D&D General Your Top Tip(s) for Prepping a Published Adventure

[Tyler Do'Urden]

In fairness to that guy, it’s a pretty natural assumption to make that something being sold as “an adventure for characters Xth to Yth level” would be able to be run out of the box without a ton of additional work on the DM’s part. New DMs look to these things specifically because they haven’t learned those adventure-building skills and they want something that will tell them how to do it step-by-step before jumping into the deep end of designing their own adventures.

Oh, absolutely. But they still need to read the thing. Nothing is more tedious than playing in a game with a DM who hasn't read the module.

 

[David Howery]

I'm actually thinking of heavily modifying GDQ for my own campaign... and replacing the Drow with Duergar, the Demonweb for Loki's Maze over Ginnungagap, the spidership with FENRIR, a massive wolf-shaped adamantine siege engine that the Duergar's manufactures have been secretly directed to (as their high priest has been replaced by a Derro follower of Loki)... and of course Lolth with Loki himself.

I used a similar plot to the GDQ series, but made it lower level and used assorted reptilian critters instead of giants... the PCs basically took on lizardmen, troglodytes, and fire newts, found that a reptilian devil-type monster was behind it all, and took the fight to him in a demi-plane full of dinosaurs and lizard things...

 

[Todd Roybark]

Also, the 5e Sandbox Big adventures are a slog to read, and outside of ToA and DoMM, don’t really give a clear path to their supposed end point. Many do not really include set piece encounters you can remove and use, so my advice is read with a note pad and index ‘stickies’.

Note what you like, what you dont, and index what maps, monsters etc you plan to use.

 

[3catcircus]

Unless it's the point of running that adventure, why does it need to be "recognizable"? I reskin/ rename/ repurpose things all the time, because I play for fun, not to retell old material.

Stealing elements of a your own homebrew or published module to throw the changeup in a different published module? Sure - do it all day long. Taking a published module and completely changing it, (especially certain "everybody knows" published modules)? Why even bother - that DM should just do their own homebrew since its obvious that they have the time and the capability to do so.

There are certain published adventures that have such name recognition that even if your player's haven't experienced it before, they will have some strong ideas about how it "ought" to be. Running I6 Ravenloft set on an asian-themed tropical island and using a penanggalan as the main NPC while still calling it Ravenloft? Most players are expecting some type of Eastern European-flavored adventure set in a medieval castle with western-style vampires. That's not to say that you can't steal Strahd's motivations, but the instant you say Ravenloft, players immediately have a picture in their minds of what to expect.

 

[3catcircus]

Also, the 5e Sandbox Big adventures are a slog to read, and outside of ToA and DoMM, don’t really give a clear path to their supposed end point. Many do not really include set piece encounters you can remove and use, so my advice is read with a note pad and index ‘stickies’.

Note what you like, what you dont, and index what maps, monsters etc you plan to use.

I would wager that you'd have a better path to an end point were you to randomly select a handful of the 32-page modules from 1e, the 3.0 Sunless Citadel series of modules, or the old DCC 3e modules. The 5e sandbox adventures are just too "something" - by the time the I got done reading them, I kinda forgot what the point was in many cases. The same could be said about the pathfinder adventure paths if you were try to run them straight-through as a single AP.

Even the old 1e supermodules became tedious. T1 Hommlett by itself was easy to drop in to just about any campaign. The Nulb stuff in T1-4 is easy to separate out. But by the time you got to the 4th level of the temple dungeon in T1-4, "again, why are we here?" sets in too easily.

The size of those big adventures is definitely a challenge for a DM - there is often an obsession to try and read a little more/prep a little more than is really necessary, as compared to the logical break if you were limited to the canvas of a 32-page adventure. Keep 5 different plots going? Sure. But trying to prep more than one "chapter" in a large module is way too much for many DM (especially less-experienced DMs) to handle and handle well.

 

[Todd Roybark]

the instant you say Ravenloft, players immediately have a picture in their minds of what to expect.

I picture not going through the Front Gate, and bringing asbestos underoos whenever you say Ravenloft.

 

[jayoungr]

The size of those big adventures is definitely a challenge for a DM - there is often an obsession to try and read a little more/prep a little more than is really necessary, as compared to the logical break if you were limited to the canvas of a 32-page adventure. Keep 5 different plots going? Sure. But trying to prep more than one "chapter" in a large module is way too much for many DM (especially less-experienced DMs) to handle and handle well.

So if anyone has tips on how to do it, that's what this thread is for!

 

[3catcircus]

So if anyone has tips on how to do it, that's what this thread is for!

Become a speed-reader... Prepping any size module is the same basic process. It just becomes much harder when you have to remember 2-3x as much information because the module is larger.

 

[Todd Roybark]

So if anyone has tips on how to do it, that's what this thread is for!

54 minutes ago

• Note what you like, what you dont, and index what maps, monsters etc you plan to use.

 

[R_J_K75]

This seems obvious, but you wouldn't believe how many DMs expect modules to run themselves without prep and have barely skimmed the material before jumping in.

Don't be that guy.

Ive run into this. I was DMing a game for about year and eventually I wanted to play so one person in the group volunteered to run a module for a few sessions. Game day comes and we start playing and DM says "I didnt read the adventure" and starts laughing. I said to him "You volunteered to DM the least you could have done was show the group some respect and prepare for the game because we all showed up when couldve done something else". After 20 mins it was clear that he couldnt improvise and the group got restless so I took over. My point is as a DM, take it seriously. Id rather play with a DM whose new and learning over one who doesnt care any day.