Reusing adventures

[copeab]

I've gotten in a bit of a habit, when I have a new campaign with new players, of reusing adventures from previous campaigns. Frex, in d6 Star Wars, pretty much every group of PCs has had the joy of fleeing from Hoth ;)

In most of the Traveller campaigns I ran, I have used _The Lady in White Robes_ patron (it's in the Traveller starter set and The Traveller Book), handling it differently in each case. I didn't use it in my first campaign because I hadn't seen it yet or in a later campaign because it had a player from an earlier campaign.

Are there any of you out there who have some particular adventure you like to reuse?

[sinanju]

I tend to re-use a couple of adventures:

1. "Dr. Saburo Pak's last creation" -- Dr. Pak is (well, was--he's been murdered) the world's foremost scientific genius. He's singlehandedly responsible for numerous advancements (what, exactly, depends on the campaign type--cyberpunk vs superheroes vs space opera, etc). Now he's dead and his last creation (or the prototype or the blueprints or whatnot) is missing and everyone wants it. EVERYONE. In the words of Sidney Poiter in SNEAKERS, "There's not a government on this planet that wouldn't kill us all for this thing." Naturally, it falls into the hands of the PCs, and they find themselves hunted by..well, EVERYONE. Question is: how will they handle it?

2. "Damien's Deep Pit Bar-B-Q" -- A new barbeque joint has opened in Campaign City. The food is excellent and it's the "in" place for the rich and well connected to see and be seen. Alas, some of the "pork" is actually human flesh. See, there's a demon who can command (and possess) cannibals. He can't exercise his full power over you until you _willingly_ eat human flesh, but even unwitting cannibals can be influenced (disturbing dreams, suspicious appetites, etc). A PC meets an informant there and thus begins the adventure. (And the cult behind this scheme is planning to open several more restaurants in other cities....)

[Lucius]

I've recycled a lot of adventures, including some published ones.

For example, I've started more than one Champions game with all the characters being abducted by aliens who want to use them as gladiators in arena combat. This gets all the player characters together in one place, and gives them at least one obvious goal (given that very few player characters are actually willing to go along with the idea of being gladiator slaves, even if reassured that the combat will be nonlethal - usually.)

Lucius Alexander

Sometimes I even recycle palindromedary taglines

[tkdguy]

I've re-used a couple of adventures, if they went well the first time around. Many of them were ideas from a gaming magazine, like Dragon, but I fleshed them out and changed the genre as needed.

[Curufea]

I don't GM much, so I haven't needed to so far.

[AmadanNaBriona]

I've resued Plots quite a few times, but I file off the serial numbers, and in some cases the exact same players haven't recognized the origin of the plot.

The one I've gotten the most play from?

Diehard. (The movie)

Boiled down, the Protagonist(s) are thrown into a crisis involving superior numbers of badguys while trapped in a closed environment with limited or no equipment, and have to determine who the bad guys are, what their goal is, and how to deal with them.

I've ganked this particualr plot, with different trapping, for almost every genre.

[Matt Frisbee]

My all time favorite adventure for Champions takes its inspiration from Marvel Comics -- the classic Metahuman Misunderstanding!

This usually introduces the PC's to one another. Have a supervillain on the loose and our heroes (with no reputation to speak of) arrive on the scene of his or her latest crime in progress. Add some confusion and misdirection so the amped up heroes start pounding on each other. Have the villain escape while the PC's are occupied, then spring the realization that they have all allowed the bad guy to escape. Now they have to work together to corner and capture the baddie they could have had earlier.

Matt "Call-me-a-traditionalist" Frisbee

[Kevin C. Wong]

I don't reuses adventures on purpose, but there have been a couple where in the middle of the adventure the players said "didn't you run this a few years ago?" "Oh yeah. Hmm. Roleplay as if your character doesn't know what's going to happen."

[CBikle]

I've re-used The Great Super-Villain Contest. That adventure still works.

http://graphics.drivethrurpg.com/images/gsvc00.jpg

[Captain Obvious]

I've often reused adventures. Not generally with the same group, though.

I have run The Keep on the Borderlands for people who have been through it before. I decided early on into that one that I needed to change some stuff up. A lot of people have that one essentially memorized.

[Curufea]

It's odd - I've got about 6 or 7 D&D modules. But I've never used them. I originally got them for ideas, so I could use parts of them - I think I've used one encounter from one of them in my entire life.
On the other hand - I've got nearly every BBB module for Champions (bought when they were first published)- but I never played superheroes (and don't like reading superhero genre comics). I've been tempted to run a superhero genre game of Hero - but so far never have.

[AmadanNaBriona]

It's odd - I've got about 6 or 7 D&D modules. But I've never used them. I originally got them for ideas, so I could use parts of them - I think I've used one encounter from one of them in my entire life.
On the other hand - I've got nearly every BBB module for Champions (bought when they were first published)- but I never played superheroes (and don't like reading superhero genre comics). I've been tempted to run a superhero genre game of Hero - but so far never have.

Speaking of D&D modules from the old days....

The Isle of Dread, which came with one of the boxed sets at one point, sat in my gaming stuff for YEARS till I was running a Sinbad style nautical adventure for FH... and all of a sudden it hit me.

It was an almost perfect lost worlds swashbuckling adventure once ported over... Granted, things like Dinosaurs and Sabertooth Tigers are a bit nastier in FH than in D&D, but thats the beauty of a nautical adventure... a whole crew worth of redshirts to get eaten by the nasties.

The running fight between the crew and a swarm of pterodactyls across a rickety chasm bridge was priceless.

[Captain Obvious]

Speaking of D&D modules from the old days....

The Isle of Dread, which came with one of the boxed sets at one point, sat in my gaming stuff for YEARS till I was running a Sinbad style nautical adventure for FH... and all of a sudden it hit me.

It was an almost perfect lost worlds swashbuckling adventure once ported over... Granted, things like Dinosaurs and Sabertooth Tigers are a bit nastier in FH than in D&D, but thats the beauty of a nautical adventure... a whole crew worth of redshirts to get eaten by the nasties.

The running fight between the crew and a swarm of pterodactyls across a rickety chasm bridge was priceless.
That place just calls out for a giant ape....

[Curufea]

More adventures would be improved with the addition of a Giant Ape.

Wandering through Drow caverns, sick of the constant whining over good and evil and the constant nagging from their matriarchs - throw in a Giant Ape.

Defending some fort somewhere from some collection of disparate monsters that have been cohesively organised, and just plain sick of the siege. Throw in a Giant Ape.

Vampire council dragging? Meeting after meeting about those darn Anarchs causing your teeth to ache? Giant Ape!

Giant Ape - for all your adventuring needs.

[Captain Obvious]

Maybe I'll build a Giant Ape Summon to put on my next character, to liven things up every now and then...

[Curufea]

"Where did I put that emergency Giant Ape?"

[Mike W]

I've done it a little, but not much. I could get away with it since my new group is in a completely different part of the state from where I was GMing in college, but the college guys tended to make much different characters, so I'm not sure how much I'd be able to transfer over. Of course, I've also changed settings too.