In Defense of the Pre-Built

I’ll admit it; I love pre-generated; pre-built; ready to unwrap on Christmas morning and play, games. I get excited to thumb through new settings, leaf through adventures, and muse over character builds. It’s a window into the mind of the designer, a glimpse at the true game they had in mind. What’s not to love about pre-built adventures?

Makes Up For My Faults

I find most pre-built adventures, and characters do a great job of making up for any weakness I might have as a GM. I can read through the adventures and anticipate how my players may avoid the tricks, traps, and boss fights along the way. Most importantly, for me, I can even run it off the cuff, reading as we go along and adjusting bits as I see fit. It’s also a story I want to tell, I want the players to share in the heartache and joy in the adventure. I want them to share in my excitement when I first read the adventure and imagined all the cool encounters that could spawn out of it. It makes my only job in the game to share this with them.

Allows me to Make Memorable NPCs

Creating a rich character background on the fly is downright impossible, so why would I bother if I’m reading from a pre-built adventure? Everything has been laid out neatly in front of me all I need to do is play to my strengths of creating voices, and memorable bits of dialogue. Focusing on breathing life into these people has made some incredibly memorable characters. Meepo was a goblin that the players took a liking too. He spoke in a voice based on a combination of Golum and Dobby from Harry Potter. While he only had a line or two of written dialogue because of the voice and portrayal the players latched on to him and eventually made him king of the Goblins. One of my players even wrote an un-released song about him during for our holiday album Christmas in the Underdark.

Learn the Rules; Know the Setting

Pre-built adventures are hands down the best way to learn a game. With the bulk of the work being taken off the design aspect you can focus on the nitty grity of making sure the rules are enforced correctly and that everyone is having fun. I’ve found adventures are the best way to get into the setting. Adventures such as the Witchfire Trilogy introduced me to Iron Kingdoms and the Slipstream plot point campaign was the best way to get into the right head space of the game. Having something to fall back on to keep your game moving is invaluable.

So much love, and yet, there are so many weakness, join me tomorrow while I come up with a rebuttal to my own argument.

Do you love pre-built adventures or settings, or are you firmly in the world building category?

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  • 77IM

    I love world-building more than anything. But what I've learned is that building a great world does not in any way help one have a satisfying role-playing game session. (At most, it is a minor factor, as some settings are more “adventure-prone” than others. But usually the setting is orthogonal to the actual adventure.)

    Conversely, a published adventure (a good one) is a huge help when running a game, for all the reasons you listed. The biggest one, for me, is that it cuts down drastically on prep time, while still producing a satisfying blend of challenge and story.

    So my ideal is to have a large source of pre-generated adventures that can work within a custom world that I have created. D&D is set up for this perfectly; the game never assumed a specific world, but a set of “shared assumptions” and as long as your setting adheres, any D&D module will work. For other genres, using a published setting often involves filing off the serial numbers (replacing the orcs with subterranean mutants, or whatever). For this reason, it may be easier to build a setting around a good group of adventures than vice-versa. (Reality Blurs's Old School Fantasy and Triple Ace Game's Daring Tales of the [Sprawl/Space Lanes/etc.] are ripe for this.)

  • http://www.apathygames.com Tyson J. Hayes

    Completely agree with the cutting down on prep time! I've been known to run pre-builts a bit more off the cuff because of the lack of prep time.

    Although I haven't had a chance to read through RB or TAG's games they definitely read like they would be fantastic for what your suggesting. They are on my buy list for eventual review/play.

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  • http://singularmoments.blogspot.com/ Cole

    Ever since I tried building a world of my own, I developed an appreciation for ready made campaign settings. If I had to keep coming up with setting material for my games, I would've stopped GMing a long time ago.

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