Running Published Adventures (DM's Journey #3) 

Going to run my first d&d with friends tonight, we're doing the lost mines of Phandelver because we're all newbies, and this video is just in time!

Wait did he say his "Table Top RPG Class???" Where was this when I was in school 😭

I play DnD at my school, one of my teachers setup a dnd club, and I think it's reasonable for him to use the modules, since he is a teacher, and has less time.

I love that you teach a tabletop rpg class at school

When i run, i use published adventures and customize side stuff and add my own additional storyline!

I've been in homebrew games that were worse than published adventures. I got the feeling that both homebrew DMs I've played with didn't spend any prep time as they didn't want things to be 'on the rails' and so everything felt directionless. The games ended up being less a story and just a series of PC driven shenanigans messing with NPCs. As always, it all depends on the DM!

Lost mines of phandelver was amazing. quite a long adventure too. I actually want to play it again haha. Its fantastic as written but open enough to incorporate character stories easily. lots of maps and adventure, and most importantly it seems to slowly introduce different aspects of 5th ed. to new players. highly recommend the starter set.. You cant beat it for the price too. combined with the free dnd rules via the official site, and maybe a few sets of extra dice you can have a table full of players having a blast for weeks on end for less than 30 bucks.

I also use dungeons and dragons in my school. I teach English as a second language and find d&d a great way to help students engage in class using English while having fun. 😊 We are doing death house from Curse of Strahd right now

I’m a relatively new DM. I tried to start off doing my own adventure and quickly got overwhelmed. That’s when I got a module to run. I kind of feel like a module is little like DM’ing with training wheels for me personally and we have had a lot of fun with them so far. I do Wizards of the Coast modules as well as free hombrew mods I’ve gleaned from the Internet and I’ve been happy with them so far.

I've been running an adventure for my family out of the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount for the past month or so, an it's been extremely helpful for me as a new DM. I'm provided with a lot of resources already in the module (Tides of Retribution, if it matters), and I've been taking opportunities to build on those resources along the way -- fleshing out NPCs, building loot tables, spicing up combat... It's been such an excellent starting point for throwing us all into the game. But, of course, things went massively off the rails a few sessions ago -- one of our pre-written encounters took a turn for the worse when a large group of enemies got a surprise round on the party and their NPC crew. It took only two rounds for a TPK. I called an extended break, had brief panic attack, then quickly raced to formulate what would happen next. Came back to the table, used some generators to draw up some quick NPCs, and got to work. Now, instead of heading toward the final encounter of the module, the party is bound for Darktow to regroup and prepare. And yet, thanks to the previous parts of the module, I felt ready to take the story into my own hands. I can't recommend pre-written adventures enough for new DMs.

I'm a brand new DM running Lost Mine of Phandelver as my first campaign. For me, DMing is like being the director of a play. I don't also have to be the playwright. My skillset is more in managing and running encounters, playing NPCs and monsters, etc. I don't really have a lot of ideas for creating my own stories or worlds. So far the published adventure has provided everything I need to run a fun and interesting campaign for my players.

As a DM who's been running homebrew for 2 years twice a month, I recently picked up a published adventure. It's been such a refreshing and fun experience that I can do nothing but recommend it. In fact, I haven't even finished reading the book. You don't really need to read through everything, as long as you're comfortable improvising with your players. Not caring do much about the material you're running just feels great, since you didn't put hundreds of hours into working it. Just some of the most enjoyable games I've had

That is OUTSTANDNG that you teach a table top RPG class for high schoolers! Keep up the Strong Work!

i'm currently running the Hell's Rebels Pathfinder adventure path, and i love it because, as an urban adventure, the whole story takes place in one city with small treks out into the surrounding country-side. this requires the city to be incredibly rich with detail and it is. there's a great amount of freedom in what the players can be and it's very easy for a character to be connected to the city in some way because of the extreme detail. i run my own homebrew, but as i'm a little slow with session prep, i enjoy just sitting down for an hour or so and reading the book to see what's coming up next in the adventure.

I only run published adventures with homebrew in it. For me I like to get in depth in connecting players to the story but I don't want to work on the story itself. That's why published adventures work out better for me. Also one of the things I enjoy most about dnd is reading the books whether it is the phb or ToA I really enjoy reading dnd books. While trying to figure out how to connect things together in a story can be stressful and draining reading a dnd book for me is always a pleasure.

