, but don't do an especially good job of developing this into something that will engage my players. So I'll take the premise or the character and work it into my own campaign.

 

[nedjer]

Mainly homebrew, but I've a heavily adapted G modules, D modules and Tomb of Horrors variant which still gets an occasional outing.

 

[jmucchiello]

Put me in the 'I'll steal, borrow and copy' parts from any type of published module, but never ran a module at all.

I would vote for, re-write/tweak and add my own content to published adventures if that was an option.

I suspect these answers are common enough to invalidate the poll. My own style is closer to whisper's than wolfpunk's.

 

[Haltherrion]

I'm surprised to see the numbers on the poll, to be honest. Would have guessed a different distribution.

I always write and run my own adventures. The last time I ran a published adventure was one of the giant modules or maybe the Kuotoa one some time around 1980. Those modules turned me off published modules but I found I like writing my own better, anyway.

These days, I continue to write my own modules for several reasons.

1. I like setting creation as much as playing the game and enjoy scenario creation as an extension of that.
2. I like my scenarios to fit together and that's hard to do without using a single series of published adventures.
3. I never liked the idea that my players could read the module and might have already run it (doesn't mesh well with "2" where I'd need to use a series of modules, increasing the risk of a player being or becoming familiar with it).
4. I'm a fussy ref and like my scenarios "just so"

 

[Mark Chance]

Currently taking pre-written modules and retooling them to fit my needs. For example, I'm adapting The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde to both Pathfinder, my homebrew campaign, and one player's ranger's favored enemy of fey.

 

[Gilladian]

I LOVE running modules for one BIG reason: I've been playing and DMing for 30+ years. I have my own habits and well worn routes of thinking that I follow instinctively.

When I pick up a module and run it, it forces me to re-evaluate those habitual modes. I get to use monsters I would never select on my own, and tricks and traps I wouldn't have designed.

I frequently tweak things to fit my world, of course. I often write adventures that are all or largely my own. But I'm always using modules, too.

Right now I'm starting an E6 campaign. We're on session 4 and the PCs are halfway to 2nd level. They've done a goodly chunk of dungeoneering in the Dungeon-a-Day, and they've visited the "outpost" from Kingmaker, and have an idea how bad the bandits out in that area are. Things will spin out from there... I'm already working on "e-sixing" the higher levels of the dungeon, and pulling apart threads from Kingmaker to feed into the plot.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I tend to run pre-published (pre-p) stuff, as I don't have a lot of time to create adventures now that I'm a father and work full time. Maybe if I won Mega Millions and retired, I'd be able to do it...

However, I do tend to modify pre-p adventures - maybe not a lot, but I tweak encounters based on my group.

For my 3.5E campaign that ran from 2007-2010 and took the PCs from levels 1-18, I ran a somewhat modified pre-p adventure that took them from level 1-3. I then ran a few big encounters of my own design after that that came from their actions related to the pre-p adventure. The climax was freeing a local noble from slavers... my follow ups to that were the slavers striking back. They were then level 5.

I then ran a short mystery scenario that I found online that took them to level 6 and then ran a pretty cool pirate adventure/zombie apocalypse pre-p scenario that took them to level 8 (I think). Then, I had a few campaign threads tied together with a few more encounters and then they were into the "meat" of the campaign.

Those encounters and the journey to the next Pre-p module took them to level 10 or 11, if I recall. I ran a stripped down jungle pre-p that concluded with an encounter with a marilith that was somewhere around level 13. (the original monster in the module was a demonic tree... I changed it to the Marilith, though, as it was a better fit for the campaign and I had a really nicely painted Reaper marilith miniature...)

From there, I was not able to find anything pre-p for 3.5E that was both campaign-appropriate and powerful enough level wise, so the last several encounters and the various twists & turns and NPCs and villains of the campaign were all my own design. I think that went from level 14-18.

 

[denzoner]

I too tend to run MOSTLY pre-written adventures, as I don't have the time to write anything these days. And teh ones that I DO write, are almost completely inspired by the big-screen & TV. So, yeah. I was a really good "on the fly" DM in the day, so the creativity is there, but I think its buried beneath years of college "education" and saturated with "work".

 

[Tinker Gnome]

All of the adventures I have run have been of my own creation.

 

[Oryan77]

I prefer to run pre written adventures, but I tweak them a lot to fit them into the campaign. I still make up a lot of my own plots, especially to get personal quests going for PCs. But I always use an adventure as the backdrop in my plotlines.

I like doing it like that because I enjoy reading adventures that other people created. To look down on a pre published adventure seems a bit cocky to me. Plus I have played in plenty of games where the DM just made crap up as he went, and it sucked (and some were fun). So I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to reference adventures just for the possibility of getting some good material from them.

It's not that hard to find out which adventures are good and which are bad. Also, your group has a lot to do with it. One adventure might be major fun for one group, but a big bore for the other. I've had a couple misses before and it wasn't always the adventures fault.