Oof, I kind of hate using premade adventures. Tried to run one this weekend and just couldn’t relate to any of the material and so my storytelling was a total mess.
I was still in school when I last did any GMing, but I’ve always found running my own adventures exhausting, both parts rewarding and painful to come up with. As an attempt to find a way to make GMing easier on my heart, I think I’m just going to try cannibalizing parts of a premade for use in adventures of my own for a little.
Me too, I can’t figure out how to do it well. I basically have to rewrite the whole thing to a format that I can use, and why would I do that for someone else’s ideas when I can come up with better stuff on my own in less time and with less effort? Premade adventures feel like a square peg getting jammed into the round hole of why I play RPGs
Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be lazy and run one but I think maybe I only have in practice once? Usually I end up just paging through monster books, finding a couple that sound cool, and figuring out how to work them in in a clever way. The published stuff that really got me going was that Volo’s Guide to Waterdeep from 2nd edition. I’ve lifted establishments from there every time I’ve had to run a city based session. But that’s more of a springboard than a whole adventure.
I have always wanted to run Dungeonworld/Land Beyond the Magic Mirror since I worked hard to track those down waaay back when. And more recently, that Wendy’s game (maybe this will turn into that if it runs too long).
Since I’ve got my hands a bit more tied behind my back thematically for this upcoming game and I have the least amount of free time ever, I was hoping someone’s already done a bit of work.
i do like reading those big campaign guides and hexcrawls because I can usually just lift little hooks and ideas out and get inspiration for things to do and also possible subsystems to play with, but that feels pretty distinct from adventure modules. The old runequest ones are especially a treasure trove (Griffin Mountain, Pavis & Big Rubble (watch out for where Morrowind got a lot of its inspiration from with this one), etc)
I literally just found out “hexcrawl” was a term yesterday so I’m working from some old and insular paradigms.
I don’t think I’ve ever paged through any Runequest books but if those were as classy as those Cthulhu adventures, those are worth exploring! I can probably draw the cover to that 80s main rulebook from memory though with the Sutton Hoo guy at some Mayan temple.
even better than the cthulhu adventures! Literally think they’re the high watermark of supplement design for any rpg. (Jennell Jaquays was a co-author of Griffin Mountain so you know its got good design)
I saw there’s an At the Mountains of Madness adventure book for CoC 5th edition, which would be really cool to look through I think.
I started a homebrew version of the Haunting with my coworkers today during lunch, and I am really optimistic about how smooth this one is going to go. I finally feel like my experience struggling along as a DM for years is resulting in some good insight and decent table storytelling skills. I also have a better appreciation for the way that the rules of the system and the situations they are designed to create. CoC is pretty popular but I think it’s a fun system for making mysteries fun for exploring and adventures suspensful.
I’ve been thinking a lot about RPG systems lately, so I ended up buying Champions/HERO System 4th edition and Fantasy Hero and Cyber Hero and thinking a lot about how I could make a Pirates of Dark Water game with it.
Dollar Tree currently has polyhedral dice (which the Internet is saying are totally unbalanced) and I just found one of these generic off brand books at 5 Below the game master’s book of random encounters: adventure location edition | Five Below | let go & have fun
Not as cool as a couple years back when all the 1st edition Pathfinder stuff was getting offloaded at Ollie’s but if you’re in a discounts and dragons mood, there’s stuff to be found.
“5th edition rpg adventures”
Could be 5th edition Call of Cthulhu from 1992
From looking up the page count for the hardcover version, it looks like 5below is doing trade in some kind of abridged version. Maybe all the d100 tables just go up to 60 or something.
I’m continuing my journey into weird small press RPGs and I’m wondering how much of the whole OSR scene pie is composed of
a) purely rules-based curmudgeons from the 70s
b) people pissed about the SRD thing for legitimate reasons
c) people pissed about the SRD thing because they’re into improv comedy podcasts
d) people who think that elf gods shouldn’t have their pronouns listed
I jumped on a couple mega cheap print on demand odds and ends out of curiosity, then it occurred to me that maybe this is how people unknowingly get into nazi metal, and maybe I should sniff around better.
given that the lamentations of the flame princess guy literally wanted to publish a game by varg vikernes, it is exactly how people get into nazi metal
(lotfp sucks ass and that entire corner of the osr scene is full of nazis and rapists)
Oh shit! That’s a way more 1:1 connection than I expected!
I’ve seen a lot of hype for Lamentations (usually with some passing acknowledgment that it’s a bit edgy) but no one mentioned the Varg tie!
absolutely steer clear of lotfp and any author associated with it
it is entirely some nazi metalhead jerking off while copy-pasting the entire dnd srd and calling it game design, and every author and artist associated with it sucks too for their own special reasons
the most popular author they had, Zak S, was finally outed as a rapist a few years back which was enough to get him cancelled after years of him just being an extremely abusive transphobe who sent harassment brigades at queer people and poc over imagined slights
his buddies like scrap princess and patrick stuart/false machine never really got the comeuppance they deserved for cheerleading and defending these vile pricks
Literally the last time I looked into the online TTRPG scene was when that Zak guy was outed as a creep despite being on the cusp of some big publishing deal. I couldn’t remember the name of his game or setting or whatever (Dungeon World, Dungeon Planet?) so I just steered clear of everything just in case he was involved—he seemed that ubiquitous.
I just found one of those Reddit Q and As with that Lamentations guy and he comes across as a jerk even when he’s not saying something directly fucked up. I’m legit disheartened that the reviews I was reading were giving him a break!
I picked up that White Box book, and I dug its minimalism and how it’s legitimately easier to peruse and follow than its namesake. One of my friends was trying to get a game going with his kids and I was going to suggest it. Hopefully it’s on the up and up and my $5 didn’t go to buying a burger for someone too heinous.
anyway the good OSR stuff is mostly past just regurgitating dnd again and again. We’ve got great stuff like Electric Bastionland and Mork Borg, real hybrid designs like Vagabonds of Dyfed, minimalist rulesets like Knave, Black Hack and whitehack
ah, you’re combining one of the dungeon world guys (who is a dumbass narcissist) with zak s, who hated the dungeon world authors for imaginary reasons. zak s’s big thing was uh some game he was developing on patreon, but he also got a consulting credit on 5e because that’s how you sell rpg books, you get the creepiest shitheads to put their names on them
You are the best! Thanks for the links and the seemingly bottomless font of knowledge!
Ok!!! That explains why I was super confused!