How much tweaking do you do in your world?

As opposed to, what colour is the sky in your world? Although I suppose that could be quite the unexpected tweak.

Copied over from the EZboard forums.

How much do you tweak your campaign world? Even if you use a purposefully generic setting like FR or Greyhawk, do you allow everything that's in the various sourcebooks, no matter how outre it is (alienist, oozemaster, etc)? Do you go to the trouble of creating special groups, knightly orders, mages' guilds etc, and if so, do you make up prestige classes to go with these?

I guess I want to see how much of an active "editorial stance" people take. On the one hand, you have groups where anything that sounds interesting and isn't too unbalanced is okay. On the other hand, you have groups that have a highly specific idea of what they want in the game world, and anything that doesn't fit the vision is rejected.

Any comments, people?

I've run games in the Forgotten Realms since it first appeared, mostly because it has far more stuffing than most campaign settings, there is literally something for everyone and every situation.

As such there is plenty to use, abuse and tweak to suit a GM's needs and then some, of course over the years i've still created heaps of modifications here and there to this and that. And certainly added plenty of original things, but having the basis of many groups and factions laid out for you to "tweak" in forgotten relams free up your time to concentrate on the other parts.

(Copied from EZboard again)

BiggusGeekus:

PrCs - The PrCsin the generic sourcebooks are, unsurprisingly, generic. They're designed to fit into any campaign, that's the point. So in a campaign you've designed yourself, why would you use them? The whole point behind your own campaign is that you've put your own spin on things and a PrC with a bar code on the back of it will only detract from the flavor you're giving the world. Also, you have to worry about how the sourcebook PrCs fit in with your own PrCs and feats.

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Personally, I don't mind using sourcebook PrCs, if they fit the general tone of the world. After all, there's only so many ways you can design a knight, archer, weapon master or what-have-you; if someone's already done the work, why not use that? Just make some general changes to the backstory and the prereqs (eg you might require membership of a particular group in your own setting), and away you go. Instead of a "purple dragon knight", you now have a "knight of the silver serpent".

Races - If it has an ECL of more than one it is not welcome in my game. I'm strongly convinced that the ECL system does not take everything into account. Then again, I'm the same facist who has a thing against Gnomes.

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High-ECL races create problems, I agree.

My whole campaign world is messed up.

I try to stay true to the people playing the game - me and my players. I have a lot of ideas that I don't use because I don't think they'd go over well with the group (can't wait to see what the Paladin's player's reaction will be when he finds out his powers are not divine), but if I think something will work and the group will accept it, I'll go for it.

My campaign worlds has many new groups and prestige classes along with reguliar classes. I have all the main groups, with plenty of room for little cult and minor orginizations. So, when a PC wants to become an Oozemaster I can easily insert that as a rare occurance, and give it a little history and reason so it doesn't feel like a tack on.

Copied over from the Ezboard Forum:


I always make up my own world or extremely alter a published one.

The one I am DMing right now is a "Ravenloft on the Material Plane." In this world, the evil gods defeated the good gods, and are now warring among themselves for the leftover portfolios. The landscape of the world has been decimated by the explosion in evil races, the outer planes are a complete mess and it is up to the PCs to eventually set things right.

If I hadn't chosen that one, I would have played in a pseudo-Rokugan where each of the clans is a different race and the entire empire has been thrown into turmoil as a result of the Emperor's death/banishment. I would have completely discarded the timeline for typical Rokugan, and instead run my game one thousand years after the Seven Thunders imprisoned Fu Leng. And no, Fu Leng is not dead.

Edit: I realized I didn't answer your question. Oops.

I only use the core books as standards, and besides that, I have 25 pages of house rules. The game is fundamentally the same, however, I have made so many changes that it is a completely different version of DnD.

One in which there are no PrCs, cross-class skills are eliminated, clerics spontaneously cast their domain spells instead of cure spells, you can save skill points and feats, Monks and Paladins can freely multiclass, Rogues get bonus skill feats, Bards cast divine spells, Rangers gain virtual feats and a linear favored enemy bonus, etc...

So actually, I never use any of the rules as given...go figure.

Well I designed my own world for my campaign (which has been running since the PhB came out!)...
I keep adding descriptions to the "campaign book" and give updated versions to my players. It's about 100 pages long by now.
It is a world where all the gods work together to fight a supreme entity that they just call Warsinger. It is kind of low-magic setting appart from the two cities of the gods.
Now that D&Dg is out I'm re-working my list of gods.

As for modifications: modified the ranger and the cleric class, changed almost all the PrC from the splatbooks and added a good 20 homemades. Changed the rules for counterspelling, introduced new rules for making magic items...

I made the biggest change imaginable...

I replaced gold coins with silver!

You should see how excited the players get when they actually do see gold. And if I were to ever give them platinum, I'm pretty sure they'd faint.

I've got a few rules changes (spell components cost 1gp per spell level cast), magic consumes precious metals (which gives the commodities value outside of their rarities), and there are no elves (they left recently).

Lots of tweaking......

My players are all ex-Rolemaster players. I wanted a darker more dangerous feel to the game that is prevalent in rolemaster. I use the forgotten realms, but changed it to a less 'magical' world. (I use FR because the sourcebook was pretty good as long as everything is toned down and i dont use the NPCs).

Magic is harder (Wiz spells take 1 hr/lvl to memorize (or .5 hr/lvl if spell mastered), Sorcer spells dont use spells per day but instead take subdual damage (1+1/spell level) but have more spells known. Dwarves use rune magic (copied it from some web page). Elven mages use psionics (mind magic) (though they cost lvl*pp) and i use alot of PsiCo's variations. Clerical magic is subject to the will of the gods and gods arevery capricous (roll DC to cast spells). So magic is very deadly just not as easy to use. Magic Items are more rare and precious (scrolls and potions though are not uncommon).

I use the grim'n'gritty combat system so life is deadlier (in theory more realistic...but that is said with a smirk). I nerfed/changed evasion some (as now hitpoints are much closer between monks/thieves and fighters).

I use a number of published PrC's (easier) but fit them to my version of FR.

So I do lots of tweaking..with rules, campaign characteristics, Classes etc........

Apoptosis

bit o' dis, bit o 'dat

my current campaign is a FR campaign with a fair amount of tweaking. i don't use any of the NPCs beyond bar talk, "Yeah, I could kick that Drizzt's butt any day!"

my "in the works" campaign is a homebrew world of low magic and little civilization. while i've got alot of work before i can run it, i'm pretty certain it will make for a much more fun campaign for me to run since it's completely my own.