Before I die, I want to run all these modules.

That’s what I said to a friend the other day in Starbuck’s. We were planning campaign dates and got to talking about Castle Amber, the classic Moldvay adventure, and possibly my favourite adventure of all time.

I waxed on about how I’d love to GM it again. Then it occurred to me that I should start planning to run the module instead of just wishing about it.

I Gotta Make the Time

With regular campaigns taking up a lot of my planning and gaming time, I could spend the rest of my life just running my campaigns. I might never get to running certain modules I’d be chafing to get at. I might never get to visit Castle Amber again, with its crazy NPCs and tricky encounters.

So, I decided in the coffee shop to make a published adventure bucket list and to make the time to work through it.

What’s on the List?

My list only contains published adventures. And there are two types:

  1. I have DM’d it before and want to do again
  2. It’s on my shelf begging to be run for the first time

I have Dungeon Magazine’s picks for top adventures of all time, and several of those made it into category two.  Several other modules have a great reputation or rating online. And a few are just teasing me to try.

My Game Plan

The point of the list is to create a plan that will get accomplished.

Just making a wistful group of modules I’d like to run someday will not get the job done. It’ll always remain a fantasy. Then I’ll get hit by a bus, my family gets a bunch of insurance money, and those modules will land up in a garage sale without me having the opportunity to spill cola on them or get food crumbs lodged in that crevasse you can never reach between pages.

I will take a module from the list, prepare it to my game system de jour, and run it outside of my regular campaign. I’ll schedule a weekend day, or a few, to get the adventure complete.

That way, my main games go on unhindered, I get my bucket list slowly pared down over a period of years, and – the best part – I get additional gaming in!

I get to carve a new gaming island out of my schedule and be stranded on it for a multitude of adventures.

That said, I also will incorporate some modules into my regular campaigns (assuming I am still gaming fantasy at any given time). That will help me get through my bucket list faster, before that nasty DM Killer Bus hits.

Some modules are full campaigns, and they will not get gamed in one weekend, so they’ll have to be part of my regular gaming or a dedicated side group.

List A – Modules I’ve Run Before and Will Again

Castle Amber

Curse of Xanathon

Keep on the Borderlands

Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

Night Below

Queen of the Spiders

Scourge of the Slave Lords

Underwater series

The Desert of Desolation Series

The Forge of Fury

The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun

The Ghost Tower of Inverness

The Secret of Bone Hill

The Temple of Elemental Evil
List B – Modules I Will Run for the First Time

Against the Cult of the Reptile God

Axe of the Dwarvish Lords

Bloodstone Series

City of Skulls

City of the Spider Queen

Dead Gods

Die Vecna Die!

Dragon Mountain

Dwellers of the Forbidden City

Egg of the Phoenix

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan

Illithiad Trilogy

Needle

Red Hand of Doom

Return to White Plume Mountain

Shackled City

The Assassin’s Knot

The Gates of Firestorm Peak

The Lost City

The Rod of Seven Parts

The Witchfire Trilogy

What on your list?

What’s on your game master bucket list – things to do while you still can?


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