Curiosity: Demarcation between Personalizing and Homebrew

[Shiroiken]

I'd have said that a published setting is just personalized, rather than homebrew, no matter how much you change it. At least until I joined my friends "Greyhawk" campaign in 3E.

I asked where we were based, and was told Verbobonc, so I wrote up a character that was born in Hommlet before the first rising of the Temple of Elemental evil, and became squire to a Knight of the Hart during the battle. I eventually earned my spurs (and became a paladin of Heironious), and returned to Verbobonc to serve against any future rise of evil. I explained my background to the DM at the start of the session, so that he could introduce me at his convenience.Everyone stared blankly at me... no one had read ANYTHING about Greyhawk, despite playing in it for almost a year! The DM had gotten the map, and other than a quick glance at Verbobonc, just made everything up (He didn't even know who Iuz was!)...

Now I pretty much consider the defining line where you deviate from canon. If you want to run a game based on canon up to a certain point, then ignore later events, I think that's still just personalizing. If you decide to change things that lead up to your starting point, you're probably in homebrew territory. Of course, this is all just semantics anyway

 

[Henry]

Take a bunch of player familiar with Eberron and Forgotten Realms. Transplant FR names, politics, etc onto a map of Khovaire. No dragonmarks, no dragonmarked houses, no Last War, no warforged, no lightning rail or other magitech, no Draconic Prophesy and all that comes with it. They meet Elminister, Drizzt and deal with clerics of Mask and Bane, the Red Wizard of Thay. Then ask them what setting they are in.

I really doubt you'll find the majority will say they are playing in Eberron.

Calling a campaign after the area it's in is an easy thing to do. I ran a completely homebrew setting call the Chronicles of Errantas, named after the kingdom the group started in. But with the same map but different things filling it up it would have been a wholly different campaign regardless of the name.

That’s not a map of Khorvaire you just described, now, is it? No Galifar, no Droaam, no Shadow Marches, no Demon Wastes, not even a Mournland - It’s Faerun with a slightly different chalk outline. Besides, you’re trying to use an exception to disprove what someone has already admitted is an arbitrary rule for the sake of drawing a line when asked. The vast majority of game groups I’ve ever seen who used a published setting map have never changed it to that extent - if they use Faerun/Krynn/Flanaess/whatever, they’re almost always using the same geography and place names, they’re not going to the trouble of using a blank map and recreating whole cloth. If a DM was willing to go to that much trouble, they have probably already made their own map, as well - or used the FR map, since they’re using FR NPCs and place names.

 

[not-so-newguy]

<snip> there has to be a line somewhere between a setting that has been personalized for a particular campaign and a setting that has deviated enough from the source material that it has essentially become a homebrew setting, with perhaps only the names or maps from the original source material remaining intact. <snip>

So, for you personally, at what point do changes to a setting go from "mere" personalization to hombrewing? Your response can include examples from your own setting, ideas based solely on theory, or whatever else. We're just chatting here!

I’m tinkering with a Mystara campaign; drawing from different sources on the Pandius site, B10 Night’s Dark Terror, And Gaz 1; then combining that material with 5e and my personal taste. I consider all this to be “canon,” for lack of a better word. There are quite few contributors to Mystara and there are often several different “takes” written on the same subject matter. Most of the personalization comes in choosing what stays and what goes.


The homebrewing part won’t start until I have players, when they bring their expectations and start interacting with the world. It’ll probably start happening at session 0. Homebrewing happens organically for me, usually by necessity to keep the game going or to make it (hopefully) more interesting than what is already written. Most of the “canon” will fall by the wayside, becoming unimportant and obsolete, as the players continue to make choices which I didn’t plan for.

 

[oreofox]

To me, if you take an existing world, use the lore up to a certain point (your starting point), use all the geographical portions of that world, you have a personalized setting. If you use Greyhawk up to the canon lore at the end of 2nd edition, and then create your own lore based on the happenings of your sessions, that's a personalized setting.

A homebrew setting, again to me, is one where you just make everything up. The map, the names of people/places/things, the lore up until the starting point, and so on, is completely created by you. Golarion started as a homebrew setting. Faerun, Krynn, Greyhawk, and so on all started as homebrew settings.

Now, there's a gray area, where you take an existing world, keep the geography (using the world map), but change the names and locations of places (no Hommlet, no Castle Greyhawk, maybe even there being no mountains in one area), and the only "greyhawk" thing about it is the shape of the landmasses, I would consider that homebrew. Also, setting the adventure Storm King's Thunder in a world you created yourself, it would still be homebrew.

 

[staticdrifter]

Why would it matter? Isn't it just a label that has no impact?

They may be labels, but they do represent two very different ideas that do matter a lot.

Assume you are a player looking for a game in a world you are familiar with, say Greyhawk. You find a DM and he tells you he has some personalized features in his game. This is fine, he will present you with what boils down to flavor text about his particular world of Greyhawk. It will not matter as much but you might need to know that strawberries are poisonous and items sold by redheaded orc children, which are known as rhorcs, are required to be orange, blah, blah, blah...

You don't care to play in a world where strawberries can kill you, so you pass and keep on looking.

The next DM you come across also runs Greyhawk, but he uses some homebrew features. These may be races, classes, feats, etc... or even core mechanics, which may change the very nature of how you're character will interact with everything in the game.

Homebrew affects rules, personalization affects asthetics.

Homebrew is adding a bay window in your garage, personalization is what color you paint your house.

Mind you, this is my opinion, take from it what you will. Someone is sure to want to stomp all over it.

 

[jgsugden]

They may be labels, but they do represent two very different ideas that do matter a lot...

However, if there are large levels of ambiguity between which is which, then the labels are useless to make informed decisions.

Further, homebrew/personalized/stock is a very minor part of a much larger conversation that should take place before a campaign begins. You can buy stock materials off the shelves that contain materials that are offensive to some players. As such, you need to sit down and describe the campaign you intend to run, addressing any elements you consider to be potentially controversial, with the players. When havin that discussion, it does not really matter if the elements in question were your creations, came from someone else, or come from a blend of sources.

However, to engage in the intent of the thread:

Stock - any prepublished materials that ou run without substantive changes. A substantive change is one that requires adjustments to multiple areas of the adventure to maintain consistency or significantly alters a story element.

Personalized - you begin with a stock material, but make substantive changes. However, the majority of the core elements of the materials are present, even if modified.

Modified - you begin with a stock material but alter most of it so that it is more your creation than someone else's creation.

Homebrew - you begin with your own concept. Even if you absorb elements of other products into your idea, a homebrew begins from your creation.