Worlds of Design: Why Buy Adventures?

Why do people buy commercial modules when early RPGs assumed the GM would make up the adventures?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Why Bother?​

Of course, it’s much easier to use a module than to make up your own adventures. But there’s more to it than that.

Simply put, game mastering takes time and effort. Game masters who use multiple sources requires significant demands on their time, something that is increasingly challenged by the diversification of other forms of easy entertainment. I discussed this in two different articles: Worlds of Design: The Chain of Imagination and World of Design: The Lost Art of Making Things Up

But it’s also certainly because adventures make game companies money. In many ways, making a game world out of whole cloth can be daunting to new gamers. It's just easier (and more lucrative) to buy adventures set in an established game world. This has the added bonus of causing a lot more commonality among the customer base (who can share tips and tricks with each other on how to play an adventure), and also happens to make those same game masters repeat customers as their players advance in level.

It wasn’t always like this.

The Hoi Poloi​

In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, lack of a single campaign setting (we had both Greyhawk and Blackmoor), ever changing rules and editions, and the general inability to share them (no Internet back then!) meant games were messy affairs. Game masters made things up as they went along, customized rules as they saw fit, and largely played what could only be interpreted as a variant of D&D. And for some time, this wasn’t just the norm, it was encouraged by then parent company TSR, who wasn’t in the business of publishing adventures.

But that all changed over time. D&D became more solidified as the rules went from Original D&D to Basic/Advanced, to just one version. Along with the codification of rules came established adventures, many of them now legendary in gamers’ experience who played through them (e.g., Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Ravenloft).

Of course, not all adventures were fully fleshed out either. Some had large gaps (both in the maps and text) where game masters were meant to customize to their liking, or roll randomly to determine what came next so players wouldn’t be able to metagame the adventure. Over time, this became much less common, to the point now that we get completely mini settings. For an example of how much has changed, see Beth’s review of Quests from the Infinite Staircase, which takes sandbox-style adventures from Basic and Advanced D&D and fleshes them out in detail.

The Art of the Module​

There’s also something to be said for the art of adventure creation. That is, there are definitely some adventures that are better than others, and those who figure out the magical mix are more likely to be bought by game masters who appreciate the effort. Or to put it another way, people who create published modules will, on average, likely be better at adventure writing than a novice, so you might choose to buy a few to learn from the best.

This trend is exemplified by Paizo, how pioneered the art of the Adventure Path. D&D’s level system ensures games take a lot of time and effort for player characters to level, which requires a lot of adventures strung together. A GM in the old days had to buy different modules and justify stitching their plots together, but with an Adventure Path the entire throughline seamlessly integrates from end to end, from the very first to the very last (usually 20th but not always) level. It's a lucrative model, as it requires significant investment from customers not just for one adventure, but for several.

A Question of Experience​

Whether or not you buy published adventures likely pivots on several factors: your prep time, your players’ interest in a campaign setting, and your experience. Game mastering is a significant investment, so if you don’t have the time, published adventures are the way to go. Your players might be deeply committed to a setting (like Greyhawk) and thus be only interested in playing in published adventures in that campaign world; conversely, they may like your homebrew so much they could be turned off playing anywhere else.

And finally, as you get more experienced, adventure writing becomes a lot easier. There’s nothing like playing a terrible adventure to motivate you to write your own. I doubt that there are many veteran GMs who have never used a commercial adventure module – I certainly have used them, for convenience (lack of time) or when one was especially useful or even famous (e.g. Against the Giants). I haven’t bought one for a long time, because I already have so many, and because there are so many free ones available. But it appears from Wizard’s catalog, and from the publications of many other publishers, that lots of people buy them.

Your Turn: Take the poll and let us know!

 

[Hussar]

Those people are goofy and they should not be cited as authorities on D&D.

Player generated content is fine, if that's what the group collectively wants. It's a bad idea if the group collectively doesn't like it. Everything else is just keyboard warriors bloviating.

You are missing my point I think. Even your examples of random tables means that you had to create those random tables (or someone had to create them for you) before you could use them. Which took time.

I'm talking about Story Now games where setting material is created whole cloth by a single player during play. There's none of this "group collectively" stuff. It's built right into the game where the players are full on expected to create setting during play. It's literally impossible to have a random table generation in such a game since it's never you, the GM, creating anything. You take the setting material, NPC's, whatnot, that the players give you, and then you build a session out of that.

Sure, you can do less prep in D&D by using random tables, but, look at what you said - you only use those random tables when the players are going somewhere that you haven't already prepared. You did the prep, it's just that the players aren't going to whatever it was that you prepared.

The entire DMG of every edition of D&D has the same advice - the DM creates the game world. Then the DM creates the adventures in the game world. The DM is everything and everyone in the game world that isn't the PC's. Which means that you have to do a HELL of a lot of prep for a D&D game. Which is why people buy mountains of setting guides and monster manuals and adventures and whatnot.

