I rarely buy modules because I have rarely come across any that had a decent plot. I don't care for straight dungeon crawls so a majority are out the window to start with. Others with more event driven plots seemed too railroad-y with very tenuous connections from part to part.

I usually have the best luck writing my own scenarios with a basic premise of - these are the NPCs and this is what they are trying to do. If left unimpeded, they will succeed. Insert PCs and let them react as they wish and the NPCs will in turn react accordingly and adjust their tactics in pursuit of their goal.

Sometimes I will buy a module if it has some good re-usable bits in it, like a well fleshed out city, town or region or several interesting NPCs statted up for me, or even a few good maps.

Quote from: CRKrueger;373318Pathfinder and Goodman Games built companies off of them.   Wizards cares enough about them to admit publicly they need help writing them, yet the good old fashioned adventure module seems to be looked down upon by modern game companies.  We constantly hear "they don't sell".  I guess what it comes down to is, I don't buy that argument.

I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The really bad TSR period churned out some really bad modules and turned people off of the medium.  The D20 glut did the same for 3e.  

Modules got a bad name, so people stopped buying.
People stopped buying so modules got the "don't sell" tag.
Since a good module is hard work, designers dumped them for quick and dirty plot-point idea adventures (like SW) or the encounter-based framework (like 4e). The non-D&D games have followed suit.  Even when doing modules, the modules became lighter.  WFRP2 was much less detailed in modules then WFRP1.  SR3 and SR4 much less detailed then SR1 & SR2, etc.

Now we're at the point where we have an entire generation of RPGers that have never even looked at a module that they could run as is with a good level of background detail.

There are some exceptions to the "adventure-light" crowd.  Green Ronin does a decent job with the SIFRP modules, the Dragon Age ones are even better.  Kenzer knocked one out of the park with Frandor's Keep.  Goodman games keeps chugging along, but Necromancer Games stuff generally was better.  

Basically, I think modules will sell when their perceived worth increases.  The more information GM's can pillage from a module, the higher the perceived worth.  That's why modules don't sell today, IMO, a lot of people have no need for the style of the ones currently on the shelf.

Personally, I much prefer the Plot Points to classic adventure modules, because I don't tend to have to worry about my player's characters not being a certain "level", lacking a certain ability, or even being the wrong size of a party.  The Plot Points thus far proven to be far more flexible AND way more bang for my buck.

Its a tiered system:

1. Almost nobody creates base systems from scratch, and the vast majority of the gaming group buys(or at least has significant access to) the base system. Almost everybody buys the system as opposed to creating it.

2. More people create their own supplemental rules than they create base systems, but a lot of people prefer to buy them(or do both). Again, there's a good chance that multiple members of a group will buy rules supplements. A lot of people buy rules supplements.

3. A lot of people create their own gaming world, with varying levels of detail. Much more than people buy their own rules. A smaller percentage of the membership of the average gaming group is likely to purchase the campaign setting as well. A smaller number of people buy settings, and a lot of people create settings themselves.

4. More people create their own adventures than any of the previous three items. In addition, in all likelihood only one member of the gaming group purchased the adventure. Even less people buy adventures, and I'd guess that a majority(large) creates adventures themselves.

So system > supplements > setting > adventure

Quote from: shalvayez;373329Blah. I take personal JOY in putting as much work into my world as possible.

Same here.



And my I add that your zombie Jesus avatar is going to give me nightmares. :jaw-dropping:

Quote from: CRKrueger;373318I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The really bad TSR period churned out some really bad modules and turned people off of the medium.  The D20 glut did the same for 3e.  

I tend to agree.  With the single exception of D&D, I have never seen my gaming group buy more than one copy of ANYTHING except the core rulebook.  Well, actually, except for the Paizo APs where multiple people subscribe.

I love adventures.  I seldom want more rules and a little setting fluff goes a long way.  Though I never run them "as written," I find that adventures do the hardest work for me - stats and the like.  

Paizo makes a living at it because they do good ones.  Same with Goodman.  There was a lot of junk out there, especially from Wizards.  With the exception of Red Hand of Doom, no one has much good to say about ANY Wizards 3e adventure, and pretty much have nothing good to say about any 2e adventure without exception.  Heck, some of the 2e adventures actively scarred me...  

1e adventures, however, are legends that helped grow D&D into the behemoth it became; half of D&D's legacy is Tomb of Horrors, Temple of Elemental Evil, Scourge of the Slavelords, et al.

Even (especially?) in non-D&D milieus I like adventures because they help explain the setting - a very high concept setting really benefits from adventures to help show how things are supposed to play.

I think a lot of games have been built on good adventures!  Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia are two games where the vast majority of supplements are adventures.

