Module running advice

#1

OK folks, I’ve never run a module before, and I’m thinking about maybe giving it a shot soon. Any advice about how to use it so that it engenders interesting ideas, doesn’t become a shackle and also isn’t a ton to keep track of? I’m used to a more improvisational style of GMing. Modules I’m thinking of running 1) Gardens of Ynn 2) Blood in the Chocolate 3) Ultraviolet Grasslands (which I realize is more of a setting book, but it’s in the ballpark). Aside from the particular FoaBD episodes about those books, any that give more general advice that you’d recommend? Do you folks have any thoughts?

(X-posted to Slack)

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#2

Well, right off the bat, you seem to have the right outlook on modules. Are you approaching this as a few-shot or part of an ongoing campaign? As far as practical advice goes, you can cut down on the exposition and generate player buy-in by writing some establishing questions. Look through the module and try to pick out one or two themes that are heavily presented in it - if it lacks that, try to find ways to reincorporate the theme in areas that need it. Write a couple of scene painting questions to cut down on boxed text and reinforce the shared hallucination. If you need a bit more, consider following the 7-3-1 procedure.

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#3

One thing I always found useful from my D&D Days in the store was to do a quick plot outline after I read through it so that I could get a feel for when I could jump over sections, or move clues/NPCs from one location to another or swap rooms out. It’s not a sacred text., and it doesn’t survive contact with the player in a pristine state; don’t worry about rearranging the elements.

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#4

Seconding what Michael said! Get a good hook and connect them to the hook. Get them to own that hook or own some variant on it. Blood in the Chocolate does this especially well, and when @Tylom ran it, he guided us to connect with the hook in really interesting ways that ensured we were committed to the goals (and maybe had some of our agendas).

For tools, with Emmy Allen’s work, it might help to have either a few pregen locations you can turn to when the players are moving faster than you planned. I know that there’s a Stygian Library generator and heard there’s one now for Gardens of Ynn, too, which can speed up on-the-fly locations and encounters. @HorstWurst wrote a great piece on the glory of random tables, and I think much of the beauty of Emmy’s work comes from that commitment to randomness, so if you pregen locations, I’d still pull them out fairly randomly to keep that feel.

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