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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 1919888" data-attributes="member: 26473">This one is for all the homebrewers out there: Do you build a campaign setting to work with a particular game system, or do you create a campaign setting and then find a system with which to play it?A month or two ago I started working on a campaign setting for d20 Modern - the more I fleshed it out, the more I realized that the existing AdCs would need to be supplemented with campaign-specific versions, a couple of new starting occupations, a new equipment list including stats for over a dozen new weapons, and several skills and feats that would need to be added or modified. I was looking at an awful lot of work to get this off the ground - I started working on a dozen AdCs, with plans for at least three others and four PrCs as well, prepared the first draft of the weapons list, and created a new starting occupation. I estimated I had about 20% of the work done needed to start the game.Then last week I began rethinking the campaign and how I wanted it to play, how it should "feel" to the players, and I realized that I might be better off using Mutants and Masterminds instead - instead of AdCs and PrCs I could use character archetypes (that could be tweaked to reflect the individual player characters as desired) with no need for additional skills or occupations. The feel of the campaign wouldn't change noticeably - I could opt for the grimmer, grittier variants in the M&M rules to get the proper combination of action and danger. Within a day I had all of the character archetypes sketched out, completed three of them from soup to nuts, and started a list of potential adversaries.When I created my pulp adventures campaign, I went through a similar process - I originally considered using d20 Modern and the Pulp Heroes minigame from Poly. However, I opted for M&M for this as well, largely because I didn't want to use the MSRD magic systems - they didn't have the right feel for the campaign setting I was creating: Vancian fire-and-forget magic is too rigid, too predictable, and incantations aren't the stuff of fast-moving adventure.Now I wouldn't want to run all of my games using M&M - I'm quite happy with the campaign setting I created for my Modern tabletop game, I wouldn't consider running my now-inactive Western game without Sidewinder: Recoiled, and I have two more Modern "mini-games" in my personal creative pipeline.To answer my own question, I think sometimes the setting best fits a particular game system, and sometimes I think the game system inspires a the campaign setting. How about you?</blockquote>

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