Running it Back: The Case for Replaying Modules

18 Feb, 2026

Part 1: Why You Haven’t Yet

What’s your favourite movie? Your favourite musical album? Imagine them both in your mind.

Now, how many times have you watched that movie? How many scenes can you remember, how many lines can you repeat? Same with the album: can you name all the songs, hum all the melodies?

Now: what’s your favourite dungeon? To run or to play, doesn’t really matter. Let me ask you: how many times have you played it? Maybe you’ve ran it for a bunch of groups in various scenarios, but let’s here assume you have a standard “home table” or steady gang of internet friends. How many times have you played a favourite adventure twice, or ran the same adventure for your group? Have you ever reminisced with your group about an amazing encounter in an adventure, and wished you had done things differently?

Why, exactly, haven’t you ran it back?

Today, I want to talk you into putting on your favourite old record (here’s mine) and let’s talk about running it back.

I have a friend who reads a plot synopsis of every book or movie he chooses to enjoy. He knows what he likes, and happily trades any novelty for the assurance of an interesting plot, and the anticipation of watching “twists” unfold before his eyes; and yet I’ve ran many, many games for him in the decades we’ve been acquainted, and he wouldn’t dream of reading ahead in a module. Good for him, I say; but the truth is, he probably already knows, on some level, what’s going on in the module simply by observing the cover of an adventure and scanning the copy on the back, looking up the ad copy on a website, etc. All of these things are, in some way, a mild spoiler, and one we rarely bat an eye towards.

I fully expect the notion of spoilers / cheating to be the biggest pushback I receive as to the idea of running a module back¹, so let’s talk about two prominent ways we as roleplayers and referees conceptualize what’s happening at the table vis a vis collaborative storytelling as opposed to the social metatextual experience – the fiction within the game, as it supports and possibly supplants the game within the hang. I fully intend to dive into the weeds on what we think of as “in character” and “out of character.” I’m going to say upfront: I contend that this is, in many ways (but not all!), a false dichotomy which fosters miscommunication and ill will between players and with the referee. Moreover, I want to talk about the concept of using player knowledge to unfairly or unjustly aid your characters. Spoiler: I don’t think it’s even possible, let alone a bad thing.

If you, the player, know something about the world, it follows, to my mind and style of playing, that your character should know that something, too. There are plenty of scenarios where you might know more than zero facts about the module you’re about to play. The most obvious one, as we’ll discuss a bit later, is when the referee announces: “Hey, show up on Thursday, we’re playing Dracula's Castle.” Instantly, facts are known; and heaven forfend if you should look up reviews of the module to decide if you’re willing to push off tennis with nan to faff about a make-believe castle with the dolls. Simply by arming yourself with enough knowledge to determine if you want to play, many would say that you’ve disqualified yourself from the “tabula rasa” optimal dungeon delving experience.

What we’re dealing with, here, is whether and by what degree you can “spoil” a dungeon for someone. In terms of media, the easiest comparison for a single adventure stretching over a single night or a few sessions would be, as briefly mentioned above, watching a film. Now, what even constitutes a spoiler in media is enough to prompt several obnoxious arguments, so I’ll try to narrow my focus to several focal points: the concept of the module itself, the events which unfold, and the novel moments and twists (assuming there are any) which separate this module from others.

The concept of a module is probably why you’re playing the darn thing in the first place. Many playgroups simply trust their referee to choose something fun for the ref to run, and for the ref to make it fun for the group in turn; but just as often, I imagine, players show up because they’ve been promised a chance at Dracula’s Castle, or signed up for a specific module at a convention or an online open table.

Perhaps this is because I have a memory disorder, or perhaps I’ve simply played so many modules they sort of smear together in my mind; but it occurs to me that most players don’t remember huge swaths of a module they’ve played so much as isolated moments where something truly exciting, fascinating, or funny occurred. Often, those moments are due to random encounters, character choices, and other factors only tangentially related to the adventure as written. An average dungeon can have dozens of events, each potentially just as impactful; but in reality, most of them coalesce into a broader impression: a good dungeon, a hard module, or overall well- or poorly-designed, punctuated by a cool setpiece or funny story that sticks out. I remember using dynamite in a random castle room and accidentally discovering a grand treasure room, with the king’s legendary magical sword; I even made that character a king in a later hexcrawl. All of that stands crystal-clear in my mind, but I can’t remember: 1) the first character I had, who died shortly after the drawbridge, 2) why we had the dynamite, or 3) literally anything else about the whole castle. I loved the module, and I’m eager to play it again, this time without dynamite (probably).

That treasure room was definitely a twist, eh? Perhaps it’ll feel unfair that I already know about it, that there’s some certainty there. In practice, however, it’s no different than an overheard rumour of lucre within the castle’s walls, or any number of framing devices. And who’s to say the referee won’t simply guarantee a random encounter in the room, to mix things up? Maybe she’ll plop it on a different floor just to mess with me. All valid options, but also: just running it as written trades a microscopic conceptual advantage for so much anticipation and excitement. Now I can whip the table into a frenzy hunting for Excalibur in the ruins, screaming “I know it’s here!” as we knock the place down brick by brick. There’s an entirely novel situation that sort of demands that I have found the sword at least once, right? For all I know, it was the 00 entry on a random loot table. Maybe not, though; and I’m excited that I can play to find out.

