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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2270396" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'll agree on this.  Good map making is one of the rarest skills amongst DM's.  It takes alot of practice, exposure to good technique (on reason to buy modules with good maps), and many DM's find it too boring to put the effort required into it.   Alot of DM's just want help with the maps, and they figure that they can take it from there (and some of them can).There are several other reasons why most DM's should rely in part on published material.  First, most DM's have neither the time nor the willingness to put the amount of time required in to preparing thier adventures from week to week.   This leaves alot of DM's relying largely or totally on extemporaneous development, and while this is sometimes fun, most DM's cannot pull it off consistantly at a high level of quality.   It's just hard to pull out a high level of detail, creativity, variaty, and consistancy from thin air.   Extemporaneous development is good for some things, but not for everything.  It's virtually impossible to draw a good map extemporaneously, or to foreshadow future developments, or develop good puzzles on the fly.   It also tends to make the campaign rely too heavily on you, since you've never decided ahead of time what's what, it's hard to be truly fair to the PC's.That said, no DM should rely wholly on published material either.  Even if you bought a module, you still should put in perparation time to make the game your own - and that means more than just quickly reading through the module.  The game isn't going to run itself.</blockquote>

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