The Virtues of Pre-Published Modules vs. Homebrew Campaigns
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ค. 2024
- Should you run pre-written modules, or create your own adventures? What are the benefits and drawbacks of pre-published campaigns?
Thanks so much to Dscryb for sponsoring this video! Visit dscryb.com/supergeek and use the code SUPERGEEK at checkout to get 10% off of your first subscription payment.
dscryb.com/supergeek
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:13 - Modules Tell Us What Homebrew Should Look Like
04:04 - Modules are Not Easier to Run
06:17 - Modules Do Important Work for You
07:43 - A Word From Our Sponsor
09:21 - Modules Don’t Know Your Characters
10:55 - Homebrew is Customized for Your Group
11:49 - Modules Can Be Customized for Your Group
14:20 - Your Group Can Be Customized for Any Adventure
16:07 - Modules Promote a Shared Language in the Community
18:34 - You Can Steal from Modules for Your Homebrew
19:32 - How I Run My Games
24:30 - Outro
PATREON: / supergeekmike
DISCORD: / discord
NEWSLETTER: www.supergeekmike.com/newsletter
____________________________________
WEBSITE/BLOG: www.supergeekmike.com/
WISHLIST: www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls...
Address for Packages:
Mike Christensen
100 W. High St., #1326
Moorpark, CA 93021
- PLEASE don't address things to "SupergeekMike"; I need to show I.D. when I pick up packages, and that isn't the name on my driver's license
Address for Letters:
Mike Christensen
P.O. Box 1326
Moorpark, CA 93020
TWITTER: / supergeekmike
INSTAGRAM: / supergeekmike
TIKTOK: / supergeekmike
TWITCH: / supergeekmike
____________________________________
More Links, including my One Funny link: www.supergeekmike.com/links - เกม
![[UNCUT] “เชื่อมจิต” ใกล้จนมุม อนันต์ชัยเปิดตัวละครลับ เตรียมล้างบาง I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ l 2 ก.ค.67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jeOwG0vt114/mqdefault.jpg)
Do you have a favorite published module?
Thanks so much to Dscryb for sponsoring this video! Visit dscryb.com/supergeek and use the code SUPERGEEK at checkout to get 10% off of your first subscription payment.
dscryb.com/supergeek
I don't yet have a favorite for 5e as I have only run The Sunless Citadel from Tales of the Yawning Portal and played in Curse of Strahd which we finished. I would say my favorite is all of the Age of Worms Adventure Path from Dungeon Magazine that I ran in Eberron for 3.5e. It was the first full 1st-20th level campaign that I DMed.
s2 white plume mountain, first module I bought as a kid.
I subscribe to the Pathfinder Adventure Path line, mainly as a source of worldbuilding seeds, interesting setups, and quirky NPCs. I often don't really agree with the POV of a lot of published adventures, and modern ones can feel a bit over-embellished, weighed down by too much lore.
Outside of setting books, and maybe novels, lore details really need to serve the characters and/or plot, otherwise they're just extraneous mental clutter.
Isle of Dread and Danger at Dunwater, I had these back in the 32 page format.
I really like Tomb of Annihilation. I've run more than a few modules now (Like 10 I think?), and it's just nicely put together and the Players get the gist right off the bat. There's a lot of wandering, but unlike other adventures the PC's are on the hunt for something specific, and they are on the clock so there's more weight to the choice of whether or not to mess around with something cool they just found or heard about. But I like taking bits and pieces of adventures and modules and tossing them in my campaign.
I would argue that a well designed module is easier than homebrew. Most modules are not well designed. Generally it's an issue of layout, when you get one that has good layout (in addition to all the things you listed) they are a breeze to run. Maps that aren't just keyed, but labelled with short writeups of room contents, and reminders of the most important thing about them, it can make things incredibly easy. (I found some labelled maps of the dungeons in Tomb, and if I wasn't a little extra and felt the need to complicate every game I run, I could literally run it just from a labelled map and everyone would have a good time.) I really think a shake up in how these adventures are organized would make a huge difference in approachability. There's some interesting stuff in the OSR scene, but that's a whole other design philosophy in some ways.
I really wish that Wizards would make an audio version of modules that I could listen to in my car. That is half of why I mainly do homebrew. I can listen to a bunch of books, podcasts, and TH-cam videos while I do chores or drive and get ideas. I'm in medical school and have young kids, so haven't been able to sit down and read a non-school related book that isn't a kids picture book in years.
that's a brilliant idea, would really force writing into consise and accessible form
@@andrewburgess9578 Honestly, if they had it as a feature for D&D Beyond where you could just press a button and have it ready the section to you, it would seriously up the value. I have a book app that does this and it is so helpful. I bet more people would subscribe.
