Crispy™ Published settings vs homebrew

[Night Goat]

Which is better and why?

I like the freedom of creating my own setting, and I can never be completely happy with one I didn't make. On the other hand, it seems like it'd be a lot easier for players to come up with backstories and goals for their characters if they had a lot of information to base it on, and I'm not one of those DMs who write up dozens and dozens of pages for his own campaign. But on the other hand, my experience with players so far has been that they just want to roll dice and don't care nearly as much about all that stuff as I do - if they had any amount of creativity, they'd be the ones DMing. What do you guys think?

Discuss!

 

[Grunker]

I always use lesser known regions/subsettings within very established settings and then change them to be appropriate for my use. That cocktail means that 1) the players know the world, 2) I can make changes without aggrevating them because I'm using a lesser know subspace within the setting.

 

[Havoc]

Better? I don't know. I created a lot of homebrew settings, sometimes even whole worlds, while stopping the campaign prematurely happened a lot. I had couple of homebrew worlds that I created that we only played 2-3 sessions and because of something (TPK, the group created asocial fucktards or went off the rail too much) stopped the game and I'm one of those GM's that don't use the same setup twice. So those worlds I created? Sometimes even whole maps, organizations and NPCs? All scrapped, because I don't want to GM the same stuff again - always improve, always new stuff.

I never had problem GM something that wasn't mine, with different levels of modifications (none, small fluff, major fluff or overhaul). In the end, it depends what I want to GM and what they players want to play. Fit the world to the style I say.

 

[Neanderthal]

I used to use established settings, an most on em are big enough that you can do your own thing wiout steppin on world lore, for instance Greyhawk City sourcepack were fuckin great an made for a fantastic detailed setting for game. Dogs bollocks for fun an background, but as you say its them small things that niggle at you an eventually I think any GMs gotta go wi his own settin (an possibly system) if he wants to be happy.

Personally I solve character creation by makin it organic, have a really small an detailed starter settin, that me an players work together to fit the characters into, with acquaintances, jobs, parents, relatives, friends, enemies an all that kinda shit. Though I don't mind ocassional wanderer from far reaches background, but they will be treated differently an lose a certain immediate depth, then again they can choose to expand on that mysterious background at any time an make it as important or epic as they like when campaign expands.

 

[Scroo]

I usuall use established settings and tinker them to my needs. My group either doesn't care or doesn't notice.

 

[Dustin DePenning]

I always use lesser known regions/subsettings within very established settings and then change them to be appropriate for my use. That cocktail means that 1) the players know the world, 2) I can make changes without aggrevating them because I'm using a lesser know subspace within the setting.

Yeah man. This all the way. That's why I like settings with lots of loose ends and questions to answer. That's why Eberron was more interesting to me than forgotten realms

 

[udm]

I either use existing settings to drop my own localities/factions/NPCs in there, or create my own worlds that are expansive enough to ignore ongoing campaigns, even ones that peter off halfway. The impact of the campaigns are usually not severe enough to affect the overall world's structure, so I can just reuse most of it (or tweak elements a little).

 

[nikolokolus]

I've always been partial to building my own. For one thing I can't be arsed to memorize somebody else's fictional gods, nations and NPCs and keep it all straight in my head and for another most of the published settings never really jive with my sensibilities. The only exception I can recall is running a Wheel of Time game way back in the day among a group of friends who were all big fans of the series and even then we set the game in the big gulf between the fall of The Dragon and the Dragon Reborn.

That doesn't mean I won't beg, borrow and steal from the settings of authors I love like Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Micheal Moorcock, and half-a-dozen more.

 

[Ulminati]

Established setting but some far-off corner. Gives me the freedom to improvise, but also lets the players dive right in with a basic idea of what the world is like.

Except in burning wheel, where you usually make the world with your players in the first session

 

[Melan]

I make my own settings, and read published examples for inspiration. But I believe "homebrew vs. published" is not the actual dilemma.

A setting's role lies in helping the GM and the players put the actual campaign into context, and supplying the GM with support for running a game in the setting. Most setting books fail to provide this kind of help, because they are written as large infodumps (or as toolkits of mechanical options, like extra classes and such, which is slightly different). They are invariably about world- or country-scale information. However, an actual campaign takes place in a much more zoomed in context. How much of a setting book is useful when most of your adventures take place around a single city? How does it help a GM develop his or her own corner of the world to list several pages worth of mostly trivial information?

I think a good setting is one which is most helpful in running your own game, and creating your own interpretation of a basic idea. Some good ways to present a setting are:

• A simple, brief framework with enough macro-level detail to "place" characters and adventures within the setting, while leaving the rest to the group. Information should focus on things which are useful or inspiring for character and adventure creation. The Scarred Lands Gazetteer is a good example of the idea in product form. A good guideline to create your own is to think about the "20 questions" proposed by Jeff Rients.
• A setting which is presented in the form of campaign-specific procedures, guidelines, inspiring random tables and customised rules - a "campaign toolbox" - which let the group come up with something of their own, which will be individualised every time, but similar due to being built according to shared principles. Examples of this approach include Yoon-Suin, Vornheim ("Vast is Vornheim, The Grey Maze… …but I'm not here to bore you with that. This book is not about Vornheim, it’s about running Vornheim"), the ultra-light Towers of Krshal, or the second half of City State of the Invincible Overlord, which describes the city in terms of odd, sometimes half-baked rule systems about how to haggle for slaves, how to run a courtroom trial (influenced by things like "the Judge is feeling bored" or how much you pay in bribed), how to pick up women, or how to recruit an army. It immediately gives you ideas about how the place works!
• A setting which is presented in a directly adventure-relevant, micro-level format. Instead of dwelling too much on abstract concerns about grand-scale history and language trees, these setting guides go straight to describing encounter-level things the characters can interact with. This is the "Judges Guild tradition" of RPG design, originating in products such as the aforementioned City State, as well as Wilderlands of High Fantasy. You can see simple, free examples with The Hexenbracken and Blackmarsh. These settings are immediately useable, and tend to generate a lot of spontaneous adventures through being used, although they can be fairly time-consuming to write if you don't restrict yourself to a limited area. (Although you can just as easily create them on a step-by-step basis. You never actually need to know about anything that's further than two or three days of travel from the characters.)

I also appreciate some of the classic, macro-level setting guides (even the 3e Forgotten Realms book, which is deservedly well-regarded), but if I were to run a game in a published world, I'd go for something in the vein of the three options above.

 

[Night Goat]

The 20 questions are good, I'll include the answers in the players' guide for my next campaign. I'll need to come up with some monsters terrorizing the city (there's not really a countryside), I like the idea of challenges that the players can tackle whenever they feel they're ready. Coming up with secret societies seems like an interesting challenge too.

 

[Xathrodox86]

I like established settings. Sometimes I add a small twist of my own, but generally I tend to trust into game dev's wisdom.