PDA

View Full Version : Prewritten adventure paths?



golentan
2015-02-18, 07:25 PM
Why are they so popular? The PBP recruitment board is full of Kingmaker and Hoard of the Dragon Queen and other prewritten adventures. I don't get why modules like this are so popular. I enjoy some modules which give me pre-built set pieces or locations or characters. I like modules that include some new spell or item. But adventure paths always seemed like they limited my agency as a DM. And as a player, it's impossible for me not to be familiar with the general plot twists coming my way in the most popular paths, and I feel an insatiable urge to tear up the rails...

If you like adventure paths, what's the appeal to you? I'm curious.

Othniel
2015-02-18, 07:57 PM
Well, they appeal to me as something new, and perhaps easier to grasp. Additionally, I've only been gaming for 6 months, and the 5-month-long campaign my IRL group was running was a VERY off-the-rails game that ended up being quite chaotic (not in the alignment way). A little stability and form appeals to me right now.

TheOctopus
2015-02-18, 08:08 PM
Premade adventure paths (and stand-alone adventures) appeal to me in that it takes a little of the burden off me as a DM. Adapting a module to my group is generally faster than writing one from scratch. And some of the prewritten adventure paths are really good.

I still plan on starting my next D&D group with The Sunless Citadel adapted for 5E. It's that good. It's my go-to module for any new players.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-02-18, 09:01 PM
Yeah, I suspect a lot of the answer you're going to get is that not everybody enthusiastically takes well to having to write their own adventures. Based on my observation, anyhow.

golentan
2015-02-18, 09:18 PM
I just... A huge part of what keeps running games fresh for me is the ability to write NPCs and improvise when the PCs blow up my plans...

Kid Jake
2015-02-18, 09:54 PM
If things blow up then you still can, it's just not the same adventure you started with anymore. I don't think I've ever ran a prepublished adventure (mostly because I'm too cheap to buy any) but I could see the appeal in them; if for no other reason than to say you beat it, the same way some people track down obscure or difficult video games just to cross 'em off.

GungHo
2015-02-19, 09:54 AM
One misconception I want to clear up... premades (even ones that are seemingly written on rails) can blow up as easily as DIYs, and sometimes it can have worse results because you haven't considered alternatives.

I don't use them, but I do read them. The Pathfinder Adventure Paths, for example, have a lot of good ideas, and sometimes I'll take certain set pieces or characters and file of ye olde serial numbers.

endur
2015-02-22, 01:49 PM
I just... A huge part of what keeps running games fresh for me is the ability to write NPCs and improvise when the PCs blow up my plans...

Part of the question is whose plans did they blow up?

1. Did they blow up the evil mastermind's plans for world dominion?

2. Or did they mess up the GMs plan for a large climatic fight with characters swinging from chandeliers? Instead they chose to ambush the BBEG in a dark alley.

If it is 1, then that's cool. If it is #2, you will have to scramble and ad lib what happens in the dark alley instead of using your chandelier swinging fight plan.

Expect the unexpected. Sometimes players will walk into the obvious trap even though you fully expected them to avoid it. Tomb of Horrors is just one big death trap, yet how many adventurers have entered that place.

YossarianLives
2015-02-22, 02:37 PM
If you ask my opinion, prewritten adventures are for lazy DMs who don't want to write their own setting and adventure.

golentan
2015-02-22, 03:07 PM
Part of the question is whose plans did they blow up?

1. Did they blow up the evil mastermind's plans for world dominion?

2. Or did they mess up the GMs plan for a large climatic fight with characters swinging from chandeliers? Instead they chose to ambush the BBEG in a dark alley.

If it is 1, then that's cool. If it is #2, you will have to scramble and ad lib what happens in the dark alley instead of using your chandelier swinging fight plan.

Expect the unexpected. Sometimes players will walk into the obvious trap even though you fully expected them to avoid it. Tomb of Horrors is just one big death trap, yet how many adventurers have entered that place.

Oh, #2... I never overprepare if I can avoid it, because the PCs always come at things from an angle I haven't expected, and improvising has proven a better skill given my group than writing ahead of time.

And I like that. I sketch out a rough plan for the campaign, and write the opening 5 scenes for it, but I can reliably count on things being shot to hell by scene 3. And that's when the fun starts.

BWR
2015-02-22, 03:36 PM
If you ask my opinion, prewritten adventures are for lazy DMs who don't want to write their own setting and adventure.

