How do you use modules?

zozotroll

Mongoose
I buy lots of them, but almost never run them. Instead i mine them for NPCs, maps, and sometimes ideas.

Anybody else do this? Or I am the odd one?
 
I mainly run both Mongoose and old TSR modules for my games with customized encounters and side quests when desired. Just not enough time in my days to make new story-lines, new nPeeps complete with stats, new encounters etc. This has served my group and I well with the exception of the Lurking Terror of Nahab. That is a horrible, horrible rail-roading adventure. :evil:
 
Time is the main reason i mine NPCs. By pulling out most of wehat I need, I can reserve my small amount of creativity for the story it self.
 
Well I too use them as only resource material. I never run them, I get ideas for own 'works' and this way no one can ever second guess me or knows what is coming up next. I like to keep people guessing!

Penn
 
Outside of the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics, I never run printed adventures. I get my ideas from short stories, movies, the comics (Savage Sword rules!), etc. If I do use anything from adventures, its usually just the basic plot, which I usually twist considerably before I run the game.
 
I use modules all the time. It like having a script or a novel already writen--I just have to doctor it to my tastes, which is a hell of a lot easier than filling a blank page.

Plus, it's such a time-saver using published adventures Stats are there. Maps. Background story. The whole she-bang. I usually spend some time customizing the module, though, to fit my campaign. My game runs like one big piece of life. The players find it hard, sometimes, to figure where one adventure stops and another begins. I play it out smooth. If I know where I'm going, say, three adventures down the road, I'll even lay in plot points that will pay off a month or so later. "Hey, remember when we came across that scroll several game sessions ago?..."

Sometimes I'll run a module fairly straight. Sometimes, I'll just drag pieces of it out and use it separately.

For example, in the game's last module, the players ended up skipping an entire encounter. No problem. I've keept it "safe", as they say in the Marathon Man. I'll just pull that encounter out and play it some other time--probably in another part of the game world.

I also make up stuff from scratch to play, but that takes so much time, making up the story, populating it with NPCs and items, etc.

If I had the time I used to have when I was in high school, I'd prefer making up my own stuff. But, since I don't have that kind of time on my hands, I much prefer published modules now.

In fact, when I'm looking at a new game to buy, I'll check to see how many adventures have been published. If the selection is nil or thin, I'll typically pass on the game.
 
Scorpion13 said:
Outside of the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics, I never run printed adventures. I get my ideas from short stories, movies, the comics (Savage Sword rules!), etc. If I do use anything from adventures, its usually just the basic plot, which I usually twist considerably before I run the game.
I also like to mine books and movies for adventure fodder. I also like to take elements form sci-fi and use it in fantasy games, and to put fantasy elements into a sci-fi game. When I tell people this, they find it to be such a strange thing, but the truth is - it hardly strange or unique at all! Star Trek was well known for taking fanciful stories, and make it into a sci-fi story. The strange, green-stone cities in Conan are vary sic-fi in style.

Some of my biggest mining efforts, is for my Gamma World game. Most people new to the game would look at it as just a gritty Mad-Max styled post-apocalyptic game, but GW is actually a bizarre science-fantasy akin to the old Kamadi comics. I like to take it a step further by taking things I find in Conan, Princess of Mars, Thundarr the Barbarian, Kamandi, Logan's Run, The Herculoids, Barbarians of Lemuria, Gandahar (Light Years), Axa, Heavy Metal (the movie and the magazine), Carcosa, and liberally use it in my bastardized games of Swords, Sorcery and Super-science - IT'S ****ING AWESOME!!! :twisted:
 
Except for in my early GM'ing days, I have rarely run anything 'as written' for the most part I either run entirely my own plots (As with Legends of Zamora) or use modules as a base.

Modules can provide a great springboard, add in more of the encounters of the type the players want (be it combat, social or supernatural). Remove any stuff I don't like.

Often I find some way through a module the players will, through role-playing or just dice rolls, go off on their own direction. Rather than drag them kicking and screaming back to the original plot I will (figuratively) hurl the module over my shoulder and wing it.

I hate three things as a player, and therefore, avoid doing as a G.M.

I hate being railroaded into following a plot.

