Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 231 - Premade Adventures

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

There are similarities between delivering a performance at a theater and running a game whether online or in person.  In this episode I’ll tell you what lessons I learned on and behind the stage that can be applied to your tabletop game.   #pf2e #dnd #dmtips #gmtips #AdventurePrep

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. I've been following this method of GM prep for a long time. And remember, I'm old. I've used this general method since the AD&D days. It's been refined over time, tweaked and improved so that it further minimizes the amount of prep that I need to do in the middle, episode 231, giving GMs some tips for preparing pre-made adventures. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Trees.

When hiking, I love looking at the different trees in the forest. They are, oh, hey, with me. Oh, yeah, grown all you want. That joke was pine and dandy. I also want to give a very special thank you to Scott Nichols who generously donated to help keep the podcast going. Thank you so much Scott and by the way Scott had an idea for an episode that pairs very nicely with this one. Campaigns that follow on to pre-published adventures. So it's coming in two weeks, stay tuned for that.

If you'd like to be an awesome human being like Scott and donate to the podcast, please consider a small one-time donation to ko-fi.com slash taking 20 podcast. It does take a lot of time as a one-person podcast publisher. So if you'd consider a donation, I'd be very thankful. But you know, hey, if you don't have the spare gold pieces right now, no problem

Thank you so much for listening and please consider a donation in the future when you can. I had the weekend of the fourth off. You'd think I'd be well rested. You'd be wrong. I spent that entire weekend cooking and working on parts of the house like cleaning out the garage. My hamstrings are so sore. on parts of the house like cleaning out the garage. My hamstrings are so sore. But that doesn't change the fact that I am excited to bring you another episode, so here we go. There are a ton, sorry, you know what, let me correct that. There are a shit ton of pre-made adventures and campaigns out there. How many? Well, I went out to the Dungeon Master's Guild website where there are, as of the time of this recording, 5737 adventures, all for levels 1 through 4. Similarly, I went to Pathfinder Infinite and there are hundreds of similar adventures for Pathfinder 2e. And that's just two places where you can buy electronic adventures. Modules are available in electronic

and print format for an overwhelming multitude of game systems, both popular and niche, with any kind or at least nearly any kind of theme that you can think of, from pirates to wandering fairs to rebellions to horror to an entire adventure built inside of giant clockwork monster. I used to in my younger days flinch when I bought pre-made adventures because I'm parting with hard-earned cash to buy something that I could probably do it myself. But then I realized it's like any other service that you may buy, like getting your oil changed, pressure washing your driveway, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, prepping dinners,

whatever. It's not whether you can do them, it's whether the time you gain by having it done by someone else is worth it. I had a group who wanted to try Pathfinder 2E and wanted a traditional old school dungeon crawl. Can I make a dungeon crawl? You bet your ass I can. And you could too, by the way. But it's a big if you and I wanna take the time to do it,

to find maps, figure out the theme, populate the levels of the dungeon, find art, either prepare the items for in-person role play like miniatures or prep the virtual tabletop for the adventure. Or, you know, I could just pay for it to be done for me. Even if it only took me a laughably small amount of work like 20 hours and I bought, say,

abomination vaults for the full price of 60 bucks, then I'm paying $3 an hour to get all that time back and to me that was worth it. Sorry, I'll leave the cost benefit discussion of pre-made adventures to another time, but it was on my mind and I just had to dump it into podcast form because it's not enough meat for an episode all its own I don't think, and I wanted to get it out for it left my brain. Anyway, that being said, I'm a huge proponent

of pre-made adventures for multiple reasons. I've run them dating all the way back to, gosh, keep on the borderlands, all the way through modern gaming systems. So one thing I do have a lot of experience with is preparing and running these pre-mades from the thin little soft cover ones all the way through enormous hard covers

