Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Hope" data-source="post: 3018988" data-attributes="member: 27051">I have definitely changed setting elements as my homebrew has progressed.  Names and concepts that I thought were cool in 1982 certainly don't seem as cool several years down the line.  When it comes to simple stuff like names, for example, I tend to tweak the nomenclature until it sounds more pleasing to my ears.  This is explained away in-game as there being differing names for a place or person depending on the dialect or language being used (Jorvik/York, Den Haag/The Hague etc etc).It's easier for those elements that didn't appear in play, or were only referenced briefly, or were in play with a group that is no longer together.  In those cases I just change them wholesale without further ado - nobody will notice or remember anyway.I do worry obsessively about these things, though.  Respect for a setting is one of the key attitudes for ensuring that the setting hangs together and works well in play, imho (a huge topic in my mind, best suited for an entire thread on "treating your gameworld well").  So I mostly try to keep continuity and verisimilitude.  One of my rules is that it isn't real until it happens at the table - once something comes up in play, I try pretty hard to keep continuity and ensure that any changes follow accordingly.As for edition changes, I do try to come up with some rationale for this, and tend to plan ahead as much as possible.  Moving from OD&D to AD&D involved a jump of 200 game-years to explain changes in the rules-set.  From AD&D1 to AD&D2 I started a new 1st-level campaign in a different area.  The old high level AD&D characters were tweaked as needed when we returned to them, but apart from one ranger (whose prime requisites all changed) this was pretty painless.  The ranger player moaned a bit but sucked it up like a trooper.  For the change to D&D3e, I am setting the new games in a fresh cycle of cosmic history in my homebrew world, so all changes come hand-in-hand with this.  No worries in that regard.All of the above <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.Generally I make a brief stat note like the one you cite for Eärwen when sketching out an area, and flesh this out in prep-time before the game as the campaign begins to move in that direction.  Some areas (particularly those that I know will become campaign staples) get lots of work, often more than the characters will ever see.  I enjoy this aspect of DMing immensely, though, so I don't see it as wasted effort.  And besides the fun of building cool NPCs, plots and locations "off-camera", I also think that it adds to the greater feel of campaign integrity.  Just as actors in the Lord of the Rings movies gained a feeling of greater immersion in the story through prop and set details that were never seen on film, by the same token these added details help me to portray and present the gameworld with greater believability, and give the players a sense of a larger world beyond their own presence and actions.</blockquote>

Verification