As a long time DM, this is also my issue with published adventures: they still require me to reprocess all the information into a format usable in game. I guess it saves you time in writing plot and making maps, you still wind up having to invest a lot of time in reorganizing information into notes. Not as much of a time savings as you might think.
They are servicabe as a guide to running an adventure. Yes, you still have to do the work. This isn't the type of game where you just open the box and play. It's a hobby.
It could be pathfinder adventure paths are super easy to run I just read through about 10 to 15 pages ahead where the party is currently at and I am good to go for the session. I only have to spend 30 minutes to an hour each week to prep for the session with the adventure paths.
@Shadow-bk1im eh the problem with all of it is that the legacy of Paizo's run on Dungeon (APs and ABs) shines through with how they tend towards one fight to the next with poor downtime, sometimes feeling more like an MMO's main quest line awith maybe a few meh side quests here or there. Truthfully the old module system worked a lot more readily and sometimes reinforced the Gygax-Arneson idea of put this in your world.
@@pewprofessional3181 TSR era. I started playing in 1980 at 10 years old. Until Ravenloft and Dragonlance came out, the VAST majority of modules were "Here is map, here are traps and monsters, here is background that doesn't matter much". Of course, there were exceptions, but many of the Gygax written modules were very nearly "sandbox" with minimal information, and (even according to Gygax) most of the modules were designed with that very PURPOSE, so the DM could make an actual plot, reorganize information, and overall spend a lot of time creating an actual story. Take those tiny bits of information regarding "factions" in Shrine of the Kuo Toa and make it into a full blown political story with a lot of work, if that's your idea of how to spend your time as a DM. OR, just run the modules as a lot of "kill kill kill". Neither option was "bad". The second option was far easier and often the very thing that Gygax ("TSR Era") himself did.
And here there's these mad lads in the comments telling me they markup their $50 books like it's a bible study. I don't write inside them, but I do sure like to toss them around.
Wow, finally someone who thinks like I do. Great template, I'm going to use it. This is how adventures should be organized from the start. I don't want a novel, I want relevant and organized, easy to use and reference data.
Thought crossed my mind as well. I wonder how the lawyering would work out, because you could cut out / replace the names, and afaik no one can copyright 'concepts' only 'expression'.
This isn't even the worst part about prewritten adventures. The worst part is that, as a player, you feel as though your individual story doesn't matter as it is harder for the DM to create an overall narrative that includes your player's story in an integral way. They end up railroading the overarching story because, in many ways, that is what these books "force" a DM to do. A flexible, tailored, homebrew experience will beat one of these books any day, even from a bad DM.
While that is true, it is something that can be worked around by integrating the characters more in the preexisting story. Or by implementing story points for the character into the existing story. You can use the book as a good guideline for material and then come up with your own stuff as well. In the end, you and your players come together to have fun with a module they hopefully also want to engage with. So when they are creating characters, you should sit down with them in character creation. Work out together what a character they'd want to play and how that fits the campaign. Though, all of that requires you to have a good understanding of the general story that the module provides.
I agree that's the absolute worst part of prewritten adventures, especially for newer DMs. After running CoS and having a hard time implementing PCs backstories into it, I have now switched to another DMing method. By reading the basics for the module and how it ends - the goal of villains and how they need to achieve whatever they want. Then entangling all of that with the PCs. Even completely random backstories work. And since PCs' backstories cannot be disconnected from one another, you have to interconnect those as well so it forms a complete plot web with various twists they won't see coming. Having a plot web, I no longer care about what is written in the module as the campaign has become player focused, so they drive it forward. Whatever no longer serves the PCs' narrative gets axed from the story. I found that method is what keeps players engaged the most. Having to railroad them is the worst feeling. CoS is sandboxy only at first glance - if your players stray from the path, they would get absolutely butchered by the higher CR monsters. Meh.
Not at all. I played iron gods with a group a year back and everyone had a connection the story, for example our Barbarian met all the criteria in the source book to be related to the King, my character was a Lashunta living as a human who added loads to the Lashunta encountered in the late stages of the campaign (where he met his actual patents) , our rogue had connections to several antagonists, etc. A good source book provides tools for the players and dm to connect to the overall plot, and surprise players with connections they didnt realize they had.
These pre written adventures are great, as long as the players tie there backgrounds to the campaign. They also save a huge amount of time. I am a dm with two kids in competitive sports, I don't have the time or interest to generate a completely custom campaign.
