This blogpost is a response to Jordan DeWitt's comment on a poll asking, "When running an written adventure, how much do you change it to your taste?"
The ensuing conversation made me realize:
For running adventure modules, more often than not I'm interested in the act of adaptation. And maybe this is a mistake.
If it's a dungeon/facility/what-have-you, if I need to change things, I won't even run it. There are enough dungeon sites out there to find the good ones for the game at hand. In an ongoing campaign, like Jordan says, I'll swap out faction/corpo names to reflect the established world, and the less I have to adapt, the quicker I can get an adventure to table.
But some modules have great thematic ideas, characters, what have you, but wonky/crunchy mechanics, like Classic Traveller Adventure 9: Nomads of the World-Ocean. Or the inverse, great mechanical support but thematic elements or setting pieces that I'll never use, like the castle map in Kidnap the Archpriest.
I also like mashing modules together with similar themes into the same campaign framework, like the Mothership S&R Campaign (and unpublished jungle moon and superearth oceanworld blogs). And sometimes I just want to have a bit of fun in the act of adaptation itself (Decagone Driven to the Maw).
Most often, what I've run up against is that I have a pressing need for a campaign, and there's a module that has one very useful place, monster, mechanic, or theme that I need for the game, and I just don't have time to rebuild everything from scratch, so I swap in the shore leave ideas in Hot Stuff on Shore Leave onto the space station from Dying Hard on Hardlight Station.
And I feel like some works demand to be run as written: Prison Planet, Gradient Descent, Mouth Brood. Hell, I would not have done the Decagone Driven to the Maw mash-up if I hadn't run Decagone as written twice beforehand.
Thing is, if a module has a more cohesive vision, from start to finish, i.e. the better it is written, the more likely I will run it RAW.
What's the mistake here, Chris?
It's funny because Jordan's comment comes at a time when I've been doing butcher surgeon's work on a weekly basis for six months, running Classic Traveller, and now this Monolith 2e playtest. It's an entirely different style of game running, the homemade sandbox improv vs module running. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying these games a lot, but I felt like a better GM when I was stringing Mothership modules together from week to week.
Personal preferences might make one way feel better than the other, sure. And I'll definitely concede that the more time (and practice) folks have to pour into homebrew, probably the better its chances to feel good at table, OK. I ain't got enough time, these days, and I can tell y'all that I feel the difference. Running a module feels smoother to me.
And it should! A well-written module is the product of someone's hard work, thoughtful choices, and playtesting (or one would hope).
I think this feeling I'm having is what Jordan's speaking to: experiencing the cohesion of ideas of a well-written module, from start to finish.
I feel like it shouldn't be controversial to say a well-written module should be run as written. Nor should it be a revelation to say there is a difference between homebrewing a module and running one as written.
To be totally clear, different doesn't mean better, one way or the other. It is just different.
I think it's entirely possible to feel an author's consideration and intent at your gaming table. And this is what so many of us do, so game writers should be seeking this experience.
If you're not a game writer, this argument doesn't matter for shit. Granted.
In any case, playing as written will be different than running it with personal changes. It's a mistake to argue otherwise.
If you're trying to work on your game writing craft, like I am, taking what you'd consider to be a good module and running it as written, can allow a writer to better feel for that transitional space between text and play, and perhaps learn to write better through the experience.
So if it's what you do, it's a mistake to be so laissez-tomber about it.
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