I hear you
I’ve used it for smaller pdfs, but there i have used the Speechify app. It reads a pdf for you. It is a bad Siri voice, so not great for super long moments. But it is usable in a pinch.
GOOD THING THIS VIDEO IS SPONS
In my style, I treat all modules as ingredients. The best adventures use a variety of ingredients, some aged, some fresh, and brought together for a unique experience.
Just like cooking. It's great to have some idea about what ingredients to use and how to prepare the meal, even if you don't end up following the recipe exactly to the letter
I personally am not experienced enough to do homebrew on the scale of a whole campain, so, to keep the culinary comparison, I treat the module as a recipe, and I had some ingredients of my own.
I am going to run Tomb of annihilation soon, so my goal is to start to add some home-brew locations here and there as a beginning, even with a few local tribes (a werewolf tribe as one of my player is an order of the lycan Blood hunter, and an Eladrin nomad tribe, as one of my player is an eladrin born on the island.
The fun of talking about modules with other people who played them is underrated. I love talking about Curse of Strahd with people. I'm glad you mentioned this virtue!
I'm a very experienced DM, started in the earlier 80s, have played so many different systems. I've been really enjoying your videos, thank you. While much of what you're saying is old hat to me, believe it or not, there's a lot of things I'm learning directly, or getting inspiration to do, and most importantly, you're updating me on what's out there with fresh eyes. For instance, in the early days having a "game session 0" and discuss things like what the players don't want to deal with, like self-harm, wasn't even a spare thought to anyone... and I wouldn't even think to ask that kind of thing, but having heard your comments and changes to the ravenloft module, that was eye-opening. Even more eye-opening, cause I've got a party right now of early 20s that are in the very first campaign, first RPG.
From a DM of 40 something years of experience, thank you for teaching me new things.
I found myself using pre-written modules more and more as I got older. Being generally a low energy person, on top of that having job, ready adventures really help. As far as stealing/reusing things this might be a thing people don't know about. Fifth edition is close enough to 3rd edition that, with a few tweaks, you can run any of the adventures from Dungeon Magazine (the magazine wotcy used to publish) that use 3/3.5e. For example if it asks for a spot/listening check, that just perception, search can be investigation, use magical device = arcana etc.. Monsters you just keep the CR and try to find a 5e equivalent or nearest approximation. Using this method my high level players played through Seekers of The Silver Forge, exploring the ruins of a githyanki city deep in the ocean. You can probably run also PF1 modules using this method, haven't tried that yet. Another source for adventures is Dungeon Crawl Classic, they also published a lot of well dungeon crawls using 3/3.5e. I ran a group through DCC#28 Into the Wilds levels 1-3 using 5e and it was a blast.
Reading modules and watching TH-cam videos are my entire RPG experiences right now. So thanks for the content!
I feel your pain Mister Mustache. I feel your pain....
Glad I can help!
I couldn't find a group or a time were I can play online... So I decided to start my own campaign with my 9 year old daughter and her friends... Is base on a module I find online and we are all enjoying learning about the game. This helps a lot so thank you.
What I tend to do is take a module and condense. It’s partially to make it more digestible, partially because I can’t be bothered to voice 10 different NPCs. “He’s the barkeep and the blacksmith. She runs the general goods store. This city’s now a hamlet. This town’s a tent village. You’re spending 90% of your time in the wilderness anyway.”
I've recently discovered the value of osr modules. They're usually just a dungeon and the context to run it. Maybe some hooks to get characters to go explore it and that's it. This makes the value a lot more bang for buck in my opinion
And often they’re so much better at formatting and usability at the table!! They make up the bulk of my collection at this point…
I'm a Pathfinder guy, and that system lives on its 3-or-6-part one-book-a-month Adventure Paths. I own a lot of AP books (though not that many complete APs) but I've only run a few more-or-less "as written." (When I do run something close to "as written", I'll have a post-campaign session where the players can talk about things and I pull back the curtain a bit and reveal what I added, subtracted and changed from the core book, which is useful for the community "I also played that adventure" sharing.) A lot of the time I will take one particular book of a 6-part series that I like, chop off the connective tissue and make up context to run it as a standalone adventure, because that particular book has a really fun scenario ("The magical nuclear reactor is going into meltdown!" "This town is being menaced by a serial killer!" "You've woken up in an insane asylum full of monsters and can't remember anything!" "Explore this ancient super-wizards personal vacation demiplane!"). There's an art to it, but it's a good way to create short-to-medium-length adventures with a variety of themes and genres.
