Curiosity: Demarcation between Personalizing and Homebrew

[TwoSix]

I'd say if you can tell your players that they're making characters in a certain setting, and they can make those characters by reading some sourcebooks and doing some Googling, than it's a personalized setting.

If they can't make characters in that setting without you giving them some upfront information about what's different, it's a homebrew setting.

 

[Mercule]

If your personalization becomes so extreme that another fan of the setting wouldn't recognize it

I think this probably nails it. I used to use Greyhawk as "neutral ground" for one shots and the like. If you told me you were running a Greyhawk game, would most of my assumptions be applicable? If you can sum up all the meaningful changes in a paragraph or so, it's probably personalization. Probably. If it takes much more, or if my assumptions are a liability to playing (and not because I'm being a purist), it's home brew. It's definitely gray, though. I would imagine that, if you drew your own map, but pulled in Dragonmarks, kalashtar, warforged, distant gods, pulpy feel, etc., I'm probably just playing a personalized version of Eberron -- again, it depends on whether I could say "We're playing Eberron, with these tweaks" and have it be beneficial to a player new to my table, but familiar with Eberron, or if it would give them too many false assumptions. I definitely see that as being a lot less likely, but theoretically possible.

I think this is a really, really significant part of my issue with the Realms in 5E. We're heading in a general direction where I could invite a new player to my table for "D&D" and they assume that means they should select from the five factions, the SCAG is in use, etc. If I'm using Eberron or a home brew, those assumptions are going to be a liability to everyone's enjoyment of the game.

On a more amusing note, I've got a player who has (I think) read every Realms book published in the last 20 years or more. He was somewhat disappointed that SCAG wasn't a "true" 5E FRCS book. I keep threatening him that I'm going to pick up the SCAG and that will be the only canonical source used. I'm going to drop an island off the west side of the map that's filled with kalashtar and dromites, the Harpers will be secretly controlled by a cabal of evil doppelgangers, etc. To your question, that's probably home brew, but could be considered personalized, depending on whether or not you take WotC's position of "all the material for older editions is still valid".

 

[pemerton]

I call my games "Greyhawk games" if I'm using GH maps, and most of the proper names - for peoples, nations, cities, etc - come from the GH books. (I tend not to fuss too much about which era maps I use, as I don't follow any particular era for details/minutiae.)

I do so even when eg using the Wizards of High Sorcery with their three moons as an ancient Suel order of wizardry still current in the Great Kingdom (because I liked that bit of the DL world); or using a mash-up of GH gods, homemade gods and ancient Egyptian gods for my Suel pantheon; or ignoring the canon about GH vikings being descended from Suel migrants.

I don't think that satisfies [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s test - eg you can't just look up some websites and build a WoHS for use in a GH campaign - but I generally don't use that sort of approach to PC building in my games in any event.

 

[Blue]

I see those two terms as a bit of a Venn diagram, with a good amount of overlap.

Spitballing, let me throw out a few ideas that fit in the various circles and see if I can then generalize from there. I am going to talk about defining the setting before the impact of the players - every setting should change based on what the characters do during the campaign, that's the nature of play and outside the DM defining the setting.

Starting with an existing setting and filling in details that aren't there and don't change canon is the "far end" of personalization - as far from homebrew as you can get. The equivalent of homebrew would be creating a setting from scratch - as far from personalization as you can get.

Let's take a step closer on each side but still clearly one part or the other. Hmm, homebrew would be taking elements or inspiration from one or more settings as details, but for a vastly different outcome. Stealing the lightning rail - but nothing else - doesn't make something Eberron. Especially when you are mixing in the Towers of High Sorcery from Dragonlance but flavored as the magical school on Roke from Earthsea, adding Iuz and Vecna, and using Norse pantheon as the only gods. Personalization would be changing/ignoring canon details that have limited impact. Hey, I'm adding Tieflings into Dark Sun, and my Halflings aren't cannibals plus can only cast as preservers - they are incapable of defiling. And shifting around some of the history of Rajaat to make all of that fit.

Another step closer: Taking inspiration, geography and elements from a single setting (only). Say I reinterpret Eberron assuming a split back when the Silver Flame tried to eradicate shifters but instead was nearly defeated and forced into hiding. And the Last War never happened because of the changes in politics. We still have the houses but their political standings are much different. Warforged were never created, or were perhaps created but not as weapons whih would change the whole outlook. There is a new transnational coalition of weres and shifters that has martial and political clout, and they have non-traditional allies. Maybe there's been a concerted effort dealing with the Lords of Dust.