If you ask my opinion, people with this opinion are ignorant jerks. Have you ever stopped to ask why people like prefab stuff? Not just scoffed and said "lazy sods" but actually thought about it?
You might actually come up with the right reasons.

Re: OP: I don't use Aps much myself but well-written material is well-written. Sometimes other people come up with awesome stuff and I'm happy to use it, be it settings, adventures, NPCs, locations, plot ideas, whatever. As for APs specifically, I like reading them. I have enough to do without actually running them but sometimes I find something I consider stealing. Other times I am tempted to run them, there just isn't enough time to play everything I want.

golentan
2015-02-22, 04:23 PM
If you ask my opinion, people with this opinion are ignorant jerks. Have you ever stopped to ask why people like prefab stuff? Not just scoffed and said "lazy sods" but actually thought about it?
You might actually come up with the right reasons.

Re: OP: I don't use Aps much myself but well-written material is well-written. Sometimes other people come up with awesome stuff and I'm happy to use it, be it settings, adventures, NPCs, locations, plot ideas, whatever. As for APs specifically, I like reading them. I have enough to do without actually running them but sometimes I find something I consider stealing. Other times I am tempted to run them, there just isn't enough time to play everything I want.

That's a really clear, concise answer. Thank you! :smallsmile:

johnbragg
2015-02-22, 04:58 PM
If you ask my opinion, prewritten adventures are for lazy DMs who don't want to write their own setting and adventure.

My friends and I believed this in high school. We were wrong, if we had bought and run pretty much any prewritten adventure, it would have been better than some of our campaigns.

I tended to believe it after high school, when I ran some pretty good campaigns in homebrewed settings and played in some good ones my friend ran.

One campaign a few years ago ended when the DM got a job and didn't have time to keep working on his game. (He had money from the 90s tech boom--he mainly got the job teaching because he was striking out with women when they found out he didn't have a job.)

At 40, married and with kids, if I ever DM again, I'm going to start with a module or two.

ProphetSword
2015-02-22, 05:29 PM
In the 30+ years I've been DMing, I think I have used a pre-written module maybe two or three times. I'm a sandbox DM who enjoys story building and dealing with changes on the fly. It's like a game within itself...the players get to enjoy the game I'm running for them, and the game for me is keeping things on track and coming up with great challenges and story hooks when my players go a direction I didn't expect (which is nearly every week).

It took me years to figure out why people run modules; because, I certainly didn't and still don't. It's not that they can't make their own adventures and it's not that they're lazy. It's a number of factors, which vary from person to person, including:

* Not having enough time to prepare an adventure
* Not being good at creating their own adventures
* Reading a module that seems like a fun experience
* Wanting to try something different without lots of work
* Wanting a good starting place for a campaign
* Because they enjoy modules in general
* Wanting a story that is deeper than just killing goblins
* Desire to run a very large dungeon without making one themselves

And on and on and on. One or more of these might apply to people running modules, or none of them. Point is, there's a market for modules and adventure paths and that's why they exist. There's nothing wrong with them and they don't say anything about the DM's creativity. Some will follow them to the letter and some will use the module as a base to do their own thing.

goto124
2015-02-22, 09:33 PM
The question is How to use prewritten paths/already existing stories/etc to make a good game without railroading? The railroad trap is one that's easy to fall into, especially when you're basing off a CRPG mystery/puzzle. I've been there already.

Axinian
2015-02-22, 10:11 PM
If you ask my opinion, prewritten adventures are for lazy DMs who don't want to write their own setting and adventure.

Yeah because clearly people always have that sort of time on their hands right? It's not like playing D&D in general is already a pretty big time sink or anything. It's not like pre-made settings in scenarios might be interesting in their own right either, they're just chaff that serves no purpose!

In case it's not clear, I'm being sarcastic because the opinion expressed in your post is not one to be taken seriously.

Thrudd
2015-02-23, 12:00 AM
The question is How to use prewritten paths/already existing stories/etc to make a good game without railroading? The railroad trap is one that's easy to fall into, especially when you're basing off a CRPG mystery/puzzle. I've been there already.

You need to pick them apart, expand on them, insert bits of them into a more open game. Don't base your games off of a crpg, pen and paper games have so much more flexibility than that (crpgs originally were poor/limited versions of D&D, after all!)

YossarianLives
2015-02-23, 12:56 AM
If you ask my opinion, people with this opinion are ignorant jerks. Have you ever stopped to ask why people like prefab stuff? Not just scoffed and said "lazy sods" but actually thought about it?
You might actually come up with the right reasons.

