Just wondering what your experiences are with this. I know the answer is partly 'how much prep do you do?' But to run the table well, is there more prep for one than the other? Also, I'm not a particularly experienced DM, although I've been around the block a few times so can wing things if I need. Asking because I'm thinking about my next campaign (currently running LMoP).
I know HB you have more planning as you have to create everything, but with published you have to get familiar with the material and be ready for you players to go off script.
Overall, I would say a Homebrew campaign requires more time. Creating a world big and complex enough to give the players the impression of reality takes time and planning. While the creation process will probably give you a much better understanding than you would have of a published campaign setting (and so you may be smoother/faster at the table, without needing to look something up), I don't think that would offset the upfront time cost.
Aside from that, I think session prep would probably be pretty similar. You're not going to want to run encounters entirely from memory in either case.
I've found preparing for home brewed adventures harder than making my own stuff up. I have to read most adventures a couple of times to get the hang of where everything is and an idea of how the adventure can flow and branch. If I'm making my own stuff up I'm a lot more confident of making stuff up on the fly and moving stuff around as I'm not going to bugger everything up if I bend something important in a published adventure.
I find it easier to remember the stuff I created rather then the stuff I read about. I'll read an adventure several times and re-read the sections I think will be relevant prior to the session, and still not have it down. I find it hard to grasp the NPC's motives from written adventures (why is this guy here, why does he want to help/harm the party, what does he get out of it, why is he so good/evil, etc.) If I'm creating things, I'll think it up before hand, write it down, and I'll know it like it's been in my mind forever. Creating an entire elaborate world is of course alot of work, but I think once the groundwork is laid out it becomes easier to build on and run multiple campaigns from that same world.
Thanks everyone, I'm inclined to home brew I think for the reasons you stated. Deciding now whether to home brew an entire world or just plonk something in to the Sword Coast or whatever.
A published adventure that is well-written from the perspective of your group's play-style is the quickest, other than my personal favorite "Hey, wanna play some D&D? No, I don't have a plan or an adventure to use... we'll have were things will start figured out by the time we're done rolling up characters." which takes pretty much zero time to prep - once you've spent whatever time it took for you to become confident enough with the game to actually do it.
Second to that would be home-brew campaign in an established setting.
And tied for "I can't count high enough to know how long I've been working on this" would be home-brew campaign in a setting that you are also home-brewing and actually putting in some form that other people can learn about the setting other than by asking you questions, and using a published adventure that is poorly-written from the perspective of your group's play-style so you basically have to write the important parts yourself, defeating a significant purpose to using published adventures in the first place.
Second to that would be home-brew campaign in an established setting.
Heavily leaning towards this. All the background work is done and the ground rules for how the world works are familiar, but I don't need to be across every detail of someone else's game. Thanks for the advice.
A published adventure that is well-written from the perspective of your group's play-style is the quickest, other than my personal favorite "Hey, wanna play some D&D? No, I don't have a plan or an adventure to use... we'll have were things will start figured out by the time we're done rolling up characters." which takes pretty much zero time to prep - once you've spent whatever time it took for you to become confident enough with the game to actually do it.
That's my favorite, too.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
For me a personal campaign is far easier to run than a published adventure. I tend to free form a lot more. I have an idea of how I want things to go and use a good deal of stuff on the fly. The published adventures require a ton of preparation and I always feel like I miss so much while running. That being said my games are never as awesome as the published ones.
Which takes longer, writing a book "loosely based on star wars?" or writing a generic fantasy-esque book featuring technology from the middle ages?
It depends on the DM. Some DMs can invest hundreds of hours into a pre-made campaign, and some will show up and literally read the book at the table.
Some DMs will start a home-brew campaign with 100 years of history, involving the 3 great goblin wars, and a royal family tree with hundreds of names upon it. Others will show up to the table, and just start throwing NPCs at the characters until they take the bait.
If you are an experienced DM, you can pull off being lazy better than an inexperienced one, but a lazy DM will be a lazy DM no matter what.
And that's not necessarily bad in any way, since "lazy" just means they could work harder, not that said work would inherently make their campaign better in any way.
Speaking strictly literally, making homebrew always takes me longer. Which does not mean that using published adventurers is fast, just faster than making it from scratch. Like the OP said, you still need to familiarize yourself with the material. Cracking the book open and never looking at it before had is almost a guaranteed way to grind the game to a halt.
