Published Adventures and You

[mearls]

I'm curious to see what EN Worlders think of published adventures. I've tried to make this poll as comprehensive as possible.

If you use published adventures, why? Are there any titles in particular that you enjoyed running?

If you don't, why do you find yourself creating your own adventures as opposed to using pre-made ones?

 

[Crothian]

I use some but I'd say about 3/4th of my adventures I create on my own. There just are not a lot of adventuires featureing what my party has decided to do (free trapped gods, long story...). On top of that I've grown tired with dungion crawls and with adventures that feel like dungion crawls. My players have as well. I don't run a lot of combat, its more character interaction and choices being made. Modules like that are rare.

But I do like modules. I ran Of sound mind just lkast month and Standing Stones two weeks back. They happen to fit what I needed for a good side adventure.

 

[Darrin Drader]

The last two gaming purchases I made were for Necromancer Games The Bonegarden and Goodman Games Temple of the Dragon Cult. While I am fully capable of creating my own adventures, I like having something premade to run on game night. It saves me time, and most have advanced monsters, monsters with templates, and NPCs, all of which I am capable of doing on my own, but take more time than I have to prepare.

I've enjoyed running a few of the Necromancer Games modules in the past and I plan to get around to the Demon God's Fane and the Banewarrens sooner or later.

Of course I do also enjoy designing my own adventures on occasion and I've ran more than one campaign in the past where I didn't make use of published adventures at all.

 

[hong]

I'm curious to see what EN Worlders think of published adventures. I've tried to make this poll as comprehensive as possible.

If you use published adventures, why? Are there any titles in particular that you enjoyed running?

If you don't, why do you find yourself creating your own adventures as opposed to using pre-made ones?

I'm an inveterate tinkerer. I like making up my own NPCs, monsters, encounters, plot hooks, and so on. If I do pick up a published adventure, I often end up modding so much of it that the convenience factor is completely lost. I'm also of the arrogant opinion that I can design a better adventure than any module writer out there. In this, I am almost certainly wrong, in that there probably are writers who could design something that would give my players better entertainment value than I could provide on my own. Nevertheless, that's how my worldview operates.

Also, there really are some modules out there that are just plain broken in the sort of treasure that gets handed out, and these have coloured my opinion somewhat. For example, there was a free 10th level WotC module that had as (potential) treasure an item that could turn the wearer into a werewolf lord at will, with no downsides that I could tell. This is a 16 HD melee brute that could put frost giants to shame for destructive power, and it's a module for 10th level characters! (There were other logical inconsistencies about the module, but this one puts them to shame.)

Another one was the 6th level "Swords Through the Ice Gate" module that was half of Nature's Fury, the Fiery Dragon production. This one gave out a horn of blasting, the 3.0 version (the only one extant at the time), which basically stuns everything in the area of effect, with no save, no SR. For those not in the know, and anyone who presumes to be called either a game designer or a module writer most definitely should be in the know, stunning is a remarkably powerful effect, and not allowing a save or SR is highly dubious, to say the least. Clearly the author of this module is a WITLESS INCOMPETENT who is either OFF HIS MEDS or on TOO MANY MEDS and knows NOTHING AT ALL about game balance and is only avoiding being called a MUNCHKIN because I'm being generous and assuming IDIOCY rather than MALEVOLENCE. Let me just check who it is, so that I can tell everyone NEVER TO LOOK AT ANYTHING written by this AWFUL, AWFUL PERSON ever again.

"Mike Mearls"










Oh.











Never mind, then

 

[Wombat]

I've used a couple of pre-packaged adventures, but I found that I had to alter them so much to fit my group, the campaign situation and suchlike that they were not worth my time and effort.

I am quite certain that there are excellent adventures out there, but for the most part I just find it easier to craft adventures to my campaign.

 

[Wraith Form]

Personally, I enjoy buying adventures to "mine" them for ideas. One of the most challenging things for me as both a (non-professional) writer and a DM is thinking up plots and creating realistic villains (I can't emphasise realistic enough). I buy pre-written adventures--including Dungeon--to jump-start my creative juices so that I can take the "kernel" of the idea and wrap & blend my own twisted ideas throughout.

Quite frankly, most of the pre-written/published plots I read are fairly crap, and invariably need to be tweaked for the gaming group. I like to add my own unique spin on the plot--I enjoy intrigue, so I enjoy seeing how I can add that element to the adventure. (Things are usually not what they seem in my adventures. I'm sure you DMs understand-- )

(As an aside, I also strongly dislike halflings, flying 'Tinkerbell' fairies, kobolds and other "cutesie" creature NPCs--so I attempt to convert NPC creatures into human equivalents. Demons? Feh. I'm not a fan of them, either--I feel that the human mind can create plots twisted and intricate enough to rival any demon lord (after all, what are we but demons wrapped in a fleshly skin?). Elves--we've perverted them from Tolkien's "beings of light" into tree-hugging humans with pointy ears. Why are dwarves always "gruff" and speak with a really horrible faux-Scottish accent? No thanks. I grew up on Robert E Howard, which featured mostly human opponents. Seems like a LOT of adventures lately seem to feature hafling villages, fairie pranks gone horribly wrong and demons, so I replace them as best I can with human NPCs.)

Anyway, to get back on topic--that's what I use adventures for.

I will continue to purchase them as long as companies print them, then strip 'em down to their bare plot & re-work to my tastes.

Oh, and I like the maps.

 

[Morpheus]

I have made my own adventures and have run published ones. Last session, I used the map from the Forge of Fury in the Dawnforge campaign I am running. If I buy something, I like to try and get some use out of it.

 

[Hawklord]

I use pre-written modules almost exclusively. With work and other committments I don't have the time (or to be honest the inclination) any more to write my own stuff. I need something I pick up can scan over before the game and run it.

For also I tend to buy mega-modules - RttToEE, Necropolis etc. I like the epic feel and scope of them.

 

[Gothmog]

I don't usually buy too many adventures. The ones I do get I've never run as is- they are mined for ideas and/or maps for me to use in my game. I feel that I can make adventures from scratch that are much better suited to me and my group's taste than a published adventure can. In addition, since I typically run a low magic, human only PC game, I'd have to do some pretty extensive modification to most published adventures to use them.

I have kept up with Necromancer's releases (have them all) because they are easy to mine for ideas and generally high quality, even if they are sometimes a little dungeon-heavy. I also typically get MEG's Foul Locales series since they have a theme and mood that suits my campaign, and make for interesting side-encounters. I've also been impressed by the Hamlet of Thumble and the Village of Oester, and plan on using modified versions of those adventures in the future. Finally, I recently discovered Monkey God's adventures on Ebay, which are actually very good non-dungeon based, strong story adventures with numerous plot twists. Unfortunately, MG is no longer producing adventures. I don't really have much interest in adventures from other publishers, since IME they tend on the ridiculous in terms of magic level, magic items, and diversity of creatures in one area.

 

[tonym]

I started using published adventures to save time. Later I realized they were almost always better than my made-from-scratch stuff.

Tony M