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View Full Version : To run Published Adventures or not, poll



DontEatRawHagis
2016-03-31, 12:18 PM
Quick question and I know this might change based on what system you use:

Do you run more published adventures or create your own?

I ask because for the most part I run my own adventures, but the players/gms in the organize play groups in my area never seem to run only published adventures.

Just curious.

Concrete
2016-03-31, 12:30 PM
I recently ran a pre-made adventure path, and have started with one I'm making myself.
I've found the following to be true of the pre-made adventures I've Gm'd
Pre-published adventures can be good, but they have a few problems.

1. They are optimized for a very basic gaming group, and if your players make odd character choices, you might end up with adventures where they either breeze right through, or run into a brick wall, unable to move forward without a whole lot of imagination and drudge-work.
Same with if they make very powerful/weak characters, you may have to do a bit of rewriting to make it suit them.

2. standardization. The adventure assumes that you are doing one thing, and will only have the bits needed to do that thing. If you like for your players to get a chance to have a place in the story, you will have to rewrite it.

Telonius
2016-03-31, 12:38 PM
When I started out as a new DM, I ran published adventures. Now, I write my own.

ComaVision
2016-03-31, 12:43 PM
I largely use published adventures as the backbone. However, I'm very willing to change any part I don't like and often have to "fill in the blanks" when my group does something the adventure didn't account for.

I'm just not a creative person.

Yora
2016-03-31, 12:55 PM
Depends. I don't use adventures that tell you what the players are going to do and how they solve the problems they encounter. Which is probably well more than 90% of published adventures.

But there are a few that only set up an interesting situation and various factions that are about to attempt something bad with which the players can interfere. Those are great.

LibraryOgre
2016-03-31, 01:26 PM
I tend to use published adventures as a starting place for a campaign, but campaign developments frequently take them beyond what the published adventure would account for.

Tiktakkat
2016-03-31, 01:32 PM
I overwhelmingly run modified published adventures.

I am quite good at concept and campaign design and development, but I just plain suck at writing adventures.
Rather than fight my weak points I go with my strong points, and just adapt adventures someone else has written to suit the campaign I'm running and the characters my players are using.

DontEatRawHagis
2016-03-31, 01:40 PM
My first game had an uninteresting intro adventure and didn't have any published ones at the time. So I've been making my own since I've started. The only time I run pre-made adventures are for one-shots or for organized play. And organized play has uninterested me for a while since D&D's is always Forgotten Realms and my favorite setting is Dark Sun.

ComaVision
2016-03-31, 01:45 PM
My first game had an uninteresting intro adventure and didn't have any published ones at the time. So I've been making my own since I've started. The only time I run pre-made adventures are for one-shots or for organized play. And organized play has uninterested me for a while since D&D's is always Forgotten Realms and my favorite setting is Dark Sun.

I play 3.5 D&D but I use adventures from any game. I'm mostly redoing the numbers on everything anyway so it's not really any extra work to grab an AD&D module to build off of rather than a 3.5 module.

BWR
2016-03-31, 03:19 PM
For D&D I run a lot of published adventures. Partially because a lot of them are pretty cool, partially because lots of them are easily adapted to whatever game I'm running (sign of good game design).
For L5R there aren't a lot of finished adventures but plenty of CFSs (Challenge-Focus-Strike: three-part/paragraph story hooks spread throughout lots of the splatbooks or by friendly members of the community), a lot of which I have used.

nedz
2016-03-31, 03:46 PM
I've only once run a published adventure - though I did run that one twice for two different groups - and that was 20+ years ago. Since I've been DMing for a very long time this means I run my own stuff pretty much exclusively.

