Wanted: Imagination

Yesterday I wrote about my love for pre-builts, be it adventures, characters, or settings. Anything that I don’t have to generate earns some love from me. When I was writing the article however I couldn’t help but come up with a rebuttal against my own argument. After all when I started gaming it was extremely fashionable to hate on pre-built anything; the era of the OGL did ruin it for a number of people.

Stifles My Creativity

The biggest complaint is the stifling of creativity. Pre-built don’t offer the same freedom that I can have with my own adventure. It doesn’t allow any changes for player’s taste or opinion; it’s all laid out in front of me, immutable as stone. If the wrong adventure is picked, my players or I could burn out before its done burden down by the pacing of the story. I can attest that adventure burn out has happened to me in my gaming career. Designing my own games allow me to make adjustments to the overall story. I mean who wants to stick with just one adventure, when you have a whole world you could make up?

Pushing the Envelope

I’ve never run a horror game; never really been my bag. While I could reach for a one sheet or pre-built adventure to help learn the craft, I’m far more likely to reach for what I know. While I could make my players go crazy with Cthulhu, or send the back to High School with Pinebox. All are fantastic settings to tell a story in. It’s just; I’m more likely to throw a band of orcs at them; my old school D&D colors shining through. With pre-built games I’m actually less likely to try something new; I’m just not sure how to run it. I look for comfortable dungeon dives, and fantasy settings where the bad guys are well defined. Why stray far from the tree?

Makes for Lazy GMs

Let’s be entirely honest with each other, we fall into lazy patterns when running pre-built adventures. We fall back on the adventure being balanced, and that it would provide all the necessary components to be fun. We don’t try as hard and we have a tendency to railroad our players towards the goals. We fail to think outside of the box instead relying on the scripted dialogue to convey any meaning. The way most games are written we can look at our players with apathetic looks on our faces and blink at them until they do what is obvious. No thinking required. What’s the challenge in using pre-built games?

I still fall on the side of using pre-builts, my love for them is strong and while I am lazy I’ve gotten pretty good at tweaking adventures to fit my needs. I know I’ll have fully lost any respect as a GM when they come out with Choose Your Own Adventure for Savage Worlds and I run that game. Feel free to take away my blogging credentials when that happens.

So where do you fall on the debate, pre-builts, or your own worlds all the time?

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

    I have run only one pre built adventure. It was a free download from the WoTC site. The players seem to have enjoyed and nobody complained. While I think there is a place for those type of games, I prefer to rely only on a well defined setting and come up with adventures on my own.

  • Theron

    Both are valuable, depending on the player.

    A pre-built can fill in a gap in the PCs knowledge or open up new idea if the players are exploring the system – “I never would have thought about Tricks as a viable option if that PC didn't have Dirty Fighter!” or “wow, two-weapon combat is a lot harder in DnD” are statements in support of pre-builds.

    My only advice is to make pre built characters ALWAYS combat effective, as that's likely the angle of any scenario that players will analyze. Let's face it, RPGs are built along conflict resolution and that's the most readily available test.