There is a real need for GOOD 4e modules.  The only one I have seen thus far worthy of being called GOOD is War of the Burning Sky.  I have heard some Goodman ones are up there, but I have not seen them.  The WOTC ones? They stink.

I think there is opportunity there for 3rd party publishers to fill that need.  For whatever reason, they are not taking advantage of the opening.

Quote from: Mistwell;373462I think there is opportunity there for 3rd party publishers to fill that need.  For whatever reason, they are not taking advantage of the opening.

I though it was because the GSL requires third-party publishers to deliver their first-born children to Whizbros for the office Carcosa LARP. Or something like that.

Quote from: One Horse Town;373326Before you even consider worth, etc - only 1 person in any given group needs to buy it.

That's true of any decent game or supplement though.

While its a very small sample, I find it interesting that of all the free material I have up for download, the adventures tend towards the lowest download figures. (Apart from one anomaly, which the second most read file.)

I am not sure its not due to the fact that scenarios seem the most artificial material that is produced. I have never seen GM sit down and write a scenario of their own to run as an actual session, only to present to a wider audience.

I think it may well be that the accepted formatting of a scenario for publication, has actually become an artform with no actual relation to the game its made for.

Quote from: jadrax;373473I am not sure its not due to the fact that scenarios seem the most artificial material that is produced. I have never seen GM sit down and write a scenario of their own to run as an actual session, only to present to a wider audience.

I think it may well be that the accepted formatting of a scenario for publication, has actually become an artform with no actual relation to the game its made for.

All of my modules so far were played as part of my campaign before ever thinking of publishing them. I have a couple of modules on the horizon that were conceived as products from the get-go, but most of what I have on the schedule are things that were done in my home campaign.

The reason I personally just don't buy many modules (unless, as other people have mentioned, I can pillage them for ideas or setting details easily) is that they often make a whole heap of assumptions about my campaign. They assume the party has a particular composition, they assume the party is this sort of team who are interested in this particular kind of plot hook, they often assume the party is going to react in a particular way... I often find I have to do so much work making the module fit the campaign that I may as well have just written my own adventure from scratch.

Quote from: JimLotFP;373474All of my modules so far were played as part of my campaign before ever thinking of publishing them. I have a couple of modules on the horizon that were conceived as products from the get-go, but most of what I have on the schedule are things that were done in my home campaign.

Normally, so are mine. But the write up I do for mass consumption often have very little in common with the notes I actually ran it from. Are you saying that the presentation of the modules you write matches the notes you used to actually run it?

Quote from: jadrax;373478Normally, so are mine. But the write up I do for mass consumption often have very little in common with the notes I actually ran it from. Are you saying that the presentation of the modules you write matches the notes you used to actually run it?

Of course not. I don't use complete sentences, or need to explain what anything means to myself, for my home notes. And of course when publishing something I get to correct all the conceptual fuckups made during the original run.

I do consider the published versions of my adventures far superior to what I originally ran. Legible, better organized, clearer by far, very detailed. It's that detail that I feel is the value of published adventures (I'm not a One Page Dungeon user, for example - those look like my home notes!).

I'm not sure there is really useful data one way or another on module sales.

I think the notion that "modules don't sell" came largely from TSR/WotC staff with 2e experience, wherein 2e adventures sold very poorly. (But keep in mind, 2e adventures for whatever reason really sucked, too.) I think Ryan Dancey at one point said that the OGL was intended to allow 3rd parties to produce supporting material for D&D that was unprofitable for WotC to make -- and I think he singled out adventures as an example product.

From here the "adventures don't sell" meme spread. But it's also important to note that by the middle of the 3e era (say, around 2004) most of the big d20 companies were reversing themselves and starting to produce modules because clearly, based on the experience of Necromancer and Goodman and maybe most importantly, Paizo, adventures were selling. Green Ronin and WotC both jumped into the market at that point.

I think, based on the sustained success of Paizo, it's difficult to make a blanket statement that "adventures don't sell."

Quote from: JimLotFP;373479Of course not. I don't use complete sentences, or need to explain what anything means to myself, for my home notes. And of course when publishing something I get to correct all the conceptual fuckups made during the original run.

Well yes, honestly all of that stuff should have gone without saying.

QuoteI do consider the published versions of my adventures far superior to what I originally ran. Legible, better organized, clearer by far, very detailed. It's that detail that I feel is the value of published adventures (I'm not a One Page Dungeon user, for example - those look like my home notes!).

Which I think gets to the heart of the possible disconnect, your clearly stating your looking for something in a published scenario (detail) which you don't actually use seem to use when you run it yourself? I know when the stuff I write, most of teh detail is based on stuff i made up on the fly when running it.