My greatest campaign took this a few steps further and essentially took two 6-book APs and combined them into one, using the villains and plot from one and the setting and concepts of another (with some background ideas from a third, shorter adventure) to create a very long campaign about the drow and Elf Illuminati's battles over ancient alien technology. It's so much fun.
Not all modules are created equal. In AL my DM usually shares with us how much back tracking and index searching needs to happen for just 1 encounter only possible in our current chapter. Where other sections of the same module have a duplicate stat block for a common monster in the early chapters and not force the DM to cross reference every 3rd detail .
Even referencing page numbers to the DMG or the MM would go a long way for preparing for party shenanigans.
I'm basically running a Rise of Tiamat-ish story, set in the world of Eberron (because Eberron FTW), while using elements from Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mines of Phandelver, playing in a rules light, non-D&D system.
It is glorious.
The part I love best with running a campaign path several times is just how different the campaign feels everytime.
As long as you remember that the story is about the party and the campaign just the backdrop?
It will work and will be fun.
I love the old school modules. 8 to about 32 pages. The hard cover modules/adventures are just huge. The anthology books, Radiant Citadel, Candlekeep, Ghosts, and Keys have some great modules.
I have stolen the maps from various modules and repopulate the map. But on modules you own. Write in it. In Lost Mines I cross referenced a lot.
The old school modules make great bathroom/bath tub reading. Oh on 1E modules. It was assumed the group was magic light. So on my initial read through, I would pencil out about a third of the items.
The one thing about using the word Homebrew campaign in this context I can always be a little bit confusing to some people though is there's a difference between writing your own, for the lack of better word, module that you're going to run for yourself, an actual homebrew of like an entire setting.
I myself generally run almost exclusively in established settings, but I don't exclusively use published modules. So I don't really consider myself a home brewer on one level, my material is all pretty official and in official settings, but not every adventure I run is a pre-written one (though I frequently do that).
I realize you're also making videos on different settings, so it's going to be interesting to see how these two concepts interact as you go forward.
Thanks for the quality content
So cool to see Ruins of the Grendleroot during the vid! I'm currently running that adventure and give it high marks. I also run a home brew game and use parts of published adventure as much as I can.
I've only DMed twice so far, both one shots. One was a module, the other was my homebrew. I was having more fun with the module tbh bc I'm still learning, and I like the feeling of being propped up by a module. I think modules are an amazing thing to help baby DMs.
I do a good bit of using modules but frequently adapt them to my campaign. For example, I ran a module that was much lower level and a different edition that had good ideas that fit my campaign. I ended up altering a lot---I mean I had to to deal with the edition shift and level shift---but the map and basic idea was intact and fit the PCs' interests, so it really helped me out. I had maps, some interesting creatures and such that I wouldn't have thought of on my own, and helped give me a nice campaign arc. After that, I stuck to things I made up myself for a while, which led to the PCs defeating one of their long-term enemies, but am starting off on a new arc using Return to the Tomb of Horrors. It's been reskinned as the Tomb of the First Emperor to fit the fact that the PCs are interacting with a pseudo-Chinese area of my campaign world. Acererak is the First Emperor (loosely modeled on Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China). It's a legendary treasure horde that has things they want inside, but it's also been foreshadowed for quite a long time as they've found out more about the world.
Before the pandemic I was running an adapted version of the classic Desert of Desolation. During it I was running some of the Goodman Games classic modules... B1/B2 In Search of the Unknown/Caves of Chaos, B4 The Lost City, and X2 Castle Amber. "Life" hit so I wasn't able to finish either campaign out, but they were fun. I freely adapt adventures, though, especially old ones, to incorporate PC stories, make things fit the party better, etc.
What I generally don't do is try to run an adventure path. That really bugs me. I usually find there's just too much railroading to keep everything on book.
Many moons ago, corner shops in the 80s used to have actual D&D modules - only about 25-30pp each - in the racks just like comics & newspapers. Browsing the racks, with their evocative artwork, was some of the best marketing ever for the game.
It wasn't unusual for folks to pick up just a module or two, no PH/DMG books, and run it with their own made-up rules & stats filling in the "blanks".
Modules emulated the style of sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks of the era - cheap & accessible, meant to seed your imagination. Homebrew & module were intended from the start to always be in conversation with each other.
