Well, in the mists of time (high school) me and a few others always used our own adventures because we were too lazy to avoid the work. Also, we started from scratch because we had nobody that had...
Well, in the mists of time (high school) me and a few others always used our own adventures because we were too lazy to avoid the work. Also, we started from scratch because we had nobody that had played before, just the books of AD&D in translation, found at some rummage sale.
Which meant, once when I was the GM, a dungeon door opened to show a surprised orc on a toilet.
Player: "Wait, what do you mean a toilet?"
Me: "It's a hole in the ground. These are orcs, man."
P: "How deep? It's a huge cavern right? There were lots of these orcs. That's a mountain of sh---"
M: "Sure, why not. The orc squats over a yawning abyss redolent of---"
P: "I push the orc into the toilet hole." (rolls, succeeds)
M: "Sure, that's a thing. It vanishes with a scream and lands in the darkness with a thump and a cloud of dust redolent of---"
P: "I throw the torch after it."
M: "Okay."
P: "Wait, orc dung is flammable, right?"
M: "Hmm. Flammable, no."
P: "Oh."
M: "Explosive, yes."
Player 2: "Fly, you fools!"
After that we had a new, exciting way of cleaning up orc caves.
Maybe "cleaning up" isn't the right phrase.
(One other time, me and my brothers tried the Middle-Earth RPG. We kind of misunderstood some of the... we rolled everything from the critical fail and hit tables. It was not easy. First hits were usually fatal. Not rolling high enough on picking a lock could cost you an arm. A character stumbled on some stairs and ended in a three-week coma, at which point we began to suspect there was something wrong.)
One other time, I wasn't the GM, but just one of us murder hobos infiltrating a perfectly innocent evil monastery. Player 1 finds a hamster and rejoices in a pet. Player 2 finds a rooftop ballista, aims it at a crystal dome covering the main hall, and realizes he has no arrows. So P2 does the obvious thing: "I put your hamster in the ballista and fire."
After some intra-party and party vs bent monks strife, my character, a horrified bystander, is still alive, except sans a finger because the GM decided that's what injuries mean. He's gasping next to an evil ritual brazier, waiting for the next batch of monks. Good ideas are needed. So I say: "Okay, I put my finger in the evil demon skull brazier and ask for divine help."
Player 2: "What?"
Me: "What's the worst that could happen?"
GM: "Let me think."
Cue a berserker fit and then everybody is screaming.
So what I'm saying is with the right players every adventure is bespoke.
I like to read premade adventures because there's often really cool ideas to crib from in there (I miss you, Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine...), but when it comes to making them for my group...
I like to read premade adventures because there's often really cool ideas to crib from in there (I miss you, Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine...), but when it comes to making them for my group I want to make it from scratch. Setting aside the possibility that one of the players has also read the module, I feel like a GM will do better with material they know more deeply (or are more willing to fudge on a moment's notice) as opposed to feeling constrained to the adventure as written.
Same boat. I will use ideas and maps from modules, but never run them straight. My approach to adventure design is backwards, starting with the climatic battle, thinking about the motivation or...
Same boat. I will use ideas and maps from modules, but never run them straight.
My approach to adventure design is backwards, starting with the climatic battle, thinking about the motivation or ecology, and coming up with a plot hook. Then I come up with a plot hook for that (a twist) directly related to the characters or established NPCs.
I run a Star Wars D20 group and I almost always use premade adventures and frankenstein them together, so that they fit the overall campaign. Changing character names, the loot they're after, how...
I run a Star Wars D20 group and I almost always use premade adventures and frankenstein them together, so that they fit the overall campaign. Changing character names, the loot they're after, how the group got there, whatever is needed to make it work.
This is partly because I am to lazy to think of evening-filling stories myself, and partly because I know that even when I'd sit down and make same myself, they wouldn't be of similar quality. For the last meet-up for example I straight up lifted a whole section of Kotor in a flashback-style mission.
We already changed half the game with house rules (going so far as to create a new skill system on the basis of the one DSA uses) and aren't too strict with enforcing even those rules, so it kinda fits our whole game philosophy to modify other adventures to our taste.
I think this works for us, because the biggest part of the enjoyment of our game evenings stems from the fact that we only get to meet each other a few times a year and are all really good friends. Rules as loose as ours and all the hand waving and judging by what seems reasonable rather than what's written in the guide book wouldn't work as well for a group that "only" meets up to play the game rather than getting to catch up with all your friends.
Congrats! Don't worry about how simple it sounds, there's always time to cue off of something the players say and tie that in then. As for my group, our DMs all write their own campaigns. Some...