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Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Dragons, for You are Crunchy and Taste Good with Ketchup,
And that's not necessarily bad in any way, since "lazy" just means they could work harder, not that said work would inherently make their campaign better in any way.
If you are competent, prep work does improve the story...
But you are right that it is possible to be both lazy, and also incompetent. For those people, I recommend board games.
If you are competent, prep work does improve the story...
That is no different than me saying "If you are competent, not prepping does improve the story." Both are true, and yet neither is more true than the other.
That's the magic of their being different things to be competent at, such as one person being competent at planning out the right details so they actually manage to come up during a session, rather than be wasted work with no effect other than to increase the amount of work that's been done, and another person being competent at improvisation so the players can't tell that whatever it is that is happening during the session wasn't deliberately planned by the DM in advance.
Hmm, this is one of those questions which really doesn't have a right answer.....
Let's start with running a published adventure for starters, let's say the Lost mines from the starter set, you'll likely need to spend at least one full evening reading through it to get a good idea of how with adventure is 'supposed' to run, taking notes of problem spots as you go, you'll likely then need to spend some more time planning for your gaming night's session, preparing stats, spells, maps and extra encounters in case things don't go to plan (and trust me, they likely won't!), this could overall cost you at least 6-8 hours of prep time, just to get one gaming session of around 3 hours in, and for bigger adventure books, you can add at least another 2 hours for each extra 100 pages of material to review in your first session, and bare in mind, you'll likely need to spend around 2 hours to prep for each and every session of play, longer for higher levels or longer game sessions.
Now Published Camapigns is a different matter, you'll likely need to spend at least two evenings reading through the book to get familiar with the setting, then another evening preparing resources for the first session of gaming, taking into account what rules you'll need for your player's characters, what spells and such will be available to them, etc, and that's without the time needed to prepare for the actual adventure you'll want to run them through! You could easily spend anywhere from 8 to 12 hours prepping the campaign!
Now homebrew is a different ballgame all together, take a look at site's such as Pinterest for RPG Maps, download a number of map's you like, viliages, towns. cities, countries, dungeons, ruins and so on, that's around an hour maybe two, chose your rules you want to use, character classes, spells etc, let's say another hour or two, select the maps for your first few adventures, select some monsters to populate each site, write down notes the whole time, why are they there? What are they doing etc?, another hour or two, then browse sites such as RPG now for downloads that detail NPC's, Treasures, location dressings etc, take notes of which will apply to each site, let's say another hour or so, you've spent around 4 to 8 hours you've spent building and laying the foundation of your homebrew and the first few adventures, additional details are added during play as and when needed, always remembering to take notes.
All three options are valid for DM's and really which you use depends on how competent you are with the game, newer players will likely use method one, while the most experianced are likely to use method three for their campaign, but there's no reason why a new DM can't do a killer homebrew!
You also could try a much more narrative D&D style game that requires less prep work but is much more open ended. I run a few Dungeon World campaigns which is super rules light but hits all of the things I love about fantasy roleplay. It saves me time and gives me the same enjoyment and unknown of a normal D&D world otherwise I would defer to the other posters who hit the nail on the head with basically "it depends" on you which is faster.
Might I suggest half and half where you implement your own homebrew into an established adventure as players take you off the rails?
My personal experience has been that homebrew adventures are easier than published adventures. Here's a few points that come to mind. I'm surely omitting plenty of Pros/Cons for either route.
Homebrew
Pros
You can make things up as you go along, to some extent, if needed, and the characters will never know the difference. This means that with some fore-sight, or instinct, you'll be able to avoid backing the characters into a corner which might happen with a published adventure. Of course you can improvise with a published adventure but then you're effectively homebrewing.
You can customize and tailor the adventure or campaign to the characters and party in ways that might be difficult or nearly impossible to pull off cleanly, with a published campaign.
Cons
The DM must do their homework in terms of integrating setting lore, ie: Forgotten Realms, etc, into the homebrewed world. It could break the world and impact the player experience if you take a NPC that they've heard about, and make the NPC do something totally uncharacteristic.
It has the potential to take longer to prep for than a published campaign, depending on the DM's level of commitment and appetite for fleshing out the world.
Published
Pros
You don't need to be nearly as imaginative when prepping for a session. If the published adventure is well-written, most of the work should be done for you. If you're in a situation where you're drained after work but able to read-up on an adventure ahead of time, and just wanna DM and sling some dice, a published adventure could fit the bill. I've tied together one-shot style adventures into week-over-week connected plotlines for my adventurers and they had a great time.
