Published Adventures and You

[nikolai]

My problem is that adventures often seem too mechanical and linear. I'd love an adventure where - instead of "clear the dungeon" - the PCs have a choice of different routes they can take to get to the end. With each choice having different perils and the PCs not seeing every bit of the dungeon.

Plotwise, I really admire adventures with a clever twist, so that the player's expectations are confounded, and they have to use their minds as well as their swords. I don't just mean the old "the player's are hired by the baddies" cliche: but slight twists. So the old tales have been distorted and the treasure the find isn't quite what they expected. Or their patrons aren't giving the players the full story and, if they are clever, they can work out the true reason they've been sent to do what they've been sent to do and the real story beind their adventure.

I'd also love more dynamism: with background events happening outside the PCs adventures. So they could be sent to do X, and the background could be an invasion by an orc hoard. So as the adventure progresses the setting changes. They can visit a Beacon Tower early in the adventure, but if they go there later they find it has been burnt to the ground.

 

[The_Gneech]

Published adventures gooooood.

Being at work all the time so I can't write my own adventures, BAD!

-The Gneech

 

[Cerubus Dark]

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?

If I buy a pre writen adventure I take maps and ideas from it. I normaly write my own adventures to use. Then again, I perfer to make one adventure and if my party wants to go somewhere else we make stuff up on the fly. It works better for my group.

 

[Staffan]

I like to use premade adventures - currently I'm running the adventure in the back of the Oathbound book.

The main problem though, for me, is that most adventures I've seen for 3e are dungeon crawls. I've run through about 2/3 of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil before I got sick of the endless dungeoneering.

Another thing: the way I see it, premade adventures should generally stick to either of two different niches: the "shortie", a quick adventure that takes 1-3 sessions to run through, and the "biggie" that basically forms the basis of a whole campaign. The only 3e adventures I know of that fit the later niche are Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Banewarrens, and City of the Spider Queen. All of these have a strong element of dungeoneering. From the description, The World's Biggest Dungeon will also be campaign-sized (or more), but something tells me that's kinda dungeon-centered too.

I'd rather see something like the old 2e adventure Dragon's Crown. I've mentioned it before, but I really like this adventure. It has a bit of dungeoneering, sure, but it's not a "MEGADUNGEON!" like the 3e biggies (or some of the 2e biggies even - Night Below comes to mind there). Instead, it incorporates a lot of travel (and things that can happen while travelling), as well as many elements that strongly link it to the setting in which it takes place - man-eating halflings, a strong psionics presence, thri-kreen, the Sea of Silt, and so on. I'd like to see something similar for 3e - an really big adventure tailor-made for a setting with strong flavor.

 

[scourger]

love 'em!

I use published adventures when I DM. I just don't have the time to write adventures. I subscribe to Dungeon [Adventures] Magazine. Almost all the D&D adventures I run are from that source. I have purchased other titles, but those are much fewer in number. Free downloads are also great and will usually cause me to buy the main product (i.e. Skull & Bones).

On deck now is the third adventure presented in the back of Alternity Gamma World adapted to core D&D d20 rules using the Omega World mini-game from Dungeon 94 (the Polyhedron side).

After that is The Wreck of the Venerable Drake in a low-magic D&D core game using setting material from Skull & Bones. Bloody Jack's Gold could figure in that game after some naval battles. (I just saw Master and Commander.)

On the drawing board is a collection of 5-8 adventures from Dungeon adapted to the Spellslinger setting.

I would also love to run the Shackled City adventure path from Dungeon; The Giant's Skull using the pregenerated characters & counters; Russian Roulette & Target Mega-City One for the Judge Dredd RPG; Gentlemen's Agreement (if I could figure out a lighter version of Spycraft, maybe the aforementioned Omega World); Raw Recruits for DragonStar; a couple of "jungle" Dungeon adventures for an old AD&D campaign converted to 3e; and several Dungeon adventures for my 3e Greyhawk core campaign--which was to also include The Crystal Tower and culminate in Swords Against Decption (thank you very much!).

I am also very much looking forward to Mysteries of the Drow. It may be one of the few modules I buy this year.

 

[Caspian Moon Prince]

I pretty much agree with what several others have said. Mostly, I have found that published adventures take more work than they are worth. This is especially true while running the adventure. I find myself having to constantly be on my toes to make sure I don't miss a detail that could screw the entire adventure up. With my own adventures, I know the details or if, heaven forbid I forget a detail, I can usually wing it or try and fit the detail in someplace else. It is hard to do that with published adventures.

Mostly with published adventures, I'll incorporate ideas from the adventure into one of my own. Basically, take the main plot and build an adventure from it. Which is great because mostly I just need the summary for.

 

[kamosa]

I use a lot of published adventures, but I heavily modify them for my purposes.


I often change all the NPC names to fit characters in my world that the PC's would know. Gergork the bartender becomes Bill the bartender that the party has dealt with a thousand times, etc.

I then alter the monsters to fit the power of my party. Since most designers have never met my party, I take the liberty of adjusting the stats and powers to match up with my group. Then I right a pre adventure and post adventure path.

I read the adventure a couple times and memorize the plot and then run the game. I try not to look at the module during play except to get a room description or to draw the map. Basically I run the module as if I made it up. I don't worry about changing anything or adding and flushing it out as we go. The players want to go to the hall of records but the module doesn't list a hall or records, no problem. Lets see, couple quick notes in my campaign note book and off we go to the records hall.

I don't have time to do all my own campaign work, especially with a weekly game and a more than full time job. Adventures are a nice way to get a ton of the adventure ready for me without me doing the work. Plus, it keeps lots of designers and writers employed in the gaming industry and that's a good thing as well.

 

[SSquirrel]

The new gaming group I joined has a 1st time DM (played various stuff but its been awhile) and so he's running some NEcromancer Games stuff starting with WIzard's AMulet and heading into Crucible of Freya and Tomb of Abysthor next. I have those last 2 for him and a bunch of other Necromancer stuff a buddy gave me and so he'll probably stick with modules for awhile while he gets his DM legs.

Wizard's Amulet was fun too.

Hagen

 

[Thetford]

Classics

The only adventures I run are old 1st and 2nd edition that I convert to 3rd edition they have a flair and style I can't seem to find brand new adventures. Sadly they are getting harder and harder to find, so eventually I guess I will have to start buying new prepackaged adventures.

 

[Creamsteak]

Throw my name in the bag of DMs that like to rip apart these modules and use bits and pieces on call, maps, encounters, NPCs, stories, anything that I think is good enough to use. One thing I also like to be able to do is run a spontaneous game on the fly with little to no preparation, and when I do have a well made module I like to attribute the whole thing to memory. That way I can "wing it" if my players decide to go off in some direction where the module could reasonably fit. I've run Sunless Citadel at least twice with the same group of players, and in such different ways that they have no idea that they've been through the same "module" twice. Considering that they made it through both times using primarily diplomacy and stealth, I was seriously surprised that they didn't start to see repetition with some of the creatures I switched out for name and appearance sake. Each time is completely different, and I'd like to attribute a handful of additional modules to memory someday.