Most prewritten adventures should be written with time in mind. Every day is three eight-hour chunks. Two get a short rest and the other a long. When the rests happen, the story happening around the characters clicks forward one time unit. Things are developing, regardless of interaction.
Pre-written adventures have 2 main purposes : the first is to help experienced players transition into DMing. The other is to give people who are starting to DM examples of settings, plot points, dungeon crawling scenarios, exploration, social and combat encounters, and how to narrate a scene. A lot of things that are on adventure books will never be used at the table, but can help DMs to do world-building when they're creating their own adventures in the future.
As someone who got into DMing through pre-written adventures... lmao no they don't There is no DMing advice anywhere to be found in any pre-written adventure. You have to make up everything from scratch. Especially if your players, at any point, want to do something that Hasbro didn't consider in the 1-2 paragraphs any given encounter is given. When I made the move to treating the game like improv, with my campaign as just a backdrop and nothing more, mine and my players' experience at the table improved drastically
@@DoinItforNewCommTech The problem with especially modern D&D is that they just throw DMs in cold water. You have no good examples, you have no introduction, nothing. Even the DMG assumes you know what you're doing. I still own a version of the original Red Box D&D version. There are two things in there that help you learn to play the game; A solo Adventure explaining not only the rules but general Genre Conventions (you play a fighter and meet a cleric and she tells you all the stuff about clerics and stuff and you fight an evil wizard etc. She has her own fandom, lol) and an example dungeon, where the first layer is fully populated with monsters and excerpts that teach you to run encounters as a DM and how Dungeon Design works, the second layer is pre-drawn but you are supposed to fill most details in yourself for the next session, and the third level is non-existant, you are supposed to make that up yourself, just make sure the evil wizard and the dragon that are the reason the party goes there are in there. Show me a single modern D&D product that is so DM-Friendly. NOTHNG! It's all just player content, new classes with barely fluff. FML. Oh yeah, don't get me started on the lack of fluff for official campaign settings. As a DM I want tons of Fluff I can work with *if I want to* and not a coffeetable artwork collection with as much world building as an AI-generated Poem about Bananas.
@@DoinItforNewCommTech "There's no dming advice". If you read my comment, you'll see it doesn't say published adventures have DM advice. The adventure gives examples of what to describe, and how to describe, how to do an encounter etc. Learning how to treat it like a background for improv is precisely the point. You're not only not disagreeing with me, you're reinforcing my point. The DMG gives dming advice (not well enough, though, hence things like "The return of the lazy dungeon master" exists). That's also why I've said written adventures help experienced players to start dming: we usually learn how to DM by playing. Seeing how other DMs delt with given situations and adapting it to our style. No pre written adventure will teach you how to DM. Only experience (playing and DMing) will. Adventures only give examples of how to do it (here's how to describe a room, here's how to create a plot hook, here's one example of a combat encounter for characters from lvl 3-4...).
I am running the Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, and the room descriptions are exactly like your point and click method. So easy to run with little to no prep
What a DM lesson you just gave. Impressive, fun and educational. Thank you very much, I mean this completely. In less than 10 minutes you have shown how an adventure or campaign, or at least several of the chapters, should be organized. I subscribe immediately, a huge greeting from Spain :)
This is fantastic! Not only is your information great, but your presentation/editing skills and injections of humor are on point. It's almost like you're really experienced explaining abstract concepts to people or something.
Glad I clicked on this. I think it was Jason Hardy of CGL who said in an interview that most people buying adventures are just reading them and will probably never run them. Ever since I heard that the unintuitive way adventures are written made a lot more sense. They can't just give an outline with the pertinent information because that would cut out a major portion of thier audience.
Exactly why I jumped off the DnD 5 wagon. It’s got some great stuff, but I generally just grab bits I like and use it in OSR stuff like Forbidden Lands or Old School Essentials. This is really good DM advice though. Gonna forward this vid to my nephew who is running his first DnD 5 game. Fun stuff.
Omg just discovered your channel and I love your content ! The editing is on point, everything is clear for my ADHD brain so thank you very much and please keep it up ! Also as a fairly beginner DM I'm definitely going to use your tips for my next campaign 🥰
Biggest problem: they're railroaded. The first campaign I played was Phandelver and I quickly realised how little freedom you can give players. So I dropped the idea of premade campaigns after we finished and started doing my own.
Then you don't understand what railroad actually means nor how to present published material in a manner that both follows a story-arc AND allows for player agency
Curse of Strahd is very much not railroaded and also lets the DM control a lot of what happens in the game. It’s a big sandbox of characters and dungeons and I actually really like running it. Compared to the other DnD and Call of Cthulhu content I’ve run it’s easily my favorite.
