Printed Adventures vs. Homebrew

 I am a bit preoccupied with the history of Dungeons and Dragons. By that I include the birth and development of Pathfinder and several other systems. Under the actual D&D umbrella of products there are (at least) five editions spanning more years than I have been alive. That is where part of my fascination comes in. What adventures were those early players having? What did their fantasy worlds look like? Was it a simpler time to roll dice with friends or were the early explorers of this new medium of play discovering all the complexity that modern games provide?

For the majority of the time I have been gaming the early adventures were only in the hands of aging collectors who rarely parted with them. I could read about the original Tomb of Horrors or Temple of Elemental Evil. I could even get modern modules inspired by these and other original creations. For some reason this lacked the authenticity of the original printed material. Honestly, I wanted TSR and later WotC to print 2nd, 3rd, and 5th edition updates of the original modules. I might have wanted 4th edition copies had I played then. 

When I discovered Pathfinder it wasn’t long before I became similarly preoccupied with their Adventure Path material. I was dismayed when adventures printed just 6 or 7 years before were out of print and extremely expensive to purchase on eBay. Paizo helped me out a bit by releasing an reprints in the form of Anniversary Editions of Rise of the Runelords and later Curse of the Crimson Throne. 

Since I have been collecting 5E, I have been purchasing every printed adventure. I have played or ran several of them. They vary in quality both in the company that put together the adventure and the DM running the game. I often think back to Travis running Tyranny of Dragons. It was a very solid campaign. Whitneigh played our cleric later turning paladin after picking up a holy avenger sword. Kraft and I took different paths on ranged DPS. I ran an assassin rogue while he blasted away with a crossbow wielding fighter. His damage was consistent and laid waste to the enemies round over round. I came out with explosive sneak attack damage to start fights whenever possible and then fell into a rhythm of firing from cover and hiding. 

When the first book of the campaign was over I felt no shame in thumbing through my copy of the printed material. I learned a few things. There were sections of the material that our choices in game caused us to miss which would have been a lot of fun. I learned Travis was a solid DM. I learned I am a difficult player to have at the table. Several of the things that he had to skip over were a result of my shenanigans. I didn’t crack open Rise of Tiamat until the campaign concluded. The way Travis took the game was a hell of a lot more satisfying that the options that the printed material gave us. 

I would go on to run a Princes of the Apocalypse game. I made a few mistakes at character creation allowing Walt to make a character who was basically chaotic selfish. When we settled into the town that acts as the initial hub of the adventure my players murdered the Zhentarium contact and replaced him. They then proceeded to strongly ignore the events related to the elemental cults in favor of extorting the town for fun and profit. Never let the most influential player at the table create a character that has no reason to participate in a heroic themed adventure if that is what you are setting out to play. The campaign fizzled in favor of a different game, and I blamed the printed material for my failings to run the game. 

A similar thing happened when Walt ran us through Out of the Abyss. One of the players (not admitting it was me) moved to seduce the Drow Priestess of Lolth in charge of the slave group we found ourselves in. After that situation resolved in a surprisingly successful way the group found themselves roaming the under dark with little interest or reason to stay on a campaign course. The campaign fizzled with us drowning in an undercount river equivalent of ,”rocks fall and the entire party dies.” Reading through the campaign book later I was glad I had not tackled being the DM for that one. 

I found myself then thinking about all the fun we had at the table in the homebrew world I started developing back in my high school days. It is appropriately grim dark with all but one deity no longer having access to their followers on the prime material plane in the aftermath of a holy war which saw the banning of organized religion and later the magical sealing off of the entire world from divine influence (save of course the one deity who had been banished from the prime pantheon.) We spent sessions chatting with a Beholder librarian, fighting off deranged cultists, and teaching alien women to love. Probably not that last thing. I was making most of it up on the fly with only the loosest idea that the campaign was meant to give the players a chance to break the seal and bring the gods roaring back in to help their followers. Mostly we spent a lot of time with my peace loving and weed smoking (vaguely Rastafarian) dwarves.  Good memories were made by all. 

I was thinking through all those games when planning my most recent game. My fondness for classic campaigns and a solid gift from Whitneigh put the Original Adventures Reincarnated series of books on my RPG shelf. Into the Borderlands collects B1 (In Search of the Unknown) and B2 (Into the Borderlands) in both their original printing as well as a 5E compatible version. I couldn’t help but want to dive into these games. Honestly, I wanted to hand them to someone else to run for me, but running them is nearly as good for experiencing the adventure. 