Is that homebrew? Yes. Is it personalization of a setting? I'd say yes, but ti's right on the far edge. A player told "we're going to be playing Eberon" would be mightily surprised, but a player told "we're going to be paying an alternate-history Eberron" would find a lot of familiar bits to anchor, and just need to know the differences. So I guess this would be within the overlap between the two.

So I guess personalization is primarily based on a single setting and a new player familiar with that setting would, with some description of the changes, be familiar enough to play without getting tripped up. It's recognizable. Homebrew need not start with any setting, and can be parts of one or more settings plus design by the DM. It will differ from any setting by enough that a new player told "we're playing in X" (assuming familiarity) without fairly detailed information about the changes would be surprised and tripped up by knowledge they have about the setting in that some may be correct but others would be misleading and wrong.

 

[Henry]

I think for me, the cutoff is geographical IP. If it involves a different landmass as the main setting, not using any other owned IP landmasses, then from that point, it's officially homebrew.

In truth, in keeping with the Theseus paradox, I recognize that there's always a range and there is no definitive dividing line, but if I had to choose, I'd choose there, just because when people usually say "homebrew" they're usually talking about whether they're using an existing campaign setting landmass or not. If they say "Dragonlance" or "Eberron" for instance, 9 times out of 10 they actually mean Krynn, or Khorvaire, etc. Even Matt Mercer's two streamed campaigns seem to follow suit, as he seems to call them his "Tal'dorei" campaign and his "Wildemount" Campaign, after the continents on which he set them.

 

[Charlaquin]

It’s hard to draw a clear line between where personalizing a setting ends and homebrewing an alternate version of a setting begins. Especially because any given tweak probably wouldn’t be enough to push a setting over that line on its own; it’s more the cumulative effect of many small changes that have a net result of leaving the setting no longer recognizable as itself.

I feel like this is what’s happening with Mike Mearls’ interpretation of Nentir Vale. He started from the core assumptions of 4e’s implied setting and tweaked to his liking from there. Which to be fair, is exactly how Nentir Vale was intended to be used. But, after a while, his personal flourishes added up, to the point that, for me at least, the setting he occasionally tweets about is no longer recognizable to me as Nentir Vale. It’s a cool setting, to be sure, but to me it’s far enough removed from the source material that I would call it homebrewed.

Now, I think the “for me” part is important. For others, it might still look very much like Nentir Vale with a few small personalized touches. And I don’t think either of us would be wrong. It’s pretty subjective, how much alteration one can tolerate before viewing it as its own separate thing.

 

[77IM]

I'd say if you can tell your players that they're making characters in a certain setting, and they can make those characters by reading some sourcebooks and doing some Googling, than it's a personalized setting.

If they can't make characters in that setting without you giving them some upfront information about what's different, it's a homebrew setting.

^^ This. Measure against player expectations.

If you're using a published setting that no-one has ever heard of, then it might as well be a homebrew setting. So the notion of the "personalized" setting only exists in the context of shared expectations about that setting.

 

[TerraDave]

Your running Greyhawk. And your running it as it was meant to be run!

Sure, TSR did some metaplot for it in the 90s . Metaplot was big back then. But applying metaplot to a Greyhawk game just feels wrong, unless its needed for a particular adventure (at which point it is just plot).

So you are good.

 

[Grognerd]

Your running Greyhawk. And your running it as it was meant to be run!

Haha! I agree. But I'm enjoying the discussion, and it's great seeing everyone's take on the spectrum at hand!

 

[TwoSix]

I do so even when eg using the Wizards of High Sorcery with their three moons as an ancient Suel order of wizardry still current in the Great Kingdom (because I liked that bit of the DL world); or using a mash-up of GH gods, homemade gods and ancient Egyptian gods for my Suel pantheon; or ignoring the canon about GH vikings being descended from Suel migrants.

I don't think that satisfies [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s test - eg you can't just look up some websites and build a WoHS for use in a GH campaign - but I generally don't use that sort of approach to PC building in my games in any event.

My take is that I would still call adding WoHS to Greyhawk "personalization" as opposed to "homebrew" because you haven't invalidated any possible PC concepts, you've only added to them. Likewise, adding additional gods to the pantheon doesn't invalidate any PC divine class concept, it merely broadens their options.

Now, if a PC wizard was required to take a custom subclass that corresponds to one of the three moons, then that would be where I'd personally say that my game has some homebrew concepts that need to be communicated to the players.

Basically, my personal metric is "How much information do the players need so I don't have tell them their concept won't work in my game". If a player can't make a cyber-ninja in my Eberron game, that's simply enforcing genre conceits. If your player has to change his cleric's deity to Ares from Tempus because you've replaced the Faerun pantheon with Greek gods, that's personalization. If a player can't make a tempest cleric because the pantheon doesn't have a storm god anymore, then it's homebrew.