like Curse of Strahd. I will concede that every DM is different and what follows is a method for preparing adventures that has served me well through the years. You may require more or less prep than this and this method may cause someone stress by following it. If you get stressed out following this advice, by the way, then fucking don't. I don't want you to damage your mental health just because some old schmuck

on a podcast says he does it this way. The game is supposed to be fun, especially for the DM, so find a way that works for you. That said, my method works for me because I use a similar process when I'm teaching or in the past studying for computer certifications like the CISSP. I put the lion's share of the work in well ahead of time, allowing me to put less work in week to week as I approach the deadline. I've been following this method of GM prep for a long time and remember I'm old. I've used this general method since the AD&D days. It's been refined over time, tweaked and improved so that it further minimizes the amount of prep that I need to do in the middle of a week in week out campaign. That being said, with all the caveats that I

can throw out, here are my 10 tips for how I prepare to run a module. Well, okay, nine tips for preparing and one tip for running it. Tip number one, buy the freaking module. Look, I know money's tight, but as someone who is friends with more than a few adventure creators, they already make so little money writing these adventures. Sure, there are a few who get rich doing it, but that is an extremely small percentage. So if you're going to use a pre-written module or package for your game or your virtual tabletop, please don't pirate it.

Tip number two. Since I know you're not doing that, the first real tip I will say is know your group as best you can. If you've been gaming with the same group for a while, you probably know how they play and what they enjoy. Are they murder hobos who meticulously go room to room slaughtering literally every living thing bigger than a tapeworm from entrance to exit? Or are they surgical, lightning quick, making a beeline for the boss to minimize the amount of time they need to spend in hostile territory?

Or are they somewhere in between? Keeping the methodology, the playbook, the standard operating procedure in mind for your group will help guide you as to how much or how little you need to prep. Tip number three, now the real work begins. Once you have the adventure, read it cover to cover. I don't care if it's 22 pages or 220, read it. Don't memorize it, don't get lost in the details. This isn't an organic chemistry class and you're not going to be tested on the module

later. During this first read, you're primarily trying to get a sense of the overall adventure. So during this first read, for example, I look at the following. What's the theme of the adventure? Let's take Curse of Strahd and don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything. Curse of Strahd goes into some very dark places if you let it. It's largely isolationist, gothic horror, and delves into concepts of free will, slavery, and obsession. I establish safety nets like the X card or lines and veils

and then lean hard into the gothic, transylvanian nature of the story, staying away from themes that could be troublesome for my players. It's a completely different feel, by the way, Curse of Strahd, compared to say you're running Fists of the Ruby Phoenix which is about the world's most prestigious fighting tournament or if I'm running something like Outlaws of Alkenstar which has almost a Wild West kind of feel going after the people that done you wrong. Figure out what the overall theme is of the adventure and keep that in mind as you prepare. Also, as you're going through that initial read,

look for the major bullet points of the adventure in the general story. You wanna know that the adventure generally goes to place A until they do this thing, and then place B to do that thing, and then finish and place C to kill this person. I would call this the 50,000 foot view of the adventure. Knowing where it's going and having it documented

really helps you get the adventure back on track when it inevitably goes sideways somewhere in the middle. Another thing during this initial read is that you'll learn while tracking the bullet points how connected the adventure is. Most adventures, if you really break it down, could be described in these major plot bullet points. Go here, do that, wait for this other thing, go do do something to fix it get the whatchamacallit kill the who's it big damn heroes

During this first read through read it with an eye of figuring out what those bullet points are for this adventure Now during this initial read I would recommend you create a notes document as you go while you're reading try to fill in an outline with the major plot bullet points and general outline of the adventure and jot down some important things you'll need to spend more time preparing, like NPCs, unusual encounters or creatures or situations that are new to you or have unique aspects to them. Oh, this one has a Jabberwocky in it. Okay, I don't know what a Jabberwock's abilities are other than they have jaws that bite and claws that snatch. Damn you Lewis Carroll. There's no mention of an armor class anywhere in Jabberwocky's poem. Get your shit together.