@@TwilightxKnight13 He is confusing railroading with a linear adventure, or what Id like to call "roading": Sure, you can go off the road and explore, but dont complain if the ride gets a little bumpy there.
@monkeibusiness CoS actually does really well at keeping players on the "road"... most of the high level areas have a big neon "you aren't supposed to be here yet" sign out in front of them, and Strahd being an active villain with interest in the party means he can always drop by to send them scrambling.
Something I've been doing is watching reviews of old D&D and Call of Cthulhu modules by Seth Skorkowsky and just taking the plot and characters and loot described in those reviews and adapting them into my own games. I'll also take an old adventure or horror movie, make a few stat blocks, sketch out a rough map, and then just run that. Just give your players a brief idea about what they're getting into and the tone and have them make characters that want to go on the adventure. It all just goes so much smoother and it's so much cheaper.
My approach is to have a varied world and then to ask players what sort of campaign they want: high-stakes daring do, low and nasty skulduggery etc and then drop them into an appropriate starting position. They need to create characters consistent with the starting point.
Honestly, the start of the video is misleading and distracting: what do i mean?: I see you start with a premise; these books sucks, you explode confetti on the table, clean it, you are berating the space taken by the book on the table, throwing a bunch shiny click-clack rocks all over the place, clean them, make a joke on battleship's cover art, make a joke on Shadowheart romance... What's your point?!? Get to the point ! tell the message, start really answering your premise (why modules sucks, or something) you say a bunch of things and make a bunch of jokes and flex a bunch of montage/transitions before answering anything. okay, you are berating the space the book takes on the table; do you give some solutions? suggest a course of action on how to position or sort things out? no, I don't see you develop anything, just seeing you create a distraction out of nowhere (Mountain Dew, Dice). your other argument: "so much text, oh no!" THIS IS A SCENARIO BOOK for a complicated game like D&D with a lot of permutations, of course there are letters, words and...sentences! ok, finally recommending people to... take notes. just take notes guys. heck, it's YOUR book, your can use as much highlighter/sharpie as you want. the simple message and only useful thing taken out of this video is: "read ahead and take sorted out notes, here is a technique..." work on the intro and the developments. I was getting impatient from waiting you getting to the point, felt like it wasn't coming anytime soon. good transitions? first time was fine, second time was getting old with the vacuum cleaner. trying constructive feedback for better videos in the future, good potential, maybe give more examples? like dissecting a chapter of a module? you got a lot of potential. keep it up. P.S. I like the way you take notes on the poisons and potions, clue etc, i might use that.
I can see where you’re coming from, wanting him to get to the point, but I personally loved the format. He eases me into the topic by “setting the scene” as it were: getting me acclimated to his style of video editing and humor to draw me in. If he just made a one minute video discussing the tip he presented, I’d miss out on all the funny bits!!! The shadow heart stuff was goofy, but I loved it!
@@potatoplunderer Haha I’ve seen a handful of super (to me) pedantic and/or passive aggressive comments on this video criticizing the first 2-3 minutes. Constructive criticism is good (as I think OP here was probably trying to do) To me it seems strange to do so when this is buddies second video and is clearly doing HIS OWN style and almost all of the criticism I’ve seen is essentially “You’re too ADHD and also not funny” 🤣
Loved the video. It’s a great approach. I would highly recommend the Old-School Essentials Adventures series. They are designed in such as to let you straight from the book. Another system agonistic adventure ‘The Waking of Willoby Hall’ by Ben Milton aka Questing Beast is useable as is. They use these methods as well as an excellent layout structure designed around use at the table.
So you're not a fan of pre-written material. But, if you've ever created an epic campaign, you know it's a lot more work than translating what's already been written.
This video MIGHT in fact be my favorite video on RU-vid right now. Full stop. I have rewatched this at least three times. BTW in response to the "I can't read!" bit, I suggest checking out Green DM's videos where he explains D&D adventures as fast as possible. Hilarious, especially Curse of Strahd.
This is why I modify the heck out of my adventures ((I've turned waterdeep dragon heist into a 2 year game which lead into a waterdavian civil war preceeding a waterdeep: decent into avernus)) also my ((entirely legally acquired) PDFs have this wonderful little feature of CTRL F.
