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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6264953" data-attributes="member: 4937">And I think you are both right.It's true early modules didn't spoon feed the DM because it was assumed both buy the seller and the purchaser that, by accepting the mantle of DM, you were committing to spending a lengthy amount of time prepping to play a scenario - even a premade module.   When I first ran Ravenloft as a DM, I spent probably 30 hours in prep, including adding more than 80 NPC's to the town of Bavaria and filling the town with additional intrigue and side quests, rewriting a few areas of the castle, and so forth.   Modern DMs in general don't do that, and would balk at the suggestion that having bought a module thy'd be expected to do that.   Which is why you seek module page counts increasing over time.  All that additional info has to be added in, along with a lot of advice telling the DM how to run the adventure.But its also true that the vast majority of early players of D&D weren't expecting elaborate plots, consistant settings, and lots of non-combat interaction with NPCs either.   The introduction of plot, story, atmosphere, and deep non-combat interaction with persistant NPCs when it first occured in most early groups (say pre-1985 or so) was novel and revolutionary at each and every point.   Most early games simply didn't worry about such things, and when each group invented it on its own or was introduced to it, they tended to be amazed by it.  I can remember as a 13 year old a college aged DM that had already been playing for years introducing me to these concepts and how radical and amazing they seemed, and how radical and amazing they made the game he was running seem.   I can remember this occurring as late as the early 1990s with long term groups suddenly realizing that they could take the game to new heights and places beyond hack and slash, and the sense of wonder and novelty THAT revolution brought.Today, I just don't think you can get away with only offering the oppurtunity to kill things, take their stuff, and level up.  There is just too much competition in that market, and its just too banal and mundane to even a younger player whose been introduced to levels of structure beyond that just by playing cRPGs.</blockquote>

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