I love running games. Fantasy, Sci-fi, Retro, Space, Modern… you name it, I love it. I love it when you’ve got those players sitting there, leaning forward, waiting to hear what you’re about to say, waiting to see what you’re about to hand out, and waiting to attack whatever it is you’re about to throw at them. In a nutshell, I love the challenge of creating an adventure that my players are going to want to talk about when they’re away from the table.
I’m talking about that campaign that you created from scratch – full of mystery, intrigue, danger, rewards, plot twists – and it’s all tied to the player characters in a meaningful and rewarding way.
Those moments when your players feel that you’re the BEST GM they’ve ever gamed with, it’s like you’ve won the game. It doesn’t get any better than that, right?
But what about those times when you start struggling to deliver, when you start running out of ideas, when you burnout so bad that those tires deflate?
That sucks. It sucks when your players say that they’d rather spend time with their girlfriends than sit through another lackluster, mundane session. Sigh. I’m talking specifically about when you can’t write, create, and design your own adventure or campaign anymore. Every so often I keep running into this problem. I get a little GM Burnout and those tires get deflated. It’s frustrating.
So what to do? How do you rejuvenate yourself? How do you start making an adventure or campaign that your players will love?
The fix:
Just go to a prewritten module. Shell out those bucks and buy some published adventures. Most of them are pretty good, so you have nothing to lose.
I know what you’re thinking: “Me? Use a premade published adventure?”
Yeah. Use a premade adventure. It takes you back to the old days, to the days of endless hours of gaming fun.
It doesn’t take much to run one of these, as most of the work has already been done for you. All of the NPCs, enemies, and monsters are designed from someone else’s point of view, so your players get a fresh, widened variety. They usually have maps, and those maps are usually designed with interesting detail. Even if the module uses a horrendously clichéd conflict (save the princess, help the village, or kill the necromancer), it’s still more fun than if you wrote and ran a similar home-brewed adventure. It’s nostalgia.
“But my players like our adventures to involve the PCs personally, involving their PCs’ backgrounds.”
Ok, so add it in. Running a premade module doesn’t mean the PCs can’t run into known allies and enemies from previous adventures. By all means, include them. It ties the adventure to the player characters, bringing them closer into the story. Pretty soon that premade module stops seeming so bland, instead developing into a pretty interesting and rewarding story.
So that’s it. It’s not intricate and we’re not reinventing the wheel. When you start feeling the burnout from a game that you just don’t want to run anymore, jazz it up by throwing a premade adventure in there, and tailoring it to fit your PCs’ story hooks. You’ll fix that burnout with fresh new tires.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Stevens
In Chris's opinion, the very best vices are dirt bikes, rock music, and gaming, while the very best medicine is fatherhood. If he could just learn to balance them all, he'd live forever. He's much more creative than intelligent, often wakes up belligerent, and ponders many things insignificant. Lastly, in an effort to transform his well-fed body, P90X, Roller Blades, and Food are all laughing at him. And the pain continues.
THIS IS PERFECT TIMING. Ha-HA! So simple. Thanks!
Wait, wait- you mean rehashing prepublished adventures is a last resort, not the norm? So much for my “Isle of the Temple of Castle Amber under ownership of the Silver Princess” campaign. 🙂
Great stuff. Using a module like this just let’s your brain rest while still keeping the momentum in the game moving forward. Plus, the players never know you’re using a module unless you tell them.
Quirky – you said it, “let’s your brain rest.”
True, true.
This is also good advice for the busy DM. Making a good original adventure from scratch takes time. Just like making spaghetti sauce from scratch. If you customize a module, you already have a good base. You can add your own special herbs and spices to make it fit to your campaign. It takes less time and you can focus on the parts that are the most interesting to you. And you can even kit-bash modules – take the map from this one, the encounter from another, the plot from third, and then add your own campaign’s big bad villain.
The worst part of this advice is the attitude that I’ve seen again and again. “People who use modules aren’t as much of a real GM as somebody who makes everything from scratch.” To which I say: dragonshite! The real test of gaming is how much fun people have at the table. If everybody’s enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter where the ideas come from. No matter how good you are at writing material, there are modules out there that are better than your stuff. (and a lot of GM’s overestimate how good they are at writing material).
Hey Chris,
Good stuff. Just wondering if you have any cures for writer’s block.
One thing I noticed is that running a premade adventure for 3.5 seems to be giving me DM burnout. I am currently DMing RttToEE. What a tedious adventure. But I do agree with you to take a premade and go with it. The only thing I would recommend against is one with a long duration, depending on the system, spanning no more than 2-3 levels (just to get some ideas flowing).
Philo Pharynx – “The real test of gaming is how much fun people have at the table. If everybody’s enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter where the ideas come from. No matter how good you are at writing material, there are modules out there that are better than your stuff. (and a lot of GM’s overestimate how good they are at writing material).”
-couldn’t agree with you more
@ Philo –
My best games are when I borrow from several sources, or modify an existing premade. Hey, you need to customize for your group for the best experience, right?
@ Alton –
Sorry Bud! No cure for writers block, other than change games!