It wasn't until the Paizo Adventure Path era, with Age of Worms in 3e, that we had this "all you need is in the book" approach. I still very much work in the old ways :)
There’s so much amazing curse of Strahd help out there. I’ve run the campaign a few times and the stuff online (especially additions to Vallaki and Wizards of Wine) makes the module way better!!
I've never really liked the idea of running a published module, just because part of what makes me excited to DM is the thought of allowing players to explore what I have created, and building the story the way they want to play it. I recognize taking things and using them in your homebrew, that's why I have Candlekeep Mysteries, but wholesale dropping into a well-trodden path feels less adventurous to me.
The last time I even considered running a module was when they were the individual modules, not the full-book adventures they have now.
I didn't like running modules because they invariably lacked enough supporting information; I felt that if I had to do work to fill in the blanks, I might as well do all of it. This way, any hooks and connective lore are baked into it, because the basics are in my head.
22:37 this is one of the joys of the OSR. You can grab whatever module and with very very little conversion mine it for particulars or run it whole clothe. There is so much to potentially use its frankly overwhelming!
The hard part just becomes convincing people to try something outside 5e. Perhaps Shadowdark is the answer...
4:30 For constant note viewers I can’t begin how to express how much switching to digital media has made it easier to reference. Just search for a word in the PDF, you’re there
Acrobat lets you excerpt & reshuffle, add comments, scribble side notes & diagrams, etc. Even the free version of Reader has most of that functionality. I'll pull NPC & monster art, or full-page images to set the mood, it's a great improvement to the old days of huge 3-ring binders, or satchels full of books.
I really wish there were more anthology books - this tends to be the material I use most. If anyone has favourite third party anthologies, I'd love to hear them.
Im currently running a mini-campaign based on Strixhaven, but with a completely home brew setting and plot. I basically used a lot of the mechanics and ideas from the module, but everything else is custom. My players are loving it!
I love your videos, and this may become one of my favorites. I'd like to add a point: Modules don't know you, your players, or their characters, and don't include any main characters to interact with. That's probably a weakness when it comes to creating D&D movies, but it's a huge strength when it comes to playing around a table. After all, the real world exists as it is. It doesn't adapt itself around whatever the personalities of people born today will be when they're old enough to have personalities and interact with the world at large. Modules being the same way just means that your characters will have to become 'real' enough to react to the world, rather than assume it's all been created to showcase their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. It calls for more creativity to respond to reality than it does to bend reality to one's own will. (And only a narcissist would even try.)
I really, *really* enjoy skimming modules, taking what looks cool, and adding my own twists to them so they fit my homebrew world; I lovingly refer to this style as "half-brew." I think it works well for a DM who prefers to homebrew (I inherited a homebrew world after the first dm burned out but the party wanted to keep playing) but sometimes find it hard to get inspired.
Examples - I have a storyline where the Fey of the Seasons were replaced by Fey of Elements, so when the players were poised to meet one of the Elemental Ladies, I used one of the Princes of the Apocalypse as a stat block and the Elemental Weapon as a key dynamic aspect of the battle. I have also used individual floors of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage as single level dungeons unto themselves, with a subtle plot thread that it *used* to be one megadungeon, but the mad wizard from the book went too far and the whole construction shattered, sending fragments into various corners of the earth. There's even one specific floor of DotMM that inspired all of my endgame plot threads.
Really good breakdown! I'm currently co-running a make-it-up-as-we-go-along homebrew campaign which is primed for bringing in elements from modules as needed.
As always good food for thought... I did my first dm game as a homebrew and I've sort of said never again but I need to come at modules in the right way. I also cannot sit through and read them like a book
Running a lost mine of phandelver game for my brother in law and his wife I have modified it to where the dragon is more present and encounters the party multiple times as well as having more encounter with the black spider to make the players more motivated to take them out
Oh yeah, not mentioned here, but classic D&D modules had naming conventions. Varied over time, but modules with the same letter codes generally matched in implied setting, and could be chained together as a continuous sequence of events, in number-order.
All the codes have been described on Wikipedia & elsewhere, so if you find a classic module you like, may be worth checking out the others in the set.
I'm in the "rip modules apart for bits and pieces i use in my own homebrew" or "run short modules/adventures woven together by homebrew throughlines." I struggle a lot coming up with interesting villains that are both villainous enough for players to want to defeat them but not boring moustache twirling guys who want to end the world, so a lot of that + interesting locations is what I steal from modules. Sometimes I've got a perfectly fine villain, but I struggle to figure out how to clue the players into the bad guy's plan so they can get involved.