Commenting mid vid, so you may end up touching on this point... I've never understood the mentality of home brewing is hard / takes effort and published adventure modules remove that work and make it easier. Personally I can't run prepublished adventures (I've tried) I find it to be WAY harder and way more work. I don't have time to read a massive textbook, nor is my memory good enough to retain all the details of those massive tomes. Its nearly impossible for me to keep an internal log of all the characters, motives, etc. That makes it difficult for me to improvise, as I'm always worried I do something that goes against the canon of the book and I'll end up screwing myself. For me I do very simple home brews, I think in sessions, and make basic notes that I can take in at a glance during the game. I can prepare a session in a few hours or less. I can improvise whatever I want. Most importantly I understand the world and characters better because they are mine. I have a lot of respect for DM's that are able to successfully run big adventure paths.

I’m a brand new DM and am running my players through Sunless Citadel currently. I love your videos, Super helpful! I’ve been using the Sunless Citadel content as a spring board but improvising as well, it was cool to hear that Adding in personal touches or side quests can be a best practice for running published content! It’s more fun that way too, can’t wait to start making my own worlds. Thanks for this series! 🧚‍♀️🧝‍♀️

After running strictly homebrew for over 15 years, I have been running modules for the last 5 or so. I have found it fun that I am a little more in on the different nuances of the Forgotten Realms, the Underdark, different creatures I had ignored in the past, and participating "in the discussion" as you put it. I'm also very busy as a teacher and dad to two young kids. That said, I chop up the adventure and modify it heavily. For example, I'm currently running a party through Out of the Abyss (though modified for 3.5) and they just reached the Darklake and I threw in a "Jabba's Palace" style tavern on the Darklake run by a beholder. I also wrote up every single encounter leading up to it so far. My party is having a blast. I like taking the bare bones of the module and tweaking it to make it more epic, funny or fun.

i think even after i'm used to dm-ing, i'll still want to run published adventures sometimes just because they....exist....lol..they are there to enjoy! why not?! also there's so much content to draw on for homebrewing that you can get from the published modules

I'm going to be running Storm King's Thunder pretty soon for a group of friends at uni, I definitely fall into the category of "dm who lacks inspiration" lmao. First time dming (properly) as well, the tips you gave here will definitely help 😀

I'm reasonably new to DnD, I grew up listening to Spoony's Counter Monkey series and I recently ran a homebrew Call of Cthulhu campaign with 2 players. These videos are a godsend for new DMs like me whose players want to start cracking open the massively dense boulder that is DnD. I got the LMoP module and will be running that to get a grip on the setting and basic rules before writing my own. Thanks for the videos and support!

I would like to mention that the pathfinder beginner box has downloadable free addon adventures known as Beginner Box Bash Demos. You can find them on the paizo website.

The one tip that seemed counterintuitive was that published adventures don’t save time. I definitely found that to be true: I was surprised how much time investment was required to understand the published adventures (Tomb of Annihilation took several weeks of reading) but when I put together my own adventures I found I could recall details so much quicker during game sessions (this makes sense since it was my story and not someone else’s I had to learn).

I am glad to hear you "hack it up pretty well" when running published adventures. I am doing the same with some students in our DND club right now. But they are LOVING it! I feel quite fine going off the story to the benefit of keeping the kids engaged and enjoying DND. I feel NO guilt! Great video!

I do think running the modules save me time. When I have to think my own stuff I often get chocie paralysis or writer's block, it takes me waay longer to come up with my own stuff than read and prepare a module

As a DM, I like published adventures as sources for inspiration, maps and encounters for a more sandboxy game. As a player I prefer the more sandboxy published adventures or a DM who is happy to be flexible with more linear modules.

Myself and a group of friends have recently started playing D&D and playing through the lost mines of phandelver. I find it is a very interesting story and gets the players invested on what’s going on, I will definitely be picking up a premade adventure to run afterwards, I feel I could do with a little more experience before taking off on my own imagination. I have tried adding in a little bit here and there for the characters and it seems to be going well, I just need to figure out the bigger picture for each of them 🤔. Great content keep it up, I find it incredibly helpful 😁

I'm running an adventure module because I'm a high school student, doing sport at a national level and running three campaigns. I'm running one as an adventure module because I always talk 2-3 hours planning per regular session.

