Within the gaming community, there are players and there are Game Masters. As the Game Master, you are the person ultimately responsible for keeping the Group coming back for more adventures by making the sessions entertaining, challenging and absorbing enough to transcend the gamers' everyday lives for a time. If you cannot accomplish this, your rule is likely to be a short one and the group will either find a new leader or move on to other things. This leads to the need for an ever-expanding repertoire of new adventures.
Most gamers and Dungeon Masters start out purchasing some D&D books and play many hours before branching out. Once they decide to stray into the unknown the options become endless. There are always new adventures, magazines and books for sale. The web has thousands of sites devoted to D&D, many distributing free material. Some of the free downloads are previously published campaigns; some are the original work of others within the D&D community. If you are a more experienced GM, you will want to create your own adventures - the art of being able to dream into being a fantasy world and the creatures that dwell there are the key to being a true Dungeon Master.
There will be times, however, when your creative juices are running low or the "real world" has made it impossible to come up with an original scenario before your players arrive. It is at times like these that even the most accomplished GM may want to flip on the computer and download an adventure from one of the sites below:
On the D&D Adventures site (www.dndadventure.com/dnda_adventures.html), you will find not only free campaign downloads, but character sheets, spells, a pic & bio of their "female gamer of the month", a D&D forum, and other resources for both players and Game Masters.
Visit www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20030530b and in addition to downloading some free adventures, you can pick up some fabulous character portraits, wander through their art gallery and pick up some tips and ideas from other DMs. While you're here, be sure and explore the war-ravaged Eberron or The Forgotten Realms.
For the more advanced D&D devotee, Dragonsfoot (www.dragonsfoot.org) has such offering as Beneath the DarkShroud Peaks, Shrine of the Oracle and Skein of the Death Mother. Maps, a Cave & Dungeon Generator, DM's Group Record Sheet, downloadable hex map sheets and articles on choosing equipment, the placement of monsters and how to deal with problem players are other items of interest to Dungeon Masters searching for inspiration.
Dungeonmastering.com offers 83 free "old school" campaigns, including White Plume Mountain, A Dark and Stormy Knight, The Burning Plague and Tomb of Horrors. The sight also has some great discussions and articles.
If you enter "Dungeons and Dragons free adventures" into the Google search bar, you will come up with over one million hits. Though some of them have nothing to do with downloading free adventures for D&D, many of them do offer free adventures and much more that are yours for the taking. Any of the above sites will provide you with a multitude of campaigns. Combined with the imagination and adaptability that made you a Game Master, they will lure your players back for several more dark nights of adventure.