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View Full Version : DM Help Looking for decent Adventure Paths and Modules



Theoboldi
2016-05-03, 12:29 PM
Hi there, everyone! I'm a pretty new DM, and have only just recently finished my first (admittedly small) campaign. I had loads of fun running it, and am looking forward to running some other games in the hopefully near future. However, there's a bit of a problem I am experiencing. After just having finished a longer running game, and due to just picking up a new job, I'm finding it difficult to create new material to run. I'm not really finding the inspiration to create interesting NPCs, or have the time to craft well-designed scenarios for my players to solve.

So I figured, why not take a look at some premade adventures? I've run them before, modifying things here and there to make them better suited for my players' characters and to work them into the overall story. Or maybe I could even run a full adventure path, if I'm ready to tackle something longer running again.

But the thing is, I'm not quite sure where to start looking. There's loads of modules and published adventures out there, but the quality I've seen so far is...varied, to say the least. So I figured I'd ask you guys for recommendations. Any particular modules I could run, places for me to look, publishers whose content you find good, etc.

As for the system and tone I am looking for, I do play mostly D&D of various editions and Pathfinder, with a little bit of Fate and some small homebrew systems on the side, and I mostly prefer running and playing in light-hearted games, but don't let that limit you. Sometimes, I like to mix things up a little bit and if needed can always convert adventures from one system to another without too much trouble. Unless they are very system specific, of course.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-05-03, 12:39 PM
I haven't been tremendously impressed by any of the Pathfinder modules I've played in (albeit briefly). I've heard Red Hand of Doom for 3.5 is good, though.

DigoDragon
2016-05-03, 12:57 PM
Seems there was an old thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?95929-Premade-adventures-(3-5)) that still has a few working links to free adventures. I never played these, so I'm not sure what the quality is like, but for the price I'm sure you can do a little reading and judge them for yourself.

Theoboldi
2016-05-04, 09:05 AM
I haven't been tremendously impressed by any of the Pathfinder modules I've played in (albeit briefly). I've heard Red Hand of Doom for 3.5 is good, though.

Yeah, Red Hand of Doom I've seen popping up in the recruitment forums time and time again. It seems really popular, so I think it should be worth a look.


Seems there was an old thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?95929-Premade-adventures-(3-5)) that still has a few working links to free adventures. I never played these, so I'm not sure what the quality is like, but for the price I'm sure you can do a little reading and judge them for yourself.

Wow. That's a lot of adventures. I'll have to go over them once I've got some time to do so. This is really gonna be helpful, even if not all of the links work any more and maybe some of them aren't that great. And it's right within my price range, too! Thanks a lot. :smallbiggrin:


In any case, I'm still hoping for other suggestions. Whether it's something obscure or well known, any recommendation you can give helps.

ngilop
2016-05-06, 03:35 PM
Red hand of doom is good so is return to the temple of elemental evil


for PF Rise of the runelords and Legacy of Fire are both balanced and very good ( even if legacy of fire is completely overlooked)

Of course most GiTPers are much much better optimizers than I am or ever will be, so the vast majority of opinions are going to be different from mine.

I am looking at the overall storyline, how the various parts are linked together and if the 'basic' table can play it and by basic i mean just guys and girls having fun and making characters to do such with with a goal of succeeding but not optimizing to the extreme.

others have different priorities.

Kol Korran
2016-05-10, 01:05 PM
I'm not sure you'd like my advice, but I'll say my piece anyway:

I was in a very similar situation: Real life had enough responsibilities, and was too time consuming to devote enough time to plan a decent campaign, and so I thought- "Hey, why not run something prepared, where most of the work was already done, just tweak a thing or two before the session, and be ready?"