RazorChain
2016-03-31, 06:05 PM
I almost entirely run my own adventures. When I start a campaign I have some ideas of overarching plotlines (the main plot). Then I ask for character backgrounds, usually not too long and I end up with something else. So in essence I base my campaign around the PC's. One will show up with a revenge story, the next an orphan story, the third a sick mother story, the fourth a political intrigue and the fifth a mystery. Then I tie some of these stories into the main plot, which I usually choose after the characters get made and I read the backgrounds. So in my current campaign I have the revenge story and the mystery tied into the main plot while the rest provide major sidequests. I sometimes run modules that I modify or just get inspired by them, these I usually tie to PC's home village or some NPC's they have created themselves like friends, nemesis or family. In essence this makes it much easier to bait the hooks and the story becomes much more personal. When your PC's are saving the sister of one of them instead of a princess and another one is dating the sister behind the other PC's back then things are bound get interesting.

goto124
2016-03-31, 11:42 PM
How about Unpublished Adventures, made by other players of the system/setting?

hymer
2016-04-01, 02:08 AM
I haven't run a published adventure in 20+ years. I'm very happy to steal borrow ideas and stats from published adventures, but I always run my own stuff.
My problem with published adventures is that they're either boring, or they don't really get it right for me, the campaign or the PCs. Which you can't really blame them for.
The closest I've come to running something published was Maure Castle from Dungeon Magazine. But I reworked the maps (and added two levels), restocked 80% of the dungeon, changed most of the treasure and all of the motivations, and added in a whole bunch of stuff pertinent to the campaign.

ImNotTrevor
2016-04-01, 08:18 AM
I have never done more than flip through a published adventure. Never owned or actually read one, never really stolen from them either.

And I stay away from prep-heavy systems nowadays. So published adventures don't even apply to my gaming situation anymore.

Quertus
2016-04-01, 08:29 AM
Do you run more published adventures or create your own?

A bit of a mix. Although I find home brew to generally be better than published adventures, there is also something nice about the shared experience of, "have you played tomb of horrors? what did you bring? What did you think about the..." or "you would never believe what my players did in A Paladin in Hell...".

A side effect of which is, that when I discuss the module later with others who have played it, or read it to run it with a different group, and I find that the GM has heavily modified it, it kinda kills all the advantages of having run through a module. "Why, no, I don't remember the flaming treant in Keep on the Borlands..."

Hmmm... Upon a bit of reflection, there seems to be a very strong correlation between my favorite characters and this discussion, in that, with one exception, none of my favorite characters have ever, to the best of my knowledge, been run through modules. Huh. Not sure if that's a coincidence.

Yora
2016-04-01, 08:33 AM
You have to be on board with the very "distinctive" style, but from a practical point of view I think the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures are very well done. They make no assumptions about who the PCs are and what capabilities they have, and have no preference how the players approach them, which makes them useful not just for any party but even pretty much any fantasy system.

JAL_1138
2016-04-01, 11:32 AM
I use bits and pieces of modules and cobble them together into a campaign. A town from one (keep the npcs, layouts, map, etc., ignore the module plot), a dungeon from another, premade encounters from several to fit with different environments (ignoring the module plots). I'll occasionally borrow the module's overarching setup (the villain(s), their goals and general methods) or initial setup (go investigate this place), to where I'm using the module pretty heavily, but will add things, leave things out, change things around, and won't run it by the module's rails.

The only time I run them straight-up is when I DM for Adventurers' League since it's required to, or if I'm running the classics, (e.g., Tomb of Horrors, Against the Giants, etc.).

Piedmon_Sama
2016-04-01, 11:51 AM
Here's my stance on Adventure Paths/Published Adventures:

NO, no, no, no, no no no, no, no no, not ever, not even then, not even once, not anytime, no way no how, no, no, and no and not gonna happen.



Modules, maybe, sometimes, just for the fun of doing a classic like B1 or Palace of the Silver Princess or something crazy old-skool like that.

Bryconium
2016-04-01, 12:57 PM
It does really depend on how good the DM is and how well they know the adventure. For example, we ran through an edited/updated Castle Amber that was an incredible amount of fun, because the DM was very familiar with it.

Âmesang
2016-04-01, 04:16 PM
I find I don't really have the time to come up with too many ideas of my own, unless I attempt some sort of sandbox adventure and just make up (and keep track of) details as the game goes along.

Granted I rarely referee a game, anyway, and my plans for the next, such game would be to run Age of Worms integrated with Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, Return to the Ghost Tower of Inverness, Maure Castle, and Oerth Journal #23's "Warlock's Walk."