I'm frankly a bit baffled here. I'm saying that D&D is higher prep than some other games. I'm surprised that this is getting any kind of push back.

 

[pemerton]

The entire DMG of every edition of D&D has the same advice - the DM creates the game world. Then the DM creates the adventures in the game world. The DM is everything and everyone in the game world that isn't the PC's. Which means that you have to do a HELL of a lot of prep for a D&D game.

That last sentence doesn't necessarily follow.

Apocalypse World has the following bit of instruction/explanation (p 109 of my rulebook):

Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.​

Yet AW is a precursor to Ironsworn, and certainly a paradigm of story now play. And while it's not zero prep, it is relatively low prep compared to the sort of approach you are describing in your first two sentences and your other posts.

Virtually nothing in D&D is generated during the session. The location, the NPC's, the situation, that's all generated by the DM before the session most of the time. If I declare that my character goes into the local smithy and talks to the blacksmith, by and large, I cannot do that unless the DM has detailed the fact that there is a smithy in the location I'm at. For example, if I'm in Phandalin, then the player 100% cannot declare that they talk to the blacksmith since there's no blacksmith in that town.

In many other systems, the player can declare "I talk to the blacksmith" and there will be a blacksmith in that location, because the player has declared that that is true. In D&D, you need to have your entire town detailed before the players can make any declarations about it. Sure, the DM can add things on the fly, if the DM feels like it, but, the DM can also say, "Well, in this town, there isn't a blacksmith to talk to." The content of the world and the adventures in that world all flow from the DM to the players, who react to the information given to them by the DM, and then back to the DM. That's the play loop.

I think your last two sentences are a bit exaggerated - for instance, some 5e 2014 backgrounds seem to me to permit players to establish stuff about the setting other than their PC;, and before those were invented it was common - at least in my experience - for players to make up stuff about their PCs' family, backgrounds etc as part of the process of PC gen.

Generally, though, I agree that in D&D it tends to be the GM in charge of "the setting", just as is the case for AW. But this doesn't mean that the GM can't make it up as they go along.

Another game that mostly puts the GM in charge of setting is Classic Traveller. But that doesn't stop the GM making it up as they go along, and some player-side abilities (like Streetwise, as that skill is described in the 1977 edition) can oblige the GM to introduce new content. It's not hard to use Streetwise (or some other appropriate skill) in a similar way in D&D.

When I started GMing Classic Traveller some years ago now, for the first time since I was a teenager, I had a few planets pre-rolled (about 10 minutes prep each) but I placed them into play as I needed them. And then I generated my star charts not in the way the rulebook specified, but rather by making a roll to see how many worlds were within Jump-1 of a given world that I had already placed. (I wrote up a chart for this that roughly matched the probabilities that would be yielded by applying the "official" star map generation rules.)

AD&D can be played reasonably similarly, making stuff up and putting it into play as needed. Likewise 4e D&D. It's probably not the most common approach, but it won't break the game assuming that the game is not intended to foreground exploration of pre-established material as a priority. AD&D is a little bit shaky when played in this way, and today I would only go back to it for nostalgia reasons; but 4e D&D is not shaky at all - I think this is the sort of play for which it is most robust.

 

[pemerton]

I'm frankly a bit baffled here. I'm saying that D&D is higher prep than some other games. I'm surprised that this is getting any kind of push back.

Another comment on this - the most important respect in which any sort of D&D (even 4e) needs prep is NPC/creature stat-blocks, for resolving combat. But every version of D&D takes care of this prep in advance, by shipping with a Monster Manual (or monster section, or monster booklet, or whatever).

There's undoubtedly a very common contemporary approach to D&D play that does rely on further prep than just statting up combat opposition - the pre-plotted adventure approach. As I'm sure you know from my posting history I personally don't enjoy that sort of D&D, and that's why I'm talking about other approaches I've used to play D&D.

There is another approach to D&D that is probably less common than it used to be, but is also prep-intensive - the map-and-key dungeon. Other than the odd ad hoc session here and there, I haven't done that with D&D in a serious way for a few decades, except for a few "dungeons" that I wrote up for 4e, although even those weren't really dungeons in the classic sense. They were more like devices for managing scene framing.

These days I am doing some more exploration-oriented dungeons, but using Torchbearer 2e, not D&D, as my play vehicle. And those do take me some time to write up (or to convert, when I'm converting them from D&D or RM).

 

[Hussar]

Well I’d put it this way.

Ironsworn can be played solo out of the box. Doesn’t get much less prep heavy than that.

Never minding more pass the story stick type games like Dread to use a rather old example. How much prep would you do to run Dread?

 

[Zardnaar]

If the claim is that running a low-/no-prep game is easier than preparing to run a highly-plotted adventure, that might be true, assuming the system being used supports low-/no-prep.

But I wouldn't express that point by saying that it's easier to create my own adventure than read a published one.

I can ad hoc a session if I have to.

Otherwise I just change some names and relocate my encounters/plot points.

Last session in my Greek game the PCs got a message. Depart Greece and relocate to Cyrene (libya).