One of my players (Who also used modules and such before) warned me against it, but I thought it would be a good idea. So we played the Wrath of The Righteous Path. Now, the AP itself is not well done, and has a lot of problems, but I came to realize a few more things, which are relevant to other APs, and generally running stuff that's not your own... In short:
1- You often spend MORE time tweaking and adjusting stuff, than you would have if it were your own material. Why? Well, first of- you're trying to decipher what someone else thought, what were their reasons, design and so on. That takes quite a bit of time. Then, when you realize what you can do better (And from what I've heard about many other modules, many of the Paizo APs have some... lets say "Not that good material") you need to think of how to tweak and adjust within a frame work that wasn't planned by you to begin with. And lastly- by their nature, most modules, trying to appease as large a customer base as possible, and without any ability to really conform to any particular group mesh up, are very general, and often require even more work to fit the party members playstyle, background, house rules, and so on. Lastly, some of the APs try to get you to try out various products and alternative rules, and use those in the various modules/ APs.

2- AP's in particular, (Far less so single modules), often have very weak connections between each other, each part written by a different author, and the result is a group of very very loosely connected adventures, without continuing or building campaign- long strong continuous themes. Which, if you're a DM half worth their salt and value the gaming experience, means you have to work very hard, often go through loops just to make the campaign "work". Sure, it's not true for all APs, but for the most of them it is.

3- Most APs are EXTREMELY linear, with very little info for when the party does something unexpected. Now, when you run your own stuff, improvising is much easier, but with something someone else wrote, even if you familiarize yourself with the mateiral, you'll improvise worse.

4. But it's more than that- An AP often creates expectation/ drive, both in the players and the GM (Guilty here) to "Follow the story" and "Get to the end of the campaign", a sort of an accomplishment some people seek, which absolutely KILLS any attempt to explore specific themes which interest the party more, seek out more personable goals, or (Gasp!) do things that make more sense, follow different routes, but which are not in the AP. This unconscious compulsion to "Follow the AP through/ see it to the end" have affected players and GMs who when running other material, are far more relaxed, and easily pursue the cool venues the group come together with. (Me included) The AP's story takes precedence over the story the group wishes to explore.

I'll put in a spoiler some thoughts I had when the game of the Wrath of the Rightoues Campaign fell apart (Just the relevant stuff):


Well, running (and playing) this campaign proved challenging on several levels. Through the campaign some of these were touched upon, and some I realized in our discussion in the two weeks after the last session. I have had some time to think of these, and i will try to summarize. I think the difficulties in the campaign stem from a few sources:

.....

Group's play style vs. Running an Adventure Path
This is the first time we ran an adventure path. Yet after conquering Drezen, some of the party started having new projects, new ideas, things they wanted to explore. Be it from Sena's many conversations, interactions, and his vision for the future, Julian's Sleepless eye, or ascension to godhood, or even Andera's interaction with tieflings. Yet, I couldn't quite find a decent way to put these in the context of the campaign, as the campaign NEEDED TO GO THIS WAY, and the characters more personal goals needed to be put aside, or downplayed for this to happen. Now, some groups are more fine with this, but at least two of my players (Sena and Julian) got frustrated more and more, about their core issues not being addressed. I think this is a problem with most APs, who have to deal with more general groups, but for my particular group this was a big problem.

Oddly enough, in previous campaigns, where there was no strict PATH, we felt far more at ease to explore the characters own goals, motivations and such. But when there was an adventure path, Andera and Mad Dog's player seem to desired more to move the campaign along, to proceed on it's path. This was a goal unto itself- to finish the campaign and the main story. This caused some friction within the group, which I've touched upon at times. The need to adhere to the AP just didn't fit with my groups play style.

Campaign design problems
I took a lot of effort to redesign stuff, which might have been avoided in a better designed product. I'd like to note right here, that I think some of the problems are inevitable when designing APs (I'll touch on that later), and that i really appreciate and commend Paizo's stuff for the work they did. Still, some things either could be better designed, or didn't fit my group. I'll touch on these later, when talking about challenges running this campaign.

.....


Challenges running the campaign
I'm talking about more general challenges, not strictly ones for my group. I'll talk about 4 layers here: Running a Paizo AP, running a high level game, running a game with mythic rules, and running this specific AP- Wrath of The Righteous.