I've heard rumors that a fifth octych is held in the possession of Mordenkainen, and I was honestly thinking of spreading out the remaining three between FORGOTTEN REALMS®, DRAGONLANCE®, and EBERRON™.

Zumbs
2016-04-01, 05:17 PM
I almost always run my own adventures. If I run a published adventure, I usually rewrite most or all of it to integrate it with my world and campaign, e.g. to use NPCs and factions from my campaign where possible or tie it into the main narrative(s). I find that this makes it resonate better with my players. Handouts and maps are always redrawn from scratch.

MrStabby
2016-04-01, 05:31 PM
So I tend to run my own, pretty much just 5th edition now. I find it gives me more to do as a DM. Sure I miss out on the building PCs and developing their character part of the game but i get free reign in the world to create cities, factions, monsters, spells, NPCs and in such a way they all fit together. It gets me involved as a player, not just as a referee.

There are downsides to this.

1) Time. It can take up a lot of it.
2) You grow too attached to your creations. Yes I mean NPCs, but not only that. If you plan an awesome fun and creative encounter you may have the temptation to push the party towards it. If you have an awesome magic item you have taken the time to create and balance then you may want the party to find it.
3) It took me a lot longer to know what a good campaign was by doing my own than if i had begun with some pre-written material.

Yora
2016-04-02, 05:28 AM
I don't think WotC/Paizo type adventures can teach you anything about good campaigns. They all have a predetermined plot and outcome, which is a complete waste of the possibilities and potential of games run by a GM. They are all written like videogames.

goto124
2016-04-02, 05:50 AM
So what pre-made adventures are good and how does one get them?

Quertus
2016-04-02, 07:57 AM
Here's my stance on Adventure Paths/Published Adventures:

NO, no, no, no, no no no, no, no no, not ever, not even then, not even once, not anytime, no way no how, no, no, and no and not gonna happen.



Modules, maybe, sometimes, just for the fun of doing a classic like B1 or Palace of the Silver Princess or something crazy old-skool like that.

Modules, yes; adventure paths, no - NJNHN. What makes adventure paths deserving of your ire?


So what pre-made adventures are good and how does one get them?

There was a thread where people were discussing this recently; I can't remember which one. Off hand, I remember people mentioning "Keep on the Boarderlands", "A Paladin in He'll", "Sunless Citadel", "(Return to the) Temple of Elemental Evil", and, in its own class, "Tomb of Horrors".

To get them... I tend to use Amazon :smallwink:

Tiktakkat
2016-04-02, 03:22 PM
Adventure Path vs Non-Adventure Path runs into a conflict between two conflicting modes of play reflected in certain television programs: Continuing Series vs Random Episodes.
Adventure Paths are a Continuing Series, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Particularly with the Paizo APs, they reflect a series with multiple focused story arcs. The characters have a concrete investment in the quest and the setting as their adventures generally wind up hardwiring them into the overall story background to the point where their choices have an active impact on the development of the campaign.
Non-Adventure Paths are Random Episodes, with no particular connection between them other than the same focal characters showing up repeatedly. The characters have little to no investment in the quest or the setting as they are more guest stars in some unknown other person's series, rather than the stars of their own series.

Of course both of these can work for an against play:
APs can become a bit absurd if none of the starting characters survive to the end (which seems to be almost a default assumption with Paizo APs, which apparently expect one character to die in each of the six installments), leaving a bunch of random pick ups to complete someone else's epic quest.
Non-APs can become a bit absurd as nothing really matters. Go murderhobo on the king? Whatever, one name change later and the new king gives you another quest a couple of sessions later.
To counter those, APs can wind up granting the PCs excessive plot armor, while Non-APs wind up granting NPCs even more excessive plot armor.

APs are locked into a story. Break too much of the story with random PC failures, incompatibility with a minor goal, or just plain boredom with a minor goal, and the whole thing derails.
Non-APs are just plain random. After a certain point, that breaks immersion, as the PCs murderhobo the king one week (assuming his plot armor doesn't hold up), then are begged by his son to save the kingdom the next week.
To counter those, APs just hand out plot armor and deus ex machinae. Non-APs snicker at you because you passed on running an AP.

