Comments on: Why you should never use pre-made adventures as your main storyline

By: Wilmer Claessens

Wilmer Claessens — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:52:17 +0000

Premade Campaigns can be a good solution.
For example,

Last time I played D&D, I spend 12 hours on making a perfect night, everything I made was right. But my friends weren’t in the mood apperently and ruined the evening for me. I had wasted 12 hours of my time and had a bad feeling about it. I did use some parts from premade campaigns sometimes. But now I’m planning on doing a whole campaign without spending to much time in it. According to Dungeon Masters Guide 1 you will only have to spend 1 hour for preperations each time you play D&D with a premade campaign. Two if you want to be prepared for a fast gaming group. I don’t mind spending two hours for a evening that doesn’t go as I would expect. But I do hate it when it aren’t 2 hours, but 12. So I think that premade campaigns can be a great solution for DM’s with the same problems like I have occasionally.

By: Robin

Robin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:33:53 +0000

I think that pre-made quests are a very good way of learning the game. When I first started out as a DM I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But then I started to look at pre-made quests and I got to learn hor everything works for a DM. It is kind of a cop out when you use them but I think that they are an absolute amazing learning supplement.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:50:58 +0000

I find my biggest problem with pre-written campaigns is that they have nothing to do with the PCs. It’s a series of events that sort of happens at the PCs. When I start a campaign, I give my players a basic outline of events so far and then I work with them to produce a backstory for their characters. I then take elements from that back story to construct the main plot. That way the adventure is all about them. So far it’s worked quite well.
Pre-written adventures, on the other hand can be a nice way of dropping in a side quest if you haven’t had time to prepare that week :)

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:43:19 +0000

I agree w/ focusing on a single section in big worlds (like FR), and having the few other cool sections in the back of your mind.

I often do this even in my own worlds: I focus on a specific section (ex: the Bloodstone Lands from FR), but I might have some thoughts about another area in the back of my head (ex: the Waterdhavian merchant).

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:18:52 +0000

Long ago, when I first started DMing, I pretty much ran only published adventures. To be honest I think its the best way to go for a new DM because when everything is new to you, you can use all the help you can get.

Over time I ran fewer and fewer published adventures till I reached a point where everything I did was completely my own. Just like you describe, it was faster, simpler and just plain better to do it myself. I think without a doubt the best adventures I ever ran were the ones I made up myself during those years, but then something changed…

I fell out of touch with the players I had know, and while I had some chances to be a player, I was never in a position to be a DM for a period of about five years. When the chance arrived to DM again, I found that spark had gone; I literally have no ideas for adventures, and ideas that are handed to me on a platter I have no ideas as to how to expand them. Now everything is a struggle, and so published adventures have become my crutch. While you are quite correct that I spend much longer now preparing an adventure with much poorer results, with my brain not co-operating my only real options are use published material or not DM at all.

Part of me completely agrees with you, because I truely believe that the way you describe for creating adventure is second to none, but another part of me can’t help but think your article and its tone are akin to kicking people when they’re down. No one wants to spend money buying published adventure and time learning other people’s material. Every DM who buys adventures does so because making his own adventures is not a viable alternative for him.

And to answer your questions, I have bought Shadowfell and the only way I won’t be using it is if one of my players has already played through it.