Would you buy pre-made campaigns?

[Nightfall]

Double Ditto Spider Monkey and Mercule. I really like my campaign, but some sessions have not been going so well simply because I have not had sufficient time to plan it with the detail it deserves. 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.

Agreed, Psion. I think what seperates Shackled City from say something like Necropolis (decent adventure from Necromancer Games), is the fact you don't get ALL dungeon crawlly all the time. Some of it can be interactions, rping along with fully fleshed out details that can allow you to jump tangent to tangent WITHOUT ruining hours of work that some times can occur in homemade stuff.

Ace,
You say that now. Wait until you're 45 and trying to run a game. Believe me, you'll change your tune. *isn't 45 but knows what these other guys are talking about.*

 

[diaglo]

it is a lot of work to be the referee.

i'm buying the Wilderlands boxed set.

i've got WLD.

i'm probably gonna pick things from Age of Worms and Shackled City to add to the campaign.

even having all that stuff in print requires me to do a lot of meshing to fit the style of play of the group.

 

[Umbran]

It would have to be a pretty fantastic product before I'd buy it.

As a practical matter, the chances of me buying such a thing are practically nil. I'm picky, and I'd have to read pretty much the whole thing before I could determine if it was what I wanted.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

I'd buy it in a second if it was any good. I'm now running the Banewarrens, which is a hoot. As far as I'm concerned, make it super-deluxe and charge an arm and a leg for it since the market will be relatively small, but is composed of super-busy types who have the money to spend.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, looking at my Call of Cthulhu collection I find that my most used supplements are the campaigns,

Looking at my most used D20 supplements I find that I have written all my own campaigns, and the only campaign that I have run 'out of the book' has been the Witchfire Trilogy.

Looking at AD&D I find that I ran T1, then threw The Temple of Elemental Evil across the room in disgust. (The Village of Homlett was the best part, and I ran it a long time before th Temple came out...)

Looking at Ars Magica I find that I wish that I had the entirety of the Four Seasons campaign. But don't.

Looking at Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay I find that I ran The Enemy Within campaign from start to finish twice.

So over all I would have to say that it depends on the campaign.

The Auld Grump

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I would buy them if they were of the quality of Shackled City. No question.

In fact, I would love to see one released for Iron Heroes, as that will be my next campaign.

 

[greymist]

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.

 

[MonsterMash]

If it looks to be good quality and didn't have too wide a range of levels (e.g. Lost City of Barakus ) then I could be tempted as I'm currently finding it hard to have time to homebrew.

 

[Hussar]

Well, look at the sig and you've got my answer.

Jokes aside, really, the mega-adventure has been a pretty solid staple in DnD for a long time. Whether it's the A1-4 Slaver's series, G-D-Q series, the Dragonlance series, the "Return to" modules that came out at the tail end of 2e and the beginning of 3e or the current versions like Rappan Athuk, World's Largest Dungeon, Shackled City or whatever, people have always wanted lengthy modules with overarching storylines. Maybe not all people want them, but, more than enough do.

The reasons are myriad. Sometimes people just like the concept, sometimes (like me) the DM is just too bloody lazy to make his own stuff up, and sometimes its time considerations. Plus, let's not forget, most of those mega-modules are a riot to play. A1-4 and the GDQ series are classics for a reason. LOTS of people played them. Plus, a number of the mega-modules are starting to cater to the rp end of the scale as well by including lots of rp opportunities in the adventures. One of my players quipped the other day that my WLD game that is supposed to be mostly hack has more role play than his Middle Earth game which is supposed to be mostly rp.

 

[JoeBlank]

Count me in as another guy who likes to DM sometimes but does not have a ton of free time, so I like pre-made campaingns/mega-modules.

I'm running WLD now and loving it.

It seems that the recent mega-modules have found the nitch that enables them to sell well enough: make a level 1-20 campaign, but make the individual adventures removable and self-contained. So the consumer can use the whole campaign, or pick and choose adventures to run. This is true of WLD, Shackled City, Slavelords of Cydonia, etc.