While I'm reading in the rare times these days when I'm using a hard copy module I'll use sticky notes while I'm reading this first time. Sometimes they're even color-coded. Pink for fights, blue for social encounters, green for environmental notes, yellow for, hey, research this more, that type of thing. But if I have an electronic version, I'll use color code highlighting on my notes. It doesn't matter what color scheme you use as long as you're consistent.

It does help when I'm going back to actually run that section because these colors remind me to look up things like the Jabberwock stat block and abilities that it has. But during this first read I would encourage you do not start changing things. I know, I know, believe me. You like kobolds instead of goblins and want to change the creatures in the first act. Show a little bit of restraint at this point. Read for understanding first because the fact that they're goblins may come up again in Act 3. Two things you have to understand during this first read through though is understanding how the adventure is

supposed to start and how it's supposed to end. Keeping those two things in mind in your outline will keep your adventure grounded no matter how long it takes to get through it. Tip number four. Once you've read the adventure and have your initial notes written, take a break for a day or so. Go do anything else, other things, work on other projects. Give your brain time to absorb and soak up what you've researched. I'm a huge proponent of giving your brain a break and think about other things. I've found it helps with my retention and if you've never tried it, give it a shot.

Tip number five. After that brief break, start reading the adventure again using your notes as a guide. Questions I'll generally ask during the second read. What foreshadowing do I need to set up? What NPCs are recurring and therefore are more important to the success of the adventure? What are the natural breaks in the adventure? A lot of Paizo adventure paths, for example, are broken up into different books.

A lot of long campaigns are in one volume, but they're broken up by chapters. Look at those natural breaks as areas where you may have to transition from one thing to another. Don't forget, notes, notes, notes, because if you're running Descent into Avernus or Gatewalkers, it could be months or even more than a year before you return to this part of the book that you read.

Jot some notes down to refresh your memory when your adventurers finally get to that section of the adventure so you don't have to go back and restudy. Tip number six, most publishers have discussion boards or Discord servers for their published adventures. Go check those out and look at the most popular and or pinned posts and messages. There are likely a lot of DMs out there who have run this adventure already. Even though DM styles are different, the collective experiences still have value.

While there you can learn which encounters were too hard or too easy for the parties the DM ran through, which parts of the adventure required a little home brewing or modification, and where the potential problems lie in adventure as written. Plus, some of the later work you need to do may already be posted. For example, my GM friend, Tom,

who I really need to interview at some point, already had a couple of handouts and some Foundry virtual tabletop scripts written for abomination faults. He freely provided those to me and it sped up my prep work greatly. Speaking of which, this is where you can decide what bells and whistles you want to have in the campaign. Tip 7. If you want to use them, look for

art and music and insert them where appropriate in your notes document. Remember, you don't have to provide any art or music or custom tokens or miniatures if you don't want to and you don't have time. Back in my college days we had characters and monsters represented on hand-drawn battle maps by little round washers, wrapped pieces of candy, or the cap of a pen. It was a simpler time. Gas cost about a dollar twenty five a gallon. You was a simpler time. Gas cost about a dollar twenty-five a gallon. You could order a medium one topping for five dollars. Oh my lambegos acting up. The point is you don't need to do all of that. It's great for visualization to

have an actual goblin token represent a goblin, but if it's just a green blob that says goblin underneath it, that's fine too. And if you want to spend the money doing this, you certainly can. There's a lot of solutions out there for music and art and etc, but there are also free options available as well. Tip number eight. Based on everything you've learned, prepare your session zero with guidance to your players. I generally don't dictate what characters my players play, but I do make suggestions sometimes. That socially based, charismatic bard may not be the best choice for an old school dungeon crawl with very few trips back to civilization.