Part II: Turns Out You Can’t Spoil A Dungeon

Okay, so, some of you are gonna say it, and in discussing this with friends some of you have already said it: “Oh, so are we just gonna let the players read the dungeon first, now?”

I don’t know. Maybe?

Alright, calm down. Whether you like it or not, players often want to know what’s happening when they sit down at the table. They want to see the module, or at least have an inkling of where their night’s going. In fact, many games start with a group deciding they’re going to play through a specific campaign, especially in our post-Dragonlance world where referees show up with a doorstop hardback campaign book. If I show up to the table with a 400-page doorstop of a hardback with DRACULA’S CASTLE embossed on my leatherbound kickstarter copy I’ve been doting over like a newborn, and don’t expect my players to glean at least a little bit about what we’re gonna play, well perhaps I’m being a bit silly, aren’t I.

So, you’ve seen the cover of the module that you or the referee has brought for the evening’s festivities, and Oh shit!, it’s got a big ol’ Dracula on the cover. No mistaking it, that there castle? The one on the cover? That’s a Dracula Castle, doubtless. Now, perhaps your group has queued up Dracula's Castle as a one-shot, with fresh characters. And why not? We’re all friends here, we were all there in our brick-and-mortar niche gaming store, when we all saw that sweetass vampire on the cover and just had to have it. “We open on a big spooky castle, and pan to our heroes. Everyone: names, classes, and equipment. Go!” This is a fine way to play, and I imagine was probably de rigueur for a lot of in-person tables in the pre-Dragonlance days.

These days, I associate that style of play more with conventions, or playtesting a fellow writer’s new module. More often than not, it seems, another stereotypical campaign opening has taken precedence. You’re not starting at the Castle’s gates, no: you’re at the tavern, each of you acquainting one another. The logic is sound; these are presumably new characters from perhaps a new world. Everything here is unfamiliar, and for the shared imagined space to properly congeal and set within our minds, there has to be at least a little common ground.

Thing is, your spouse already knows their best friend and your best friend, so if that’s the gaming group, they know each other intrinsically. We’ve made a tacit agreement by arriving at the familiar table: we are a team, and we will not abandon each other. The human connection, in my mind, is sufficient, and I’d rather frame our time together, even with new players or relative strangers, as social time spent making friends and doing an activity. We’re playing a game together, and I prefer that to be the backbone of the party.²

I tend to ask my players, “who saved who?” Someone spins a yarn about how the other character saved their life, repeat in a circle and BOOM!, we have some stakes. That character’s just a little less replaceable, which makes having four whole hit points at level one a lot more of a threat. In that split-second of pondering a character’s mortality, whether a nervous laugh or grim determination, in that moment you’ve locked in: your character has, for better or worse, begun to matter. To my eyes, once a beloved character dies, there's a certain burning desire to avenge them; and I can't think of a more delightfully trope-filled solution to their best friend or sibling or lover, sworn to give their beloved a proper funeral, recover all their sweet loot, and continue on, deeper into the castle.

So! Now that we’re all friends and lovers and enemies, we get to the gritty business of how we “really” know there’s a Vampire. Folktales? Rumours? A dark family secret? Perhaps a religious vision visited upon our intrepid Joans of Arc: “Blessed Children, there are Vampires, and I strongly dislike that!” In this way, pretending like you don’t know there’s a Dracula in the Dracula Castle, not purchasing stakes and garlic because “they wouldn’t know there’s a vampire yet” dodges some core tenets of play³. In a campaign with no Vampires, garlic just makes your gnocchi palatable; but here you are, at least! Ready for the garlic wreath and the holy water. And there’s fun to be had in finally using these tools, roleplaying the glib shopkeeper’s incredulity at the notion that Dracula Castle has, of all things, an actual fucking Dracula in it! That’s just what we call that Castle! It’s a funny name, not a grisly solution to the puzzle of missing cats, cows, and callgirls.

This is rare air you’re breathing: This is an opportunity to understand the sort of metaphysical certainty unknown in our real world and its draconian principles regarding reality and its knowable bounds. Maybe your referee has an exciting idea to hook your runback into the story, or maybe you can just decide for yourself how your character knows this – here’s your chance to seize some narrative control, if that’s a thing you like! The fictional world? It does not map to our physical laws 1:1. Magic is real, and some of you wield it! Moreover, Gods are real, and they prove it with every mended break or risen corpse. You’ve been here before, haven’t you? Perhaps an ancestor attempted the same heroic journey and met a tragic fate? Or a parallel reality, an echo from a distant world. Perhaps you’ve remembered the future, you wily warlock! In any of these and a dozen other cases, there is a real, tangible metaphysical world that gratifyingly validates itself, like how Eddington takes place in a version of the world your weird uncle imagines he’s living in. This is your sign, your opportunity to stop “avoiding cheating” or “buying the hot new thing.” I bet, right now, you’re picturing a module in your head, maybe from when you first played, you knew nothing of dungeoneering, you fell for a stupid trap because you didn’t have a ten foot pole, or you bumrushed an ogre with a rusty shortsword. This is your second chance: c’mon, let’s run it back.