Running a Paizo AP
I'll start with saying that this is the first Paizo AP I've ran, and I've only read some others, and talked about others with other forumists and gamists. I haven't ran any other modules or campaigns of other sources as well, so this may not be true of other material.
Paizo APs usually cater for a group of 4 players, with low- mid optimization level. They do try to give focus on a specific theme for a campaign, and they divide their campaigns to about 6 modules, each spanning about 3 levels or so, give or take. They do seem to pose some very specific problems though:
1. As a DM, you are basically running someone's else material, which means you are not well familiar with it, nor the design purposes always. As no group is like the other, this means that except for very rare cases, you ALWAYS have to adjust the AP to your group. This may mean little tweaks, or larger ones, but rarely you just run the AP exactly as written.
2. Lack of long term continuity and themes: This stems from different writers writing different parts, with a different focus, and different ideas. This also stems from the fact that the modules are also meant to be potentially played on their own. This leads to a significant lack of inter connection between modules, or keeping major themes going. There are many examples in this campaign:
- The 4 major NPCs of the first module get more and more downplayed as the campaign progresses, with later designers almost writing them off.
- No real buildup for major antagonists (Vorlesh appears briefly in the first module, and then as one battle in the end? The Major opponent of the campaign? Really?)
- Factions and accomplishments get forgotten/ trivialized when inconvenient:
We saved Kenabres! Ok, time to move ahead.
We conquered Drezen! Well, now others rule it, go back to dungeon delving!
We rescued Arulashee, which is built to be a romantic ally! Well, she leaves you on the next module.
We made A demon lord ally! Yeah, forget about her...
It takes a real hard effort to build enough consistency and continuity for players who want it.
3. Many parts are railroaded: Yora touched upon this in another thread, but most of Paizo's modules have a very strict order of things that happen, with only very small places that can be more freely played, and then with quite... crappy support. The ruins under Kenabres have ONE path. The road to Drezen has ONE road. and so on... More then that though, as the modules all assume that the game will progress one way, and demand success at previous efforts. This leaves very little, if any, wiggle room. In our Campaign this mostly became evident after conquering Drezen. The party had a base, with resources, people and more. They had plans, but the modules basically had their idea of what the PCs should be doing, which really didn't fit most.
4. A big problem for our play style, and that of quite a few others I've talked with, is that we have little time for play, and so we value it, and like things to matter. Many of the modules seemed to have quite a great deal of "filler encounters"- which means just battle encounters, usually with little actual threat, just for the sake of earning XP. They aren't important for plot development, they aren't really challenging, not even interesting. Just... Fodder battle XP. A certain kind of play style promotes this, even benefits from this, but not ours.
[B]

.....


So.... My suggestion? Either pick a REALLY good module sequence/ AP, that you've read sufficiently in advance through, to estimate how much work you'll have to do (Note: It will be more!), or better yet- either just use them as inspiration (Most have very cool concepts, just a very lousy execution), or just develop your own stuff. You don't have to write everything down, as you'll probably hold quite a few things in your head (Basic setting/ plot/ interactions and so on), you could take your own pace, change things far more freely, and while in session, be able to improvise, shift and adjust far better.

My two cents. Take it as you wish.

Theoboldi
2016-05-10, 02:15 PM
I'm not sure you'd like my advice, but I'll say my piece anyway:

it's not problem. I'm glad to at least see some responses, especially given that you are trying to help me. That said, my experiences are quite a bit different to your own.



Well, first of- you're trying to decipher what someone else thought, what were their reasons, design and so on. That takes quite a bit of time. Then, when you realize what you can do better (And from what I've heard about many other modules, many of the Paizo APs have some... lets say "Not that good material") you need to think of how to tweak and adjust within a frame work that wasn't planned by you to begin with.
Personally, that has never been much of a problem for me. As I said, I've adjusted various modules and adventures before, and I had no problem with doing so. Heck, many times I actually did it on the fly, leading to me having to almost free-form later parts of the game because I changed so much and my players had completely blown away any rails that remained.