Cons
You'll need to do a bunch of reading ahead of time and connect the dots between rooms, NPC's, plot threads, etc. This can be time-consuming, and you'll need to keep it all in your head while the characters play, to keep things running smoothly and not omit important points, or go off the rails into territory that the published campaign doesn't cover. I say this, and take it with a grain of salt, because it's almost guaranteed that the party will go "off-book" at some point and you'll need to improvise a bit. That's just expected for every DM. A well-written campaign will cover most of the common bases though.
Its kinda like asking which is easier...babysitting your neighbors kid or your kid.
Its technically way easier to watch the neighbors kid as you have a set of rules and you can hit a stopping point and its fine. However there is way more pride in creating your own world and failing at certain things only to make them better later.
So I've gone ahead and started creating my own world. In the end I had too many ideas to leave on the shelf and as I've started thinking it through this thing has gained a life of its own. I hope my players like it once we land there. I've got the legendary bundle from BDD and will just incorporate material as appropriate into my setting. World building is easy, I think it will be keeping the actual adventures fun which I'll find a challenge.
I am about to DM for my first time, while simultaneously teaching my 11 year old daughter how to play. My wife decided that I should get the 5e Starter Set and so I've been reading through that. Previously, however I've actually started creating my own world(s). MS Excel has been a friend for map creation, and even creating working character sheets (3.5e about 95% completed) which can include dice roller and incorporate attacks, spells, saves, bonuses, etc. We have a group outside DnD Beyond that played for a while, but our schedules died.
My thought process is get the main story arc generated, so that you know what you have planned in a straight line; which of course will most likely be deviated from. In that aspect, have a mind map generated ahead of time. If A then 1, else if b then 2 ... and so on. Also if you're creating your own campaign as I am, consider your starting location, add a few side-quests in that the players are able to address if they choose, whether its a message board, or a messenger that runs to the party, or even someone who sees the party respond to a certain action in a specific way, seeks them out to hand a problem (s)he has that is similar or coincides with the character's goals.
As for building the world, I think it is rather easy, depending on how often you play and what happens in each session. You can create a town/city, and everything happens there (like the original Bard's Tale), while you work to develop the surrounding landscape. Creating the political/religious cultures, social structures, etc may be a bit more challenging, however taking an NPC generator to create an NPC then build a family or group based off that NPC can reduce the amount of work in the initial development. Part of my thought process is to also have the characters build a back story, a general personality, or something they want to develop for their character; resulting in ideas to incorporate into primary-/side-quests. 5e does a good job at having pre-generated backgrounds and character traits, but adding in the personal touch works well too.
An example I might be leading off with is an assassination attempt on the DM's character, but then leaving the future actions of the group to decide where it goes. Does they choose to hide from future attacks, investigate and quest before addressing it, or 'Leroy Jenkins' it and blindly counterattack? Sidequests also may be useful in redirecting the players onto a story arc, supposing they do continue to hide or ignore the assassination attempt; maybe more assassins are sent (eventually you may have to handle the source). Another story arc I've thought about is players are in a colosseum, either watching or participating, one thing or another happens and they all end up forced to work with one another...hopefully winning the tournament. From there they celebrate and supposedly team up. Anyone is free to use the ideas if they like them. Each story will be different, even with starter sets.
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Just wondering what your experiences are with this. I know the answer is partly 'how much prep do you do?' But to run the table well, is there more prep for one than the other? Also, I'm not a particularly experienced DM, although I've been around the block a few times so can wing things if I need. Asking because I'm thinking about my next campaign (currently running LMoP).
I know HB you have more planning as you have to create everything, but with published you have to get familiar with the material and be ready for you players to go off script.
Thoughts?
Overall, I would say a Homebrew campaign requires more time. Creating a world big and complex enough to give the players the impression of reality takes time and planning. While the creation process will probably give you a much better understanding than you would have of a published campaign setting (and so you may be smoother/faster at the table, without needing to look something up), I don't think that would offset the upfront time cost.
Aside from that, I think session prep would probably be pretty similar. You're not going to want to run encounters entirely from memory in either case.
I've found preparing for home brewed adventures harder than making my own stuff up. I have to read most adventures a couple of times to get the hang of where everything is and an idea of how the adventure can flow and branch. If I'm making my own stuff up I'm a lot more confident of making stuff up on the fly and moving stuff around as I'm not going to bugger everything up if I bend something important in a published adventure.