That said, I love building my own dungeons and monsters, and I'm pretty good at building friendly NPCs, so I often change the dungeons around in the modules. I use a lot of old-school modules, so I've gotten pretty good at converting them to 5e at this point, but I go into every prep session knowing I need to convert monsters a little bit when I'm running my duet, so I'm used to monster-rebalancing.
There are also a lot of 2e era modules I think are really interesting concepts but as written are incredibly railroady, so I've been working on re-writing them to make them more open-ended/have more player choice in them.
All that said, I can't run the big 5e campaigns. I love their one-shots/short adventures, and I'll look through adventures for pieces -- I'm working on a potential campaign concept in my DM's main setting that I might run once day, and the ten towns section of IWD had a bunch of little encounters/places I could use as small adventures as part of that campaign.
My DM [also my fiance] has a bunch of 5e modules, and he doesn't run them straight up either. He just steals ideas from them. For example, the second chapter of our current 1-20 campaign was his adaptation of Rise of Tiamat, but very little from the actual Rise of Tiamat was in it -- I think he kept like, one dungeon and the basic premise and that was it.
Hey dude I dig of the thoughtful videos. Just leaving this note so that the website might show favor to your work.
Thank you!!
This isn't related to this video specifically, but your voice is really pleasing to the ears! Sometimes it can be hard to listen to a youtuber and work with something else at the same time, because the sound is sort of loud/peaks, but yours are perfect for it! Maybe it is the settings or filters, but whatever it is never change it
Thank you!
You are doing a great job getting around in the TH-cam space. Keep up the good work
Thank you!!
Great video as always, Mike!
Thank you!
I went with lost mines of Phandelver for my first time dming for my friends and they really enjoyed it but I found the times my players and I were having the most fun was when we were playing content I completely made up. Like when they decided to give up on going after the orcs about halfway there and the orc tribe was directed by the black spider to attack Phandalin right before the end or when the Black Spider himself was not a mage with 27 hp but a Dryder in a large cave beneath wave echo cave. So I moved on to the Neverwinter 4e book that I converted to 5e with the occasional help of a kind soul on the internet for levels 5 through 12 so far. I think once we complete this campaign around level 18 or 20 I'll be homebrewing my campaign 2 since I feel more confident in what should be expected of a dnd world and what is the most important thing to prepare before each session (spoiler alert, for me it was character sheets)
I’m glad to hear you’re considering getting into the paid DMing space! As I was watching this video I thought to myself, “Man, it would be so cool to be in one of Mike’s games.” And then you mentioned professional DMing!
I am having my cake, and eating it too. I have a homebrew world that I have run games in for years. I am currently running a group threw my very own version of Storm Kings Thunder. A book campaign in a homebrew world. They are called The Dukes Riders.
I tend to find modules - or at least the established setting form of them - more intimidating than homebrew. That little nagging feeling of "What if I do it wrong?" which back when I was writing fanfic and doing fandom roleplay in the early 00s lead me away from established characters and towards OCs can rear it's head when I look at them.
Saying that, while how I do prep and how modules are laid out look nothing alike, reading them is definitely useful. And very, very, rarely when doing so something clicks in my mind and "Yes. I want to run this if I ever have a campaign it will fit into."
Honestly something that stops me from buying a lot of official adventures is the price tag. I find it hard to buy a full adventure if I’m never going to run it, and if I’m going to only take a few elements or change it beyond recognition I’d rather save the money and make my own adventure.
I run a series of the modules made for the Dragon Age RPG. But I used their idea for stringing the games together with the level 5 adventure, so there are weaving plots. Im having a different BBEG be the one after level 5. As well, I'm bringing in NPCs from my character's backstory and stuff show up in-between and sometimes during the premade adventure. But Ive only got premade stuff up to level 11 so from that point on it will be on me. But I think I'll be more ready to make my own from then. I hope so anyway lol.
When I run a module, I usually let the players know we're playing this adventure from this book. It makes me feel a little better about telling the players no if they do something completely outside the scope of the adventure. Using Ghosts of Saltmarsh as an example, the first adventure mostly takes place in a house just out of town. If the players tried to go somewhere completely unrelated, like if they wanted to skip town altogether, I'd feel more comfortable than in a homebrew game reminding them that's not part of the adventure we all agreed to go on.
I'm running Ghosts of Saltmarsh at the moment. Back in the days of 1e AD&D, my cousin was the DM and he ran us through the original U-series. I spent some time skimming through the modules - both versions. Treasure is often not where it makes sense. This is usually in an effort to make every location interesting when they don't need to be. I get the exploration idea behind it but let's focus a bit.
