Why do you homebrew? or Hombrew blues

I have been going thru this creative dry spell. For a long time I have been using published settings. I have a busy life and it's easier to use the stuff that someone else has done. Lately though I've gotten the urge to make a homebrew world again. However while I have a basic idea I keep wanting to borrow from other settings(wow race X looks cool), then I think if I'm borrowing so much from published setting X then why don't I use published setting X and forget Homebrewing. That and combined with the fact that a lot of things have been done. What can I put in my homebrew that isn't already done in Published setting X (or Y or Z for that matter).

For those that homebrew...why do you? I see so many vanilla homebrew fantasy settings...why bother? Why not use a published vanilla D&D setting? Is your setting so unique that it hasn't been done? What keeps you from just simply using a published setting?

Enquiring minds want to know...

Homebrewing is a creative release for me. I'm always getting these "what if..." ideas, and homebrewing allows me to put them all together, add a pinch of PCs, and see what I end up with. I homebrew to the exclusion of published settings because there's a level of intimacy that homebrewing allows you to attain. I know what the sea sounds like as the waves crash into the docks of Avenmoth along the northern shore of Saunder. I know what it feels like to travel for days without seeing a tree in the great plains of Damas. I know the fear that Brisian peasants feel when the Hobgoblin tribes come to raid, and I know the relief those same peasants feel when the Brisian cavalry arrives, setting into the raiders with sword and spell.

Sure, I could find out exactly how many miles lie between towns, what their populations are (and the racial breakdown thereof), and the names and class levels of the important people, but there are some things that you just can't learn from reading someone else's setting.

Gundark said:

For those that homebrew...why do you? I see so many vanilla homebrew fantasy settings...why bother? Why not use a published vanilla D&D setting? Is your setting so unique that it hasn't been done? What keeps you from just simply using a published setting?

Click to expand...

Ah! Excellent question. Myself, I have looked at published settings or homebrews on the net (see link in sig), but despite seeing interesting things never found something to my taste. Everytime I would first be interested in a setting, I would nonetheless eventually find something that I don't like, that wouldn't fit with the idea I have of what a setting should be. I realize that players wouldn't care and wouldn't really see the difference between my own vanilla homebrew and another published or homebrew vanilla setting. However, I couldn't but want to create my own settings. I guess it has more to do with pride and creativity...

In any case, my suggestions to would-be DMs is to better use an exiting setting, be it homebrew found on the net for free, or commercial product, as creating your own is horribly time consuming and often results in a less detailed world than what you could have gotten otherwise.

Most of my homebrew games are heavy RP/rules lite. Most published settings and modules are rules heavy/RP-lite with major emphasis on "the dungeon", which I dislike. A nice little dungeon here and there is great, but a 40-room complex, ten levels deep, really really really makes for a boring game unless you shoehorn in RP.

Also, I enjoy the creative process. When I create a homebrew, it becomes more like a story than a game. As such, I like to plug-and-play modules into my personal setting (as modules do a good job of "crunching the numbers"), but my personal setting is the one that stays strong. I tend to create off-beat stories, more like "Final Fantasy" than "Lord of the Rings", and I'm unafraid to throw any random crap together so long as the story remains interesting (and the cast of NPC characters is strong).

Let it be known that I am not against published settings per se. I often find, however, that there is simply too much information to learn to "accurately" portray a setting when I can just make it up on the fly myself.

I have to agree with Turanil. My homebrew setting is not very original - vanilla is probably a good word. But it doesn't have the things I dislike about most settings - not that there's any ONE thing I dislike about every setting, but each has something that bothers me.

I have no need for outer planes, demon invasions, hundreds of thousands of types of monsters, enormous dungeons, etc...

I like "nearly normal" kingdoms with a low-key dose of magic, a few quirks, and lots of room for the the PCs to show themselves off. And I like being able to add or drop any aspect of the world, knowing exactly what that will do to the rest of the world. That's why my homebrew has grown for the past 25 years into a place of considerable complexity and familiarity to me.

My responce is usually the other way "Why used a pubished setting" but that could be seen as snarky, so I won't delve into it.