And lastly- by their nature, most modules, trying to appease as large a customer base as possible, and without any ability to really conform to any particular group mesh up, are very general, and often require even more work to fit the party members playstyle, background, house rules, and so on.
See the above. I've encountered problems with these things before, especially since I adapted modules from different editions into others. But it's never been to the point of really causing much trouble.

Really, I had more difficulty when I had to make up new, original stuff, since then I could not just modify something to my own ends. Tailoring something to a specific group, especially when it's not a long established one, I think is a lot more difficult than just repurposing something for them.


Lastly, some of the APs try to get you to try out various products and alternative rules, and use those in the various modules/ APs.

That, I agree is pretty bad, and I do wish to avoid those kinds of APs. After all, I don't want to have to buy even more stuff once I already have the module.


2- AP's in particular, (Far less so single modules), often have very weak connections between each other, each part written by a different author, and the result is a group of very very loosely connected adventures, without continuing or building campaign- long strong continuous themes. Which, if you're a DM half worth their salt and value the gaming experience, means you have to work very hard, often go through loops just to make the campaign "work". Sure, it's not true for all APs, but for the most of them it is.

I've not yet really encountered this problem in the APs I've read so far, but I'll take your word for it. That said, this seems more like a problem with specific APs than a reason to not use them at all. And I wouldn't exactly say that my games have strong, continuous themes either. Usually, they are more episodic in nature, with loose overarching plots.



3- Most APs are EXTREMELY linear, with very little info for when the party does something unexpected. Now, when you run your own stuff, improvising is much easier, but with something someone else wrote, even if you familiarize yourself with the mateiral, you'll improvise worse.

This, I also haven't found to be much of a problem. I'm pretty good at improvising, and had no issue doing so even with linear modules. APs may be a different beast, but considering how far my games have jumped off the rail without me losing control, I don't see how it could be worse when I actually have a written-up world to fall back on to nudge things back to normal.



4. But it's more than that- An AP often creates expectation/ drive, both in the players and the GM (Guilty here) to "Follow the story" and "Get to the end of the campaign", a sort of an accomplishment some people seek, which absolutely KILLS any attempt to explore specific themes which interest the party more, seek out more personable goals, or (Gasp!) do things that make more sense, follow different routes, but which are not in the AP. This unconscious compulsion to "Follow the AP through/ see it to the end" have affected players and GMs who when running other material, are far more relaxed, and easily pursue the cool venues the group come together with. (Me included) The AP's story takes precedence over the story the group wishes to explore.

My players do usually have that mentality already, so I can't say it worries me too much. Besides, that sort of game style is nice, but only works with players you already know well and who are very proactive. Which, quite frankly, is something I cannot always assume. Most often, running a straight-forward 'here's something evil threatening the town/country/world/your friends/your earnings, go fight it' is the safer bet for me.

More individual and personal stuff usually develops over the course of the game, and once it does I do make an effort to modify things towards it. It's not always possible, but the alternative is having to create these things from scrap, which I am not good at.



So.... My suggestion? Either pick a REALLY good module sequence/ AP, that you've read sufficiently in advance through, to estimate how much work you'll have to do (Note: It will be more!), or better yet- either just use them as inspiration (Most have very cool concepts, just a very lousy execution), or just develop your own stuff. You don't have to write everything down, as you'll probably hold quite a few things in your head (Basic setting/ plot/ interactions and so on), you could take your own pace, change things far more freely, and while in session, be able to improvise, shift and adjust far better.


For the most part, I do already use APs and modules mostly as inspiration, since what I run usually ends up very different from the written text. (Though that may be because I simply do not adhere very closely to it.)

