Would you buy pre-made campaigns?

[HellHound]

I've run most of Shackled City - it was a big hit.

I'm running the Drow War - players love it.

I'm also chewing through all the old Living Arcanis adventures and story arcs - to my players' enjoyment.

So yeah, premade campaigns rock my world. I don't have quite enough time to finish working on my homebrew, which is sad, because I ran it from 1982 to 2001 without serious interruption, but never quite got the time to build it up for d20 yet.

 

[Quickbeam]

Absolutely.

I'm running "Age of Worms" for our group now and it's been a tremendous hit thus far. Such adventures give DMs the ability to tweak events and encounters to suit their personal styles, while not requiring a HUGE time commitment in pre-session preparation. I also love that published adventures will frequently include handouts which add flavor and a sense of tangible understanding to the campaign.

 

[Ceresco]

You can get this very thing through Living Arcanis put out by the Ennie winning Paradigm Concepts (they're the fans choice). There is a year long story arc for each year since LAs inception, along with side adventures. They use a system they call Hard Points, Soft Points and Anchor Points. Hard Points are part of the over arching story arc that is the World of Shattered Empires. Soft Points are side adventures that are great in and of them selves but are usually one shot. The exception being things like the Old Coryan story arc put out by two Arcaniacs. Anchor points are adventures that anchor major plot twists. Each adventure is scaled by APL (average party level) and down loadable for free from the RPGA. If you're interested in great plots and story line, excellent oppertunities for role playing and NPC interaction and tough combat than I highly suggest giving Arcanis a look see. There is a lot of support material out there just waiting for you.

I would definitely consider buy a "campaign in a box" for the same reasons as everyone else, lack of time.

I would prefer smaller boxes though, instead of running from level 1 to 30, I would rather see multiple products that might take the PCs from 1 to 10, a different product from 11 to 20, and maybe something that covered 5 to 15. This would allow some mixing and matching.

Also, I would like to see adventures designed to be scaled up or down a few levels, so I can match it to the party. Once again, this allows more flexibility.

 

[Dragonhelm]

These ready-made campaigns have a lot of appeal for me. Like many of the posters above, I have little time due to Real Life (wife, kids, work) as well as other projects (freelance writing and Nexus fan site). For a while, I felt that I did more work for other peoples' campaigns than my own.

I'm currently running the Age of Mortals trilogy of adventures for Dragonlance, which takes characters from level 1 to level 20 and allows them to have an actual impact on the world.

I'd like to give Age of Worms a try down the road and do a "next generation" sort of game for the Realms since my old Realms game was set in Daggerford.

There's a lot of appeal to ready-made campaigns. The adventure is already thought of, it saves time, you can gain a lot of support online from other people playing the same adventure (which provides a nice shared experience), etc. etc.

 

[Gnome]

The only one I have was Night Below many moons ago. I would now if something seemed interesting enough.

 

[painandgreed]

I would prefer mega-module approach rather than whole campaigns. Something like the GDQ series that might cover a span of 6 levels or so. I would see something like that as more usuable and re-usuable since I may know where I want a campaign to go but not where to start or the other way around and would find it easier to fit into another campaign.

 

[The Shaman]

So is there a market for pre-made campaigns?

Yes.

I'm not likely to be part of that market however. It's unlikely (but not impossible) that I would by a campaign - if I did, it would most likely be out of interest in the subject matter, not to actually run it.

 

[Staffan]

I have Shackled City and it is a very slick production and is more than just one big dungeon as many previous packaged campaigns have been.

That's a good point. I'd be interested in a big campaign, but not if it's just a honkin' big dungeon crawl (Return to TOEE, I'm looking at you).

Back in 2e, I ran Night Below over the course of one summer (well, half of Night Below, then summer ended and I moved). The first bit of NB was really great, with a bunch of stuff going on in Haranshire - some related to the main plot, some not. Then the plot moved on to the second book, which was basically one loooong dungeon crawl... and about halfway through that, we kinda lost interest.

This is why I keep plugging Dragon's Crown as my favorite adventure - it's really more of a mini-campaign, except that since it was designed for high-level AD&D characters, they'd probably only get enough XP to advance a level at the end of it. Had it been 3e, it would probably have covered three or four levels. Anyway, Dragon's Crown is split into eight different adventures, each being set at a different place in the world. Sure, there are dungeons, but there's also a lot of stuff in between the dungeons.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I'd buy anything that saves me time. I've been eyeing Shackled City and WLD for that reason alone.

 

[KB9JMQ]

Considering the amount of time it will save I am interested in them.
I am not sure if they will fit what I want but it is easier to tweak a pre-made campaign then to invent one and flesh it out myself.