I don't have a world for the characters to adventure in - I build the world to suit the characters. A player wants to be a king in exile, and not know it (a la Arthur) then there is a kindgom for him, with that history built in. I take the player desires for thier characters, and thier approach to gaming and shape the world to thier needs. A published setting cannot give me, and them, the ability for that personal attention that makes games great - now I could alter a published setting and alter it, but the time or two I tried it, it takes more work.

When I GM there is usually a particular tone and feel I want with my worlds. None of the published settings have that tone and feel. So I make the world have the kind of feel I want, again rather than adjusting it.

I borrow bits I love from other games to plug in to my worlds. I have Waterdeep (under a different name) with Undermountain in my world. I use it fairly often. I've got Freeport. I use the old war that spawned the Warforged concept. But the kingdoms, cultures and NPCs are mine.

All in all, I cannot get what I want from a published setting.

I use the Forgotten Realms Setting, but modify it so it fits our campaign more. It ends up coming close to a homebrew, and I develop a "homebrew regional sourcebook" for the campaigns focus town/country as I go along.

I don't see why I should take a setting and run with it instead of customising it so it suits my group better.

Hmmm... I don't know if you realise this or not, but you're asking more than one question here.

1) Why do you create your own settings?

2) Why do you use your own homebrew settings rather than using a published one?

3) Am I still homebrewing if I'm borrowing elements from other settings?

4) If your homebrew setting is so vanilla that it's practically indistinguisable from hoardes of other such settings, then why bother creating it?

My answers:

1) Why do you create your own settings?

Cause I like the activity of creating settings. All by itself, it is a fun hobby. Some of my setting will most likely never be played in, which does sadden me somewhat, but doesn't deter me in the least from still creating settings. Usually, I don't make vanilla settings. My settings are usually exploring an idea or a set of them - a grand leap off of a "what if..?" question. Example, "What if there were no land, and all the races were either aquatic or airborne?" Then the creative juices start flowing and I'm thinking of sea creatures, subaquatic weaponery, water combat feats, etc. Then I'll spark off into imagining floating forests held aloft by air bladders, and then animals which live there and races which evolved there. Then, I'm exploring how the water and air ecologies interact. What cultures arise? What unique adventuring opportunities could exist? and so on.... It would be great if people also played in my settings (and sometimes they do), but it isn't a requirement.

2) Why do you use your own homebrew settings rather than using a published one?

Your typical well-developed setting (whether published or free) has a lot of material in it. To properly GM such a setting, I would need to read, study, and then memorise the bulk of it so that I then know enough about what that world is like so that I can run adventures in it which aren't mostly ignoring the setting and using the map only. I don't have time to do that. Also, all the fun bits are already completed. The setting is completed. Sure, I could customize it, but at that point I may as well make my own setting rather than try and force an existing one to meet my preferences.

3) Am I still homebrewing if I'm borrowing elements from other settings?

Well... That depends. Are you taking more and more elements from a single other setting such that essentially the only differences are things like the city names or the map? Or are you borrowing elements from a variety of different settings and combining them together with unique elements and creating a new setting? If you're doing the first, then perhaps you're right, you may as well just use that setting rather than filling off the serial numbers and re-creating it bit by bit.

If however you are doing the second, then you're not really copying a setting, you're creating a new one. If you take Driders from setting "X" and turn them into a benelovent forest PC race, then you pit them in a war with the cool Beholder empire from setting "Y", and you borrowed that neat Dwarven god from setting "Z" and gave it to your Dwarves, then you have created a combination of circumstances that the creators of settings X, Y, and Z never imagined and thus your setting is different and unique from all of theirs, despite the borrowing from them.

The difference between inspiration and plagerism is a combination of how much you take wholesale from elsewhere, how much you yourself contribute to the finished setting, and how you use or re-envision the elements you borrow. Doing almost nothing and just re-labeling others' efforts as your own is plagerism. Taking ideas from others, combining them with your own, and presenting them in new and interesting ways is inspiration - there's nothing wrong with that. Artists of all kinds have been influenced by prior works for tens of thousands of years.

4) If your homebrew setting is so vanilla that it's practically indistinguisable from hoardes of other such settings, then why bother creating it?

