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

[R_J_K75]

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.

Generally Ive written my own adventures because I retain it better. Even then I only create an outline with a few NPCs, monsters, maps, and a general plot. Ive found less prep makes me react to players and makes for a more organic game.

When I run modules I keep it to ones 10 pages or so. Short enough to get through in about 4 hours. This way before game day I can read through it once without taking notes, then a second time to take notes and highlight important parts. Come game day I'll refresh my memory one last time. This way Ive familiarized myself with the material enough improvise if the players do something unexpected as they always do.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

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.

As for "why even bother", well, the reason I do it is that I like to have a structure to work with to prevent the analysis paralysis that sets in when I try to homebrew something from scratch.

And as for modules... well, my players never see the modules since I use PDFs and don't say their name. In fact, some of my players are surprised when they find out I was using a module at all. Though yes, if you say Ravenloft and do as you say above... that's stretching things too much. Though I'd still like to play in that campaign under a different title!

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

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.

Agreed, which is one reason why I've shied away from using the 5e mega-modules. I mostly use Kobold Press Midgard modules, which are generally rather short (with the exception of a few bigger epics), Dungeon-magazine length vignettes varying from 4-16 pages. DCC modules are also some of my favorites (both the 3e and the DCC RPG ones!) as are old Dungeon magazine and Pathfinder mods, though I haven't used any in my current campaign - with over 250 modules already published for Midgard (over all systems), there hasn't been much need as of yet.

 

[Fenris-77]

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.

Yes and no. Published modules do run as-is right out of the tin (more or less), but that is not the same thing as being prep-free, which they are decidedly not. The more familiar you are with the material the more smoothly the sessions are likely to be. DMs who aren't familiar with the shape of the adventure, who haven't identified points where the PCs could easily go off piste, who don't have names and stat blocks handy, are pretty inevitably going to spend too much time looking crap up and aren't going to be ready to improvise where necessary. Players always, always, find a way to mess with the best laid plans, so my motto is be prepared.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes and no. Published modules do run as-is right out of the tin (more or less), but that is not the same thing as being prep-free, which they are decidedly not. The more familiar you are with the material the more smoothly the sessions are likely to be. DMs who aren't familiar with the shape of the adventure, who haven't identified points where the PCs could easily go off piste, who don't have names and stat blocks handy, are pretty inevitably going to spend too much time looking crap up and aren't going to be ready to improvise where necessary. Players always, always, find a way to mess with the best laid plans, so my motto is be prepared.

Oh, for sure, and even new players really should go into these things expecting to at least need to read the whole adventure before running it. I’m just saying, it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people, especially new DMs, expect published models to do most of the work for them. That’s kind of the premise they’re sold on, and yet they don’t (and can’t) live up to it.

 

[Fenris-77]

On the one hand, being completely up front about the amount of work needed to run a canned adventure risks putting new players off, which isn't an ideal result. On the other hand, them running the module without enough prep and having it flop might also inculcate some salt, "why didn't they tell about the prep time?", also not ideal. So on a third and very unexpected hand I would suggest that perhaps there's a happy medium in the middle there somewhere. Better information about what work is necessary, but not so much detail that it puts people off. Maybe something in a free PDF about How to Run Your First Module. You can find a lot of that kind of thing online if your look, but newbs might not know where to look (through no fault of their own I'll add).

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

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.

I broadly agree with that, which is why I qualified my comment with "Unless it's the point of running that adventure...."
If you tell the players you're running Ravenloft, then run a recognizable Ravenloft.
Otoh, if you're swapping out Strahd for a penaggalan don't bill it as "Ravenloft", but rather as "gothic horror in an Asian-themed setting" or something. (Of course, players familiar with the story will immediately say, "So you mean Ravenloft, but with a penanggalan or something, right?" )

 

[R_J_K75]

On the one hand, being completely up front about the amount of work needed to run a canned adventure risks putting new players off, which isn't an ideal result. On the other hand, them running the module without enough prep and having it flop might also inculcate some salt, "why didn't they tell about the prep time?", also not ideal. So on a third and very unexpected hand I would suggest that perhaps there's a happy medium in the middle there somewhere. Better information about what work is necessary, but not so much detail that it puts people off. Maybe something in a free PDF about How to Run Your First Module. You can find a lot of that kind of thing online if your look, but newbs might not know where to look (through no fault of their own I'll add).

I think the big thing here is prep time varies from DM to DM and from adventure to adventure, so itd be hard for a publisher to quantify with any accuracy in my opinion. Same thing for the amount of prep, a new DM needs to read spells, monsters, magic items and other various rules where a more experienced DM may not. Except for the DMs who started with the original game out of the gate, most people who DM started as players and should have a general idea what it takes to prep and run a module but maybe not the time involved.

 

[uzirath]

While not all gamers agree on this, I like to customize adventures for the particular group of characters that are going through it. Ideally there should be challenges that particularly suit each character. For example, my recent Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh group included a mermaid and a fairy dragon. I added more water options for the mermaid and used the vertical dimension more explicitly so that the fairy dragon could enjoy her powers of flight. This didn't take much work (a few notes scribbled on post-its), but had a big payoff for the players.

 

[3catcircus]

While not all gamers agree on this, I like to customize adventures for the particular group of characters that are going through it. Ideally there should be challenges that particularly suit each character. For example, my recent Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh group included a mermaid and a fairy dragon. I added more water options for the mermaid and used the vertical dimension more explicitly so that the fairy dragon could enjoy her powers of flight. This didn't take much work (a few notes scribbled on post-its), but had a big payoff for the players.

I'm not particularly a fan of this if it caters to the players too much since I prefer the "PCs aren't the only important entities in the world and stuff happens unless they specifically interfere' style of campaign.

I will, however, modify flavor, challenge level, etc.