Thank you for spending your creative energy tending to our future adventures!

I'm actually running a game using several different modules with extra prep work and a setting guide for the forgotten realms. the players can change their module at any time and i have done tons of extra prep work and organized a bunch of "Side quests" so that the world feels more full. it is like the base game is the setting and all of the adventures are DLC.

I see them as excellent learning tools. They are great for learning how to run a system and special mechanics. The different adventure paths from pathfinder usually are used to introduce new mechanics like their mythic tiers, kingdom building, and such. This is one of the great things about them.

Great video Nate, I totally love your channel. I have been DMing for 2 months now and I started with a publishes adventure called Princes Of Apocalypse. One of my players wanted to solo role play his backstory and I accidentally killed him so we turned it into "Flashback Sessions." It became it's own campaign with all of my players, RIP Thoog. Now everybody in my group is involved and we haven't played from the book since our second session. I love the freedom of story I now have to give then.

I feel the same way he did starting out! (I still do right now as I'm still new at DM-ing) Thank you so much for your helpfulness.

This video was incredibly helpful. I watched this months ago when I was newer to DMing. Thank you sir

Favorite published adventures? Against the Giant's 1st ed. The entire Descent series, because Drow! (The original drow-when they first appeared!) The Bloodstone series where you end up fighting Orcus in his home. And Threshold of Evil, from issue # 10 of Dungeon magazine. Where someone reasons out just exactly what a 20th level mage can accomplish when he has time and wish spells on his side. You can still find copies on ebay.

Thank you so much for making this series. Me and my family have decided to get into the game and none of us have any experience playing and we decided i should be dm. This has helped so much to figure out what im supposed to do

Great video man! I was actually surprised to not fall under the categories of GM's who would run these adventures. I like them because I love the world of the Forgotten Realms and get a kick of having my players run around through areas that I read about in the Drizz't and Elminster series. I watched a lot of reviews for adventure paths and actually chose Horde of the Dragon Queen even though it was never rated very high, specifically because of its location. I am starting it next week and am super pumped about it!

I am a brand new dm. I am going to be running Tomb of annihilation in a few months. Thanks for the advice

Great videos thank you so much. I am running my first game ever as a DM with my wife and a friend and we are all new to tabletop RPG’s. We have a lot of experience with tabletop games like Terraforming Mars, Dune, Apollo and Villanous but wanted to get creative and expand our gaming. We are playing through the Dragon of Icespire and I have started expanding the on-rails adventure to fit their character stories better after an initial run through the Dwarven Excavation. I’m really enjoying your vids and can’t wait to get better at being a DM.

Nate is the best DM around town

I'm a new DM who has only played a few games 15 years ago and looking to start a new party with some family and friends. I typically work 60 hrs a week and dont have the time or experiance to create my own adventure. I have planned to start with the lost mines of phandelver and move to storm kings thunder if the party sticks together. The published campaigns have helped a ton so far and well see how well the game goes in 2 weeks when our first session starts. Wish me luck.

Nice! I just started DM'ing the Tomb Of Annihilation, so this is great!

I think the railroading issue isn't exclusive at all to published adventures but more tied to DM attitude. They can't anticipate every choice a player group will make so a DM will always have to tailor it. They even say this. As soon as you open the book, the adventure becomes your own. It's a problem in homebrew too; the DM has an idea of how the plot will go, the players make a choice not thought of, now they're in the same boat. What published adventures give you is a well fleshed out world. Villains and npcs that make sense and stay consistent. Well thought out locations. There's typically content that players wont ever see. Need to change things up? Move that content to where they are to get the story going. You at least have the tools to make it coherent, now you just need to figure out which parts your players need and when.

Its my first time DMing tonight and I'm running The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Wish me luck!

If the module is fun, awesome. If homebrew is fun, awesome.

Definitely good to use a published story to get your head around the mechanics, when you're solid on that, then go for your life with your own stories!

This really helped me. Thank you.

I can't get enough of your baldness!