Congrats! Don't worry about how simple it sounds, there's always time to cue off of something the players say and tie that in then.
As for my group, our DMs all write their own campaigns. Some start with just an outline and go nearly 100% off of what the players want to do, others create huge elaborate worlds that we slowly discover. It's definitely up to the DM's style.
Well, in the mists of time (high school) me and a few others always used our own adventures because we were too lazy to avoid the work. Also, we started from scratch because we had nobody that had played before, just the books of AD&D in translation, found at some rummage sale.
Which meant, once when I was the GM, a dungeon door opened to show a surprised orc on a toilet.
Player: "Wait, what do you mean a toilet?"
Me: "It's a hole in the ground. These are orcs, man."
P: "How deep? It's a huge cavern right? There were lots of these orcs. That's a mountain of sh---"
M: "Sure, why not. The orc squats over a yawning abyss redolent of---"
P: "I push the orc into the toilet hole." (rolls, succeeds)
M: "Sure, that's a thing. It vanishes with a scream and lands in the darkness with a thump and a cloud of dust redolent of---"
P: "I throw the torch after it."
M: "Okay."
P: "Wait, orc dung is flammable, right?"
M: "Hmm. Flammable, no."
P: "Oh."
M: "Explosive, yes."
Player 2: "Fly, you fools!"
After that we had a new, exciting way of cleaning up orc caves.
Maybe "cleaning up" isn't the right phrase.
(One other time, me and my brothers tried the Middle-Earth RPG. We kind of misunderstood some of the... we rolled everything from the critical fail and hit tables. It was not easy. First hits were usually fatal. Not rolling high enough on picking a lock could cost you an arm. A character stumbled on some stairs and ended in a three-week coma, at which point we began to suspect there was something wrong.)
One other time, I wasn't the GM, but just one of us murder hobos infiltrating a perfectly innocent evil monastery. Player 1 finds a hamster and rejoices in a pet. Player 2 finds a rooftop ballista, aims it at a crystal dome covering the main hall, and realizes he has no arrows. So P2 does the obvious thing: "I put your hamster in the ballista and fire."
After some intra-party and party vs bent monks strife, my character, a horrified bystander, is still alive, except sans a finger because the GM decided that's what injuries mean. He's gasping next to an evil ritual brazier, waiting for the next batch of monks. Good ideas are needed. So I say: "Okay, I put my finger in the evil demon skull brazier and ask for divine help."
Player 2: "What?"
Me: "What's the worst that could happen?"
GM: "Let me think."
Cue a berserker fit and then everybody is screaming.
So what I'm saying is with the right players every adventure is bespoke.
Thanks, I needed a good laugh today :D
I like to read premade adventures because there's often really cool ideas to crib from in there (I miss you, Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine...), but when it comes to making them for my group I want to make it from scratch. Setting aside the possibility that one of the players has also read the module, I feel like a GM will do better with material they know more deeply (or are more willing to fudge on a moment's notice) as opposed to feeling constrained to the adventure as written.
Same boat. I will use ideas and maps from modules, but never run them straight.
My approach to adventure design is backwards, starting with the climatic battle, thinking about the motivation or ecology, and coming up with a plot hook. Then I come up with a plot hook for that (a twist) directly related to the characters or established NPCs.
I like that idea of starting from the marks you want to hit, and then threading the adventure along through those scenes and fights.
I run a Star Wars D20 group and I almost always use premade adventures and frankenstein them together, so that they fit the overall campaign. Changing character names, the loot they're after, how the group got there, whatever is needed to make it work.
This is partly because I am to lazy to think of evening-filling stories myself, and partly because I know that even when I'd sit down and make same myself, they wouldn't be of similar quality. For the last meet-up for example I straight up lifted a whole section of Kotor in a flashback-style mission.
We already changed half the game with house rules (going so far as to create a new skill system on the basis of the one DSA uses) and aren't too strict with enforcing even those rules, so it kinda fits our whole game philosophy to modify other adventures to our taste.
I think this works for us, because the biggest part of the enjoyment of our game evenings stems from the fact that we only get to meet each other a few times a year and are all really good friends. Rules as loose as ours and all the hand waving and judging by what seems reasonable rather than what's written in the guide book wouldn't work as well for a group that "only" meets up to play the game rather than getting to catch up with all your friends.
Congrats! Don't worry about how simple it sounds, there's always time to cue off of something the players say and tie that in then.
As for my group, our DMs all write their own campaigns. Some start with just an outline and go nearly 100% off of what the players want to do, others create huge elaborate worlds that we slowly discover. It's definitely up to the DM's style.
I like writing adventures around the characters in the group, so I do everything from scratch.