The problem with completely making things up is that I am, simply put, bad at creating my own ideas from scratch and then developing them. It takes me a lot of time, and I am just unable to create the wealth of content found in your typical AP or module. I might come up with three NPCs and an interesting encounter or two, but I take ages to get an idea for the actual events they are involved in, put them all together in a fashion that makes sense, and plan ahead enough to even make a single session. And usually, what I create will be pretty rail-roady and straight-forward, leading to my players jumping off the rails right away. This time without anything for me to fall back on, since I don't have the world established by an AP or Module.

In contrast, when I have an established AP or module before me, I can more easily see and predict the weaknesses it has, and plan ahead more easily for what my players might do. And when they still surprise me, I can more easily figure out how the thing that they try goes. And I usually am very permissive when it comes to their actions, most often finding a way for them to 'move forward', so to say, with their chosen course of action.



That enough to dispel your worries? :smallwink:

ngilop
2016-05-10, 03:03 PM
Really, I had more difficulty when I had to make up new, original stuff, since then I could not just modify something to my own ends. Tailoring something to a specific group, especially when it's not a long established one, I think is a lot more difficult than just repurposing something for them.


This is a biggie ive encountered for every first time DM I have ever played with. The campaign make no sense and literally feel like as a player you just kinda grabbed a keyword adventure out of a box and kinda ran threw it and nothing makes sense at all

like.. why are yetis in the jungle temple? why is there a random maze fillwed with earth elementals, skeletons, and demons in the middle of the city

Wrath of the righteous is atypical o the vast majority of adventure paths. Paizo attempted to fit 2 ( or is it 3) sub systems that were not really playtested or any implications of those actually thought out.

actually most of the latter APs from paizo have that problem. its not the AP is bad. its th new subsystem thay incorporate into it is not really fleshed or thought out.


and it has always been a given that you are going to have to tweek a published adventure/adventure path/campaign. Im no sure why kol is so surpised at this.

Kol Korran
2016-05-13, 04:36 AM
@ the OP: Very well, I guess it works better for you. My experience was the other way around, but to each his own.

@ ngilop: I imagined I would need to tweak the campaign a little, but it ended up s overhauling complete sections of campaign (If you know WotR, then some examples would be a re haul of the Grey Garrison, Pretty much about 80-90% of the second module, about 70-80% of the third, and not to mention the fourth. I pretty much kept the very basic plot line, and redid most everything else, other than a dungeon here and there. But my critique of that stemmed form other sources as well, not just needing to readjust the written stuff. (Such as the railroaded "compulsion") Yet it seems that the OP has had enough experience to like using modules, and likes them, so this is a moot point anyway.

--------------------------------------------------

Good luck with your game!:smallamused:

DonEsteban
2016-05-13, 07:16 AM
According to most (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?299050-The-Adventure-Paths-The-Best-Ones-Are) of the (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?328773-Best-Adventure-Path) sources (http://www.enworld.org/forum/productforums.php?catid=&title=Adventure+path&mfrg=Paizo+Publishing&authors=&sort=rating) the best Paizo adventure paths are Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Age of Worms and Kingmaker (the latter has somehow fallen from grace recently).

Red Hand of Doom is good (about the only good adventure from Wizards for 3.5), but also have a look at their new modules: Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, Curse of Strahd.

For something else, look into the Zeitgeist or War of the Burning Sky adventure paths from EN Publishing, Ptolus from Monte Cook, Way of the Wicked from Fire Mountain Games, Freeport (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25605/The-Freeport-Trilogy-Five-Year-Anniversary-Edition?it=1) from Green Ronin or Eyes of the Stone Thief from Pelgrane Press.

If you want some old school stuff, have a look at the GDQ (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/110321/GDQ-Giants-Descent-Queen-series-1e-BUNDLE) or Desert of Desolation series.

If you don't find anything you like there, you probably won't find anything at all. If you have any money to spare, I suggest you stay clear from the free stuff. Spend a bit of money, support the industry and get something solid that got good reviews (check drivethrurpg, or rpg.net, or rpggeek.com) from one of the good companies like Paizo, Green Ronin, Kobold Press, Pelgrane and the like. You'll find it is worth your money.