That low intelligence barbarian may not be good for an adventure where the players are going to be spending most of their time researching and hobnobbing and rubbing elbows with the aristocratic elite. Then again, it might be fucking hilarious if the players should at least know what they're getting into and want to play that type of character fish out of water. If the publisher provides a player's guide to the adventure, I always review it and provide it to the players and discuss the high points during session zero. Tip number nine. Set up or ask your players to set up a notes page that is for them to collectively take notes throughout the adventure. Ask them to invite you to it so you can review correct spelling of those weird names and

that kind of thing, but review the notes page before each session and use it to augment your notes or to refresh your memory where everything left off. As a bonus, by the way, as you're reviewing that document, you can probably tell which aspects of the adventure are catching the eye or the heart of your players, and it can provide you some insight about what to focus on next.

Now, those are the nine tips that I had for preparing. I have one tip while the adventure is going on. Step 10, while the adventure is going on, focus on the next thing. What's the next big fight? What's the next area they're going to? What are the next encounters they're going to have? During your week to week prep, this should be your focus and here's where your pregame reviews come into play and will really pay off. Look at your notes, important story beats, important NPCs, foreshadowing that you need to do, areas that you need to use, and you can use all those notes to

keep you focused on getting to the end of the story. When you DM a long, long adventure, it's easy to do two things. One, lose sight of the adventure, and two, overwhelm yourself with work. As you're prepping week to week, use your first two read-throughs and your notes as guardrails to keep the adventure moving toward the end that you're keeping in mind. Secondly, to avoid becoming overwhelmed with work, only prep what you need to week to week. That's why I gave you tip 10. Sure, this book or this chapter of the long adventure culminates with a showdown on the castle parapets with the fierce blue dragon, but the party isn't there yet.

They still need to fight their way through the top two levels of the keep. Don't get that blue dragon ready just yet. Focus on the next few encounters of the adventure and prep that. Different groups will move at different paces. I'm DMing two groups right now and one of them moves through adventures like a roadrunner on cocaine. The Yetton's dead, let's loot the corpse, 13 gold pieces and a carved wooden doll. Neat! Okay let's take a few minutes to heal and get back in the hallway, go to the door to the north, go go go go go! There's loot in them there

hills. Okay that's not a bad thing but they do move at a breakneck pace through adventures. For a three hour session, I'll have to get like six to nine encounters ready. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just I know that going in. But contrast that with my other group who are slightly newer to Pathfinder 2E. They are deliberate. They take their time all the time. In a three hour game session, I'll maybe have to prep three,

maybe four encounters. That's it. They spend a ton of time discussing who gets what loot, strategy during combat, which way to go next, whether to sell this thing or have somebody use it. It's constant conversation. Again, not a criticism. That's the way they like the game, so no worries. I'm all about trying to give them the game they want while periodically challenging their comfort zone with things like chases and timed encounters and other tricks that keep the game moving. Using a pre-made adventure is a great way to get to the gaming quicker, saving time during the week-to-week or session-to-session preparation. Put in your work reviewing the adventure and making notes before you even start and lean on those notes during the adventure. If you do that, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it.

Do you like this podcast? If so, please like, rate, and subscribe to it wherever you happen to find it. Now for the bad news. I have a family trip scheduled for next weekend. My wife loves capybaras and I'm taking her somewhere that lets you hold them and pet them and play with them and I have a feeling she's going to be in love and either ask me to adopt one or she might try to steal one. Not sure. I'll update you when I get back to let you know if my wife clipped out a cute little rodent.

Editor Jeremy here. As I was finishing this episode, I realized I never actually said there won't be an episode next week. So to that end and to fix that gaffe, there will be no episode next week. Anyway in two weeks I'm coming back with Scott Nichols topic idea, thank you again for donating Scott, how to build a follow-on campaign to published adventures. But before I go I want to thank this week's sponsor, Trees. I can get grumpy while hiking among trees, but don't worry, their bark worse than my bite. This has been episode 231, all about prepping pre-made adventures.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 podcast is a publishing cube media production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content or copyright their respective publishers.