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Of course, the players can always take the encounters in a different direction. A module may detail how a monster will fight in combat and be designed for such a combat to occur, but the players may decide (like we did with the orcs at Blaze Arrow) to negotiate, and the DM may have to come up with a completely different response from what is dictated in the module. When I DMed the Speaker in Dreams module, I found that the text in the module gave me tips for combat and the skills and abilities I needed for the NPCs to fight; however, it gave me no insight as to how to initiate the combat or what to do if the players did not engage in combat. As an inexperienced DM, who naively thought I could just follow what was in the book, this lead to an awkward moment where the characters entered a room, saw the NPCs, and stood there. Unsure how to get things started, I had the NPCs immediately become threatening and tell the characters to leave or else. This signaled to the players that a combat was the intended outcome of entering that room, but did not prove for a very interesting story. A good DM must take an authorial role at this point, come up with dialog, and engage the characters and players in the encounter. Interestingly, module writing has shifted from the early days of Temple where Gygax and Mentzer organized the module by location rather than encounter and included many superfluous locations where no encounters would take place. Either method gives the DM a great deal of flexibility. When extra locations that do not have encounters included, the DM can exercise creativity to make these locations interesting or to add encounters. When the module is organized by encounters, the DM may need to add additional locations to complete the world and answer player questions.

For Scott, the Gateway module served more as a location for his own story than as a story of its own. This particular module was designed more as a setting and was organized around locations in the town of Gateway. Scott took the map from the module along with the general description of the city and incorporated them into the world of Sorpraedor. For example, the city in the module is powered on water turbines, has a large population of nobles, and several powerful thieves’ guilds. These elements were all key in the city of Gateway in the Sorpraedor campaign. For example, a larger story element within Sorpraedor was the growing discontent of the gnome population. Within Gateway, Scott decided that the gnomes were the one responsible for maintaining and running the water turbines that powered the city. Thus, as tensions increased within the gnome community, the city gradually began to fall apart. The gnomes went on strike, and eventually refused to operate the turbines altogether. The player characters were involved in this plot only to a small degree, although they could have pursued it more if they had chosen. Instead, the party pursued one of the key underground guilds, the Obsidian Brotherhood, which was based loosely on the Scarlet Sashes from the Gateway module. In this way, the DM must author many possible stories, but be willing to go whichever direction the players choose. In our case, the party was scarcely aware of the gnome problem—despite a series of clues and hints provided—until the entire city of Gateway shut down, and we were forced to leave. Because the players did not choose to pursue this plotline, it was authored more solely by the DM than through collaborative effort; however, other plotlines were authored more by players.

Re-writing Rule Books

Although modules are often used in both home campaigns and RPGA gatherings, the game rule books always serve as a key text that the players and DM interact with. Three main rule books are needed to play D&D. These books include the Player’s Handbook, The Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), and The Monster Manual. The first is necessary for players in the game while the DM will likely use all three books. As new editions