Everyone of does this, we modify and home brewthe shit out of it!! I usually like to take ravenloft as a multipurpose multidimensional hub between worlds which allows me to explain how my players got from ebberon to the forgotten realms and back to ravenloft etc. 😂😂😂😂
This could be like part 1 of 10 of how to make WotC’s awfully written adventures usable. I think the main thing I would add to this is to break the adventure down ahead of time into “Moments” you want to see happen and bullet point them as briefly as possible so you can memorize the critical details. Ask your players what they want to do next session, then plan the specifics to bring these “Moments” to life. Plan every single session as if it’s an epic one-shot so if your game falls apart if doesn’t feel like you didn’t accomplish anything.
A couple of weeks ago I got started with D&D for the first time ever and I'm also the DM. We're playing through the starter set adventure (Dragons of Stormwreck Isle) and I found the structure of information to be painful for new players/DMs. After the first session, I realised that I could not rely on following the adventure booklet mid-season, as the players would ask me for something that I wouldn't find an answer to until nearly 4 pages later. So I started to take the maps into photoshop and mark notes on them in a similar way that you did on paper. Using arrows and text to mark down treasure locations and what loot was there, traps and the DC needed to evade them, placement of monsters and how they trigger and encounter, etc. But I like the way that you write down easier ways to describe what PCs see. I'm hoping that as I get more experienced, I can plan less meticulously and improvise a bit more. Great video! It was really helpful 👍
This video and your channel should really blow up. You definitely deserve it. This was a great video, and what's interesting is that I think everyone (players and dms) knows this. This is an open and clear problem that never gets attention. We don't talk about it or at least never heard someone articulate it like this let alone provide a soild solution. Great job 👏
Amazing. It took a while to get to the point and I was afraid the video was gonna be too much joke with too little substance, but the second half gave some of THE BEST advice I've received in a long time. The point & click style is perfect and I shall now depart to restructure the notes for my next session exactly like that
As a rookie GM going into my second game, this is the first time I’ve seen someone covering properly how to write an RPG adventure. Awesome videos, man. Best GM channel I’ve encountered.
Notes For Descriptions Name locations 1-2 descriptive words followed by what it is. Ex. turn, “O1. Ground Floor” into, “O1. Filthy Makeshift Kitchen” Briefly describe the shape, size, movement and feel of the room. Ex. Round room, 20’ in diameter, and 8’ ceiling. See dishware piled everywhere and small human bones littering the floor. Movement draws your eyes to chickens strutting in a coop. Hear them clucking and toads croaking. Smell baking pastries mixed with a horrendous stench. Describe what is in the room that can be interacted with, use arrows to denote what happens when you do. Use Landmark, Hidden and Secret information. Landmark is information the players get immediately for free. Can be denoted with bold. Hidden is information that the players get for interacting with landmarks. Can be denoted with > arrows. Secret is information that the players get using by either skills/knowledge of the players/PCs, or with time. Can be denoted with italics. Ex. Brick Oven > Dozen Dream Pastries Baking > Morgantha checks if done at the end of turn. Center Barrel > foul smelling green-black ichor inside > knock 3 times, summons dretch, up to 9 > Obeys Morgantha. Heavy Trunk > Croaking sounds, tiny holes bored in the lid > 100 toads jump out, harmless. Pretty Flower-Painted Cabinet > bowls, herbs, baking ingredients, hollow gourds (powdered bone inside), 12 locks of hair inside doors, Labeled containers > “Youth,” “Laughter,” and “Mother’s Milk” > Youth > Golden Syrup > Appears younger/more attractive for 24 hrs. Laughter > Reddish Tea > Cackling Fever (DMG pg 257). Mother’s Milk > Greenish Milk > Pale Tincture Poison (DC 16 CON save, 1d6 poison & poisoned. Save every 24hrs) Chicken Coop > 3 chickens, 1 rooster, 2 eggs Follow this with any exits from the room. Ex. Stairway going up > Shrieks and cackles heard upstairs > leads to O2. Bone Mill.
I find it so interesting how differently different people think. This looks like so much work to me, and I personally find it much easier to simply memorize all the text of the dungeon. Obviously not like *memorize* it, but after reading a Dungeon a couple times, I can usually find all the specific information in the text just as quickly as I could on notes taken about the text.
Yeah, that's what I do...not so much memorize as familiarize. Since I ran my games like sandboxes, I never quite know what the players are going to do or where they're going to go so I prepare for the 3 most likely scenarios and if they deviate from those then I absolutely wing it because if they arent gonna care then neither am I :P
It really surprises me how anyone can buy these D&D adventures books and really enjoy reading 200+ pages of words and boxes - that was supposed to be clear and objective - instead of creating an adventure by youself. These modules lack objectivity, didactics and organization. You spend the same time (or more) reading the entire adventure, memorizing parts, organizing, taking notes, than it would take creating something of your own that you would master more easily. Ultimately, these books are very far from being a facilitator of anything they propose.