I find it easier to remember the stuff I created rather then the stuff I read about. I'll read an adventure several times and re-read the sections I think will be relevant prior to the session, and still not have it down. I find it hard to grasp the NPC's motives from written adventures (why is this guy here, why does he want to help/harm the party, what does he get out of it, why is he so good/evil, etc.) If I'm creating things, I'll think it up before hand, write it down, and I'll know it like it's been in my mind forever. Creating an entire elaborate world is of course alot of work, but I think once the groundwork is laid out it becomes easier to build on and run multiple campaigns from that same world.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Thanks everyone, I'm inclined to home brew I think for the reasons you stated. Deciding now whether to home brew an entire world or just plonk something in to the Sword Coast or whatever.
A published adventure that is well-written from the perspective of your group's play-style is the quickest, other than my personal favorite "Hey, wanna play some D&D? No, I don't have a plan or an adventure to use... we'll have were things will start figured out by the time we're done rolling up characters." which takes pretty much zero time to prep - once you've spent whatever time it took for you to become confident enough with the game to actually do it.
Second to that would be home-brew campaign in an established setting.
And tied for "I can't count high enough to know how long I've been working on this" would be home-brew campaign in a setting that you are also home-brewing and actually putting in some form that other people can learn about the setting other than by asking you questions, and using a published adventure that is poorly-written from the perspective of your group's play-style so you basically have to write the important parts yourself, defeating a significant purpose to using published adventures in the first place.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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For me a personal campaign is far easier to run than a published adventure. I tend to free form a lot more. I have an idea of how I want things to go and use a good deal of stuff on the fly. The published adventures require a ton of preparation and I always feel like I miss so much while running. That being said my games are never as awesome as the published ones.
Which takes longer, writing a book "loosely based on star wars?" or writing a generic fantasy-esque book featuring technology from the middle ages?
It depends on the DM. Some DMs can invest hundreds of hours into a pre-made campaign, and some will show up and literally read the book at the table.
Some DMs will start a home-brew campaign with 100 years of history, involving the 3 great goblin wars, and a royal family tree with hundreds of names upon it. Others will show up to the table, and just start throwing NPCs at the characters until they take the bait.
If you are an experienced DM, you can pull off being lazy better than an inexperienced one, but a lazy DM will be a lazy DM no matter what.
Speaking strictly literally, making homebrew always takes me longer. Which does not mean that using published adventurers is fast, just faster than making it from scratch. Like the OP said, you still need to familiarize yourself with the material. Cracking the book open and never looking at it before had is almost a guaranteed way to grind the game to a halt.
Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Dragons, for You are Crunchy and Taste Good with Ketchup,
If
That is no different than me saying "If you are competent, not prepping does improve the story." Both are true, and yet neither is more true than the other.
That's the magic of their being different things to be competent at, such as one person being competent at planning out the right details so they actually manage to come up during a session, rather than be wasted work with no effect other than to increase the amount of work that's been done, and another person being competent at improvisation so the players can't tell that whatever it is that is happening during the session wasn't deliberately planned by the DM in advance.
Hmm, this is one of those questions which really doesn't have a right answer.....
Let's start with running a published adventure for starters, let's say the Lost mines from the starter set, you'll likely need to spend at least one full evening reading through it to get a good idea of how with adventure is 'supposed' to run, taking notes of problem spots as you go, you'll likely then need to spend some more time planning for your gaming night's session, preparing stats, spells, maps and extra encounters in case things don't go to plan (and trust me, they likely won't!), this could overall cost you at least 6-8 hours of prep time, just to get one gaming session of around 3 hours in, and for bigger adventure books, you can add at least another 2 hours for each extra 100 pages of material to review in your first session, and bare in mind, you'll likely need to spend around 2 hours to prep for each and every session of play, longer for higher levels or longer game sessions.
Now Published Camapigns is a different matter, you'll likely need to spend at least two evenings reading through the book to get familiar with the setting, then another evening preparing resources for the first session of gaming, taking into account what rules you'll need for your player's characters, what spells and such will be available to them, etc, and that's without the time needed to prepare for the actual adventure you'll want to run them through! You could easily spend anywhere from 8 to 12 hours prepping the campaign!