GS has about two pages of notes covering the first four adventures. The notes are very short. I had to come up with new hooks for the non U adventure. Moreover, I was able to ignore a good deal of WotC's additions since this Saltmarsh is Fellmire - a town in Midgard. I never liked the lair for the Lizardfolk. Instead, they have a walled village.
Modules are never run exactly as written. Not even my homebrew adventures. It's not only about the players' decisions; it's what comes to me in the moment too.
It occurred to me while watching that not only have I never run a pre-published module, but I've never played in one. For DnD at least. I did run a Starter Kit module for the Sentinel Comics RPG a couple of years ago. Which was fun, but I definitely prefer homebrewing a campaign. I should probably steal from modules though. Sounds like there are a lot of locations and encounters that I could benefit greatly from.
I’ve only done homebrew so far as a DM, I’ve always wanted to try running a module but I was always afraid about getting information wrong or if the players strayed too far from what the book had laid out. I definitely want to try to properly go for it someday!
It's important to remember that, as the DM, you have total editorial control over the module. If you get something "wrong," it becomes "right" in your campaign (unless it's an actual problem like you forgot to tell the players the room has another door, at which point you should just be honest and correct yourself). Players straying too far can definitely be a concern, but at that point you're homebrewing anyways. I would recommend probably starting with a smaller module of a few levels rather than a Level 1-18 super-campaign.
I always have felt that the DM should run the campaign that they are good at. If commercial modules are easier for them for various reasons, they should stay with that. Not everyone has the skillset, resources, time, etc... to create their own world. Or if you have those necessary resources/skills then run your own world - homebrewed as you'd like.
Most of my DMs have had some version of their own worlds & often lifted ideas/creatures/items/themes from commercial releases. They enjoyed the world-building aspect of being a DM and were good at it. Ironically, this experience has hampered me in 5e a little as I know nothing of the Forgotten Realms lore - especially compared to some of my fellow players.
They also 'lifted' ideas shamelessly from the fantasy works we all loved (e.g., Saberhagen, Lieber, Tolkien, Feist, Lovecraft, Moorcock, etc...).
As to 5e modules I've been in most seem a little too railroady to me - probably since I mostly only ever played more 'free form' games. Too many things have to happen in a certain way for things to work out the way the module says it has to. Funnily enough my least favorite has been Strahd as I couldn't get into the 'Strahd loves to play with his food before eating them.' Just not my bag, I guess.
As a player my advice to a DM running a module is for them to as prepared for the stage of adventure the gaming session will cover as possible. It slows down everything when something is missed or the party has a rewind moment because the DM misunderstood the described interaction. This will happen sometimes, obviously, but if it is a frequent occurrence it can kill the flow of the gaming session.
Kato
I do both.
An the best Gamemasters have done both as well as play & run a variety of systems.
Yeah, I started with Phandelver, which I heavily homebrewed because I wanted a more compelling plot with fewer NPCs. Then branched off into almost pure home brew after the party defeated The Spider.
@@deschaingames1851
I did the same with Phandelver.
I actually scared & confused so many meta gamers.
It's actually hilarious.
@@tabletopgamingwithwolfphototec I made The Spider and changling and zombified Gundren. It was a good time lol. I also took a lot of liberties with The Kragmaw and expanded that dungeon a lot, and changed the boss, and added puzzles. Kept the flood sequence though because I thought that trap was awesome.
@@deschaingames1851
Wow that's a wild turn.
I also added onto Cragmaw castle ( added a basement level for prisoners which came in handy as half the party was captured and the rest ran away in the fight with the Bugbear king ).
An i added a rat maze in the wall in the Red cloak hideout which the familiar trapped some of the PCs in.
As a DM for now gods, probably 5 years on and off? I've yet to run a module, though I own a few for 5th edition: DragonHeist, Netherdeep, Avernus and perhaps my favourite of the bunch: Dragonlance. It's unfortunate timing but here's a couple reasons why, when comparing them all:
a) A pretty nice beginning section that will have knock-on effects for the rest of the campaign
b) A very early good reason for PCs to be involved
c) The general heroic undertone of the adventure. This is no cyberpunk or dark fantasy: this is knights and mages. It's fun sword and sorcery, a bit old school even at times.
d) Brilliant, short chapter introductions that debrief what that section is about. I recall going through those when I first got my hands on the book, and had a pretty good idea of where it was headed.
The modules I have, I generally purchased for a specific reason: Dragonheist for urban inspiration, Avernus for grueling extraplanar environments and the infernal war machines, and Netherdeep as I adore the rival team idea. I'd like to run each but invariably I feel like I want to make significant tweaks: not so with Dragonlance. I'd change pretty little and nothing major, truth be told.