Re: OP: I don't use Aps much myself but well-written material is well-written. Sometimes other people come up with awesome stuff and I'm happy to use it, be it settings, adventures, NPCs, locations, plot ideas, whatever. As for APs specifically, I like reading them. I have enough to do without actually running them but sometimes I find something I consider stealing. Other times I am tempted to run them, there just isn't enough time to play everything I want.
You are almost certainly right! I just like writing my own adventures.

goto124
2015-02-23, 02:04 AM
You need to pick them apart, expand on them, insert bits of them into a more open game. Don't base your games off of a crpg, pen and paper games have so much more flexibility than that (crpgs originally were poor/limited versions of D&D, after all!)

I guess you have a point. In computer games, railroading is a necessary staple of the genre, because every single thing has to be coded for, and there's no human DM to make the world react realistically to the player. A probably good idea: use the setting and characters, not the plot. You get a lot of details with much less time, and you're less likely to force the players into the 'story'.

And I just leave the story to the players.

Eldan
2015-02-23, 05:37 AM
I use them for inspiration. I usually play D&D 3.5, but I quite like reading old Planescape adventures for ideas, as an example. The fluff is often quite nice, even if I may not like the execution.
Similarly with adventure paths. I wouldn't run them as written. But one can take an idea or two from them and run with it. They usually contain far too much combat for my tastes, so that usually has to go. Then I add a few quirky side-NPCs, perhaps a few more political agendas that can interfere with the players, rewrite the bad guy's motivation to fit into my world, change the location to fit my world, include organizations that fit my world, you get the idea.

The end product is only distantly related to what I start with.

Zombimode
2015-02-23, 05:47 AM
Don't base your games off of a crpg, pen and paper games have so much more flexibility than that (crpgs originally were poor/limited versions of D&D, after all!)

There is no wrong in basing a PnP campaign off a crpg. Executing it like a crpg is where the problems begin.

aspekt
2015-02-23, 06:11 AM
I'm like the OP in that I only use modules for ifeas and pieces or even settings.

Unless I'm new as a GM to the setting and/or its mechanics. It's useful to see how those who already have a firm grasp on the mechanics stage and craft encounters or even settings.

BWR
2015-02-23, 08:32 AM
As for the 'problem' of railroading, I honestly don't mind railroads as long as the ride is smooth and the scenery pretty.

DigoDragon
2015-02-23, 08:51 AM
I like the pre-written stuff to save time when life would get particularly hectic, but not so bad that I'd have to cancel a session. As long as I read the module ahead of time and took notes, it was pretty easy for me to edit the module as players went through it with ideas not taken into account by the module's original design.

goto124
2015-02-23, 10:01 AM
There is no wrong in basing a PnP campaign off a crpg. Executing it like a crpg is where the problems begin.

You're right. Another problem is that CRPGs almost always force the players to take certain routes, so there's the element of railroading there.

In a computer game, the normal solution is: You kill a servant to get a key, then you say a specific phrase to the woman to trick her into leaving the room, then you open the locked chest and take the shirt from it. In the original game, there are a lot of measures to ensure there's only 1 way. if you kill the woman, the chest will disappear from the room. It's like killing/stealing the keys from a guard, only for the door to disappear. Could that be considered railroading? Nevermind getting the players to figure out the entire process...

For example, in a computer game, you first give money to a fisherman to get a fish, then give the fish to the chef to get a melon, then you present the melon as evidence in court. Want to kill the fisherman? The game makes the fisherman un-attackable. Want to use some fish other than the fisherman's? You can try, but when you give the wrong fish, the chef doesn't say anything, no response, nothing. These could be 'fixed' easily, but there's a lot of them, and there's no telling what your players could do. What if the players don't think of visiting the fisherman? What if they don't think of helping the chef, or even getting the melon? What if the player kills the chef?

Joe the Rat
2015-02-23, 10:24 AM
I think it would rather depend on how well the path works.

Individual modules make a quick and easy setup for a site-based adventure, or add some detail to the surrounds if you are pulling from an exploration/outdoorsy piece. I keep a metaphorical rasp on hand to file off serial numbers, tweak details to fit my world, and we're good to go. Presumably much of the same can be done with adventure paths. But I also like to have two or three sets ready to go alongside travel encounters, depending on what the party decides to do, or what sort of game events the players are interested in.

So, pretty much what using pre-existing settings is like, only on the micro-scale.