In my opinion 5e needs to release a "Villians" supplement because more often than not the heroic party is just a reactionary to the villian's motives and plans. So if we had an official 'Who's Who' of the forgotten realms which stated every important villian or character's agenda and aspirations, that could be much more useful for DMs in creating new adventures while still having a feeling of 'officialness' than an adventure module. Secondly, when i do run a published adventure, i change remove add mix and match just about any and every feature of the adventure. To some people our campaign would look unrecognizably different from the module

for the short on time thing, you can also download a bunch of little one shots and short adventures and scrapbook them into your campaign is super easy and quick. just change names and backstories to match your story and jump into it. most are like 5 or so pages and loads are free or under $5

Great tips and advice! I bet you’re a fun high school teacher, the kind that students never forget.

I had this problem tonight with "The Lost Mine" campaign. I kept having to look back at the monsters and it was annoying

have the site donjon at the ready. It is so damn handy for making quick adventures, especially dungeons. Also their easy to use encounter calculator and monster listing helps when deciding based on CR what monsters to throw in.

My entire Pathfinder game as a DM was based on modules, campaign and lore of Golarion... but I modified them so much that it was almost unrecognizable at the end in the hope that my players (who are readers-fan of all that is RPG) can still be surprise. It take me a lot of time to change all the stories, and enconters, and dungeons, but it was still really satisfaying because at the end, it felt like my own product. And because I had that solid base, it was easier to improvise along the will of my players if they went off the rails. For exemple, the group just finished "Hollow's last hope" and "Crown of the Kobold King" when a new mage player joined the table. In his backstories, he was coming from Olfden. I could just have them go to the next module ("Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale" that I adjusted to be their level) but thanks to Pathfinderwiki, I knew in the lore that Olfden was supposed to be attack that year (4707 AR) by werewolf. So I got the new player and goes : "Yeah, so in fact, your city was almost ravaged by these creatures and your mission is to get help from Falcon's Hollow." And that's how I had to created that massive urban guerrilla. In all this, the players instantly became brothers of arms, finally gained a group name (the Company of the Silver Blood) and... got into a few trouble with the group getting exiled of Andoran because of political friction with the mayor of Falcon's Hollow, and the mage getting a traveling trader pregnant... thus starting the next module as I wanted but in such an organic way that it didn't looked at all like getting on rails again. I have maybe another exemple for each member of that six-players-table, but it would probably be too long to write it all and nobody will read it anyway, so...

I use Stat Trackers - its expensive, but really worth their weight in gold, and they come with many blank cards in case you want to use creatures from Tome Of Beasts or say from Dreaded Accursed.

Thanks for the video, Nate! You are awesome! I think one way to save time using published adventures is to take dungeons from those books and integrate them into your campaign, including necessary changes. For me dungeon and combat design are the most time consuming part of preping. It's a lot of fun, but you know.... with all this important real life crap you just might be short on time. (Kidding, both my fantasy and real lives are great=))

Great stuff Nate, thanks! Yeah it's an interesting debate. Agree with all your reasons and scenarios! I think the main reason when I've run published adventures is just simply the excellence of the product. If you see or buy one that really stands out, inspires you, has amazing prose, an incredible plotline, and conjures up an atmosphere you'll never forget (*cough* Ravenloft) why then you want to share that with your players! Also, I'd add that it's worth remembering that D&D players have something like 35 years of adventures and modules to draw from - sure, you might have to update the stat blocks, but you can pick up amazing stuff from older editions or other publishers online for a fraction of the price of the official WotC releases. Finally - you can always go "halfway house" and use things like pre-published dungeon maps, or pre-published lists of plots, or pre-published lists of adversaries, and then do the rest yourself. Bit like the Adventure Kit idea.

I'm about to start DMing for the first time, after a few years worth of experience as a player. I haven't been playing for over a year now though, so delving back into D&D as a DM, decided to start with printed material. These videos have been useful/helpful, and have further cemented my decision to start DMing in this way.

My DM is about to hit a good break point in the campaign we've been playing since summer 2019. I'm going to run Dragon of Icespire Peak for the group with a new set of characters. I've played on and off since ADnD 2e. but this will be my first time as a DM. I'm looking forward to it, and hoping the pre-made helps with my growing pains as a DM.