I made some decisions about the game. I set the campaign in the Forgotten Realms. You can place Quasqueton pretty easily anywhere south of spine of the world on the sword coast. I made it a few days hike north of Silverymoon in some reimagined forested hills. After reading the modules I knew that I could run a mini campaign by starting the player’s off with a bit of a reason to be seeking after the former famous adventurer’s secret home. 

I rewrote a few details of the printed material to make it make more sense for me. Zelligar and Rogahn went from adventuring companions to lovers. Honestly, they read that way to me from the source material in spite of a little evidence that one of them likely swung both ways. The barbarian invasion from the north makes even more sense if Z&R were allying themselves with the orcs in the area which is in line with the original module. I also futzed a bit with the timeline of their disappearance. I resisted the urge to change Z&R’s alignments. 

All of these details are things only someone who had read the module would know. Presenting the story to my player in scraps of rumor and conversations with NPCs lets them write their own narrative. When introducing the adventure I set up a few NPC patrons that gave different reasons to send the party searching for the hidden home of the infamous adventuring duo. Basically, I had a good aligned NPC, an evil NPC (who I modeled after the jailer from the Brendan Frazier version of the Mummy), and a neutrally aligned NPC who is all about material gain. 

During character creation on Session Zero, I paid close attention to what everyone wanted to create. Zach built a tiefling bard who I know won’t be roleplayed as anything except chaotic selfish. Love my little brother from another mother. He plays the same basic personality at every game which is both awesome and dependable. His character will always want loot, magical items (I mean who doesn’t), and to do smart ,fun things in combat. 

To be fair, no matter who I roll up I am often the exact same character that I enjoy playing. I will be cocky, impulsive, and rebellious against any form of authority. I point that out to say that I am not criticizing Zach in any way. I enjoy having him at the table partly because I know who he is going to be in game, and it is even more exciting when he has an out of character moment that defies my expectations. 

Tyler knew early in game that he wanted to be something magical. He was leaning toward a sorcerer or warlock. He also wanted to run as a gnome. I gently pushed him toward wizard because the min-max player in me also influences me as a DM. I enjoyed watching him get caught up in the background of the character as a sailor. 

Taila put together a paladin mostly because she saw the group needed some muscle. I cannot exactly read her mind even being her father, but I think fighter or barbarian looked a bit boring. She also was pretty into the idea of being Dragonborn and paladin fits the stat bumps. Ah, how the power gaming flows in the DNA!

Whitneigh often ends up as a healer. I hate to push the stereotype of the wife or girlfriend being in a game because the boys need someone to keep them alive. For Whitneigh I think it always works out that way because she isn’t too picky about what she plays and everyone else rushes into their concept. I personally love playing clerics. I have about five different hooks that interest me (a weed smoking, pacifist dwarf as an example) when being the party’s source of spare the dying and cure wounds. Whitneigh’s version is very self sacrificing and always elven. 

I rounded out the group with a thief and fighter NPC. Later they would also pick up a guide in the form of a ranger. I built character sheets and handed them out for the players to run. Keeping it simple, the rogue will only fight if someone is actually dying. She is there to find traps and open locks which are skills the party blatantly lacks. The fighter is a paid mercenary who lets me hit them with slightly more difficult challenges. He also loves his pet peg that follows them around because I have a cute pig mini that came in with one of the Kickstarter campaigns for Iron Kingdoms which I backed. 

By the time this publishes, we will be in our fourth session. We have traveled from Neverwinter to Silverymoon completely without incident in a large, well-armed merchant caravan. Though well equipped,  we picked up a few more things from Silverymoon before recruiting our guide and heading off down the road to adventure. 

The party has been ambushed by kobolds. This began a recurring theme of Zach’s character getting hit in the head with a thrown rock.  I believe it has happened at least once a session since though he was the only character I didn’t down in session three. Developing a thick skull may be important to survival at my table. 

We began tracking through the woods. We fought more kobolds. We saw a large red dragon fly over. We camped which turned out to be an adventure in and of itself. 

Over that first night camping the party met a wandering merchant named Ogden. He joined their camp for protection. They heard orcish war drums in the night. Then some unknown being robbed them of all their coin and magical items. Ogden too was victimized even losing the boots from his feet. 