To my surprise they're going to Cyrene. The cult showdown will just happen there instead of Athens.

I try to be more subtle than head west red dragon, head east red dragon.

 

[AK81]

I have run one full campaign and I'm 2/3rds way through my second campaign.

My first campaign was a heavily modified mix between Lost Mines of Phandelver and the adventure in the Essentials kit + the three free DLCs that continued the Essentials kit's adventure. It was a big success and a lot of fun, but also a lot of work to make it my own and to fit it in to the players back-stories and aspirations.

My second campaign is a totally homebrewed campaign set in Star Wars the Old Republic and using Star Wars 5e. It has also been a lot of fun to make everything myself. Especially in the beginning when I was full of creative juice. It has become more challenging after 2 years to find my creativity week after week, and I do miss having an adventure module to fall back on when I don't find my spark.

Next time will be with an adventure module again. It's just too convenient to have something to lean on when I'm out of ideas.

 

[The Soloist]

But, again, the system is going to matter.

In, say, Ironsworn, virtually all of the "adventure" is generated in play, during the session. There is virtually no prep possible since the system is used to generate the content. That's what the Ironsworn rules do. Virtually nothing in D&D is generated during the session. The location, the NPC's, the situation, that's all generated by the DM before the session most of the time. If I declare that my character goes into the local smithy and talks to the blacksmith, by and large, I cannot do that unless the DM has detailed the fact that there is a smithy in the location I'm at. For example, if I'm in Phandalin, then the player 100% cannot declare that they talk to the blacksmith since there's no blacksmith in that town.

In many other systems, the player can declare "I talk to the blacksmith" and there will be a blacksmith in that location, because the player has declared that that is true. In D&D, you need to have your entire town detailed before the players can make any declarations about it. Sure, the DM can add things on the fly, if the DM feels like it, but, the DM can also say, "Well, in this town, there isn't a blacksmith to talk to." The content of the world and the adventures in that world all flow from the DM to the players, who react to the information given to them by the DM, and then back to the DM. That's the play loop.

That is not true in other systems where it is virtually impossible to prepare because the entire table is expected to generate content in play.

So, yes, I can say that system has a very significant impact on the level of preparation needed to play. D&D is very much on the high end here. You will have people who read the above and will vehemently oppose any such system in D&D. You absolutely cannot have player generated world building in D&D during play, is a very common refrain any time anyone suggests even the slightest bit of player authorial power. Which means that D&D is a high prep game. It has to be because nearly all the content needs to be created before play and it needs to be created by one person at the table.

Thousands of solo players, including me, have been running D&D BX solo hex crawls and dungeon crawls for decades with nothing more than a d6 oracle and the supplied random encounters tables in the rules. No prep is required. Just ask a question and let the d6 oracle answer.

You can apply the same principles during group play.

 

[Hussar]

d6 oracle? What is that?

 

[The Soloist]

d6 oracle? What is that?

The simplest form is Yes (1-2), No (3-4), Maybe (5-6). If a Maybe comes up, you ask another question to refine further. You can change the odds of the results if you feel one of them is more likely given the circumstances.

Ex:
Is there another door in the room my character just entered?
Roll = 1-2. There is a door.
Roll = 3-4. No door.
Roll = 5-6. Maybe. I ask 'Is there more than one door?' and roll again to determine to outcome. Roll = 2 yes. I ask 'How many doors?' and roll an d3. Roll 5-6, there are three other doors in this room.

You can apply the same principle when talking with NPCs. Usually, you add 'yes, but' and 'no, but' results to the d6. You can even add 'yes, and' and 'no, and'.

The Mythic GM Emulator 2e is the most popular Oracle for solo play. Ironsworn is also a favourite among soloists.

You can watch episode 1 season 1 of Me, Myself and Die if you want to see Mythic in action. Trevor is a voice actor, and he is very entertaining. He also did a solo season using Ironsworn.

 

[zakael19]

There's undoubtedly a very common contemporary approach to D&D play that does rely on further prep than just statting up combat opposition - the pre-plotted adventure approach. As I'm sure you know from my posting history I personally don't enjoy that sort of D&D, and that's why I'm talking about other approaches I've used to play D&D.

Quoting above from @pemerton and bolding for emphasis: I see this a lot on reddit. Tons of posts like "How much campaign do I need to plot? Can I write some of my campaign now and do more later? Wow it's really intimidating for me to think about pre-writing an entire detailed 1-12 campaign like the books do is that required?" If you think that you've gotta have an entire pre-written set of story beats / destinations / dungeons / blah blah before play starts, then ofc buying a book with all that done starts to look really appealing! Sure, maybe you tweak it a bit, or use it as a jumping off points or whatever, but it seems so much less intimidating for a lot of people.

But man, it was a paradigm shift for me finding out about things like DW "Fronts" / AW "Threat Maps" and all this other tech that lets you just work with the players to bring a set of starting conditions and character priorities forward and then just do what comes naturally as they push against the world.