APs are locked into a hard and fast level scheme. Veer from that too much with character deaths and crafting, and you need to find a side quest to catch up.
Non-APs are wide open, but that leaves you trying to find a reasonable high level adventure that makes at least vague sense as a sequel.
To counter those, APs try to get sandboxy, but if they go too far they destroy the whole point of an AP in the first place. Non-APs just shrug until you play Tomb of Horrors and reset the campaign that way.

There are more elements for both, but ultimately the thing to keep in mind is that APs were developed because people wanted a more coherent and unifying story between otherwise random adventures, but that can easily fall into re-playing someone else's heroic quest rather than playing through your own. To make either work, a DM has to know when and where to tweak things to avoid the bad elements, to the point of just breaking up existing APs and planning your own from random chunks of others plus Non-AP modules.

Noje
2016-04-02, 04:16 PM
Personally, I am more comfortable running my own adventures. I can make things up on the fly easier and I feel that I have a better understanding of what's going on in the adventure. When I have tried modules or use settings that I haven't made, I often feel like I don't understand how the author wanted it to be played and I am doomed to mess it up.

I do also think they are a good resource for those just starting out, however. It is sometimes hard for new DMs to get a feel for how to create interesting encounters, characters, or locations. First edition AD&D (the edition that I primarily play) has an abundance of resources to pick from due to it's age, which I think helps a lot with accessibility.

But that's just my two cents on the subject :smalltongue:.

ApocalypseSquid
2016-04-04, 07:51 PM
I mostly run my adventures. Aside from a few classics (Tomb of Horrors, anyone?), I find that it is far more fulfilling and makes a better story when I make my own.

Piedmon_Sama
2016-04-05, 12:35 AM
Modules, yes; adventure paths, no - NJNHN. What makes adventure paths deserving of your ire?

Modules really at their core are a map and a set of descriptions. You can plop them down just about anywhere in most games and they'll keep to themselves. In other words, they're places to go rather than stories to experience. The cool thing about something like In Search of the Unknown or Keep on the Borderlands or Palace of the Silver Princess is that these places are just there. If your players decide ISotU is boring they can walk out anytime and go do something else, but most adventure paths now have to have a whole plot going on. I prefer D&D where the players make their own story rather than being led along by the nose through cut-scene style exposition and setpiece battles.

Firest Kathon
2016-04-05, 04:01 AM
I prefer to run my own adventures, but I run published adventures sometimes:

Not much time to prepare. Running a published adventures takes less time for me, especially when looking at higher-level play.
GMing for an organized play group. E.g. in Pathfinder Society play, you have to use the adventures published by Paizo.
Unfamiliar with the game system. The first times running Das schwarze Auge I was using published adventures because I would not be able to stat up enemies on the fly if required, and did not know that much about the game world.

Denomar
2016-04-05, 12:02 PM
I think it very much depends on what your strengths as a gm are.

I feel like I'm significantly better at making overarching stories than single adventures. I've got a list on my desk that i basically the cliffnotes version of my entire campaign.

The issue I have is connecting the dots between those notes. Writing up floor plans for dungeons, populating them with monsters and loot. Most of the advice I've ever been given about this is basically to just "throw goblins at them" and describe them as whatever you'd like.

While this has been in some respects helpful advice I do agree that there's a lot less work to running a pre generated adventure. So much so that I've considered lifting whole sections of dungeon crawls out of the most obscure sources I can find and them plopping them whole cloth onto the table. Context is everything.

On the other hand. As a player, I've had some of the most fun playing through published adventures. There's a great draw to knowing that there's more to experience that is already written down. Not having the uncertainty of "how far ahead did the dm plan" is great!

DigoDragon
2016-04-05, 12:13 PM
I occasionally find an interesting published adventure by Goodman Games and adapt that into a campaign (or just run it as a one shot). Some years back with a local group I had integrated 5 different published adventures by GG into my campaign (they had similar elements) and it worked pretty flawlessly. Definitly requires an experienced GM who can improv and adjust modules on short notice should the PCs do something extra weird (like getting to the boss door and deciding to go back a level and take a nap, or climbing down the world's largest toilet to see what's at the bottom).

O.o