Quote from: Hzilong on November 20, 2024, 08:08:26 PMSupported to the extent the early Realms and Spelljammer were back in the day? I'd say probably not. But that's less to do about interest and skill and more about the fact that there are more GMs with experience who like to homebrew now. The industry is also, I'd argue, less centralized. There are lots of small publishers making their own settings and systems which means less need for a broad, kitchen sink approach so it is less likely a singular system will grow in the same way as the Realms.

I have a strong suspicion (with a caveat) that you're correct. My caveat is that we're in the "indy-churn" where all the cast-offs from the WotC_D&D program are falling from the tree and the ones that stick in the hobby will eventually gravitate towards other systems. We're still "sorting" that out, and likely will be forever (as is healthy). There is no "one system to rule them all" but I'd be a fool to ever say that systems don't matter.

But once a person is settled - I'm talking about GM's here, how much content is optimal for you and the games you run? I'd honestly like to know how much GM's on this forum do homebrew and to what degree?

For example - I can homebrew a whole world from the ground up, but then I start thinking... why? when there are settings that have a lot of the bones I'd just recreate anyhow. So *usually* what I do is homebrew something within an established setting, and effectively create a large sandbox and steamroll/integrate anything outside of it as necessary as the campaign demands.

In retrospect, my longest running multi-year campaigns have always been based around homebrewed sandbox content nestled within an established campaign setting. It's definitely an interesting datapoint I didn't consider.

 I'd like to know what other GM's do for homebrew and how much? And do established settings in your system of choice have any impact on your purchasing of content for that system or your homebrewing activities?

Quote from: tenbones on November 21, 2024, 04:55:20 PM

Quote from: Hzilong on November 20, 2024, 08:08:26 PMSupported to the extent the early Realms and Spelljammer were back in the day? I'd say probably not. But that's less to do about interest and skill and more about the fact that there are more GMs with experience who like to homebrew now. The industry is also, I'd argue, less centralized. There are lots of small publishers making their own settings and systems which means less need for a broad, kitchen sink approach so it is less likely a singular system will grow in the same way as the Realms.

I have a strong suspicion (with a caveat) that you're correct. My caveat is that we're in the "indy-churn" where all the cast-offs from the WotC_D&D program are falling from the tree and the ones that stick in the hobby will eventually gravitate towards other systems. We're still "sorting" that out, and likely will be forever (as is healthy). There is no "one system to rule them all" but I'd be a fool to ever say that systems don't matter.

But once a person is settled - I'm talking about GM's here, how much content is optimal for you and the games you run? I'd honestly like to know how much GM's on this forum do homebrew and to what degree?

For example - I can homebrew a whole world from the ground up, but then I start thinking... why? when there are settings that have a lot of the bones I'd just recreate anyhow. So *usually* what I do is homebrew something within an established setting, and effectively create a large sandbox and steamroll/integrate anything outside of it as necessary as the campaign demands.

In retrospect, my longest running multi-year campaigns have always been based around homebrewed sandbox content nestled within an established campaign setting. It's definitely an interesting datapoint I didn't consider.

 I'd like to know what other GM's do for homebrew and how much? And do established settings in your system of choice have any impact on your purchasing of content for that system or your homebrewing activities?

I do a lot of homebrew stuff. Even with established settings, I end up going for the corner cases and untouched bits that need to be expanded on and fleshed out. I do also buy published settings that interest me just so that I can have a baseline to compare my homebrew stuff to.

(This has also been part of my recent 'zine fixation because the material in them is rough and unpolished but different and creatively original.)

In my opinion (and I stress that) a good setting has some well established material that a GM can run games in for a long time but includes some foundational material for a GM to do his own thing without breaking the core setting.  A good example of this is in The Third Imperium for Traveller has an entire sector that there is no official material for just GMs and independent creators can fill it up.

I reached the point where I now want to make my own games and settings. I'm not satisfied by what exists, especially outside of the oversaturated fantasy and cthulhu genres. There's a lot of turnover that I'm frustrated with, so most of my settings are pastiches of old settings that were killed or driven into the ground by apathetic corpos and Disney's bullshit copyright law. I'm making all my game material public domain in order to hopefully avoid that happening again. I'm also gonna be writing prose fiction to tie into my game work. Not microfiction, but actual stories with plots and conclusions.

My settings are all homebrew. I do occasionally steal or make allusions to established game worlds, but even then I try to change it up a little. I do appreciate stuff like Pundit's Silk Road stuff or the various Savage World settings since those can provide inspiration and/or guidance for what I want to do in my games. Funny ebough, the most useful aspect of setting books to me is actually the unique rules. If I buy a sci-fi setting I want to know the numbers because I usually don't have time to sit down and make spreadsheets to balance out an interstellar economy and determine the price of space-crack.

- Started almost all homebrew, because I had lots of time and little money.

- Went on a Forgotten Realms kick for awhile, with a few other things mixed in.

- Got a lot of ICE's Shadow World stuff, which I barely used straight, but did spin, mangle, and fold into my own settings.