I ran Storm King's Thunder. What I liked about it was it reskinned the sword coast based on a common threat, but did not force the characters down one path. It was a lot of reading and I agree, these do not save you time, but they do give you a solid framework. I often deviated from the script and added in one-shots and my rogue took on a warlock pact, they almost were swept into Barovia when they meet a vampire in the sleepy little town in the dessarin valley. If you run these word for word you are doing it wrong. "LET'S TALK"

Thanks for the tips Nate. Loved the video and again thanks for sharing. If I ever get to run a game this tips are a must. Oath of the Frozen King is something that has being on my head for a time. I got to be on my first 5E game this monday as a halfling fighter, and I loooved it, now I can't wait for the next one.

Great vids thank you

I find the Android app "D&D Companion App" very helpful for running encounters.

I started playing pretty late with 4e. DM'd and played for about a year then switched to 5e when that came out and played for another 2. It's been a few years since then and I'm starting up a campaign with some friends again. Doing the Lost Mines of Phandelver helps me familiarize myself with simply being a DM again. I wouldn't really have the time to sit and read a larger published works, myself. But they do look like a good time. Especially the Ravnica one since I started also playing MTG about a year or 2 ago funny enough.

Don't cry Nat. There are a few published adventure books with short adventures that are good for quick preparation time.

nice doornob

As a DM of over 30 years and multiple editions I agree that published adventures can be railroads. But the recent batch of 5e ones have been much more open (jungle trekking through Chult, exploring Waterdeep and Undermountain). Most of my games now are ran in my FLGS as Adventurers League so have to stick to what's written, but I still like to put little bits here and there tied to player characters back stories just to help personalise them.

Nate will yo be making more D&D Rules School videos? The first one helped clear some things up.

Tips start at 8:40 .

I like to use Adventure Path as a backbone of my campaign and inspiration and rest I tweak according to my players actions and decisions or if I have some cool idea of my own. Instead of line rails I use just dots in the story arc.

I personally think when learning a new system, if it is one where the GM prepares an adventure, then you SHOULD run at least one published adventure. This gives you a feel for how the games go, gives you insight into ways to use the mechanics that you might not have realized. You get an idea of tone, and can avoid accidentally bringing in baggage from the previous game you've ran ("you mean I shouldn't prepare a series of balanced combats for Numenera?").

I'm currently running a mashup of three 1e AD&D adventure modules (Against the cult of the reptile god, Secret of Bone hill, and Secret of Saltmarsh) in a 5e steampunk setting. I love modules for what I can mine from them. I've run some modules straight as well, but I am a dm that does much better with a basic structure and improv than remembering a zillion minor details and where to flip for which details. This sometimes causes issues if I don't take good notes on what I've changed... I wholeheartedly recommend running published adventures if you like. But if you are like me (discovery writer/gardner vs. outliner/architect), be sure to allow yourself to be loose with the source material. I also love the inspiration I get from the adventures. You can yank amazing dungeon rooms. Awesome villains. Interesting towns...there's a lot to mine from the decades of pre-written adventures.

I either use dndbeyond with separate tab pages for stats or an excel with the encounters per room. For additional encounters, I write the important stuff down: Stats, AC, HP, Attack modifier & avg damage.

Running my first game tonight. I have never played DND before so I'm happy for premade adventures. I tried to make my own...but it was overwhelming. I want to in the future but I want to get a feel for how the game works. Thank you for your videos

Im using The Sunless Citadel for my first session for tomorrow, i dont plan to do much actual playing, i think it will take some time to get them ready, its there first time as much as mine

Late to the party: I have always DMed my own stuff, but all my campaigns were doomed to die, because the playerbase changed and I run myself into forms of writer blockades. Now with dnd 5e I've runned Curse of Strahd and Rise of Tiamat. WotC makes awesome products now in my opinion and especially Curse of Strahd was an absolute blast. I will finish RoT this sunday and are planning on returning to Barovia soon. This are my first campaigns I have finished and everyone at the table had so much fun. Always have in mind, that you aren't restricted to the pages of these books. I have transformed the campaigns heavily, so far, that I have moved entire places around, but these book take so much work away from me and give awesome inspiration. Planning on running Waterdeep Dragon Heist next and will probably alter it heavily also, to include more of the heist aspect. Love the current WotC books.