Now homebrew is a different ballgame all together, take a look at site's such as Pinterest for RPG Maps, download a number of map's you like, viliages, towns. cities, countries, dungeons, ruins and so on, that's around an hour maybe two, chose your rules you want to use, character classes, spells etc, let's say another hour or two, select the maps for your first few adventures, select some monsters to populate each site, write down notes the whole time, why are they there? What are they doing etc?, another hour or two, then browse sites such as RPG now for downloads that detail NPC's, Treasures, location dressings etc, take notes of which will apply to each site, let's say another hour or so, you've spent around 4 to 8 hours you've spent building and laying the foundation of your homebrew and the first few adventures, additional details are added during play as and when needed, always remembering to take notes.
All three options are valid for DM's and really which you use depends on how competent you are with the game, newer players will likely use method one, while the most experianced are likely to use method three for their campaign, but there's no reason why a new DM can't do a killer homebrew!
"I am The Ancient, I am The Land"
You also could try a much more narrative D&D style game that requires less prep work but is much more open ended. I run a few Dungeon World campaigns which is super rules light but hits all of the things I love about fantasy roleplay. It saves me time and gives me the same enjoyment and unknown of a normal D&D world otherwise I would defer to the other posters who hit the nail on the head with basically "it depends" on you which is faster.
Might I suggest half and half where you implement your own homebrew into an established adventure as players take you off the rails?
My personal experience has been that homebrew adventures are easier than published adventures. Here's a few points that come to mind. I'm surely omitting plenty of Pros/Cons for either route.
Homebrew
Pros
This means that with some fore-sight, or instinct, you'll be able to avoid backing the characters into a corner which might happen with a published adventure. Of course you can improvise with a published adventure but then you're effectively homebrewing.
Cons
Published
Pros
Cons
Its kinda like asking which is easier...babysitting your neighbors kid or your kid.
Its technically way easier to watch the neighbors kid as you have a set of rules and you can hit a stopping point and its fine. However there is way more pride in creating your own world and failing at certain things only to make them better later.
So I've gone ahead and started creating my own world. In the end I had too many ideas to leave on the shelf and as I've started thinking it through this thing has gained a life of its own. I hope my players like it once we land there. I've got the legendary bundle from BDD and will just incorporate material as appropriate into my setting. World building is easy, I think it will be keeping the actual adventures fun which I'll find a challenge.
I am about to DM for my first time, while simultaneously teaching my 11 year old daughter how to play. My wife decided that I should get the 5e Starter Set and so I've been reading through that. Previously, however I've actually started creating my own world(s). MS Excel has been a friend for map creation, and even creating working character sheets (3.5e about 95% completed) which can include dice roller and incorporate attacks, spells, saves, bonuses, etc. We have a group outside DnD Beyond that played for a while, but our schedules died.
My thought process is get the main story arc generated, so that you know what you have planned in a straight line; which of course will most likely be deviated from. In that aspect, have a mind map generated ahead of time. If A then 1, else if b then 2 ... and so on. Also if you're creating your own campaign as I am, consider your starting location, add a few side-quests in that the players are able to address if they choose, whether its a message board, or a messenger that runs to the party, or even someone who sees the party respond to a certain action in a specific way, seeks them out to hand a problem (s)he has that is similar or coincides with the character's goals.
As for building the world, I think it is rather easy, depending on how often you play and what happens in each session. You can create a town/city, and everything happens there (like the original Bard's Tale), while you work to develop the surrounding landscape. Creating the political/religious cultures, social structures, etc may be a bit more challenging, however taking an NPC generator to create an NPC then build a family or group based off that NPC can reduce the amount of work in the initial development. Part of my thought process is to also have the characters build a back story, a general personality, or something they want to develop for their character; resulting in ideas to incorporate into primary-/side-quests. 5e does a good job at having pre-generated backgrounds and character traits, but adding in the personal touch works well too.
An example I might be leading off with is an assassination attempt on the DM's character, but then leaving the future actions of the group to decide where it goes. Does they choose to hide from future attacks, investigate and quest before addressing it, or 'Leroy Jenkins' it and blindly counterattack? Sidequests also may be useful in redirecting the players onto a story arc, supposing they do continue to hide or ignore the assassination attempt; maybe more assassins are sent (eventually you may have to handle the source). Another story arc I've thought about is players are in a colosseum, either watching or participating, one thing or another happens and they all end up forced to work with one another...hopefully winning the tournament. From there they celebrate and supposedly team up. Anyone is free to use the ideas if they like them. Each story will be different, even with starter sets.