Why are modules no longer popular

[Drawmack]

Personally I think that campaign specific modules are the best.

Let's take Freeport for example:

Green Ronin put out three modules that took place in a city called Freeport.

Then they put out a sourcebook to play in Freeport with those modules as the recent history and lots of pointers to those modules in the book.

Now they are putting out more Freeport modules.

I think if you really want to do modules this is the way to do it.

Making them setting specific gives them a certain feel and consistency. Also you can put out a module much more cheaply then you can a sourcebook so you can get an idea from the module sales how well your sourcebook will fly before you even create it.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I am wary of modules because the quality varies so widely-- on top of which, there's no guarantee that any given module (or author) will match your personal style preference.

I have only two sources for modules that I trust implicitly:

1) Fiery Dragon (and by implication, Kevin Kulp);
2) Monte Cook (regardless of imprint-- WOTC, S&S, or Malhavoc).

Two adventures by these authors stand out in my mind:

1) Of Sound Mind, the finest beginning adventure I have ever read (and that's counting Keep on the Borderlands!);

2) The Banewarrens.

Both of them are noteworthy not so much for the adventure they present (although they are loads of fun in their own right), but for the excellent advice they provide to the DM. They are the pinnacle examples of everything a good module should be.

If you run either of these modules, you will be a better DM for it.


Wulf

 

[Frostmarrow]

The problem with modules is there are so many bad ones. Well, not exactly "bad" but just bad for the respective players' style. For example I like a module that isn't entirely a dungeon crawl but I don't want a freeform, free-wheeling role-playing module either. I like low magic and creative use of such. I don't like world-altering, rules-bending magic. For example in a module I bought the other day magic was ever present. It included time-travel, thousands of years stasis fields and artifacts just to be able to stage a simple foil-the-murderer plot.

The module wasn't bad by any means. Well written and nice artwork. Great maps. The plot wasn't that bad either. It's just that I can't use it on account of the over the top magic necessary to run it. Moreover the author included several great role-playing opportunities such as communicating with an undead jester with a slashed throat. Really great idea if role-playing means pantomime to you. It doesn't to me. I'm not an amateur thespian and neither are my friends. Still, it's a shame.

So how do you know what module to buy? Reading reviews is a good start but that only works if you know the reviewer, what stuff the reviewer like or you will not be any wiser. I mean it means very little to me that a psionics-lover simply loved Of Sound Mind.

Another alternative is to write your own material but that won't result in more published modules, I'm afraid.

The third option is to play whatever everyone else is playing. I.e. high profile modules that you run whether you like the style or not. I mean, I ran RtTToEE and had a great time even though dungeon crawls isn't my beef. Still it's been valuable since I can read and participate in all the threads concerning that module. The same goes for the adventure path-series.

 

[Crispy Critter]

I love modules. Mini-modules, classic modules, Dungeon magazine scenarios, long campaign-style modules (ie. Return to the Temple..., Banewarrens), the list goes on and on.

I am really bad at developing story-lines and such from scratch. But I am really good at finding a module and fitting it into the campaign I am running.

I think when 3rd Edition came out there was a huge amount of modules that were published. As time has gone on, that has diminshed, but I still think there is a great amount of material out there.

 

[Krug]

Dungeon Magazine. The modules in there are of average to high quality, and so many of them they've practically killed off the module market. A DM just has to scour through his old stack of Dungeon for adventures to put his players through. There's little incentive to purchase a module (which is also more costly on a per page basis) to add to the 'to be used' stack.

 

[MarauderX]

I think the modules have to change back into an epic storyline that can get the characters involved, and it has to be easily adaptable to home-brew worlds for DMs. Adding new critters and spells are a must too, as well as a PrC or two, and doing so by incorporating them into a new world of your own works wonders on saving time. Modules usually provide a good start to any campaign that will last a while, and it can set the tone and motives of the towns, NPCs and goals very well. Also they tend to be very well thought out and reviewed, edited, tested, etc. before going out the door so you know it has to be balanced and interesting. They have to also give contingency settings for good and evil PCs and have give some hints to incorporate into a fear or humor setting to fit in the world in your campaign. I will continue to rely on them when I start a new campaign up to help out most of these things. But what they haven't been doing is helping out with town settings... who are the aristocrats? Where is the sheriff who would normally handle the situation? What will the clergy(s) do to help or heal the PCs? It's details like this that need a bit more fleshing out to me, and although the PCs might not care about all the details, the politics in the town need to make sense with one another.

