Why I Don’t Buy Adventures

There’s a great post over at RPG Musings about buying third-party products. I have a similar problem:

I rarely buy third-party RPG products. In my experience, those products are too-specific slices of other peoples’ campaign worlds, which don’t fit into my own.

I’ve only bought generic tools, like Gygax’s Book of Names, or completely self-contained adventures that don’t connect with my world, like a jungle temple adventure I bought.

Which begs the question: what would a more useful product look like?

For adventures, I’m reminded of “Die, Vecna, Die!”, an adventure from 2^nd Edition D&D. The reader is presented with major plot points, providing the DM with the overall shape of the adventure and the creatures involved, leaving room for the DM to decide exactly how many enemies should be in a particular encounter and in what configuration.

This lets the writer focus on being awesome. I want n adventure that makes me think “Oh, man, I have got to use that somehow.” So, adventure writer, don’t sweat the small stuff. Yes, I want monster stat blocks, but don’t map out the entire fight for me.

Let me integrate your adventure, not drop it in whole.