Pre-Written vs Homebrew Adventures

How do you feel about running pre-written modules vs making your own adventures up? I, for one, have always found it easier to create my own story rather than running from a book. I have a really hard time reading all of the way through the written modules and find it easier to make a world and take notes on it to keep everything consistent.

I thought that this would change in Play-by-Post, what with having so much extra time to look things up, but it turns out I was wrong. I am able to run them now (something I was hesitant to try before), since I do have time to look things up, but it's still not easy for me (and I'm running four pre-written modules on here now).

Just wondering on which side of the fence you fall? Pre-written or home-made?

it depends on how confident you are and how good you know the rules, pre-written cuts out a lot of work for you, however it confines you, what if the players dont go the direction the adventure wants them.... well that is not written in the book.

i like both, but for story wise i like home made, mechanics i like pre written because it cuts out a lot of balance work so i can focus more on well story and players

I generally find myself running prewritten stuff mainly because I don't have a lot of time to prep for games. That said I generally use the adventures/modules just as outlines and if my players want to go off on a tangent I try to let the game flow with them.

I run my own material almost exclusively. I have run pre-written adventures on here, but they were pre-written by me. I'm more interested in writing what I want to explore than trying to find pre-canned adventures that fit what I am looking for.

Good topic!

I much prefer running my own stuff. It allows me to go with the flow and let the players help drive what ultimately happens in the story. It is also one of my few creative outlets and I really enjoying coming up new encounters and drawing crappy maps and such. Always get a kick out of how the players NEVER do what I would expect them to and I think there's a lot more leeway in handling that when you're rolling your own.

I'm running two prewritten D&D5E games on here now (Lost Mines & Hoard of the Dragon Queen) and am struggling a bit with the pacing and trying to keep things on track. I don't think I'd actually run another prewritten game on here.

I'll tend to use a prewritten module as a springboard in a game where the actual adventure isn't the focus. Like my everyone's a bars game, I didn't have a good idea where to start with that so I'm starting with lost mines. That said I'm likely to change things as I go/ go completely of book.

My specialty has always been chopping up pre-written adventures into my campaign. Change around the names of characters and places to make it match my setting. A lot of my campaigns have been a series of pre-written adventures with the beginnings and ends squished together.

I can't get as into prewritten modules nearly as much as I can with my own stuff. I can totally see the benefit to them, but I feel like I run games worse with modules.

I, too, insert bits of premades into my IRL campaigns - the dungeon from a module with all of its stuff can work great, as there is often an internal story to the dungeon - just need to change the names and gods and lore and wait-no-constructs-in-this-campaign, screw it imma write my own

I don't get a lot of modules, but when I do....

Let me try that again.

I tend to check out modules if there is a lot of buzz about the story or if I am new to a system or genre and I want a crutch to help me understand. I also like reading modules for worlds with a metaplot for the obvious reason of seeing the world progress.

By and large, I tend to read them like reading a novel, and then steal from them. Or I run them with absolutely no concern about fidelity other than the broadest brushstrokes of plot structure. My ADHD tends to either send players off the rails or to run off in pursuit of players' random cool ideas.

Hmm, more than anything, I think I like modules for establishing a universe. I think I like making my own stuff set in a world that exists. Running with no context bugs me.

For me it depends. Pre-written modules can be a real time saver. Also, had someone in a group IRL buy a pre-written special hardcover campaign that the group was keen on running, so we did.

That being said, creating your material is one of the things that makes this hobby great. As long as I have the time for it, I'll always try and make up my own stuff.

Personally, I really enjoy writing my own campaigns. The D&D 5e game that I'm running has a custom campaign setting that I wrote up, a stock photo map that I populated with cities and kingdoms, and I do my best to steer away from using anything in the Monster Manual as I attempt to build my own unique monsters for every encounter. I try to make my own magic items instead of ones from the books, and I borrowed the concept Quirks from 13th Age to add to them. I think the amount of effort pays off to make an interesting, new and unique world, and I think the players have a sense of "This is ours" when they play games in it. It was built for them, after all.

But it is a huge time suck, and really I shouldn't be putting as much time into it as I do. Not everyone has that time, or even the time to make a scenario in an already established universe. I think that's the best time for Pre-Written Adventures to come in. But I think that if you have the time to write it, and you enjoy writing it, then customizing a campaign for your players makes a more enjoyable experience for them.

I'm not sure if they have similar things in D&D, but in a lot of FFG's Star Wars books they have what they call Modules, if I remember right. And these are sort of generic little scenes that could come up almost anywhere in the galaxy and you can pick and choose which ones you want and sprinkle them into your custom game to add a bit of variety. I used a few of those in my Edge of the Empire game, and the players seemed to really like them. I think those are a really good compromise for me.