Oh my god, such a good video! Funny af! And informative, yes! :) Btw, amount of work, you need to convert adventure into digestible format is so much, it LITERALLY easier and faster to make your own adventure from skratch, or use this book as a vage guideline if you particularly lazy today.
After a few years of rough DM’ing I came to this style of adventure prep on my own. Thanks for putting out a video to save others the time I’ve wasted learning this!
4:11 that's literally how I just described your curse of strahd remake as, a point and click adventure. WOW i was defiantly picking up what you were putting down there then. 6:48 Okay you did not explain the arrows in your document at all, that for me would have been a good use of page 2, instead of a cheat sheet of stuff from the adventure, but I appreciate that I got to this video within an hour of watching that other one. Clears things up, I thought that might be what it meant, something like "interact with further". Got it. Like just using that second page to explain the philosophy of interacting with your book and how things are laid out. 8:15 I did something very similar to the icespire peak starter set, rewriting the whole thing into a much more manageable campaign. It just ended, and I wrote it where I'd read a different section depending on what they did. I like what you've done here.
The best prep I've ever done consisted of a digital whiteboard in which I only had sticky notes and maps describing triggers, checks, and NPCs connected by arrows. It was a mind map/flowchart hybrid that made running the game a breeze. However, it was a pain to use for referencing past sessions.
I did exactly this a few years back when I ran C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan from the Yawning Portal book. It took the WOTC book, and my old copy of the 1st Edition module (with the illustration book, pregens and tournament scoring system), and rewrote them into a small square gridded journal notebook I bought for $5 from Michaels. It lays flat and has a couple of bookmarks. Since many of the encounters are elaborate set pieces, I redrew the room maps as two-page spreads, with icons for monsters and things the PCs could mess with in the rooms, and used a similar bullet point system -- each little map icon matched it's bullet point, with nested information arrows. Boxed text was written as general things to see, and more detailed descriptions if the PCs bother to examine each thing. If a sequence would start in the room, I made a sidebar with the events listed with timestamps, and notes on how things would change if the PCs interrupted the sequence of events. Made it much, much easier to run.
This is excellent info. I’ve been running SKT for over two years and have added a LOT of my own content & interpretation, but with your method, I can streamline these modules to make them more digestible. Thank you!
I ended up writing the entire Ravenloft on my laptop, room by room. it was just impossible to run it without making my own notes. I still need to work into making better notes, like you have, to make it easier on eyes and faster to read.
Oh yes ! I agree that those adventures have too many words and are a hassle to prep up . But tbh , i think that almost all adventures of 5e are even badly designed and not really fun to play . I would prefer that adventures should be a frame-work which the DM could design the context and the content into it that can change how the DM designs it around the framework. Curse of strahd was very dissapointing . We played the original module and we loved it while it was only the castle . Curse of strahd on the otherhand was was either way too laughable , boring when we are at the towns and dungeons and the encounters were far too forgiving . I borrowed the Curse of strahd book and when i readed i realised that it would be much cooler as a framework with maps , deacriptions of the NPCs and monsters that could appear in this setting as a setting guide-line . Even other books were really horrible to read and running campaigns with it was more lame than exciting . Thats why i prefer adventure books be frameworks for the adventures/campaigns instead being "fully-fledged " adventures that are horribly handled and designed . Thats why i prefer OSRs lately and avoid 5e like the plague.
This is a more organized version of the process I use, but I put it in OneNote or similar. This way I cut anything that isn't helpful, or that I'd just be comfortable making up on my own. I tend to do this and then hardly use the notes because typing the important stuff out sticks it in my brain. Anything I forget is in easy bullet points. Thanks.