- Somewhere in there, started a cycle of one campaign full homebrew, another campaign almost completely purchased. That happened a lot with WotC D&D, because of the prep time.

- Did a lot of system play testing where I used purchased settings for the skeleton, only adapting mechanics.

- Now I've circled back to almost entirely homebrew.  Don't have nearly as much time, and could afford to buy settings.  However, it is now almost always faster for me to write it myself than to adapt the setting to what I want. And I don't mean 5%, 10% faster, but sometimes pushing twice as fast.

That's true even with published systems. I can adapt a good TSR-era D&D module to my own system pretty darn fast.  Those aren't crammed full of fluff.  Some of the OSR shorter stuff works just as well.  The difficulty is finding new ones that I like.  For reference, I believe the most fun I ever had running or adapting a published adventure was Desert of Desolation.  I've run it both ways, straight for AD&D, then adapted and run for a non-D&D like system.

I really enjoy creating a lot of my own content, but these days I don't have the time to do that. Back in the 80's I created my own campaign world and adventures to run in it. If I still had that kind of free time then I would continue doing that. I would rather spend my limited hobby time running or playing than just creating material that I might never get a chance to share with friends.

Quote from: BadApple on November 21, 2024, 07:22:52 PMIn my opinion (and I stress that) a good setting has some well established material that a GM can run games in for a long time but includes some foundational material for a GM to do his own thing without breaking the core setting.  A good example of this is in The Third Imperium for Traveller has an entire sector that there is no official material for just GMs and independent creators can fill it up.

Do you buy into a system for those settings? Or is it the system itself that is the selling point? Or is it both? Would you buy D&D or Traveller, for instance, for just the rules?

Quote from: tenbones on November 21, 2024, 04:55:20 PMBut once a person is settled - I'm talking about GM's here, how much content is optimal for you and the games you run? I'd honestly like to know how much GM's on this forum do homebrew and to what degree?

I run exclusively homebrew settings and have since I started in 1978. This has always been a homebrew hobby for me regardless of what system I'm running (various editions of D&D, GURPS, Hero, Fantasy Trip, Savage Worlds, Shadowdark, ICRPG and others). To the extent I ever buy a game system for a setting it's because that setting resembles something I'm thinking of homebrewing and the system might therefore suit that style of play. If the setting also gives me ideas or tools for my homebrew game so much the better.

But I never buy a game with the express intent of playing that game's implied or explicit setting.

We need more unconventional settings, like TSR's old Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape, Ravenloft, etc. I'm completely burnt out on Forgotten Realms clones.

Quote from: tenbones on December 03, 2024, 11:00:43 AM

Quote from: BadApple on November 21, 2024, 07:22:52 PMIn my opinion (and I stress that) a good setting has some well established material that a GM can run games in for a long time but includes some foundational material for a GM to do his own thing without breaking the core setting.  A good example of this is in The Third Imperium for Traveller has an entire sector that there is no official material for just GMs and independent creators can fill it up.

Do you buy into a system for those settings? Or is it the system itself that is the selling point? Or is it both? Would you buy D&D or Traveller, for instance, for just the rules?

No, except for a couple of licensed settings like Star Wars and Star Trek. The system will determine whether or not I don't resell the setting books (Cases in point, I couldn't see myself ever playing Star Wars without using the d6 system after seeing how other systems fail to emulate the genre. Likewise, I prefer the Last Unicorn Games version of Star Trek because it is the best out of a bad bunch since I don't think that any of them really emulate Star Trek in roleplaying, there are two good wargames for Star Trek though). It can be both, but not usually. I did buy D&D and Traveller just based on the rules originally.

In my experience, systems are generally irrelevant. Most groups ignore rules anyway and just fiat everything. Sometimes you need the system built a certain way to support genre expectations, but most systems suck ass at that. It's the settings that convince me to buy something.

Unfortunately, settings either die off because the owner isn't interested in supporting them anymore, or they get bought by corpos and driven into the ground, or they're just constant reissues of the same setting from the 80s and have become boring since then.

There's no point to investing in anything.

Quote from: tenbones on December 03, 2024, 11:00:43 AM

Quote from: BadApple on November 21, 2024, 07:22:52 PMIn my opinion (and I stress that) a good setting has some well established material that a GM can run games in for a long time but includes some foundational material for a GM to do his own thing without breaking the core setting.  A good example of this is in The Third Imperium for Traveller has an entire sector that there is no official material for just GMs and independent creators can fill it up.

Do you buy into a system for those settings? Or is it the system itself that is the selling point? Or is it both? Would you buy D&D or Traveller, for instance, for just the rules?

When I was younger and first running games, I absolutely needed a setting to get started.  I did buy setting material so that I could run it.  As I gained some experience, then I pushed into the uncharted areas but deeply rooted in the setting so that I felt comfortable branching out.

Now, I build my own settings but I like setting material for ideas and sometimes set pieces I can drop into the game in a hurry.  I'm certainly a system over settings guy now but didn't start out that way.

