Last night I was talking to my wife as we were cooking dinner and she made the comment that in the 11 years we've been together that she's only see me run a pre-written adventure a handful of times. I started to argue with her but it's true. The vast majority of the time that I've been running has been me starting the adventure by giving them a location, a few things around them they can shop at, and an assortment of adventure hooks. From there the players craft the story they would like to play by determining where they're going and what they're doing.
The idea of a pre-written adventure being pushed through my own, weird sensibilities has a certain amount of appeal though. I think I would like to explore this option a bit more in the coming days. And I think that I should do some actual gaming online again.
Think of this as a heads up.
 |
| The Monument of the Oppressor by Paul Lehr |
And the painting by Lehr as a sign of where my mind's at today.
I've got one for ya...
ReplyDeleteGo on . . .
DeleteI also have never been one to use pre-written adventures.
ReplyDeleteFor one thing I think the prep time for doing it myself is equal to or less than what I need to do to run pre-written adventures.
Further, in my experience the chances of any group I'm playing with sticking to an "adventure path" is zero.
I have cannibalised adventures in the past and taken bits from here and there, but have never tried to run anything as written from start to finish
I've made similar comments on my own blog, as I kind of phased out pre-written adventures a long, long time ago.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a lot more work to customize a pre-fab scenario to my particular group's interests than it does just designing a location, some NPCs, their motivations, and finding out how the PCs deal with it all.
Sometimes I will peruse pre-written adventures, and the old 'modules' of yesteryear for inspiration, but then I go and just put together my own take. My personal GM style is to connect the adventure to the PCs in some way, and pre-fabs don't do that very often. It doesn't matter if Your group goes on the mission. It could be any group. I like to make scenarios that matter to the players and their characters.
I ran several old modules "back in the day," sometimes as stand-alone dungeon crawls and sometimes mixed in with my own, original content. I also really liked pillaging Dungeon Magazine for adventure ideas, especially short, generic adventures like the "Side Treks" that they use to publish. Anything that I could mine for plot hooks and potential adventures, but also wouldn't feel like I had wasted a bunch of time reading if the players didn't give a shit about those plot hooks, was perfect.
ReplyDeleteAlso: I'm alive, kicking, and blogging again if you're looking for online players. Just saying!