I've only really attempted to dm twice and both with the starter set module, Lost Mine of Phandelver. (The first I ran it for my regular group I play in to try and buy the DM prep time for his homebrew world, the second for my friends that I've never played with and I added in some essentials kit parts - though that game fell apart to scheduling and was never revived) I find that I kind of really hate dm'ing because it highlights almost every creative flaw I have. I struggle to create my own things and improvise, so I tried running the module - but I also struggle remembering things. I speak, think, and write slowly and can't do even 2 of the 3 at the same time - so it's hard to keep the game going without tripping myself up and keeping track of where we are. I can't spit out names, dates or personality traits. I'm not good at giving descriptions. I'm simply just one of the worst types of people to try and run a game I think. Which sucks because, I want to play it a lot and it's really hard to convince a group of people to play let alone convince them to play and you not be the dm.
I've been running games from about 5ish years now, and I've never ran a module. The closest I've gotten is just watching some of Seth Skorkowsky's reviews of Call of Cthulhu and AD&D modules and just using the general information covered to make my own spin on them.
Reading ToEE by Goodman Games. I am interlocking it with Princes of Apocalypse as one story of 2 Temples. Truly being a DM is work.
Ooo how tto run a module would be nice so I can get impression for modules for my Universal TT Wargame/RPG... Which is how I use modules as just immiseration mostly how they are formatted and written but also the content... So I would like a "What makes a module good to run?" Video.
Never mind I had to unsub over you intergecting modern politics into videos that donn't need them.
I'm fortunate enought that, in terms of creating a story and characters, I'm quite creative so I try to homebrew as much as I can. What I'd like to try more advanced in the game is looking for different magical items and perhaps monsters, maybe from modules or created by other people. I'm good at narrative, not in the technical part of creating something for the narrative.
You might wanna double check that Tidal Wave spell. It does bludgeoning damage, not cold damage. Your fire elemental would have been ok.
Fire elementals take 1 point of damage for every gallon of water they’re exposed to, which makes tidal wave spells wildly powerful against them. Thankfully I caught on to it before the final fight and was able to pivot to a new villain!
18:08 wait, the final boss of PotA is a fire elemental? Our final boss was Olhydra and then the walls of the cave turned to blood and a bunch of crazy shit happened, stupidly powerful enemies and enemies of said enemies that had been established earlier showed up, and a Dragon friend we previously met had to come evacuate us.
I mean I knew the DM was tying stuff in to his homebrew section of the campaign, because our group loves taking our characters to lvl 20, but i didn't realize the ending was that different lmao.
Wow, I just realized something. I tried to read up on the lore at the beginning of PotA to make a character tied into the story as much as possible. I rolled a water genasi monk who was taken from his monastery and press ganged into the crew of a water cultist ship and did some terrible things. PotA begins shortly after Drift (my water genasi monk) escaped from the cult. Most of the water cultist NPCs in the rest of the campaign recognized me and even gave me a chance to turn on the party. Turns out that, while Drift had turned a new leaf, there was a lot of work to be done before he was actually free from the cult of the crushing wave.
My DM made the finale killing Gar Shatterkeel (Drift got the finishing blow) and then killing Olhydra because of my character then? That's freaking awesome, way better than a fire elemental.
The final boss actually depends on the order players tackle the cults! In my case, they left the fire cult until last. (Actually, they left MOST of the cults alone and went on side quests, that campaign was a ton of fun but our story was kind of a mess lol.)
@@SupergeekMike oh, interesting-our party encountered and got the keys from the cults of air, water, earth, then fire. We encountered the air and water cults a second time, but, I don't remember the order relative to everything else, I just remember that we had defeated some pretty tough bosses from 3 cults before we encountered the fire cult (I missed a couple of sessions). Then we did the aforementioned fight with Olhydra.
I go with steal everything I like from modules for my homebrew forgotten realms game
I tried running a Call of Cthulhu campaign by stringing together single adventures, but it became annoying to constantly change dates and re-write handouts to fit the timeline and players. Now I'm running a custom Savage Worlds setting where I combined materials from Deadlands, 50 Fathoms, and the Sci-Fi Companion, but came up with the story based on player backgrounds, and it's way more my style.
What I do is take a pre-written adventure and homebrew the hell out of it to make it better for your players. And drop older modules into the game. Your players will never see them coming. Basically just stealing the setting and premise and making it better.
My first campaign was a mashup of Against the Curse of the Reptile God, The Village of Hommlet, and The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (all 1st edition modules) in a steampunk setting. It was great!