Alright, after binging a bunch of your videos, I know for sure that this channel is a goldmine. This stuff is extremely helpful especially for a first time DM like me. While yeah, sure, I may be yet to actually use your tips and see how affective they really are at my table- I've been a player for just over two years with nearly 150 sessions played so, while still a beginner compared to most in the community, you've mentioned a lot of scenarios and habits I have lived through yet have zero idea on how to deal with since not much people ever focus on them. So while I'm not sure whether or not what works for you works for me, these videos have given me a start on solving stuff I see myself facing, finally on the other side of the DM screen. A lot of your tips is actually stuff I already know or have thought of, but the thing is I just couldn't ever piece them together into something substantial, helpful and effective, and when I turn to the internet for advice, it's usually the same stuff being regurgitated again and again for a minimum of half an hour. What I love most about your channel is that you seem to actively look for a unique take and voice in the middle of a huge echo chamber all in just a relatively short and concise video, so thank you a lot for that. It's real funny too that the first game I'll be dming is Curse of Strahd, and having read through most of the book, yeah I share your sentiments- like what the hell is up with Castle Ravenloft. Thank god for creators like you to guide me through this journey tho Also apparently I already watched the intro of this video some time ago but just clicked off? Past me must've been a fool ig
Oh and the way you end videos segueing into other vids- top notch. You're already such a youtuber despite starting so recently, and youre still so underrated like DAMN!!!
You are spot on. 5E adventures are long on writers doing fan doc short stories and terrible job of encounter set up. 1E adventures were best and 4E/5E adventures are the worst to run. I don’t want to study the module like it’s a text book and I am taking a final exam. I want to run a fun module
I have some old Dungeon magazines from back in the day; its amazing how much better the adventures were put together for easy assimilation and presentation than these books we get now. Heck, the original ravenloft module wasnt much bigger than most of the other modules you could get at the time. To be fair, this text book format adventure lasts a lot longer than those others; My run of Princes of the Apocalypse ran for 2.5/3 years before they finished it, and Curse of Strahd has hit the 2 year mark.
@@peterberg3446 If you are happy with the adventure length that is fine. My complaints are lack of direction. Walls of text to read through. Lack of coherent layout design and a lot of book flipping through different areas
Relatively new DM (about a year and a half) but looonnng time powerlifter/weightlifter. It all follows the same trajectory. The books are absolutely filled with information because they’re assuming any of these adventures could be someone’s first adventure. So it’s packed as a sort of crutch. But, with more experience, you learn what you need, what you don’t, and what works best for you. It didn’t take long before I realized “there’s stuff here if I want to use it, but none of it really matters. Let’s improv and have fun!” I do about 30 minutes of prep (which I enjoy) and we have no problems. It’s the same with weigh training- there’s an over abundance of information and dogma, but you can shed most of it and do what works for you with great results. The big problem I’m finding is that DM’s can be pretty precious about where they want things to go. Just hold on, say “yes, and…” and go along for the ride.
I playes through storm kings thunder, and then immediately after played pathfinder 2e kingmaker. The difference is astounding. Kingmaker really encourages the players to go off the beaten path and make their own story, where as dnd is a roller coaster with a single track
Your reading of the adventure text for the players reminds me of an ad for Gamemastering aids in the Dragon Magazine. The picture showed the GM, represented as a large snake, droning on about the exact angles between the walls of the room while their players are all falling asleep around the table. A label points to the snake’s dialog bubble and reads "level 20 sleep spell."
For me, the key is to make my own map and write the most important elements of a dungeon/location on that map so I never have to look to another page to see the room/chamber and its most important contents. It also lets me view a location as a whole as I can see relative locations of inhabitants and points of interest.
5:48. I'm playing that campaign with a 11.y.o anime rogue girl. "Seamonster is apex predatooooor!" Teal hair. I ate their cookies, got captured, and the party exchanged my life for a gemstone. Then Stradh did some nasty levitation on me and took my friend's eye. The next session on I roleplayed with PTSD until werevolves came in our way. Tried to eat one's carcass after battle. Since I bitten that crap I removed some PTSD effects...
I run these modules and they are great for a person like me. I also run them not ridged and not a rail road. I person that homebrews a lot will have a very hard time running them because they are not used to them.
Ok, hear me out. Been dming ghosts of saltmarsh for a long time and BOY that mf requires A LOT of work from the DM to make it work. It’s… really not good… even if it has a lot of cool characters and set pieces. At around level 9 I decided to completely remake the remaining chapters and introduce a large open world exploration segment in between the book’s remaining chapters (think one piece, going from island to island having whacky adventures). At some point I got wild beyond the witchlight and thought it would be a cool idea to have the starting chapter as the main attraction of an island and give the players the option to play the rest of that campaign starting each part whenever they wanted after that. They. Loved. This. Book. And I do too! It’s a surreal drug trip of an adventure designed for level 1 parties, but playing it at 11th level gave my players the choice to actually fight a lot of encounters that are made to be unwinnable in the adventure. Since most encounters are social they didn’t feel overpowered all the time either. It’s made up of small locations, a couple of short dungeons and a lot of random content like encounters with weird fey creatures. Exploration can be done wiith strict rules or just contained to a couple of encounters per day and a named location. With the exception of a couple of places, that are written more as traditional dungeons, almost every text blurb is short, informative and to the point, and player interaction with the stuff they find is always fleshed out and rewarding in one way or another. That format is sooooo comfortable for me as the dm to narrate and prepare that I seriously encourage anyone to give this one a try, just to see what I would say is the golden standard (although it may not be possible to follow this kind of structure in more dungeon crawlery adventures).