Honestly I had never really played any official "Real" RPG's until the last year. I have been writing and playing games of my own invention for about six years. I think there is a certain level to where DM's can enjoy the game more if they are actively contributing to the lore and world. I know most people do anyway in set games as they go, and as MoMo said you can use a set game and alter everything around, but in my opinion making a game from scratch is incredible satisfying.
If you have a large surplus of time and dedication, I find that homebrew's can even be the most fun. Of course this also has to work for your players, but that's the case no matter what.

I've been struggling with this question in my won right for a very long time. I haven't GMed in almost 20 years and when i did it was all home brew and that left a sour taste in my mouth since my players intentionally took it off the rails just to waste my time.

I don't think that would happen here and I think PbP give me the advantage to run a campaign that has multiple small group in the same area but potentially opposed to each other that I could never run in real life since it would be weird if the groups happened to come into conflict with each other. But its been so long since I GMed that I don't feel comfortable with it all yet so I'm thinking about setting up a short dungeon crawl or something canned just to get back into the swing of things.

People always mention that they're good when you don't have the time to homebrew something, but I've always found it less time-consuming to make my own stuff than try to remember all of the stuff in the books. Maybe I'm just too picky on having everything perfect when I try to read and prepare the modules?

After you've done it a few times, a homebrew adventure for me boils down to little more than:
- forest adventure
- centaur refugees - Ganstar, Filina, Tuk, Newt
- A troll!!??
- Why is the river red?
- Four room tower with orcs
- insert next macguffin here

Then I adlib everything else including maps and stat blocks.

So it only takes a few minutes to plan an evenings events. Like Naatkinson, reading a module is at least an hour, and even then I'll have to keep flipping back to it.

Usually when I first set own to build the plot for a campaign, it'll take me a bit of time to write everything out and to craft something imaginative and memorable. I've improvised plotlines like that, and sometimes that works out really well, but I've also had some pretty lackluster tales if I don't sit down and really churn out some good ideas. But once I've got the main story in place, each session's prep work is minimal.

I went back into my notes for a Force & Destiny game I ran, and I remember the session being a lot of fun, but my notes for it consisted of nothing but, "The people, known as the"

I suppose I should've clarified in my last post that other than those Star Wars modules (which are usually a quick read, being only about 1-2 pages of content), the only Pre-Written adventure I've attempted was the World's Largest Dungeon for D&D 3.5, about 12 years ago. Frankly, I'm not the most familiar with how much effort a Pre-Written actually takes to run.

I hadn't GMed for probably decades before I found this site and in many of the games I've run I started out with pre-written modules. In all cases it was to learn the setting and the rules system. I didn't want to have to think through all the components of a campaign or adventure with a rule system I didn't inherently understand.

As a result, my Force and Destiny and Age of Rebellion campaigns have started with the newbie quest in the beginner's game. I didn't love the AOR setting, so I ditched that campaign once we completed the module. Force and Destiny is still, somewhat officially, on the pre-canned setting, but I've had opportunities to throw other things into it, drawing from the source material. It'll be a few months before we wander into other adventures given the way things are going, but we'll see. My Edge of the Empire campaign is entirely run with whatever I happen to come up with and it's been a good time for me (and hopefully the players) and I picked up a second FAD campaign someone else started, so I'm kinda winging it there too. This is okay because I'm familiar with the rules, and I have about a year of experience GMing FFG Star Wars PbP. So I'm more comfortable.

With The One Ring, I'm running the intro adventure that comes with the game, again to learn the system. I don't love it -- because in this case, they've done a particularly not-great job in explaining the mechanics of the game (something the FFG beginner games do REALLY well). I'm eager to be done with it and then work to drive my own work based on the various bits of source material I have for TOR.

In all cases, I have a lot of source material and modules for these systems, and I'll use ideas, encounters or whole parts of them if it suits my needs. Sorta mix-n-match.

I think I'd fare better with shorter modules, like 20-30 pages, rather than the huge modules for 5e that go from level 1 to 15. Trying to read all of that and remember all of the different options that it gives you is hard. Something shorter seems like it would be far more manageable for me.

I think if there was a module similar to the pathfinders society adventures that only take 2-3 hours in a sit down table setting would be a really good place to start with a new system. I think it might be good to start one of those here as well just to get used to GMing a PbP campaign. And that way if the group falls apart you didn't invest a ton of time on a home brew just to have it fall apart.