So, I just spent a fair number of words telling you why I think modules fail from a design perspective. But I can hear the screaming from the peanut gallery now “Oh! But you intentionally excluded certain things!” That was for this article, so lets talk about the other problem with modules, an issue that walks arm in arm with both Mother May I? and Prohibition
Well, You Can Just Add To The Module
Why should I? Like I’m not kidding, I’m not being cute or funny, you can email me, or dm me on Blusky to argue with me about this, and I’ll happily discuss it further with you.
Why the hell should I have to add to the module?
I paid somewhere between twenty and fifty bucks for this piece of art, this promise that it would save me time, and energy or add to my joy dramatically. If it doesn’t that means the product has in its essential nature failed, full-stop.
“Well, it just didn’t work for you! Others love it.” Fair enough, if I show up at a chicken place and get a burger and hate it, maybe it is on me. But if I buy the burger from the burger shack and it sucks isn’t it a little on the place?
I paid my hard-earned dollar for this product, and one of the encounters is way too overtuned and leads to a TPK that ruins my night of fun for my group.1 “You should have known?” what if I’m new? What if I didn’t have time to read this module cause I worked a double? What if I just made a mistake and ran the module right out of the book?
This is “Homebrew” again, I paid for a product, I have to make calls and I can abide that. But when there’s no warning for something that will ruin the group’s fun? How is that not on the designer at least in part?
But My Megadungeon Lets Me Add My Own Story!
Ok. Why even have a plot attached to it then? Cause almost every big dungeon has a whole big complicated plot attached to it, if all you want is a mega dungeon that can let you add your own story, why isn’t the perfect product for your game just a two-hundred-page selection of themed dungeon floors with a couple of differing encounter levels for ‘em?2
That’s an emergent narrative, one that I can make adjustments to and change on the fly to suit what the party is interested in. Instead, here’s a collection of tables that could lead to something interesting or could just force you into a position to improv a whole new plot! Isn’t that fun!?
This Module Is Great Except For ____!
Cool, so now I am doing the work that I was hoping to avoid by buying this product! That’s so great! I’m sorry to come off acidic here, but I do think writers deserve to get paid more and that more great product deserves to come out, so make it fuckin’ great!
If there is a section in your module that goes against the tone or theme of the game, I don’t understand why it’s included3 If you see that an adventure has an encounter that is a boring slog, just cut it and reward the players. The old tournament modules had these for reasons that made sense in context “It’s not a garbage encounter, it could be worth points!" and if you are building one for a game that requires resources to get burned, just say “Hey GM, burn some resources off your PC’s.”
You are writing this text, include your notes or thoughts from running it in the margins or even as a separate document, this isn’t a mystery novel! You aren’t spoiling anything by saying “Hey, this encounter went a little sideways in playtest, this is what I did.” If you include this as a barebones pdf you download, all you will do is show the new GM who clearly is invested enough in this system to buy your adventure how to bring their own fun home.
Well I Like All of These Things You Hate
Sick, I’m glad for you. Carry on, and enjoy it you funky little person. The world doesn’t need to be built for you, because you can always modify and change and edit a module! That was always allowed, but it shouldn’t have to be the default!
Build modules that help the people they are supposedly designed for, or design a module that just knocks your socks off! But, designing them in the way we are just doesn’t work! It’s frustrating and makes the hobby less accessible and more likely to drop! Build it and they will come, and maybe if we built for the new guy we could have a cooler and more interesting hobby all the way around.
The Conclusion: Or Who, What, Where When, and Why?
So, together we sit here and address the elephant in the room, you have read possibly several hundred words from me about modules, about how the way we look at adventures, about what makes them work, and which ones are worth playing, and overall that doesn't sound super intellectual, does it?
What conclusion can I draw from hours of writing and research? It’s a brutal one. I think that if we go back to that classic defined use case for modules, a module is for the GM who is new to the system and/or who doesn’t have the dedicated time to prep and run their own original adventure, the only conclusion I can draw is that current adventure modules fail to deliver on either end.
You have to do so much work, or come into them with so much knowledge that in general its just not worth the squeeze. Maybe this is why the vast majority of the art form is moving away from them, choosing to focus instead on setting and system as a replacement. The handful of people continuing to do them, and do them well are doing their best to innovate and improve the work they do, from integrated safety tools, to simple additions like tables that detail what character types will work in this module, to beautiful madness like God’s Teeth’s brutally unfair opening and ending scenario.
But on average? When someone new comes to me and asks for a module they should run for the group and they bounce off my recommendations, I ask ‘em “Why Bother?”
See the tavern in Wrath of The Righteous
A product I would genuinely buy, and if you make it I will 100% endorse it.
Unless mandated by management, at which point I genuinely feel for you.
the only 'modules' I ever ended up liking or using were the little pre-written adventure spots for older systems like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020, where it just has multiple little things like a convenience store or a warehouse or maybe even an apartment building. Those all helped a lot with prep and helped me really flesh out games that I've run.