Can understand where you're coming from. I run mainly adventure modules. Taking several and turning them into a themed campaign. But it takes a lot of time. Its reading once to get a general overview of each module. Then making it all fit, working in red herrings that foreshadow/tie in stuff 3 modules further in the campaign. Reading the text again and fixing/modifying the many inconsistencies and flaws that modules have. Especially 5e modules are often pretty open. Meaning you're expected to add tons of stuff yourself otherwise something like Rise of Tiamat is too straightforward and dull. Requiring a lot of fleshing out and "fixing" of content. Third/fourth time of reading the module is to indeed do it around the time you play and store it in your mind. I rarely look at the actual module during play. If you prepped well its stored in your memory. At least the important bits. Then improvise where needed. Since I tie multiple modules together it means they also need to be in a world. And when the players travel through the world they can go "off track". Creating homebrew side content is really nice to build up experience as well if you never made stuff before. When making a homebrew content I still use parts of modules. Some environments or battlemaps are easy to copy.

If you're a good DM, your players won't know its a published adventure...no matter how "elitist" they are. I have run adventures that are VERY well known and players(with 30+years of experience) didn't recognize them.

yeah, I chop modules up to make things fit better in the campaign. I do present-day cthulhu so most modules are not really tailored for my game. I homebrew mostly all of the campaign and I read modules for fun sometimes. If I'm not sure what to do I pull one in or just farm it for some cool ideas. Sometimes the only thing that actually makes it into the session is a location/a dungeon/a particular monster. If you just have a couple of modules you know on hand it can make your life easier esp. if you're doing something on short notice/if your group does something totally unexpected. You might not use any of them for weeks, but having something to fall back on if the party suddenly goes off the deep end can really put you at ease.

I love published adventures. I freely admit that my creativity gets tapped out. The big problem I've found with published adventures is trying to get into the head of the writer. There is a science fiction game where a lot of published adventures are about piracy and other criminal activities. Others are rather like reading a theatrical script and then trying to envision it. At times it's almost as difficult as writing my own. But in the long run they're well worth it.

So, I picked up Waterdeep: Dragon Heist intending to DM the campaign, but I also picked up Waterdeep: City Encounters off of the DMs Guild. My table is going to be a combination of Adventurer's League and Homebrew because the general sense of the new AL rules is unfavorable but I don't want to freeze out players who want to take their characters to another table. So, random encounters can help the Homebrew players catch up on experience if they're lagging behind the AL players, who don't get experience from random encounters . . . or gold . . . or magic items . . . Also, if we complete the campaign early (before November 2nd), or I want time to read through Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, I can run a few random encounters or homebrew some material based off the encounters listed. There's one encounter called 'Ensorcelled Child' which could make for a fantastic encounter, requiring the players to figure out the source of the child's possession, destroy the source, and then perform a ritual to drive out the possessing spirit. Or, I can make up a reason for the players to sneak through the lairs of one of the villains not used during our play through. Honestly, the possibilities are endless, you just have to find and cultivate the spark of creativity. For a lot of people that can start with a published campaign.

I remember one game where I stopped my players off at a small town by the ocean to rest and resupply then they were supposed to continue to the point of their quest either walking or maybe they noticed the passing caravan heading that way. BUT NO! One of my players rolled a Nat 20 to persuade a sea merchant to take them out to sea. WTF. Talk about having to be flexable. They literally spent a full hour playing "sailing simulator" then I had to whip up a huge storm that destroyed the boat washed them ashore, with exhaustion so they had to get on this caravan that just so happen to see them from the road just in order to get them to where I needed them for the end of that session. Had a great time, but dang I need to work on my improv cause this isn't the first time my friends have been like "wow that's a big tree. DM you said it was 80 feet tall right? Ok, I'm going to climb it." (DM remembers oh he has 11 hp left.) *facepalm*

I am currently running the lost mines of phandelver as a first time dm... I have photographed and printed the stat blocks... I have also got 3 players using the characters from the set and 4 not.... sometimes it’s hard to remember where and what their characters are able and allowed to do with players that have never played the game before. I myself have played very little but a few steps ahead of them... 😁

For me, the question of using published adventures is also a question of the system and setting I'm running. In D&D, I've never run a published adventure. I've occasionally skimmed some for inspiration, but I run my own plots, because "writing" them and building my world are part of the fun for me as a DM. However, I also frequently run a very different game, which lets the players be Sherlock Holmes in Victorian England, and that's a very different GMing experience. I almost exclusively run published adventures, because coming up with ever new murder mysteries which are compelling and consistent is way harder (for me) than coming up with a fantasy adventure.

