Hot answers tagged published-adventures
15
I tend to handle that the lazy way. Generally players will come up with a theory (or even better, several theories) as to why something is the way it is. They'll bandy the ideas about, and I just surreptitiously write down the one that makes the most sense and provides the most opportunities to create interesting situations later.
If your players aren't ...
13
There are a few different ways of going about this, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Make something up on the fly. This is great if you're a good improviser, but, well, most of us aren't. This is best for small details that the characters/players are only mildly interested in. Still, if you prefer detail to leaving it blank, this can ...
12
There are still many publishers that come out with a lot of adventure support for their games. WotC doesn't, but that's just been a pet problem of theirs for a long time. They believed it did not pay off for them (maybe it didn't because of their large corporate overhead) and they spread that idea through the industry. And of course little guys barely get a ...
11
H1 - Keep on the Shadowfell
This adventure takes place in and around the town of Winterhaven in the Nentir Vale.
10
Avoid In The First Place
First, try to predict the holes by reading and thoroughly prepping the adventure in the first place. Look at it from the PCs' point of view and ask "why?" (And especially, "why should I care?") If you see the gaps ahead of time, you can fill them or at least have an idea beforehand. I am assuming it goes without saying but you ...
9
To look at why Adventures are less prominent now
Adventures are a hard item to write well... good adventures:
have to be suitable for a wide range of characters
have to have alternate paths in case of player failure or diversion
have to be written exceptionally clearly
need targeted art done specific for the adventure (stock art won't do for maps...)
...
8
I think you'll want to go with the Chaos Scar series. This is a DDI set of adventures for low level characters that should get you through levels 1-5. It's not a campaign per se, more of a sandbox, but should be no problem to string together if you're an experienced DM. I ran some of it with my newbie group, before that group ended, I had planned to run all ...
8
H2 - Thunderspire Labyrinth
This adventure takes place in the Seven Pillared Hall, an ancient city once the hub of a minotaur kingdom and other dungeon areas in the tunnels under Thunderspire Mountain in the Nentir Vale.
7
The Plane Above is the 4E sourcebook for the Astral Sea, and includes a paragon-tier "mini adventure" set in the Astral Sea, as well as other adventure hooks. The book is about 150 pages, and the adventure is only a half dozen of those, give or take. The Manual of the Planes also spends about 30 pp on the Astral Sea, but there are no adventures. I believe ...
7
Eclipse Phase contains a lot of story seeds using nanotechs as either McGuffin, active obstacles, or as setting enhancer. All the books are released under the CC and there is a torrent where you can get them from. How does, or how might, nanotechnology work? and Who needs nanotech? should give you an idea of how nanotech is used in the game.
6
The Pathfinder RPG from Paizo (a system based on D&D 3.5, but with updated rules, and a setting information, so depending on your players reasons for "no d&d" may be no good, or may be fine) has many, many published adventures, typically organised into adventure paths, and intended to be run one after the other to form a complete campaign arc.
6
H3 - The Pyramid of Shadows
This adventure takes place in the Pyramid of Shadows. The pyramid is a transdimensional prison created to hold a tiefling wizard named Karavakos.
5
Pathfinder doesn't require major conversions to use D&D 3.5 adventures. Pathfinder is designed to allow conversion essentially on the fly. As long as the DM has a decent understanding of Pathfinder and D&D switching between the two should be almost seemless. I've run several D&D adventures (Rappan Athuk and World's Largest Dungeon) without ...
5
To try and simplify mirv's answer:
The way it works is you go through all of the questions, getting unique answers from your players (they should be writing these down!). Once all the questions are done they need to take whatever questions were related to them and turn them into aspects.
There aren't a whole lot of rules when it comes to deciding aspects, ...
5
Traveller Games
The database of episodic adventures for it is quite lengthy, counting only the commercial ones, at over 30. Adding the magazine ones pushes it well over 50.
Classic Traveller (CT) alone had 13 published non-campaign adventures (Adv 1 to 13), 7 double-adventure books with 2 each, (DA 1 to DA 7), 3 campaign adventures†(TTA, Tarsus, ...
5
There are severa ways...
Simply run players through it a second time, after some gap. This is the least satisfying of the reuses, but give people a couple years, and yes, the same module can be run again no problem.
