Homebrew settings and player appeal

[Crothian]

Accually i'm running nothing because I don't have any players. But anyway, all i'm saying is the few times i ran published setting stuff, some of the players assumed that it was as written in a couple of sorcebooks. I told them from the start there was going to be changes to the world as written. Not my fault if the player assumed differently after i told them.

True, but it is not the published setting's fault either. Homebrewing mi9ght solve that one aspect of the problem, but the bad player is still there.

 

[Mallus]

Let's be honest. Homebrewing is all about stroking the GM's ego.

Heh...sure, homebrewing is partially about 'stroking the DM's ego'. Its also about the simple pleasure of making something for yourself, and its a creative outlet.

One could argue that playing a heroic fantasy character is all about 'stroking the players ego'. Are you saying players deserve free ego gratification while DM's deserve, well, squat?

...how do you convey that to your players?

By running my game. Would you be surprised to hear that 1) after two years of the campaign my players have a fair understanding of the setting and 2) they like it?

...Unless your homebrew has something for me to read (50+ pages preferably with a decent amount of detail) It's going to feel generic and amorphous.

So you can't learn a world by playing in it?

 

[johnnype]

Heh...sure, homebrewing is partially about 'stroking the DM's ego'. Its also about the simple pleasure of making something for yourself, and its a creative outlet.

And I have no problem with that. Hell, I've created my own settings in the past but I have yet to ask anyone to play in one. Not because I don't think they will enjoy it, I just don't think I can do any better than what's already been published. I'm also not as prolific a writer as I'd like and my mediocre writing skills (as displayed in this post) hardly inspire confidence. I'll leave the writing to the pro's. They have the skills and the time to properly develop something to the extent I prefer.

One could argue that playing a heroic fantasy character is all about 'stroking the players ego'. Are you saying players deserve free ego gratification while DM's deserve, well, squat?

Although I see where you're coming from, your statements assumes I see playing a heroic fantasy character as stroking the players ego. I don't. The players are asked to create characters. The DM is rarely, if ever, asked to create a setting. Instead the players are subjected, sometimes without a choice in the matter, to the DM's setting. I think that's a big difference.

By running my game. Would you be surprised to hear that 1) after two years of the campaign my players have a fair understanding of the setting and 2) they like it?
So you can't learn a world by playing in it?

Sure you can. You can also play a game from level 1 through 20 with NO settng at all and have fun (Age of Worms, The Shackled City and World Largest Dungeon come to mind). I'm speaking only of personal preference here but I like to know as much of the setting as possible. I find it more immersive and easier to develop a PC's background. To me the setting is as enjoyable as actually playing a game. Depth in a setting is HUGE to me. I've never gotten that from a homebrew.

Then there are the exceptions. Ever seen Agyris ? I guess that's technically a homebrew but it's so well developed it easily rivals some published settings in depth.

I guess what I'm saying is that I like depth and it's rare in a homebrew. Rarer still is the GM who has bothered to write it all down so that the rest of us can enjoy it. It can be the best setting ever created but that doesn't do me any good if I can read it.

 

[ST]

Wow, experiences sure do vary. I've never been in or GMed a game that wasn't in a homebrew setting. (Okay, maybe one exception for the planar-hopping campaign that visited various worlds, but the changes to each were pretty drastic.) I don't know the stock D&D settings, so they don't have much of an appeal to me.

 

[pogre]

I think homebrew is just for the DM to make it up as he goes and as an excuse not to buy or learn a formal setting.

Thoughts?

For me that's part of why I homebrew - not the $ part, but the lazy part. The DM is doing the lion's share of the work for any campaign. If homebrewing gives him/her some satisfaction or makes it easier, why begrudge them - especially if it's a good game.

To build on Nifft's post - playing in a homebrew is really not much different than most published settings except the DM is going to know it better.

The players have to trust the DM whether s/he is homebrewing or using a published setting.

Sorry that you have had some bad experiences in homebrews, but I have to wonder if those DMs would be any better with a published setting.

 

[wedgeski]

I love this board when a thread generates so many different points of view.

In answer to the OP, as a DM it is my task to get the players excited about my homebrew, and to encourage them to carve a little bit out of it for themselves. What this means is that at character generation time, they have to know about as many of the options open to them as possible: geography, races, classes, politics, nations... Using that as a basis they can them come up with a characetr concept that works within the world, or something that is so completely contrary to the established world that it would be criminal *not* to give it a go.

Players won't get excited about a homebrew that has no interesting hooks... nothing to get the fires burning. I've seen homebrews that are nothing more than a vague continental outline on a piece of graph paper, and a couple of half-hearted 20th level NPC's. That sounds like the kind of thing that some posters on this threat might have experienced.

 

[Nadaka]

As I'm looking for a new group to play in, I'm finding a lot of homebrew settings instead of the WotC settings I'm familiar with.

What is the appeal, for a player, to want to play in a homebrew setting?

I ask this because I feel that there is great appeal for a published setting for a player, largely in that a player will know what to expect, lots of tangibles like deities, regions, politics, lots of things. Going into a homebrew, especially one that is not written up very completely, I just feel a little at the DM's mercy and obligated to acquire as much fuzzy information as possible. I think homebrew is just for the DM to make it up as he goes and as an excuse not to buy or learn a formal setting.

Thoughts?

nope. As a GM I buy many things. Incuding campain settings. Do I play them? no. But I do borrow from them for my own campain setting. You see, I am a builder and I enjoy creating my homebrew. I also can not find a single campain setting that has half the things I like in them. My players like what I do in my CS's because it is player dynamic. Every player can bring thier own ideas to the table to enrich the setting as a whole. Likewise I have been unable to find a setting that matches the basic flavor of my homebrew (wich some have described as steampunk-lovcraftian-horror-mysterious-secretic-epic-high-fantasy (with cool and interesting backstories/secrets for everything)).

 

[Odhanan]

You are always playing in a "homebrew"

Agreed. That's a good point.

 

[Cor Azer]

Although I don't get to play very often, I'm rather indifferent as to whether the DM is running a homebrew campaign setting or a published one. I've seen DMs run great homebrews and poor published settings just as often as the opposite, so for me, it depends much more on the type of campaign the DM wants to run - Is it dungeon delving? Exploration across a savage frontier? Courtly intrigue? Etc...

Certain campaign types I think encourage either homebrew or published settings. For example, I much prefer exploration type games to be homebrewed - I want to experience the sense of discovery and wonder as both a character and a player. Dungeon delves lean more to published settings, where there is already an abundence of dungeons ripe for plundering. I know that these can vary by DM, but I think it's a larger factor than just the campaign setting itself.

As a DM, I generally only use homebrewed worlds if I want to do something majorly different than the established settings (my last one, for instance, had no specific deities and it was through the course of play the players and characters learned of the existence of the two gods of the world). If I'm just wanting a generic fantasy backdrop, it's easier to use a published setting.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I've had good experiences playing in homebrews, but that was different because it was this guy's: http://www.newdimensiongames.com, so maybe my experiences have been colored. Of course, it was his own system as well, but at any rate, what I liked was that in the hands of a good DM you were guaran-f'n-teed that you would get a game that was completely "on-focus" thematically vs. most published campaign settings (especially 3.X settings) that work on making them as open as possible.