There´s something I don´t understand.
There´s all kinds of sweet, sweet stuff produced by creative people, on this very site or other places. For example in the awesome hex-filling-collaborative-wilderlanding-thread.

Or the ultra-awesome stuff from the olden days that Jeff Rients dug up recently, like the mind-blowing monster site for OAD&D.
EDIT: Or S.John Ross´s Uresia. AWESOME!

I can´t use this stuff. I just can´t. Instead of picking up the ball, I feel a strange envy for their creativity. I don´t, emotionally, want to use other people´s stuff anymore.
It must be made by me and myself alone, for whatever reason.

Is something wrong with me?
Does somebody else relate to that line of thinking?
Is this a phase in development that will go away?
How can I overcome this reluctance of accepting other people´s awesome stuff?
Or am I on a one way road to enlightenment and true RPG-creativity?
In fact, I can ponder & appreciate the way they did it, but I don´t want to use the results of the process.

Strange, ain´t it?
It feels strange for sure.

Snowflake, every really creative person thinks like that, and it's perfectly legit. As for me, my creativity largely goes into my work, so RPG-wise I seize the exploits of others with impunity, nay gusto. Just came across this gem of an NPC in the Player's Guide to Kaiin...

I don't think I've every used anyone else's stuff whole-cloth, because I usually find that pre-published material doesn't focus on what I found cool enough and/or it lets me down in the details. That said, reading through Wilderlands, for example, can certainly be inspiring and I often find myself re-imagining, interpreting, and putting some sort of Timified version into use in my games.

Tim

Set, man, I totally get you, and I feel the same way. Yeah, I know, I'm probably one of the biggest contributers to the Hex at a time thread, but, as tempted as I am, I won't use any of the stuff others have put up there- but I get a kick out of reading it, and I like the idea that someone might enjoy reading my contributions as well. Furthermore, it's a healthy excercise to think shit up and give it away. Hording ideas is bad. You have to believe that you have a limitless supply of cool stuff in your head, otherwise you wont have a limitless supply of cool stuff in your head. How's that for making no sense?

Sett, I'm with you one hundred percent.  I adore Uresia and Greyhawk and Vanth and Blackmoor.  I'm dead certain I'd like the Wilderlands if I plonk'd down the money for it.  But I feel like I'm doing myself a disservice when playing in someone else's world.  Any campaign I run from scratch will have a lot of warts, but it will also be a heartfelt expression of my own creativity and I'll feel all warm and glowy for it.

But then there are borderline cases.  My asteroid module takes Encounter Critical's sample campaign as the starting point.  I seem to have some Star Wars left in me.  But for games about swords and orcs, I feel like I'm done playing with other peoples stuff.  After 25+ years of being spoonfed modules and setting books, I feel like I need to grow up and wear the big boy DM pants.  That last line could be read as a swipe at people who still enjoy prefab worlds and adventures, but it isn't.

Reposting from an earlier thread on a very similar vein:

QuoteI frankly think "creativity" in the sense implied by the original post is highly overrated, and not often present in the volume suggested.

I can spend hours poring over making a stock fantasy world for my D&D game, or I can buy Wilderlands and have far more detail than I'd ever care to bother with on my own. The only difference is the sense of personal ownership, and a well written setting or adventure should allow enough liberty with the material as to render even that difference nonexistent.

I like gaming. I want to actually game. The biggest reason I've never really GMed is because I don't want the workload. Some people love it, and that's good for them. I can enjoy it in small doses playing about in my spare time occasionally, but by and large I don't care.

I can spend hours and hours of labor on something that isn't gonna be all that impressive in the end anyway, or I can take something someone else has done, tweak it for my own purposes, and actually get to the game table with a hell of a lot less work.

This is a hobby, not a career, and hobbies should be fun. I'll save that kind of time and effort for my actual career goals, and use the gaming to blow of steam and have a little fun.

Hey, look- it's J.Arcane- pissing in the soup! I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Quote from: AosHey, look- it's J.Arcane- pissing in the soup! I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Well, he is the Culinary Arcanist, after all.

Lord Hobie

If you have an issue with my post, I recommend you take it up with the moderators.

Quote from: AosHey, look- it's J.Arcane- pissing in the soup! I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Bullshit. He's making a pretty damn good point. Sometimes you don't have the time or creative energy at the moment to make something whole cloth, and heck sometimes you just don't wanna bother and get straight to the game. Published stuff gives you that immediate gratification for straight to the table play, or can be a baseline to riff a few twists off of. Either way it can be a nice convenience

Quote from: JamesVBullshit. He's making a pretty damn good point. Sometimes you don't have the time or creative energy at the moment to make something whole cloth, and heck sometimes you just don't wanna bother and get straight to the game. Published stuff gives you that immediate gratification for straight to the table play, or can be a baseline to riff a few twists off of. Either way it can be a nice convenience

I don't argue that at all- it's the first line about creativity being overrated that I think is amusing. I do something differently than you do- that doesn't make what you do overrated or inferior, it makes it different. But to J. at least judging by his posting history, different from what he does is bad.

-and J. Taking it up with the moderators would be a pussy move. Speaking of which, why don't you try to get me banned?

Now, as much as I'd like to hang about and be called a cunt, I have some 80's movies to watch.

Quote from: JamesVBullshit. He's making a pretty damn good point. Sometimes you don't have the time or creative energy at the moment to make something whole cloth, and heck sometimes you just don't wanna bother and get straight to the game. Published stuff gives you that immediate gratification for straight to the table play, or can be a baseline to riff a few twists off of. Either way it can be a nice convenience

Exactly.  And a well designed setting or module (admittedly there's very few of these these days) gives you more than enough room to add your own personal touch to the way it comes to the table, without completely reinventing the wheel.

I'm also not fooling myself that, say, Evenmorn, the setting I've been toying with over on D20 Haven, is all that spectacularly "creative" or any more original than what I'd get out of Wilderlands or the like.  It's standard fantasy just like about every other homebrew world I've ever played in or seen online for D&D, it's just my standard, cliche, "heavily inspired" setting instead of someone else's.

Quote from: AosI don't argue that at all- it's the first line about creativity being overrated that I think is amusing.

I dunno. It seems to me that Sett wants to be able to make up his own stuff just as cool as the stuff he sees, and may even be a little doubtful if and when he does. That's an awfully heavy load to bear in the name of creativity.

Don't be afraid of your own stuff, and sure as hell don't be reluctant to borrow and steal from others. In the end, your own creativity is a result of  nothing less than the fiddling with memories of stuff you've experienced before.

Quote-and J. Taking it up with the moderators would be a pussy move.

Whoosh.  Right over your head.

And that answers which questions of the OP?