Ah... but the devil is in the details! Let's suppose that I want to play in a vanilla setting, which I occasionally do want to do. Okay, I could pick up "The Lands of Generica" and play there. But then, I see that in that setting Dwarves all live in this single mountain range and kill Goblins, Orcs, and Half-Orcs on sight. Then I notice that the Kingdom of Sunderia is ruled by a hidden council and is waging a civil war with it's theives guild. Then, I note that the King's Guard of the Kingdom of Morenda are wandering the world searching for the three lost Morendan Princes, stolen as babes 20 years ago. Anyone playing the Generica prestige class "Morendan Guard" are all wanderers, sworn to never return to their homeland until the three princes are found. Then, I read that Sorcerors in Generica use an alternate set of rules due to their ancestors' pacts with demons during the great Demon-Titan wars millenia ago. Oh, and the chapter on the Gods includes volumes of info as well.

It's all very nice, but it is at this point I start feeling stifled by all of the setting info, none of which I had a hand in creating, all of which is suggesting adventures and campaign themes which I may or may not have wanted to persue. I then find myself starting to make MY version of a generic setting which suits the setting ideas and campaign plotlines that I want to run. Even the most generic setting has it's own character and implied themes and plotlines. Does every 1st level fighter look and act the same? Nope, and neither does every FR knockoff.

Gundark said:

For those that homebrew...why do you? I see so many vanilla homebrew fantasy settings...why bother? Why not use a published vanilla D&D setting? Is your setting so unique that it hasn't been done? What keeps you from just simply using a published setting?

Enquiring minds want to know...

Click to expand...

My settings tend to be the vanilla D&D type. They are a lot grittier than Forgotten Realms, but I could probably get by with Greyhawk. The reason I homebrew is one-part creativity and one-part laziness. I generally start with a huge world map and a very local map. The local map has lots of details and I locate it on the world map. I worry about only what features I need for the next adventure and that's it.

I used to create huge involved worlds complete with political histories, unique races, and so on - the players did not care. Really, most players do not care - tell them the stuff that involves their PC - that's it.

It's lazy because I can insert locations wherever I want. I can make up locations, personalities, kingdoms, or whatever else without any contradiction. I do not have to remember anything I have read. I find it much easier to remember things I have created and written. I do take notes at the table for times when I create things on the spur-of-the-moment to try and maintain consistency.

The problem I find with most campaign worlds these days is they try too hard to be different. They want new angles, new mechanics, new classes - thanks, but I'll just take my vanilla pseudo-medieval core D&D lazyman world.

Gundark said:

For those that homebrew...why do you?

Click to expand...

As has already been noted on this thread: part of it is because worldbuilding is one of the angles of the D&D hobby, and for me part of the fun. If you don't get that, of course, then that's no use to you: but certainly, my current campaign has gone on now over 2 years and part of the longevity for me has been two years worth of getting to make stuff up. ;-)

Part of your post seems to imply that you don't think your game is really homebrew if all it consists of is a collection of stuff from misc sources: I would contest that opinion. Sure, there's a distinction between just taking the Forgotten Realms setting and editing it's contents and dropping in one race, country or organisation from the Realms into the otehr setting: but if you change it enough that a casual glance makes it obvious it's not the Realms, then it's your homebrew IMHO.

As for why someone would homebrew up a relatively Vanilla creation.... for me at least, the ability when designing a homebrew to arrange everything to taste is part of the charm. Yes, my current setting isn't all that remarkable: all the core D&D races and classes are represented, albeit one or two in slightly modified form, but for the most part the core principles are pretty simple: but it's still my own creation in quite afew unique ways, and especially because all of the starting playrs from 2 years ago are still in the group it adds something to the personal-ness of the experience.

There's also the fact that pre-created settings always come with the bugbear of the DMs knowledge vs the PCs knowledge. My one attempt to run the realms included multiple players who knew the setting better than me, and while they were never too nasty about "telling me what to do" or antyhing, I did get the feeling the enjoyed it less because I wasn't playing to what they expected of the setting. The same goes with licensed games: I have considered running a Transformers RPG for a while, for an example, but I'm still unsure about exactly how to arrange it because one of my regular RPGers is a big Transformers fan and I['m concerned about how to accomodate both him and "normals".