Published Modules.. I've ran 3 my entire life

[twofalls]

Worlds Largest Dungeon

Modules taught me how to GM when I was younger. I learned orgainization, content, and pacing from 1st Ed modules, and I collected over a hundred of them and ran most of them. Then for a while I wrote all my own material, I thought that it somehow made me a superior GM and invested a lot of time into it. The arrogance of youth. Now I buy modules again and use them as outlines to run my adventures, it saves me tremendous ammounts of time.

My game groups latest purchase has been the Worlds Largest Dungeon, and quite frankly its a excellent piece of work, Jim Pinto deserves whatever Kudos you care to send him on it. I've been rewriting the first section to suite my game and have been in direct contact with him about it and he has been an excellent sport and has offered a great deal of ideas and direct assitance. Nice guy.

I own over a thousand RPG products and have been GMing for 26 years, and thus I feel I'm in a postion of authority to highly recommend this product. For anyone who is interested, there is a thread on running this module on ENworld.

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=100030

 

[Sholari]

I have 500+ adventures between my module collection and Dungeon magazine. Iuse them constantly. If my group decides to head of in a random direction I usually have another module that can accomdodate it. Then I simply re-tailor important details accordingly.

 

[Wombat]

I've looked over about a 30-40 adventures over the years, but I've never run one as written. In fact, the closest I've ever come to using a pre-published adventure is to steal a room or an interesting NPC.

Problems I found were monsters used that I never put in my game world, puzzle traps that require a 20th century mindset to solve, overstocked dungeons, overly complicated conspiracies that fall apart when the players just squint at them, plot hooks that don't hook, motivations that make very little sense, and the like. For my money, I am saving my money

I know there are groups that these adventures work out well for, but I'm not in one of those groups. To those of you who do like these adventures, I hope you have a great time with them!

 

[dekrass]

I have have been DMing for about 9 years and have never run a mod.
My players are very freeform and creative. The mods just seem far too restrictive.
I own a couple from 2e and used some ideas from them, but that's it.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I buy Dungeon every month and have quite a lot of modules, many of which I've never run. I tend to use published stuff quite a bit, often alternating with my own adventures. Like others, I also plunder them for NPCs, monsters, maps etc.

Cheers


Richard

 

[LiKral]

I like the idea of modules, but when I try to run any I get confused trying to remember what is going on in the module and linking it to my own plot. I wish there were some simpler modules made, with just a 1-page dungeon with fiendish traps and monsters and no plot or background (just a theme like 'egyptian' or 'swamp').

 

[Sholari]

I think most people just do not know how to properly use modules these days. I've had several non-module users start to use modules after they've seen how I do it and it has increased the quality of their games substantially.

 

[d4]

Reading all the posts about best mods, best products yada yada... a few of them were modules. It got me thinking I have ran only 3 modules my entire DMing career which is like 20+ years.

i've had the same experience. i've been GMing for 20+ years and the only 3 modules i've ever run were Keep on the Borderlands (for Basic D&D), Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (for 1e, and we only got about 1/4 of the way through that), and Sunless Citadel (for 3.0, though i had to massively change it to fit my campaign).

like Psion, i often find published adventures do not fit my style of campaigns or GMing.

edit: actually, i just thought of a fourth: Crisis at Crusader Citadel for Villains & Vigilantes. i think i've even run that one more than once.

 

[Greg K]

When I started of DMing, I ran modules (original versions of the following series: T1, A1-A4, G1-G3, D1-D3, Q1, S1-4, L1). Once, I created my own campaign setting, I stopped buying modules, because the best case scenario was that there was just too much work involved tailoring them to my world.
When I left ADND, I sold my modules along with most of my 1e and 2e products.

However, a few years ago, I read an article on modules that should be on every GMs desk. After that I ran out out bought Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread, and replaced my copy of the Ravenloft module. I keep these along side my Darksun and Ravenloft boxed sets.

I still don't use modules (or even buy new ones), but get my ideas for adventures for movies, books, tv, articles, and observating the real world, but adapting them to games that I play.

 

[delericho]

Bit of a convert here...

Until very recently, I hardly ever used a published module. They always seemed to be of limited utility, too tightly plotted, or just difficult to run. There was also a spell where I had one player who absolutely hated published adventures, and would moan constantly whenever I ran one (he's gone now).

This caused me to build up a huge store of adventures that I owned but never ran, since I've purchased and read every Dungeon since 3rd Edition came out (and had run exactly 1 module from it, a great adventure called "Cradle of Madness").

Four months ago, I realised that I just don't have the time or energy to create settings and adventures that I once had. So, I've started running the Shackled City adventure path, and having a great time. I'm also currently running a group of complete newbies through the Dungeon of the Fire Opal (which uses the map from the sample of play from the DMG).

I think the key is that a good pregen module makes itself easy to use. Or, perhaps I've just been missing out.