Home Grown or Published Setting?

[Gavin L G Steele]

When I first started playing AD&D it was standard practice for for most groups to use a home-grown game world, albeit with large chunks of Greyhawk or the D&D Known World in it. That was back before The Forgotten realms came along and changed what we expected from a published setting.
As a small-press publisher now, I would be interested in how much this still goes on. For those of you out there playing D&D or one of its variants. are you using am "official" world or one that you created yourselves? Who does the creation work? Is it the GM or do you conspire as a group? Was it created in advance or built up as the adventures troll along, as our world was back in the day?

I'll admit that there is an element of market research about this thread but I also love world design and I'd be fascinated to hear other people's input on the subject.

 

[delericho]

I'm using Eberron. For me, the attraction is that there's just enough material out there for it to feel complete, without there being so much that I feel constrained. Plus, given that they have avoided advancing the timeline, and especially now that it seems to be done, I'm free to make changes without risk of being superseded.

I would very much like to play in a homebrewed setting again, but the truth is that I just don't have the time. For the foreseeable future, then, I expect to be sticking with Eberron.

 

[the Jester]

For those of you out there playing D&D or one of its variants. are you using am "official" world or one that you created yourselves? Who does the creation work? Is it the GM or do you conspire as a group? Was it created in advance or built up as the adventures troll along, as our world was back in the day?

I'll admit that there is an element of market research about this thread but I also love world design and I'd be fascinated to hear other people's input on the subject.

I run a homebrew setting. I, the dm, do most of the creation work, though I encourage the pcs to add to the game (for instance, one player designed the military uniforms of his homeland).

The campaign world started in the mid-90s, with a single sheet of notes and a single map, so yeah, I guess it has been built up as we go. However, at this point, I guess you'd have to say that it has been "created in advance" of any new pcs. By now, the distinction between the two approaches has become pretty nebulous.

 

[sheadunne]

I love using a mix of both published settings and home brew. I have tried using only published settings but find it too limiting, especially when they get out of hand, as with Dragon Lance, Forgotten Realms, Eberron. That said, I'd hate for them not to exist because they produce some good things that I add to my own world development.

 

[Mallus]

Right now, for our AD&D campaign I'm using our group's 4e homebew with big chunks of Zak Smith's Vorheim mixed in (because it's a great product and a good fit with our aesthetic, such as it is).

For an upcoming Pathfinder campaign, I'm going to use my old 3.5e homebrew.

 

[edemaitre]

I've been running the same homebrew setting for the past 30 years, but I've also incorporated lots from published settings. Whether it's the Temple of Elemental Evil, an item from Greyhawk, a creature from Krynn, or an N.P.C. from Golarion, there's always room for more inspiration!

 

[Gavin L G Steele]

I'm using Eberron. For me, the attraction is that there's just enough material out there for it to feel complete, without there being so much that I feel constrained. Plus, given that they have avoided advancing the timeline, and especially now that it seems to be done, I'm free to make changes without risk of being superseded.

The timeline issue has always been a problem for me. Back in my Realms days I could see the timeline advancing ahead of our characters at quite a rate because we tended to play scenarios which investing a lot of real-world time for the game time they covered. I always liked Columbia Games trick with Harn, whereby everything was published at the same point in time and GMs could go where they wanted from there.

Just for full disclosure, my current D&D3.33e game is using a homebrew which is mostly my work, with some input from other players and from being a multi-DMed game. The core setting was created in advance and the details are being filled in as we go.