What to Run

[Drew]

For a number of real life reasons, my gaming has dried up lately. People have moved away, I've changed jobs...honestly, if I don't get some dice rolling soon I'm going to succumb to madness. My solution is to salvage what I can of my local players and start anew. I've always been the kind of DM that stubbornly refuses to run premade adventures. However, I no longer have the luxury of time to keep to my stubborn ways. So, I'm looking for suggestions on what I can run.

Basically, I want to know what adventure(s) you've played and would recommend. I need something that is flexible enough to be adapted to my (admittedly typical) homebrew world. Other than that, the sky is pretty much the limit. I'm willing to go out and buy something if need be. I think that an adventure path or campaign would be best, as I'm trying to minimize my own workload. I have time to tweak and customize, but not so much time to create from whole cloth.

I've looked at the new ENWorld adventure path, but I'm not sure that I'm too keen on the whole 1st - 20th level thing. My fear is that the campaign may only last into the high mid levels or so, and it would be a shame not to finish whatever we start.

So, what's great? What's worked for you? Anything to definitely avoid?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Dungeon has adventure paths. Usually they're in Dungeon Magazine, but at least one of them made it into Hardcover. You could try that.

Wizards will put out several "Expedition to ..." adventures, which are sort of remakes of old classics. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is out already.

And there's Red Hand of Doom, which seems to be quite popular.

 

[Frostmarrow]

-Red Hand of Doom. It does lead up to the same event no matter what the PCs do but during the course of the adventure the players (and DM) are free to explore an entire valley in whatever order they fancy. And there is lots to see.

It is an instant classic and beauty in four colors.

 

[MonsterMash]

Lost City of Barakus gives an area description and adventures supposedly for levels 1-5, but I'd say that the tougher encounters could easily need a stronger party and with some side quests from Dungeon or elsewhere you could easily take a party to about level 8 or so with it.

 

[bento]

Dungeon is always full of great adventures at different levels. Besides the current Adventure Path (Savage Tide), there's always something to spur your imagination in every issue. The only problem is sometimes fitting the adventure into your on-going story line.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is a step up from there in regards to fitting into ongoing stories. They are intended to drop into a game at most any point, giving you different plot hooks to get your players involved. The format is roughly the same as as old 1st Ed modules.

WoTC's recent spate of adventure books / modules are also a good fit and go one step better - the publisher created a new format which divides the information up to make it even easier to DM. There's the general flow of the module, going from one room to the next in a narrative form, and then there's a second section which disects each encounter over a two-page format. Check out the new Ravenloft book, and you'll noticed this right off.

I like this new format because I don't like flipping around to get stats on monsters when I'm in the middle of an encouter. With this new format, all the information you need is in those two pages to run each encounter. It also helps in case you're one of those DMs that forgets to use a monster's special ability. The book tells you tactically what the monster will do round-by-round (first cast spell x, second summon monster y, etc.).

I've heard good things about Red Hand, but it's not in the same format. Shattergarde and Barrows are in the new format and there's several threads discussing these modules that have popped up in the last week or so.

 

[RangerWickett]

War of the Burning Sky is designed with 'opt-out' points at the end of the 4th and 8th adventures. If you want the campaign to be shorter, it's easy to do it.

 

[GlassJaw]

If I was to run a standard fare D&D game again with premade modules only, I would run Red Hand of Doom, hands down. I've just heard too many good things about it. The Dungeon AP's are good but they require a long commitment to see the whole thing through. Plus, I don't like high-level play too much.

RHoD fits the bill perfectly.

 

[S'mon]

I agree with MonsterMash re Lost City of Barakus - took us 35 sessions of pretty high quality gaming, with minimal addition of any side quests from outside the book.

Personally I've been running a Wilderlands PBEM recently with C&C and am amazed at how great the two work together (well, I had some idea from a one-off tabletop game) - so much so I'm buying the Wilderlands of High Fantasy boxed set. This might be one way to have tons of material to use without having to prepare a published adventure path.

 

[S'mon]

Lost City of Barakus gives an area description and adventures supposedly for levels 1-5

Only a seriously min-maxed party could complete it at 5th level, IMO. And even at half XP there's enough XP there to get you to ca 7th, which I think is more realistic. I found myself upping the CR on some of the later stuff, more for realism than to challenge the PCs; eg (spoilers) I don't think an elite Drow scout team would really be comprised of mostly War-1s with 4 hp CR 1; Fighter-2s (as in 1e FF 'Drow') CR 3 seemed more likely, so that's what I used.

 

[Kafkonia]

Don't overlook the various free adventures on the WotC site.

The DCC modules are, as someone said elsewhere, quite modular, so you can build around them or drop them into an existing setting. Do be aware, though, that they really do go for the roleplay-light approach, so you may have to tweak them a bit for your players if they're into more than a minimum of character interaction. Certainly, with a couple going for $2.00 in print, it's hard to go wrong.

If you can look through them at the FLGS, do so, because you'll probably get a better feel for which ones will work with your group/setting from paging through them than just from the blurb on-line.