I am returning to playing RPGs for the first time in well over a decade this year. I ran a few modules in my first life as a rpgista, starting with the adventure that came with the red dragon black box of Basic D&D. Later, I ran the introductory adventure that came with DragonLance SAGA and Sunless Citadel, for D&D3. But I ran them without modifications.
Now, many years since I last did any playing or gming, I am running “The Lost Mines of Phandelver”, but I am changing quite a bit of it. Mostly because of the dislike we have for what was done to Forgotten Realms after D&D4. So, I pushed the adventure back to 1368 DR, what required some changes. Some of the ruins weren’t ruins in 1368 DR, so I had to change places or repopulate other places using my old AD&D2 and D&D3 books for Forgotten Realms. It was more work than just running the module straight out of the box and even making my own homebrew adventure on my own homebrew setting.
Despite the extra work, that I welcomed after so many years without RPG, I am finding it very gratifying making that module my own, and I am already preparing to continue the campaign organically, without a hard cut. Hopefully, nobody will notice when I change from the published module to my own stuff in the campaign.
If my intention as CEO is to save Dungeons & Dragons and not make a boatload of money, saving my job, and get richer, then I would dedicate every single D&D product of which my Wotzi still has a copyright to the public domain; liberating both the rules (which can’t be locked down anyway), the fluff/lore, and the awesome name.