Running Modules As Written

About a year ago, Luka Rejec made the case that nobody runs D&D modules "as written", and indeed that it is impossible to do so. What the author envisages will never be perfectly transposed into the text, and every reader will encounter and interpret the text differently. And that's before the plan, so to speak, makes contact with the enemy. Every gaming group is different, and will approach the setup in its own particular way. That there could be a "complete" module a DM could run off the bat is hence a pipe dream.

Prince of Nothing, everybody's favourite Dutch internet edgelord, has recently responded, calling this position untenable and making the case that a module-writer should think of a module as being something like a video game level - a set of obstacles, locations, threats, etc., which the PCs have to overcome. Every group will of course encounter every module in a different way, but a good module will itself play out consistently, in the same way, just as a video game level is the same for each player (even though the actual events play out differently in practice every time). 

Now, on the one hand, I am on record as saying: "I have never run anything I have bought as is, and can never really imagine how anybody would; I can only really imagine somebody buying an adventure or module and pulling out bits here, removing bits there, switching X around with Y and Z with A, or perhaps just going away inspired to do their own vague pastiche of the contents." So I suppose my natural inclinations run in Luka's direction. I don't often buy modules (and when I do, I am generally excessively critical), but I have bought enough to know that running one as written would feel to me a little bit like wearing somebody else's clothes. 

Yet at the same time, I recognise the virtue in attempting to realise PoN's quixotic dream. However people end up using modules, it is probably important that those who design them aspire for them to realise the ideal of being consistently playable, whatever the group or circumstances, "out of the box". The alternative - aspiring to create modules which will not be played, but merely read, plundered or pastiched - is likely to end in sloppiness and a kind of grab-bag mentality, with the author simply putting together a jumble of related ideas or impressions that lack coherence even as reading material. We must hold ourselves to high standards, in other words, because when we cease to do so, we tend to let ourselves go; once we have given ourselves the excuse that "nobody will ever play this anyway", we give ourselves license to create stuff which is, frankly, half-arsed. 

I suppose a simpler way of saying this is that I am "intensely relaxed" about people buying adventure modules purely to be read and never played, but the best modules to read are likely to be ones which the designer has made strenuous efforts to make consistent and robust. This is very likely to be correlated with quality in all other respects. The obverse is also true; if the designer hasn't made such efforts, this is very likely to be correlated with a lack of quality in the round. (I don't accuse Luka of this - I can honestly say I've never read anything he's written, but I do really love his art.)

An even simpler way of stating my position is that, in general, people in 2022 are already a bit too ready to make excuses for themselves for being kind of shit in most aspects of their lives, and anything which encourages that kind of mindset should really be discouraged. I like the idea of at least aspiring to make something perfect, not just jotting down some nice concepts.