Apr25
on April 25, 2017
Modular Morals
When I was running a Tomb of Horrors, one of my players was quick to reassure me that he hadn’t played the adventure, and that (apart from the leering green devil face) he knew nothing of the rest of the adventure. But it was a thirty-five year old adventure. Even if it hadn’t been played, there was lots of time to have read it. If this had been a similarly old movie we were watching, it would have been well beyond the statute of limitations of spoilers. Heck, for many people it’s fair game to spoil away within a couple weekends of a film’s release (as someone with a young child who can’t get sitting easily, I say “BOOO!”), so why is this module off limits for reading? Why did it have to be played?
In my (rather large) gaming group there’s a good friend of mine who can’t resist reading adventure modules, so it’s been increasingly hard to confront him with something his PCs were unprepared for. To be fair, he doesn’t spoil the play by divulgating info to the rest of the group.
My solution? As a DM, I never use modules. I write my own campaigns, down to the details. That’s why it takes around 3 years between one and the other… but we got many DMs to fill these gaps, and a change in pace and style is always welcome.