Pre made or homebrew?

[Mytherus]

Morning fellow DMs/GMs..

Perusing the many books I’ve bought for the hobby over the years and seeing interesting 3rd party adventures to buy from various sites..I’ve come to wonder -“how many just buy pre made adventures, be it from wotc or another party, versus how many always just go homebrew?”

Bonus question- if you homebrew , how deep / how invested do you get? Meaning do you write your own lore from the ground up create all maps all NPCs — or would you take a pre published adventure and just modify it to your needs?


I always like the thought of fully homebrew but time always is my issue I run into.

Thanks. Have a good weekend.

[Morenu]

I personally use Forgotten Realms for inspiration. But consider nothing as absolute cannon, like Forgotten Realms in an alternate dimension. I use a lot of the supplements for larger spots (underdark, waterdeep, Baldurs gate, dalelands...) keeping maps and general ideas in place. but we do not delve deep into the various histories, we may have some 2nd ed stuff mixed with 3rd and 5th (Screw 4th ed). no Gods are truly dead. adventure locations may be moved to be closer to where we are campaigning... and I also make whole new homebrew based in FR.

[Trenloe]

I tend to run purchased adventures, sometimes with a little bit of tweaking here and there (maybe adding in other sidequest adventures that fit with the theme). This is partly due to time constraints, but also because of the amazing adventures out there!

In recent years, I've ran purchased adventures for Pathfinder 1 and 2, Starfinder 1 and 2, Acthung! Cthulhu, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds and Twilight 2000.

I've ran homebrew for Conan 2d20 (quite a long campaign) and Savage Worlds Day After Ragnarök (one shots loosely linked into a campaign).

I tend to use existing lore - for Conan that was easy, just read the Robert E. Howard stories; for Day after Ragnarök I used British and Scandanavian folklore as a basis.

[LordEntrails]

Yes to all of the above

I've done it all over the years. Including creating a whole world with a world map, regions, cities (not everything has maps!), a pantheon, world history, etc.

My last major campaign I ran was a mashup of purchased adventures (Dragon Heist (with the Alexandrian remix), Beyond trilogy, Mad Mage, City of Brass) and extended and filled it in with a bunch of homemade stuff.

In general I use pre-purchased now a days, but almost always modify them. Even if not at the start, I allow the players to "go off the rails" and that often means I have to supplement or re-use. But, I really don't do a whole lot of prep. With some strategic prep from some of the popular blogs, I prep things that are flexible. Mainly maps and encounters that can be used in dozens of different ways depending upon how the players and the various factions react to prior events.

[Lazybones1969]

I have been running campaigns in my own homebrew setting since I started playing 5e about 5 years ago. Each time I start building something new in FGU I flesh out a different part of the campaign world. I bought the D&D 5e Adventures Bundle a few years back when it was on sale, and I mostly use that to mine for components that I can add to my campaigns. For example, I took three of the adventures from Ghosts of Saltmarsh and dropped them into my nautical-themed archipelago campaign with minimal edits. In another campaign I needed a challenge for my high level party so I dropped in the stone giant canyon from Storm King's Thunder, ramping up the difficulty by doubling the number of giants present in most of the encounters.

[anstett]

For the second part of your question on how deep we can get with world building etc.

http://www.dragonslayers-society.org...ernIslandGroup

Over 5,600 pages so far on our site. I have run on VTT since 2003, over 1,500 sessions over the past 31+ years.

We use FG every Friday for this game, text only so we can post it all to the site. In 2024 so far we have done over 965,000 words of character interaction and adventures.

I am happy to buy adventures here from SW, then modify them for my game and how we play. Or just build new adventures on the fly as the characters discover new places and people.

[Egheal]

I purchase adventures and do heavy tweaking to adapte to my players taste and characters backgrounds. Masks of Nyarlathotep was our most memorable campaign. Lots of work but such a pleasant experience!

[Mytherus]

Thanks for sharing how you approach use or putting together your games. The idea of true homebrew is like a small goal I’d like to accomplish one day as a DM but I only see that in reach if I can ever retire or semi retire and then if the good lord still has me with all my senses to play the hobby.

I run premade adventures but I think I’m going to semi home brew something soon just mixing ideas or using select elements from books I have and adding in my own stuff. Maybe that’ll be doable without requiring gobs of time.

[anstett]

Start small.

Build the 7 building village (village because it has a chapel) that the group is starting from. All they need to know is that the goat herders up hill are known to be jokers and the fishing families on the coast are always looking for help.

And there you go a simple home brew you can append a huge variety of modules both home make and store bought. About 500 words about this place can spin off into thousands of pages over the years.

[Vass_Dts]

I started DMing 24 years ago, when 3e came out, and was immediately faced with a dilemma: Run a premade setting (with a FR being most likely as I was somewhat familiar with it), or follow my DM's example and homebrew my own setting?

Homebrew won, and for the last couple decades I have ran all my D&D campaigns in my own setting.

I usually make my own adventures, but in the past I have used premade adventures that I adapted for my world (particularly from the days of Dungeon magazine). Long-form adventures like the ones 5e typically publishes are essentially campaigns, so they are generally not useful to me (though I do buy some of them to steal stuff occasionally).