Re-skin it. Use the same maps, but alter the encounters by swapping out for similar challenge rating monsters. Often this can be a whole ...
5
I haven't played it, but for AD&D 2nd Edition, there is the Thief's Challenge Module and Thief's Challenge II. They're designed for a single PC (Thief obviously!) and a DM, with the idea being that it allows a new character to 'catch-up' in XP and treasure with an existing party. (I believe it was designed to take the character from 1st to 3rd-4th ...
4
First to answer the last part of your question, essentials are always completely compatible with 4e.
As for module reuse, absolutely go ahead and reuse them. I like to call that efficient use of resources. (saving money!)
I reuse modules all the time with in a system and across different systems. You would be surprised how very little players can ...
4
I don't know of any 4th Ed or even 3rd Ed adventures in the Astral Plane. However there were at least two excellent adventure modules for 2nd Edition Planescape that partially took place on the Astral Plane:
Dead Gods - The Astral Plane is where God Corpses end up floating around, and the adventure climax involves the players stopping the resurrection of ...
4
I have been collecting a number of link sites that provide free gaming content over the last 2.5 years. Here are some of the best free content sites I have found. Some of the adventures would need to be adapted for edition and others for campaign. In addition a few them have added resources like maps, plot hooks and NPCs too.
Dungeon Links
Living ...
4
For the most part game companies have stopped publishing adventures as only one person in each gaming group typically buys them. Wizards of the Coast mentioned this about the time 4e came out when people asked about that. Steve Jackson games states on one of their web pages that electronic publishing is the only way to put out adventures profitably.
Player ...
4
Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, and Earthdawn all had some very high quality material. Look at Atlas Games as they have published adventures for other games. Of course, you can get Over The Edge which has a gazillion story ideas in it.
Edit: Links:
Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, and Earthdawn listing. You will get descriptions, reviews, and can buy them directly from ...
4
Ars Magica
Ars Magica has many adventures available for it, as the plots of all the adventures of earlier editions (especially 4th) are quite compatible and the mechanics are absolutely trivial to update behind the screen. I've run many adventures from supplements when I had absolutely no clue what else to run. There are also massive resources available on ...
4
The questions are just creative prompts, and the adventure expects that the group is already familiar with Fate, aspects, and the usual advice for choosing aspects, or at least that the GM can help the players out.
However, since you're all new to Fate, (re-)reading the section of the Fate 3.0 System Reference Document on how to choose aspects will help. ...
4
I don't use published adventures, but I've ran my group through levels 1 to 30, so I have some idea of how character capabilities change. My first advice would be to replace all monsters you find in that adventure, especially solos, with similar (reskinned if necessary) monsters of appropriate level, preferably from MM3 or MVs. Monster design is a part of ...
4
Not outside fantasy, but...
Pendragon (esp. 4e or 3e with Knights Adventurous)
Pendragon supplements tend to be either setting books with a few adventures, timeline sourcebooks with lots of adventures in schematic form (Pendragon Campaign, Boy king, Great Pendragon Campaign), or adventure collections (2-4 big adventures, and a half dozen smaller ones ...
4
Role-playing games sources:
Fading Suns is a game of futuristic passion play. It is a dark medieval space fantasy setting that encourages Everyman type adventures. Some of the pre-written adventures are directly allegorical, and the rest, though more focused on social and physical action, also have a moral layer. Also, there is a short story collection, ...
3
HS1: The Slaying Stone module; It's how I started by campaign and apart from the introduction, it was a well made module. There is a short level 2 sequel published in Dungeon magazine #179: The Den of Dreus in which the players face off against the villain behind the scenes. These can lead into to HS2 Orcs of Stonefang Pass module for Level 4/5, but that ...
3
Assuming this works similar to how "Night Fears" works the leading questions will help you add additional aspects to each character. The one shots are designed on the assumption that players are new to FATE so the questions help to create aspects that will come up in the course of play. These aspects help to define the characters relationships with each ...
3
As you've noted, D&D (all varieties) and Call of Cthulhu have huge amounts of adventure support. Besides them:
Savage Worlds has a huge amount of fan support; the link goes to a forum thread cataloging more than 100 free adventures in all genres.
Also Mutants & Masterminds has a lot of adventure support from Green Ronin (here's a dozen freebies) ...
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