Campaign Settings: Do you stick to the plan?

[Viktyr Gehrig]

We use a few different settings, but when I'm running, my House Rules are generally in play. My current game is a mix of 3.5 rules in the Planescape setting and d20 Modern adjusted to fit Star*Drive.

The big superhero game I'm planning after this campaign winds down is going to be my own setting-- a kind of superhero/comics universe built up from certain D&D/d20 quirks, like semi-Vancian magic, D&D spells, Illithids, and Fraal. (I'll be using the Four Color to Fantasy Revised Rules with d20 Modern, with some of my own house rules thrown in.)

I pretty much don't pick up a d20 product without house ruling it to hell and back.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What's a published setting again?

Oh, yeah, it's a homebrew that got lucky.

Screw that. I'll rape and pillage and burn the things for ideas, but I can slap flavor on while standing on my head, drinking a cup of water, and whistling dixie. I need rules, I need ideas. Everything else is gravy (and I'm not a big fan of gravy).

 

[Nightfall]

KazMid,

While I respect your right to say that, some of us don't feel like spending HOURS detailing down to the last nano spot stuff or trying to scrap and pillage just to get something right. In any case you're okay, I'm okay, but I feel I'm right!

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's what generators are for...from treasures to towns, all the incrimental work can be done with a few die rolls.

You just need to detail what's important, and fill in the gaps as you go. Use the published settings for ideas, and for niggling details ("So, what level mage is this barkeep?").

As an SL fan, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the Carnival Krewe was one of those ideas that I yoinked.....of course, now they're simply "weird swampfolk" rather than some sort of nation-state in the bayou of gators. They're in it good with the will o' wisps and swamp gnome illusionists better.

I mean, I don't knock the effort. It's just that I'm creative enough to whip up seven worlds where gods have fallen, a half-dozen spheres where an ancient empire of magic has fallen to dust, and 101 iterations on ancient Japan, China, and Fuedal Europe in a mexican-food inspired fever-dream. I'm not really in the market for people telling me "this great and ancient race of power COULD STILL LIVE beneath the surface of the world!" I'm in the mood for people telling me "This monster is a great race of power, and could concievably be populating an empire that fell in the long-ago time."

Which ends up being what something like FR can tell me.

I still stand on my opinion that published settings are homebrews that got lucky. I'm sure if most any of the settings of any DM here were snapped up by White Wolf and given a creative team to develop, each one could emerge with at least as much coolness as Midnight, Scarred Lands, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Eberron rolled into one chewy delicious doughnut.

Still, they do save us rape and pillage types a lot of work....

--Kamikaze "I guess I wasn't the first one to think of Casablanca as great gaming material, curse you Eberon!" Midget

 

[Nightfall]

Works for me Kaz, (mostly cause the Jack kicks ass! )

Btw did you happen to pick up Blood Bayou and possibly CC3 yet? You might want to consider using that. There are some rather interesting ideas in there.

While I don't agree with everything you say, as I said before, hey steal away my Scarred Lands. Just remember though, I'm the Sage. Not Yugman!

 

[Mystery Man]

KazMid,

While I respect your right to say that, some of us don't feel like spending HOURS detailing down to the last nano spot stuff or trying to scrap and pillage just to get something right. In any case you're okay, I'm okay, but I feel I'm right!

I feel your right too.

Thanks to those settings that got "lucky" and the people that had the hours and detailed them for us so we don't have to.

 

[Arnwyn]

I use a published setting (FR) but I stray quite far from the "setting rules" (in fact, I've dumped almost everything for 3e FR).