Published Adventures and You

[Crothian]

The one cleric, one fighter, one rogue, one wizard presumptive mods have never reflected a group I have run or in which I've played. Adventures designed with the iconic party in mind frequently just don't work. "Turn Undead? sorry, nobody here does that. Does the skeleton have pockets I can pick?"

I just read though Siege of Ebonring Keep by Mystic Eye Games. Good mosule that does not make any assumptions about what a group of characters has in it. IT is designed for Monte Cooks Arcana Unearthed though.

 

[RCanning]

Pre-made modules are the backbone of my world

But I have told my players that they can expect to be crowbarred from one scenario to the next at times. I have a fully detailed world and I used to write all of my own stuff, but now I find when I am writing I want to put all the finishing touches on it, and it takes me a long time to write. I also work full time, and have other commitments. And I like to game at least twice a month. Therefore.... Pre-published modules are what keeps be able to run my campaign.

Sometimes they don't fit, and that I get over by just telling my players to "cope". They have found it was more fun for me to do this than to try to modify things to fit, and then for there to be unexpected other things go wrong because of the alterations (which could sometimes happen). Sometimes they know that what they are encoutering is just for this module, and they can take it as an episode in a story that just does not seem to fit cannon, and move on. But the most important thing is fun is had by all.

I use modules from Dungeon a LOT. I have got every edition since 3E came out, and so far I have run through only about 10 scenarios. I have also run through eight (maybe 7 or 9) seperately published scenarios, from various gaming companies. My wife is running a campaign which is solely "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" and we have been playing that for over a year and are about half way through. It is great.

I tend to try to get modules in PDF format if I can, so I can print them (generally colour duplexed, but a lot of them are not colour) and then bind them for me to be able to scribble all over without damaging an original. I have to say that I tend to photocopy (again in colour) the modules from Dungeon I run, and then do the same thing. Cross out a dead monster, highlight magic items that the party has found, change this and that. At the end, have a pretty good campaign diary just by looking at my notes all over the copies I have.

I am ranting, it is a habit of mine. I will stop.

Richard Canning

 

[Wraith Form]

What I dont like: When I make my own stuff from scratch its much easier to ad-lib or deal with off-the-wall actions by the players. If I play from a module I have to filter each zany action and try and remember whether I saw any plan from the module designer to deal with this contingency. It's a lot harder (and more annoying) as DM to try and hold the threads of someone elses world together.

Yes, I completely agree with this assessment. If there's a downfall of published modules, it's that sometimes I forget details (like monster special abilities, NPC motivations, etc.)

 

[Wraith Form]

I am ranting, it is a habit of mine. I will stop.

See, I didn't think so. Actually, color-copying the pages is an excellent idea, and I enjoyed reading what you were saying. Keep it up--!

 

[Celtavian]

re

I like published adventures. I usually buy WotC modules or Necromancers Games Modules (Whom I think puts out the best 3.x modules of any company). Then I modify them to fit into my campaign. Most modules can be tweaked to fit into just about any campaign.

Sometimes I write my own material. I find it easier to purchase a module and modify it. By the time I'm done, I am using 50% original module and 50% my own material. Published modules are very helpful.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

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?

Published adventures supply maps, interesting traps, and pregenerated NPCs. So I'll pick them up for that. But only if I have spare cash. Seems these days that there's so much d20 product that I always get a hardcover or a pdf of something with a neat subsystem first. Titles that I enjoyed running all hearken back to my 1E days: L1: Secret of Bone Hill, U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, B1: Keep on the Borderlands, and the RPGA series of modules by Frank Mentzer.

I create my own adventures for many reasons. Primarily because I can't stop the ideas from coming.

ENWorld, by the way, attracts a high percentage of unique individuals. It would also be interesting to see what the folks who don't do the Internet but game a lot think.

