Modules

We don’t seem to say modules any more but that’s what they used to call purchased adventures. The idea seemed to be, at one time, that these adventures weren’t campaign specific and you could just use them in whatever world you played your game in. 

I don’t know if that was ever really the case except in the examples afforded by pure location based scenarios. The Keep on the Borderlands could work anywhere a dull, fighty series of very similar caves could exist. 

If these things aren’t fairly generic then we’re going to need to do some work to make them happen in our own setting. Worse if they’re not user friendly. 

For example I purchased a pre written adventure in a pay what you want crowd funding campaign. I don’t tend to use them a lot so I can’t explain the decision except that I didn’t pay very much for it. 

When the actual book turned up, the production values of it were far in excess of the meagre amount I offered. The art looked excellent, paper quality was excellent, it was hard back, A5, a solid high quality product. I began to feel a little guilty. I’d offered an amount commensurate with a home-brew zine type affair not this highly professional product. However, the literal opening text is…

So what is it about then? I don’t know. I didn’t read any further. I no longer felt guilty. I don’t spend money on game products to spend hours prepping them. I can do that myself. If I’m paying money for an adventure, the whole point of it is; it replaces the work I either couldn’t, or didn’t have time to, do. 

I’m probably not the target audience for your average pre-written product. Part of the joy of gaming for me is making it all up myself. Having to learn and internalise someone else’s ideas is work I don’t need or like to do. I find it hard. It’s easier for me to portray NPCs and situations that I have created myself than learn someone else’s stuff. 

I see the point of it though. People play in different ways. Having a pre-written adventure can be a great framework to run your sessions. I liked the Anomalous Subsurface Environment for this. I had the time to play but not really do a lot of prep. Having a massive, usable dungeon available meant I could game on Thursday evenings when other wise I could not. The ASE though is filled with ideas I would not have come up with myself. It’s also easy to prep. Read some dungeon rooms, sometimes just five minutes before the session and then go. It worked. 

I get that this is not what everyone wants to spend their money on but at the table usability is my number one RPG product concern. It’s why I love the Black Hack. It’s why everyone loved Vornheim (before they changed their minds.) Necrotic Gnome adventures are structured for their at the table presentation and are almost universally loved. DCC modules, despite often being on the wrong side of the railroad, are also very table friendly. Behold any Doug Kovacs map, you could probably run from it if you had to…

Dungeon layout, less than awesome; but flavour? 

So, I don’t need or want all that text or whatever. It’s not what I’m spending my money for. I have a bookshelf full of novels. Give me products designed for use at the table, things I can run at a glance, or open to any page and just go with it. Don’t get me wrong, I know writing RPG material for others to run is hard. I don’t think I can do it but I’m not asking for your money either.