Quote from: BadApple on December 03, 2024, 04:47:32 PM

Quote from: tenbones on December 03, 2024, 11:00:43 AM

Quote from: BadApple on November 21, 2024, 07:22:52 PMIn my opinion (and I stress that) a good setting has some well established material that a GM can run games in for a long time but includes some foundational material for a GM to do his own thing without breaking the core setting.  A good example of this is in The Third Imperium for Traveller has an entire sector that there is no official material for just GMs and independent creators can fill it up.

Do you buy into a system for those settings? Or is it the system itself that is the selling point? Or is it both? Would you buy D&D or Traveller, for instance, for just the rules?

When I was younger and first running games, I absolutely needed a setting to get started.  I did buy setting material so that I could run it.  As I gained some experience, then I pushed into the uncharted areas but deeply rooted in the setting so that I felt comfortable branching out.

Now, I build my own settings but I like setting material for ideas and sometimes set pieces I can drop into the game in a hurry.  I'm certainly a system over settings guy now but didn't start out that way.

Interesting. I had almost the exact opposite experience. I started playing D&D in around the 5th grade if memory serves. For the first couple of years we effectively played without a setting. We just had the core books and we played games in "D&D world", just going with whatever setting assumptions were in those three books.

I drew my first homebrew world-map in 7th grade science class (I think I still have it somewhere), and ran that world up through somewhere in high school. But around the same time I met a friend who was really into Forgotten Realms, so most of the games I was a player in were set there. That guy and myself became the reliable DMs for our friend group. I ran almost all homebrew, and he ran a mix of FR and homebrew until the friend group finally died in our late 20s.

Since then, I've run almost exclusively published settings. Partially that's because I don't have the free time to homebrew, and partially it's because older players are less willing to accept "it's standard fantasy/cyberpunk/sci-fi world, and that's all you need to know".

That's only D&D-like games though. When we played other games (usually White Wolf games at that time), we always at least tried to play the canon setting. It's entirely possible that it would only have worked in D&D or a similar game. One of the great strengths and great witnesses of D&D is that the system can easily be the setting. Within the corebooks you have races, classes, magic, gods, flora and fauna; all the setting information except for place-names and history, which if you don't care about that, you don't need it to play the game.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 03, 2024, 07:13:01 PM

Quote from: BadApple on December 03, 2024, 04:47:32 PM

Quote from: tenbones on December 03, 2024, 11:00:43 AM

Quote from: BadApple on November 21, 2024, 07:22:52 PMIn my opinion (and I stress that) a good setting has some well established material that a GM can run games in for a long time but includes some foundational material for a GM to do his own thing without breaking the core setting.  A good example of this is in The Third Imperium for Traveller has an entire sector that there is no official material for just GMs and independent creators can fill it up.

Do you buy into a system for those settings? Or is it the system itself that is the selling point? Or is it both? Would you buy D&D or Traveller, for instance, for just the rules?

When I was younger and first running games, I absolutely needed a setting to get started.  I did buy setting material so that I could run it.  As I gained some experience, then I pushed into the uncharted areas but deeply rooted in the setting so that I felt comfortable branching out.

Now, I build my own settings but I like setting material for ideas and sometimes set pieces I can drop into the game in a hurry.  I'm certainly a system over settings guy now but didn't start out that way.

Interesting. I had almost the exact opposite experience. I started playing D&D in around the 5th grade if memory serves. For the first couple of years we effectively played without a setting. We just had the core books and we played games in "D&D world", just going with whatever setting assumptions were in those three books.

I drew my first homebrew world-map in 7th grade science class (I think I still have it somewhere), and ran that world up through somewhere in high school. But around the same time I met a friend who was really into Forgotten Realms, so most of the games I was a player in were set there. That guy and myself became the reliable DMs for our friend group. I ran almost all homebrew, and he ran a mix of FR and homebrew until the friend group finally died in our late 20s.

Since then, I've run almost exclusively published settings. Partially that's because I don't have the free time to homebrew, and partially it's because older players are less willing to accept "it's standard fantasy/cyberpunk/sci-fi world, and that's all you need to know".

That's only D&D-like games though. When we played other games (usually White Wolf games at that time), we always at least tried to play the canon setting. It's entirely possible that it would only have worked in D&D or a similar game. One of the great strengths and great witnesses of D&D is that the system can easily be the setting. Within the corebooks you have races, classes, magic, gods, flora and fauna; all the setting information except for place-names and history, which if you don't care about that, you don't need it to play the game.

Prepackaged setting gave me two things when I started running, a blueprint and permission to be inflexible on core issues.

Being inflexible about how the world is structured, how society works in that world, etc. goes a long way to making a campaign work IMO.  It was a lot easier for 13yo me to say "it's in the book" than to say "I'm the GM" as to why I made a call or why an NPC did a thing.

Also, as a 13yo GM is was easy to world build but also messy as I would include stuff that would never be playable.  Published setting helped me learn what I needed and what I let die on the vine.