You would actually have to start with the chicken noise and the stench. The order how things will be noticed. I typically build a mind map of the story line. Like an adventure in a computer game would have triggers once players approach an area. Tremendously helps to trigger dice rolls of environment checks. Dimensions in the visual section would only conveyed when the room is entered. The chicken noise and smell would already convey when messing with the door.
So rewrite the whole book? I have DMed since the white box and just write my own adventures. Saves money, and since I did it myself, the entire adventure is in my head.
Great advice. I have often found myself pausing mid game to find an answer to a player question that may or may not be buried in paragraph after paragraph of info. Good reminder to me to do the concise prep work like this up front and just go with that, and F everything else.
Oy. New DM here. I am running the Dragons of Stormwreck Isles Campaign for my first time with Beginner Players. I also own several Campaign Books like Tomb of Annihilation which also appears in the Video. I have to admit, that I do not always go by the Books and adjust the Story, Events and Characters the Party meets from time to time, but follow the Instructions most of the time. I don't know if I read it somewhere in the Dungeon Master's Guide or if I've heard it on a DnD Channel, but you are always free to make some Changes and improvisations for each Campaign you play as well as bending the Rules a bit (but you have to abide by them for the rest of the Game clearly). My Group does not get bored if I read the Passages for each Room or introduce a new Character. I am also very thankful that I can read those again if needed and each of them then tells me what they gonna do. I wouldn't judge the Books too harshly as they are trying their best to make a compelling Story with many possibilities and surprises for the Players. It is also much easier for me to keep Track of the Rooms and to plan Enemy Actions this way. I also spice up some Monsters by trying to think and Act like them, even if some things are not mentioned in the Lore and Stat Blocks. For Example: I let the Spore Servant Octopus hide underwater and ambush the Players, who then tried to find it's Location, instead of attacking it directly. It tried to slam them against Walls and pull them underwater to drown them. It was a great Mini-Boss which was successfully teaching them ambush tactics, Teamwork and advantage and disadvantage. The Adventures are great and you get good guidelines for a Campaign, but you are always free to make Changes depending on how you and your Players want the Adventure to be. We have so much fun at the Table! And I am currently doing some Prep for the Harpy Encounter on the Shipwreck and the great Finale with Sparkrender. After this, the Dragon of Icespire Peak will be next.^^
the shift from modular, well, modules, in the old days to pre-written and pre-planned plots is what really dooms all officially published adventures especially those by the people that own the Brand TM. And it's been the fundamental mistake of the IP holders since then (about the mid 80s) that holds back so much innovation in the hobby
Another tip could be to use either pen or pencil in your notes depending on what you want to draw attention to, or use different colors of highlighters to color code what various things are.
My favorite use for adventures is in OSR games, where adventures are either small hexcrawls or dungeons which can populate a larger hexmap so I don't have to come up with too much and players aren't locked into a single module.
I like this organization, but I think it could be even easier on the eye with one more feature: indentations. Like in programming, they can help you figure out at a glance what's within a specific object, and can help maintain a visual hierarchy of your landmarks, hidden and secret information even from a distance.
When you got down to explaining the actual tip it was short and succint. Love the comedy and editing style throughout as well. I will definitely be using this tip going forward. You've also earned yourself a new subscriber.
This video alone will probably change the way I take notes. While point & click games were not my forte growing up, looking at the game from players' perspective like that certainly makes note taking a lot easier. Thank you for your wonderful insight.
So adventure modules suck because you need to do prep. I think the video deserves a better title. I understand you're not *really* shitting on modules here, but if you want to tell us more about your prep tricks and tips, just call the video that.
I use Foundry VTT, which lets me place notes directly on the map (which only I can see), as well as loot containers with the actual items inside, which contain all their stats and effects, and even any GM notes I want to write on them. I can even link items to characters, or locations to lore, etc, with buttons which directly open the relevant notes
Creating a note like your example would take all of my prep time for every day of the week for a 5 room dungeon. And that’s WITH being able to copy/paste the book text and just reformat it into bullet points
By Nivi Rhombodazzle's own left buttcheek, you have shown me a method that I need to begin using for writing my own campaigns. To heck with verbose prose! Short, snappy, nested notes shall be my new way forward.