 

[mearls]

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, sorry about that. I actually wrote "Swords Through the Ice Gate" for the DM who was running the campaign I played in at the time. I bought a copy for him, covered up my name, and gave it to him for his birthday. That also explains that strange new monster I included in the module, the wandering mearls healer, and the gnomes who have sworn to hand over the staff of the magi they guard to an elf named Dayereth Sunstar.

Hey, I thought it was fun. Being a game designer rules!

(On a more serious note, I actually have designed a fair amount of stuff for my own games that ends up in books.)

 

[Psion]

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

By ommitting a poll? Clever, you.

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 don't use as many published adventures these days for two reasons:
1) They are getting bigger, and bigger adventures are less easily dropped into my game.
2) FDP doesn't publish adventures.

Part of the reason big adventures don't work to me is because of the commitment factor. Usually, the longer the page count, the more consecutive sessions I will spend pursuing that adventures, and I find I like switching up the action a bit quicker than the typial large published adventure accomodates.

Further, I usually have my own plans for the campaign, and it's usually easier to fit in a small adventure than a large one. Sometimes I prefer published adventures if I have a specific activity planned for the party, but they aren't ready yet. I don't want to spend 3 or 4 class levels in an adventure unrelated to my world event; 1 level (or better, 1 or 2 sessions) is much more comfortably sized for me. For this reason I really dig AEG's Adventure I and Adventure II because they give me a nice variety of little adventures, and oddly, they seem easier to fit into my game better than Dungeon adventures.

Many published adventures are rather inflexible. Banewarrens, I think, is noteworthy, because it gives you notes to fit organizations from your own world to the adventure.


Of published adventures I have played for 3e, I think that The Ghost Machine (one half of On Hallowed Ground by FDP) has been the most enjoyable, with nods to Of Sound Mind and
NeMoren's Vault. I've had a lot of fun with Rappan Athuk, but always with pick up games, never part of my regular campaign.

I also got a ton of use out of Dark Elf City of Hossuth -- it was a very compact AEG city module. I garnished and added details, and used it as a plot hook layer for other adventures in my campaign. The fact that it was more situations than directly plotted made it real easy to fit into the game; it served more as a source of ideas. I could see your own Prison City adventure serving in the same way.

Published adventures supply maps, interesting traps, and pregenerated NPCs. So I'll pick them up for that.

This strikes a certain truth for me. I appreciate having interesting creatures, challenges, maps, and situations done for me. But having a plot done for me sort of gets in the way.

This is one reason why I so strongly disagree with the all too common and baffling condemnation of WotC's Book of Challenges. For what I buy adventures for, it is the singular most valuable "adventure" WotC has published.

 

[mearls]

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting reading as usual, especially when I consider my own experiences with adventures. The odd thing is that this was first supposed to be a poll, but I had to get going before I could finish it and quit my web browser. It was a little odd to see a thread I forgot I had started on the forums.

I tend to write my own stuff because it's less work, which sounds pretty strange but I guess works out that way when you write D&D stuff for a living. I find that it takes me about 2 or 3 hours to fully digest an adventure, and even then I forget stuff as it goes along. In contrast, I can printout a few maps from WotC's site, use the random dungeon contents generator from the DMG, and create a plot in an hour or so. The adventures might not have as much depth, but the players never seem to notice.

I also tend to sculpt things to fit how the players act. If they just attack stuff on sight, I tend to make lots of challenging battles. If they want to roleplay, I bring out more social situations and intrigue.

 

[Psion]

I tend to write my own stuff because it's less work, which sounds pretty strange but I guess works out that way when you write D&D stuff for a living. I find that it takes me about 2 or 3 hours to fully digest an adventure, and even then I forget stuff as it goes along.

Sometimes I feel that the communication barrier is a big issue for me with published adventure. I think a really good summary with all of the important details is a really good thing for an adventure to have. Often, I find that when trying to digest and adventure -- or worse, in the middle of a game when I know I am missing some important detail -- details get lost in the piles of text and encounters.

When I write the adventure, I always know what the important details are.