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

I'll second the point concerning the glut in the market.

Modules, in general, used to fall into low, medium, and high level campaigns--running from 1st to 12th level, or thereabouts. Slow level progression kept all but the longest running campaigns from moving beyond this--it also meant that a campaign would spend a longer time in each of these categories before moving to the next.

Now, not only have these three relatively narrow categories been expanded greatly, due to faster leveling, but the number of publishers has increased as well.

Add to this something that I haven't seen mentioned...

Before, not only could a publisher be fairly certain that a sizeable portion of the potential market would have campaigns within a given range, they could also be fairly certain of what the typical adventuring party would look like, due to the strong archetypes--an important consideration when attempting to make a fun and balanced adventure. It must be something of a nightmare now to develop an adventure that will be balanced for a party of unknown composition, given the huge range of possible permutations available through multi-classing. I know all this is supposed to be balanced, but that's only true in general. All classes and abilities are not equal in a specific situation--and adventures are nothing if not specific...

 

[Celebrim]

1) Most of the best written modules end up in Dungeon. I have no idea why some of the companies throw money behind some of the drab poorly written brainless hack and slash modules that end up getting produced. People who want a good module go buy a Dungeon. People who want to sell modules to often want to sell thier own average to inferior work, or one of thier friends average to inferior work, instead of the work of a handful of guys in the business who really do have the right stuff. It is a publishing business. It is about the authors. Duh.

2) It is simply very difficult to write up a full length modern style module in 32-64 pages. Almost any 'classic' module that came out today would be panned as an amatuerish effort, in part because of this constraint and in part because we demand so much more of a module today. So much flavor has to get cut for space that even a good professional module has a hard time appealing to a DM who is himself probably a pretty decent writer. Modules just don't inspire DM's the way they did in the early '80's and noone had seen anything like this before.

3) The corrolary of #2 is that a well written deep full length professional module has to be expensive, and this turns off alot of the potential customer base fairly or unfairly. "I bought modules for $7 bucks, in the '80's. Why do I have to shell out $25 now?"

4) Every module that is published is competing against every module that was published before. When modules first came out, one module occupied nearly 100% of the supply of a given module of X level. Today, there are 20+ years of modules to draw on.

5) I agree with Mark. There are alot more groups playing at above 10th level than ever, which means any given module is alot less likely to be adaptable to where the group is now.

6) Designing your own adventure is alot more satisfying.

7) One of the things that the setting search proved is something I've always said. The guys that publish modules/settings aren't necessarily the best in the hobby. They are simply the guys that put the most effort into getting themselves published, and/or were in the right place at the right time. One thing the Pro's are going to have to accept, is that for every Pro out thier publishing a superior product, there is another Pro making money whose material is probably even below average for DM's as whole, and there are probably 2-3 DM's not publishing for whatever reason that have just as good ideas. Given that, it shouldn't be too surprising that any given module, which is a relatively little ammount of work, gets bought by its customer base of DM's. Source books target a broader market (DM's and players), represent a larger ammount of work (in terms of pages), and have the advantage to the DM of elimenating the need to write up a large number of house rules and flavor context to share with the players. Even if the DM could do it himself, he is willing to buy someone elses labor for the advantage of handing his players a book and saying, 'Ok, this is the starting point. I'll inform you of any changes.' With a module, that text is only meant for the DM, so a DM can use a much sketchier write up for himself if he knows basically what he wants to do.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Another reason modules suffer in sales is becasue of the vast amount of other gaming material out in the market. the consumer has many choices and the module can often be low on the list.

I personally love modules because between a full time job, family and other hobbies, I don't have time to create many things from scratch. There are lots of good modules available. Although I subscribe to Dungeon, I hav only used one or two adventures, but have used many ideas and encounters.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I mean it means very little to me that a psionics-lover simply loved Of Sound Mind.

I friggin' hate psionics.

I simply loved Of Sound Mind.

And it's not like OSM convinced me to use psionics. Never used them, never will. But surely you've heard by now that the author included conversion notes for running OSM without psionics-- as well as for scaling the adventure from 1st to 4th level. Relevant to our thread topic, THAT is the kind of thing that makes a module worth buying to the wider audience-- getting beyond that niche within a niche within a niche.

And of course I am just doing my part to sing the praises of OSM beyond the reviews page. Word of mouth goes a long way, too.

Wulf