In an age of search engines, why use published materials unchanged?

In my current campaign, DF Felltower, I've used a few things with major changes:

- Garden of the Plantmaster (a map and a general concept, merged with The Black Heart of Ulom)
- bits of Stonehell dungeon (two map sections, really)
- Dwellers of the Forbidden City
- an unnamed AD&D module (redacted for spoilers)

I've used a few materials with minor changes:

- the Caves of Chaos
- another unnamed AD&D module (redacted for spoilers)
- some magic items from my own previous campaigns
- the name Sakatha

And I'm using published material for a currently-being-explored gate destination.

I specifically asked for no comments related to the names, etc. of the places in my last session, and I'm trusting my players not to go out and search for terms, download PDFs, buy old materials, etc. But why tempt fate? Why use these materials unchanged when I could simply change some names and details and make sure it's not an issue?

Change and Lose?

I think if you change things, you potentially lose out on a number of things:

- the benefit of someone else's creativity. The more I change to my own style of names, my own choices in monsters, my own loot, make my own map swapovers, etc. the more I'm just making my own.

- the joy of experiencing someone else's creation. Not only do you lose out on their prep work and their style, but you don't get to experience how it would go had you just used it straight up.

- the name recognition for your adventures. Perhaps Felltower is getting well known in the tiny pond that table-top role-playing gaming, but it's not really that widely known. But everyone can come into my game summaries with a sense of recognition and understanding when the players hit the Caves of Chaos.

All of that depends on how much you keep, of course. The less you change, the less you lose of that.

Use Unchanged and Lose?

Of course, I think if you grab published stuff and use it straight, you also potentially lose out on things:

- the seamless meshing with your own materials. Let's face it, if my orcs are not like published orcs in your supplement that features orcs, using yours unchanged means I get some very different orcs. That might be great, but it also might clash. ("How come these orcs aren't blood-bound by their oaths like the other orcs we met? Why are these pig-faced creatures called orcs if orcs don't how pig faces where we're from?")

- your players can have things spoiled for them by recognition. You may have a positive regard for player knowledge in your game, or a negative one. But if you use things they're recognize, you potentially allow them to spoil the exploration of the new by using what sounds like (and may be exactly like) what they already know.

- immunity to spoilers. If it's not anywhere but in your head and in your game notes, you can't have anything spoiled for your players. If it's published somewhere, it can be discovered and read, deliberately or accidentally.

- you can't control canon. In other words, you use something unchanged, and then more materials come out and change it from how its been experienced in your games or color it in some way.



So as I see it, there are upsides and downsides to keeping things unchanged. For some of what I'm using, the joy of experiencing something unchanged - getting to use something I like - outweighed my concern about players going out and reading the books (unlikely) or hearing it on my blog (I can control that.)