I am a DM who can have good ideas - but I need something to fire up my creativity. This spark, this video I saw, that unrelated comment, some movie-quote anything. On the other hand I can really feel all those people feeling overwhelmed by prepared modules. I rarely ran modules - and then mostly one page dungeons or short adventures I heavily modified. I mostly buy modules for salvage-purposes - neat ideas I sprinkle in my adventures or build another ones from. But I have great respect of people who can run modules - because reading them makes so much fun and imaging to play this also - it just ends up totally butchered when I use one :D

in the game i played with friends i created a grey-dwarf(using normal dwarf stats, at the time...), with little to no backstory. read the drizzts books befor playing. decided i wanted a battlerager like Pwent. (the dms mom owned the original dnd books, he and i are good friends to this day.) asked my dm to create a prestige class and we worked it out. used only bites, head buts, feet, fists, elbows, knees, and armor to kill stuff with. some times i would torture enemies with mundane magical items to gather information. it was awesome. paid with my earnings to have magical armor items created for each slot if i did not earn them on quests. the group never found out where i came from until late in the game as i didnt even know. had to decide where my ever mead mug came from, so the dm created a cursed undead grey-dwarf city for us to quest in as an adventure. the home of my origin that had been destroyed after i was banished or left or what ever.

I am very new to this game and I will be the th in my family group. I am using stranger things hunt for the thessylhydra. It is very simple and it im enjoying adding my own descriptions of scenes to paint a visual picture. It also has limited encounters but I have the option to add more and the same with traps and treasure. It's worth a look for the ultimate newbie like me :)

Good info and advice. I get lots of info and inspiration online. I would love to see more short adventures from Wizards. Much like what is found on some dnd sites. I dont need 50 dollar books thst are huge time investments all the time. Old school style modules would be cool. Like what is in yawning portal.

I'm currently learning to dm never played before. It's very daunting just learning the rules I need to know, but homebrew scares me the most

I plan on running waterdeep dragon heist an I only plan on using it as a basic setting and altering the story a fair amount.

I say - being a DM is probably the best hobby for a teacher

Bless you my man's 🙏

Really enjoying this series. Nice to hear you say they aren't necessarily the easy way to DM. I'm yet to DM but have been working on my own adventure for the last year and a bit on and off. As you say, constantly revising details! Currently in a bit of a twist with the narrative that needs fixing! Will you be doing a DM's Journey soon on creating your own adventure?

I think about reading adventure modules to help me improve my adventure preparation. Not that I have a problem, but after 15 years playing I have never read a whole adventure module. I feel like there might be something I am missing, and I think about publishing my own adventures. Something like getting the format of a published adventure.

Hey Nate just a heads up Gale Force 9 is releasing a couple sets of Monster stat cards similar to the spellbook cards. They will be an awesome game aid coming in the future

I run published adventures with enjoy. There are so diffrent and such cool

I recently bought an adventure module for the following reasons: 1.) I'm a fairly new DM. I'm still working on a custom campaign and I want to get a feel for what goes into one. 2.) My little cousins just started and I want to give them a taste of what playing D&D can be like. 3.) Research. Taking elements you like from other stories doesn't diminish your creativity (so long as you're not plageurizing; different debate). Is using a module bad? That really depends on the module and what you want from the adventure.

I'm about to run my first adventure, and I'm playing a different take on the game. The players are playing as the monsters/villains. In order to ease me into writing, and comfort the first time players, I'm running a chopped up and mixed around Phandelver.

I have to DM Dragon of Icespire Peak in 20 minutes!

Love the video can u do a read of the core books for ppl that can't read that good cus I would really appreciate it I know ppl make home game I know dm will make theyer own monters and or give one that in the book more hp then normal for story line stuff I'm not one of these ppl who's like but the book says I just need help with a full understanding of the books so I can feel like I'm not just playing blind or with one hand behind my back if you can yay if u can't I understand ty for taking the time to read this hope u have a great day