The party set off in search of kobolds trusting their ranger guide to lead them to the thieves. They found them in a cave where Zach was once again hit in the head by a rock. Another party of NPCs stumbled across this scene mocked them for their trouble with kobolds and left them to their own devices. Eventually the party got into the cave and killed a few kobolds and the fire warm one was riding. 

The next session saw the group setting off for the hold of Z&R. There is nothing like them trying to get back on track with the adventure. Instead they got lost in the woods for a few hours. They found themselves walking in circles until they ran into a Goliath paladin and his companions healing a grievously injured man. It turned out to be Ogden the merchant. Who knew a barefoot and unarmed human might come to harm in kobold and orc infested woods?

The party was bullied into taking Ogden back to Silverymoon. They were also able to find out that he is in a hurry to get there because his son has been abducted and taken to a temple somewhere on the borderlands. 

After a few random encounters the party was set upon by Ogden’s attacker. This invisible foe attacked the party repeatedly only to vanish into the trees. The bard managed to tag him with a sleep spell which also downed half the party. The cleric literally tripped over the invisible Orc waking him and allowing him to escape after downing the gnome wizard with a savage slash from his axe. 

In a moment of role playing genius the cleric suggested they build a raft and float out of the wilderness to Silverymoon. I spent a few minutes scrolling through monster entries looking for an aquatic menace that could attack the party without blatantly killing them. The merrow they fought might have been gimped a bit so as to not kill them. The paladin discovered that water walking magical items may allow you to ski behind the raft, but when you go prone in water things get real. Luckily, the cleric was not the least bit afraid to dive into the river to spare the dying. 

We have been gaming for fifteen hours successfully and have not even touched the printed material I keep revisiting to keep myself ready to run. We are actually on our way to Silverymoon. There is a good chance that we will follow game threads there that will spin us off away from Rogahn and Zelligar’s keep. That is a good thing. 

The important NPCs in the game are the ones that the players have strong feelings for. The storyline is the one that the players enjoy following. My prep for each session is very simple. I read through what we have done thus far (note taking while you play is important) and I figure out what plans my NPCs have that support or oppose the party. I spend a little time updating random encounter tables based on where I think we might go. I try to come up with at least one fun gimmick that I want to introduce. 

When we get to the table that leaves the the party free to chase down what resonates with them. There was only a 20% chance that the party was going to find Ogden alive after they left him in pursuit of the thieves that stole all their stuff. The party had recovered his pack and in the prep for the session where they found the paladin tending his wounds they could have easily opened up his magical pack and discovered his journal which had its own adventure hooks. Fun fact about this party, they seem to take every NPC at face value. We haven’t rolled an insight check yet. I predict a party betrayal in the future. 

I love, collect, and use printed adventure content. Occasionally, I like a story enough to follow it pretty closely. More often than not games at my table are just me managing the hooks that the player’s provide with only the gentlest of steering hand putting them in situations I have planned. I like using the traps, dungeons, maps, and (less frequently) the NPCs from printed material and reskin or repurpose it for my sessions. 

I don’t care if my players ever get to Quasqueton. If they do I have some surprises to go with the original content. Will I find myself reading some of the passages for what they find in rooms? Sure. Have I modified the dungeon heavily so that it fits more closely with the way I like to run games? Of course. For example, every intelligent creature in my games can be talked to and negotiated with if the party is clever enough. It may be difficult and even impractical at times but in theory an encounter that is avoided by clever role play should reward the same experience as slaying all the monsters. 

I have also been peppering these session with creatures and storylines that lead to other material. My party could find evidence of trouble with humanoids putting together a horde for Tiamat, encounter elemental cultist, or even find themselves wandering into mists which could whisk them way to a land ruled by a bloodthirsty count. If I manage to get all the mechanics worked out for 5E they could even find themselves climbing through a silver tower to confront the gaunt summoner of Tzeench…. I mean I have the minis and maps. Why not?

I don’t believe there should be any opposition between homebrew and printed adventures. As long as players are having fun you are doing the right thing. I spend a lot of my D&D playtime in reading different material and coming up with fun ideas. I supplement my own creativity by immersing myself in the printed material and when it is really superior, I try to lead my players to find their way down the paths  that lead to it. 

There is no reason it has to be all of one thing or the other. This may have been obvious to everyone all along and this post may have left most of you reading it saying,” Duh!” For me though, those old adventures have always been held up as something sacred. Seeing that the next generation of gamer is going to think back to that time that they built a raft at my table to get Ogden back to Silverymooon makes me realize that legends are built more in reacting properly to your players.