I hate having apparently super-powerful NPC's that save the day over and over again so that the P.C.'s become sidekicks. You know that character the G.M. played a few games ago who has now gained a few levels and is undefeatable.

Above all I hate it when a G.M. says "Thats not what your character would do, you would do this as a fifth-level thief'. I sit thinking "What part of "your character" do you not understand ? Bozo.' Yes there are G.M.s who do step in and tell you what you are going to do, how you will act and even what you would say. I even once had a player start doing that, telling other players how their character would behave.

The first two of these are sometimes found in modules and published material and I just don't game that way, and neither do my players.
 
The good old DMPC. I have never seen a game where that went well. There are those that argue strenously that it can be done OK, but in my time as a gamer I have never seen it.

Same thing with RR. I dont like it, so try very hard not to do it.
 
I can honestly say Ive never run a printed adventure, not since my early D&D days, at least.

In fact, Ive no idea why I buy them. Setting books can be great, scenario books are usually not so great. Occasionaly, they'll inspire me, I'll see an interesting or novel encounter, and build something from that.

Whenever Ive witnessed a GM running something 'as is', it always seems to fall flat, the guy fumbles for the description, or he says something he shouldnt, or he gives away information the players didnt ask for.
 
Ditto.

Modules are, in my view, useful to inspire. What few times I tried to use a module... I ended up changing it and adapting it so much on the fly that it wasn't the initial module at all.
 
I prefer to design and run my own stuff. However, I do look at them when I get them. I won't pay full price for them, so I check out Convention flea markets for them. I use them for NPC's, monsters and treasure. Occasionally, I'll run one at a convention.
 
Don't you guys ever use them as a sort of "time-fillers"? Say, one of the gamers from outside the town just couldn't come - his car wouldn't start, he missed the train or whatever. I guess a ready-to-go module is a pretty good way not to ruin the day. Obviously it is best to have the adventure in line with the system being used - this way you can always employ the PC you've already got.
 
Jacek said:
Don't you guys ever use them as a sort of "time-fillers"? Say, one of the gamers from outside the town just couldn't come - his car wouldn't start, he missed the train or whatever. I guess a ready-to-go module is a pretty good way not to ruin the day. Obviously it is best to have the adventure in line with the system being used - this way you can always employ the PC you've already got.

I find that printed adventures are really difficult to run at short notice. I don't understand how a GM can crack open one of these things and run it. I'd have to review it over a period of days, get some photocopies together, make notes, change bits. It's a big job, thats why Ive never really saw the use of them as quick alternatives.
 
PrinceYyrkoon said:
Jacek said:
Don't you guys ever use them as a sort of "time-fillers"? Say, one of the gamers from outside the town just couldn't come - his car wouldn't start, he missed the train or whatever. I guess a ready-to-go module is a pretty good way not to ruin the day. Obviously it is best to have the adventure in line with the system being used - this way you can always employ the PC you've already got.

I find that printed adventures are really difficult to run at short notice. I don't understand how a GM can crack open one of these things and run it. I'd have to review it over a period of days, get some photocopies together, make notes, change bits. It's a big job, thats why Ive never really saw the use of them as quick alternatives.
I didn't mean the brand new and unknown to the GM pieces - just keeping one suitable at hand. Still, no modifications are necessary in my opinion. Such a session can always be run as a flashback of some sort and not be influencing the running campaign.
Chosen but raw.
 
Well usuasslly it rare that I ever use one as a adventure itself. I mine it for ideas and plots and then add my own details and extras to change it around and add to it. When I get through with it, it is hard to even tell hat I have taken a element from one or not.

Penn
 
If people have used ready made scenarios successfully, I'd be interested to know which ones they thought were the easiest, or the most enjoyable. Its a general question, not neccessarily about Conan scenarios.
 
Against the Giants is about the last one I have used.

About 2 years ago, I ran a group through G 1. they where all young, and had never heard of it. They loved it.
 
zozotroll said:
Against the Giants is about the last one I have used.

About 2 years ago, I ran a group through G 1. they where all young, and had never heard of it. They loved it.

Did they get that theyre not supposed to launch themselves straight into a stand up fight in the common room? When I did that module years ago now, it fell flat, my players saw giants and fought them to the death (their death).
 
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