As a new DM this is great for me. I love the way you present the info and the idea of how you create notes like you showed for the O1 room is brilliant.
I ran D&D for a few years before even picking up an adventure. I would actually recommend that a new DM just write their own. Preferably a one-to-three-shot with a straightforward story and very basic town (maybe no more than 5 NPCs / buildings). I'm running Fog Over Dawnwilde at the moment, and this is my main issue. Although it's a great adventure and my players are loving it, it took me time to read through those 48 pages and make bullet-pointed notes from them. I ended up turning 48 pages of adventure into 20 something pages of notes, which is better but still not perfect. My solution to this is that adventures should really have two books, the super detailed big book, and a smaller book / pamphlet with all the fluff stripped out and everything bullet pointed. I want to be able to run a whole session with only two pages of content in front of me, no flipping required!
I am not going to lie, the obnoxiousness of the jokes outweighs the usefulness of the information. You had great advice about note taking, prereading the adventure, and preparing before the adventure. All great stuff. The jokes, though. It was hard to get through.
At the end of the day it's a formatting issue with these mainstream adventure books. They have good ideas and scenarios to sit and daydream about, but if it's not written in a format that makes the PLAY easier then you might as well get inspired by other media.
This strategy just saved my ass. I was struggling to figure out how I was going to get all the details of Phandalin fully organized when the players could go to any location in any order in town. The nothing descriptions of the locations in the book didn't help either. I compiled a 4 page document that contains my own written description of each place and NPC I can organically read out loud and then using your arrow strategy, I defined who each NPC is, how they act, and what information they can offer the player. 4 condensed pages for what is normally SEVEN pages worth of information scattered about through random paragraphs. I went from hard stressing my session to being fully 100% confident my players could go anywhere and I could deliver them exactly what they need from the area
when I first started DMing, I picked up a module figuring "This will be easy to do while I am just learning to DM" Worst mistake ever. Dont try to run a module. Even if you are a new DM. At most use it to source isolated encounters then build your own thing.
I'm currently DMing my first campaign atm, and something I've learned from running Dragon of Icespire Peak is that the guidebook is just that... a guide. They do the worldbuikding legwork for you and give you a bunch of dungeons, NPCs, and plots to work with but like... do what you want. For Halloween, I took a quest from the campaign that was kinda boring (there’s a farm what has orcs in it. Kill orcs, rescue farmers, go home. Yawn.) And just threw out the official thing and stuck a spooky halloween themed dungeon in there. The plot hook was the same (orcs on the farm, help) but used that as just the introduction. Orcs came, drawn to a spooky dungeon the farmer found while trying to expand basement. What in there? Why bad? Spook. It wasn’t great, first time making my own shit and all. And I learned a good few lessons from it to apply to future stuff. But still better than just "Go place, roll dice at orc" for 5 hours. TL;DR I've found adventure books to be a great way to learn how to DM, but not very good for actually playing without alterations.
My favourite ready-to-go one shots are Rotblack sludge and Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch for the Mork Borg system. They take like 9 pages. Half of those pages are pictures and a map. A small map of the room (which is described on this page) pictured at the top of every page. Did I mention those two are free? I encourage you, guys, to share good ready-to-go adventures here
I have never watched a video by Deficient Master before and I am astonished how this video looks like the inside of my brain, especially the bit where you suddenly have to google a retro game box cover to find the sexism. He's not wrong either. I haven't run a pre-written D&D adventure yet, but with other pre-written adventures, I always have to make my own notes and prep until I kind of know the whole thing without having to look. A bonus of making up your own adventure is that you already have it all in your head because you wrote it! (And if you change something or make stuff up nobody will know.🤫)
This video is ultra helpful for newbie DMs like me that would like to start with a pre-written adventure. An advice for your videos though: I really struggled to get to the meaty part on your second half of your video. IMHO consider being a bit lighter or shorter with the jokes early on, because I was 3 minutes in and I still didn't knew where did you want to got with this. I'm happy I remained up until the end, but I can't deny I struggled to keep interested up to that point. You have a lot of potential and I'm giving you my 2 cents, best of luck.
I got fed up running WOTC adventures because you essentially have to rewrite their product to make it usable. I'd rather spend my time creating content than correcting poor work.
My issue is that every single prerun ever done at my table, nobody at all had remote interest in the main plot and kept just railing against the limits of the premade.