A question for my own information: How are APs normally written? If you have this long series of adventures you expect the players to engage in, how does the write-up connect them? More specifically, how does the success or failure at one stage affect later stages - or do they connect at all? If you have to complete objective X to get to the next tableau, what happens when you do not complete objective X? This is where I could see paths breaking down (the single point of failure issue), but if adventure paths can absorb this, I can see them being practical. As a follow-up, how is failure handled? Does it impact events of later adventures, or does it send your adventure in a different direction entriely?

I suppose that question is more to the ability of the writers/designers than the nature of the enterprise.

Thrudd
2015-02-23, 10:26 AM
A big clue as to the way games are now viewed relative to how they once were: we now have "adventure paths". What is a path? It leads you from one place to another, in a generally linear, direct route. The publishers are telling you where to go and how to get there.

The older adventures were called "modules". The word means something that is meant to be attached to, added onto or fit into a larger machine. They were intended to be dropped into your game wherever you wanted. They sometimes had a very basic story, with elaborate maps, NPCs, random encounter tables, tricks and traps and treasures all prepared.

Even if, functionally, you can do the same with material from an "adventure path", the very name and the way they are written implies that they expect you to follow it from start to finish. The path/story IS the game. A "module" implies it is modular, to fit into your game. Inferring, of course, that you have a game apart from the module. It is not telling you where to go or how to get there, it is giving you a place you can go if you want to.

sakuuya
2015-02-23, 01:15 PM
A big clue as to the way games are now viewed relative to how they once were: we now have "adventure paths". What is a path? It leads you from one place to another, in a generally linear, direct route. The publishers are telling you where to go and how to get there.

The older adventures were called "modules". The word means something that is meant to be attached to, added onto or fit into a larger machine. They were intended to be dropped into your game wherever you wanted. They sometimes had a very basic story, with elaborate maps, NPCs, random encounter tables, tricks and traps and treasures all prepared.

Even if, functionally, you can do the same with material from an "adventure path", the very name and the way they are written implies that they expect you to follow it from start to finish. The path/story IS the game. A "module" implies it is modular, to fit into your game. Inferring, of course, that you have a game apart from the module. It is not telling you where to go or how to get there, it is giving you a place you can go if you want to.

You know they still make shorter adventures, right? Your dichotomy is false. Adventure paths are a thing, but they're not the only thing. The 4e run of Dungeon, for instance, published one adventure path (about 20 adventures, IIRC) and like 150 other adventures. Some of them were connected to other stuff (as side treks, pretty much explicitly "a place you can go if you want"), and I think they published a couple full Encounters adventures in installments, but it's not like standalone adventures aren't a thing in modern gaming.

Additionally, Adventure Paths are not a new thing, though that particular branding is. Against the Giants/Descent into the Depths of the Earth/Queen of the Demonweb Pits form an adventure path in all but name, for instance.

Thrudd
2015-02-23, 01:33 PM
You know they still make shorter adventures, right? Your dichotomy is false. Adventure paths are a thing, but they're not the only thing. The 4e run of Dungeon, for instance, published one adventure path (about 20 adventures, IIRC) and like 150 other adventures. Some of them were connected to other stuff (as side treks, pretty much explicitly "a place you can go if you want"), and I think they published a couple full Encounters adventures in installments, but it's not like standalone adventures aren't a thing in modern gaming.

Additionally, Adventure Paths are not a new thing, though that particular branding is. Against the Giants/Descent into the Depths of the Earth/Queen of the Demonweb Pits form an adventure path in all but name, for instance.

Yes, functionally it's not all that different. But there is no question that there is a very different conception of what the game is and how it should be played now, vs the 70's and early 80's. The language used and the way the adventures are packaged betrays this. Against the giants is a series of connected adventures that could form the basis of a decent chunk of your high level campaign, but they are still technically six separate modules.

Then, as now, there were good ones and bad ones. I wasn't so much implying that there is a qualitative difference in the material, but pointing out the shift in assumptions implied by the change in language.
Linear railroad adventures are far more common now, based on a story with a specific course of events happening. Back then, location based adventures were more common, where the only story involved is how/why the characters are at the location.

sakuuya
2015-02-23, 01:56 PM
And I'm still saying that most modern adventures are not part of adventure paths. Writing adventure paths is a heck of a lot more work than writing standalone adventures, I imagine, so the majority of content produced is always gonna skew towards the unconnected or loosely-connected. I looked up an actual index of the 4e Dungeon adventures, which I roughly estimated last time. Out of 183 published adventures, 19 belong to an adventure path, and the other 164 are either standalones or chunks of some non-AP adventure. That's an 8.6:1 ratio. You're trying to paint modern adventure design as being all about the path, but it's just not.