Tips on preparing to run premades (Tales of the Yawning Portal)?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

A group of friends wants me to run a pretty basic campaign it seems to the point they have given me the "Tales of the Yawning Portal" book and created characters.

My plan is to read the entire first adventure a couple times where I really know where to find the monster stats quickly and how to present the rooms and encounters.

It seems pretty simple compared to a homebrew world campaign I am running. I'm worried about the PC's getting off track of the book or how to guide them w/o making the world seem artificially small or blatently railroading.

I am up for any suggestions.

[The Cats]

Whenever I've run a module I explain to my players it's a module, so if they see the super-obvious plot hook it'd be swell if they didn't ignore it and wander off in the opposite direction from the area the map they found describes. They're there to play and are smart enough to know if they went totally off the rails I'd have to stop the game because, since we're playing a module, I clearly didn't have a ton of time to prep a sandbox for them.

Tell them what the main hook is beforehand and ask them to play characters who'll go for that sort of thing.

[jojo]

In this case it seems like your players have done the hard bit for you. They've presented the content that they are interested in engaging. The fact that they've already rolled characters is a awkward but nothing that can't be recovered from.

[ad_hoc]

I read the first page of the adventure. Then I skim over the chapter we're about to play for 15-30 minutes before our session starts.

Actually reading it through is too much work for me. I find they play just fine. I read most rooms for the first time as they come up in game.

[Unoriginal]

My advice: read the adventure several times, and don't hesitate to change things.

It's not because it's a premade adventure that you shouldn't make it your adventure, and the PCs'

[Beelzebubba]

Sounds like you're on the right track.

The Sunless Citadel has some potential to be a dynamic, lively place, due to the warring factions. So, I'd read through the various rooms and get an idea of the various personalities, and think ahead to their 'plan B' and 'plan C' reactions if the players blow things up, make themselves known a long time before they actually arrive, or fail to stop any 'runners' from some encounters that would try to get back to the bigger groups to alert them.

[Specter]

You should read beforehand, but not in detail. What's important to know is who's who and where's where. If you know what the NPCS are like and what each place is supposed to be, you can improvise freely.

[bc56]

My advice:
Read the adventure
Read it again
Read it again
Go through each room, and imagine what a hypothetical party would do. If something seems likely, but not accounted for in the module, figure out what you will do in that case ahead of time. If something seems pointless, fix it. (there's a room in Sunless Citadel that fits this description)
Enchanted water cache. I allowed PCs to extract 1gallon of water/hour from the keg, and decided to roll a random encounter every time the room is entered

Don't be afraid to ad-lib if necessary. The module is a guideline, not an instruction booklet.

[Tanarii]

I read the first page of the adventure. Then I skim over the chapter we're about to play for 15-30 minutes before our session starts.

Actually reading it through is too much work for me. I find they play just fine. I read most rooms for the first time as they come up in game.
Yeah that's my tactic for running one shots too. They don't take much prep time. They just require huge improvisation skills. (Edit: okay, I do read the rooms in advance. Because not doing that WILL slow the game down. But that doesn't take much time for one sessions worth of content, 15-30 minutes is about right.)

If I'm adapting something as a permanent location in a campaign world, that multiple players are going go through, I'll spend a lot more time on it.

Also I spend a bit more time on official play content, maybe an hour for a single sessions worth. Players trend to have played before and if you improvise something on the fly they can get all bent because you changed something. Oh noes!
Of course, you're not supposed to significantly change things in AL so it's kinda a fair point. :smallbiggrin: