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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 2805759" data-attributes="member: 13098">That's a good question.  Admittedly I have been playing for 25 years or so.  One of the reasons I started homebrewing gameworlds was because I wanted to incorporate elements that the designers didn't.  Or worse, that the designers contradicted.  Blatant fanboyism brought me to creating gameworlds that included stuff from literature.  But over time, you start to have your own ideas.  Or you have players that have ideas and you want to help them come to fruition.  Another source of inspiration would be tapping my 6 year old.  It is amazing how creative kids can be.  They are so unfettered with the expectations of what 'should be' that they just go off on weird tangents.  Right now, my wife and I refuse to teach him all the rules for RPGs because he just doesn't need them.  My wife will run ad lib "D&D" sessions with him and it is wonderful to hear how he comes up with resolutions to problems.  Tonight, I asked him what kind of game he wanted to play in and he laid out an entire campaign idea for me without having any idea that is what he was doing.  He can create whole bits of 'fluff' with just his imagination.  It is great and it is fun and it is kind of humbling to realize how caught up I get on the 'realism' of the fantasy when I listen to him.  But part of that is an adult perspective.  At some point he will also be looking for inspiration from others in the form of literature, games, movies, and even RPG books.  Preformed fluff is great, especially when you understand and share the same vision as the creator.  It can be very inspiring to read it.  But that fluff can also get in the way of your own vision.  When that happens, you need to be clear with the other players that whatever was in the books is no longer canon.  I stopped buying 2E stuff because none of it was relevant for me any longer.  It was easier to create my own vision from the ground up then it was to break a few pieces out and tell everyone else that one small bit was correct, but the rest was not.  Personally, I prefer lighter fluff.  I don't mind having it there because others will find it helpful and that is great.  But if every monster in the MM had a 3 page ecology overview with it, I would get very tired of it quickly.  Other people would love to have that degree of detail available.  So where do you strike the balance?  There really isn't a right or wrong answer because any answer will be right for some people and wrong for others.</blockquote>

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