Video Preview: Do Published Adventures Save You Time?

Mike, insightful as always!

Since I'm often not running fantasy d20 games, I find myself relying on homebrew a fair bit, and have only recently started trying published adventures to, at the very least, get something out that's fun vs go through what feels like an empty GM attic.

I usually run published adventures and I like the experience but you are right - they are not the time saver they may seem to be. I spend a lot of time customizing them and adding to them to make them more fun for my players or to "patch" some of the problems in them.

I enjoy running the published stuff despite the time it takes me to revise. I will likely never get to play them as a forever DM and I enjoy reading them and having the art, and stealing as much as I can, and revising the rest.

When you get adventures with massive plot holes and nonsensical premises, encounters that are super deadly for 1st-level PCs and things like chase scenes where magical artifacts teleport away if the PC managed to reach them "too soon", it really does not inspire much faith in WotCs playtesting and quality control in general, to be honest.

A big part for me is that a lot of published adventures just aren't well set up or clear. i.e. the hook for characters isn't clear, or isn't reinforced, it almost aalways needs changes to support a good play experience. And part of it is that it's just not capable of being easily flexible. If they players do something different, the adventure doesn't connect - which is where the work comes in.

After 30 years of GMing I’ll gladly take the extra time it takes to take in a published adventure vs coming up with it on my own. I can still be creative by tweaking and changing the adventure to fit my campaign.

I also find that it takes time to read, reread, review, and plan with published adventures. I also find that it really is best if you know the entire plot and what happens in the end before running. I believe it was you that said you only have to read the area that they are in and not the entire book. However, sometimes I can play an NPC better if I know that they are going to do X or Y later on as I can plan for that better and make the interactions more meaningful. On a side note I will be running Scarlet Citadel starting this weekend and since I have run the first couple of levels I know exactly what you mean in your podcasts. I am going to add in Void Cultists, Mother Bolsara the Sweet as an NPC that is using Gellert. I will connect the players by each having nightmares about the void and they must close the portal to the void. I will introduce Hune the Doorlord and their patron will be someone in the City of Brass that wants the portal closed, but they also want some void infused items that Mother Bolsara has.

Yup I've done both too and yup reading the material takes time which is something I seem to have much less of as husband, dad & worker compared to footloose and fancy free young fella. p.s. the whole lazy dm ethos is perfect :-)

Love this — my experience both playing and running WOTC modules has been pretty bad honestly. They make so many assumptions about what the players will do and give you no tools to run the game better. I heard this recently about 5e — instead of making tools for the DM to challenge the players, they are making tools for the players to challenge the DM — and that felt so true and unfortunate We play ICRPG now

Your summary really captures how running published adventures for my group has gone for me. Comparing it to homebrew sessions I'd also say that it made it harder for me to improvise details or NPC interactions, because I felt that I had to have the "right" answer for the adventure and was hesitant to just make something up.