I’m happy running adventures as written. And that feels weird to say.
Nothing wrong with that!
I think module vs homebrew means you spend your time in different ways.
Modules is reading. Homebrew is thinking.
Both are both. Most modules are not really table-ready - you need to read through, anticipate the pain points, or railroad sections, and smooth out the differences between what's written & what you & your table enjoy.
Similarly homebrew never exists in a creative vacuum - it's a product of every book, TV series, film, or story you've encountered, as well as games you've played (video & TT). A mix of game system rules & story-preferences, shaken up with your & your group's own special flair.
Remeber playing in person? When did we stop? Haha
March 2020
If WotC wouldn’t half ass their adventure modules they would actually take load off of GMs.
I understand why a lot of channels like this talk about reading more modules but.... I dunno. I just don't think me and modules are ever going to mesh well. I bought one recently as part of a pack, with the idea that it might make it easier to run a brand new system for one of my groups. And the months that it's sat there while I've just blanked on how the hell to handle it- I think it would have been quicker to do what I normally do. Chuck the lore, invent a world from scratch, come up with some points of interest and problems and let the players loose.
There are hundreds of modules - thousands if you include non-D&D systems. Entirely possible that you just weren't feeling it - that setting, those characters, the adventure style, or even the writer(s). Maybe set the bar lower - skim the overview, flip through the enemies/NPCs, check out the encounters, etc. Or just find a module that "clicks" for you.
It doesn't have to be "all or nothing".
@@mandisaw While I see what you're saying I wasn't really looking for advice or a way to 'fix' it. (I comment on most of Mike's videos because I want to boost the channel.) I have fun with my games. I'm good at worldbuilding and creating characters and if it takes me a little longer to think of a plot that doesn't matter. Because I'm an adult playing with adults and trying to schedule more games is insane.
I only talked about one small aspect of the problems I have with modules. If I started going into all the granular points I'd have an essay. And it doesn't seem fair to go out of my way to list all their bad points when most people get some use out of them. Or enjoy them.
The number of modules available and the existance of non-D&D modules (I play VtM, GURPs and CoD as much as D&D and the module in question was for Traveller) doesn't help me much. I know this was well intentioned but it's mostly come across as not believing me when I say 'these are not for me'.
@@lkriticos7619 Nah, it's not disbelief, it was indeed intended as helpful advice :) The internet lacks context - your comment read as though you've maybe only tried one or a couple modules, and the default assumption these days is that people have only played D&D, unless they state or imply otherwise.
If modules just aren't your jam, and your table is a-ok, then all's good 👍
Someone else may read the comments and find the info useful anyway, even if it's not applicable to your situation :)
@@mandisaw That's true, the internet is difficult in terms of things like context, tone of voice and such. Thanks for understanding. And hopefully someone will find it useful :)
I really like both, but I really don’t like WotC adventure paths. They’re generally….kinda boring? I have to do so much work to make Curse of Strahd interesting to my group and my DM for Tomb of Annihilation has had to do a lot of work to make that one interesting for us. The formatting is a nightmare to use at the table and requires massive rewriting into my own notes and bullet points to actually be able to use it at the table. And the prewritten encounters are 85% of the time quite dull.
I still like some of them, but…yeah. Look at “Neverland” or “OZ” for a campaign book that is useable out of the box.
Pathfinder 2 does it a Bit better as do many third party writers for 5e.
I find modules (the shorter adventures) much more useable, though WotC formatting is still rough (though better than it used to be), but they’re “modular” enough that I can drop them in where I need them and tweak them to fit the world.
Engagement comment
Thank you!
Absolutely+
Curse of Strahd is the most beloved module, because the internet rewrote the darn thing, and in reality everything everyone praises is from these fixes... and its a garbage module.
The fact it needs to be entirely rewritten, under the guise of "advice" proves that it is garbage.
I don’t know, I still think it has a lot of terrific content - all of the modules need some amount of work, but Strahd I think is one of the closest to being playable without a lot of changes (minus some of the ableist language and problematic depictions of some ethnic groups, that’s obviously a good change)
This will be a much shorter comment, promise. This second video that I have watched made me what to argue with you. I just want to say, call them campaigns instead of modules. A modules implies there are around 50 pages. A lot of campaign book have 300. Is there a reason you are not mentioning all of these modern campaign books can be found online? Still no going to click the like button. Not because I disliked it. I will be checking out some more of your videos.
I kept the term as module because I think this discussion applies to adventures of any length, and “campaign” can also apply to a homebrew campaign, so it would be confusing.