Homebrew vs. Published settings

[fusangite]

It's strange to hear so many people suggesting that story generation and world generation are separate things. For me, they are highly dependent on one another; maybe I'm just too influenced by Tolkien but my worlds tend to share Middle Earth's property of containing, within them a powerful metanarrative around which play will inevitably centre.

For me, creating the story arc for a campaign and creating the world in which the campaign will take place are one in the same. I think that's one of the reasons published settings leave me cold so often; some poor designer has had to create a world with no implicit narrative. Or, worse still, a world built to tell one story has been hijacked to tell another (of course the best example of that is in fiction with Ursula Leguin revising/ruining her own creation with Tehanu).

 

[Desdichado]

That's largely true for me as well; I tell myself mentally that I'd like a setting that was a bit more independent of the major "metaplot" elements that I've thought of, but it never really happens.

I guess my games are kinda like old fashioned Sword & Sorcery, but with more "epic" plots, in general.

 

[velm]

I guess, I, like most people out here, do a mix of my own place and add in elements that I like from campaign settings. I have a healthy amount of 2nd ed FR stuff and I have found it can be very useful to get ideas, places, and the like from some of the lesser known locations. That is one reason I like FR so much, there are so many areas that don't get seen by the masses, like the GREAT GLACIER, THE JUNGLES OF CHULT, and others. Then there are other areas that give good adv ideas, like in the SHINING SOUTH, where there is a city ruled by monsters, and then Haulera (or however it is spelt) where it is a magic rich society.

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, I'm pretty much in your boat, fusang -- my campaigns used to almost always be built to tell ONE great big humungous story. I may not know exactly what that story is when it starts, but that story is implicit in the setting, as you say.

I've gotten a little bit away from that paradigm, though, what with the Kung-Fu Angels storyline that I decided to add to Barsoom -- now I have a set of PCs wandering through a part of Barsoom in a time that is fairly removed from the primary campaign, and it's a little stressful for me, I don't mind saying, trying to figure out what they're going to do in this setting that has really been engineered for a bunch of PCs a hundred years later or so.

But my Dead Man's Chest campaign was set in the historical Caribbean, and it was tons of fun researching stuff and having that suggest wild storylines to me. Obviously, the story was NOT suggested or implicit in the setting itself -- it was mostly due to trilobite's crazy notion about crystal skulls and all sorts of fun wacky connections I started putting together.

It's possible for a setting to contain implicit stories, but it's not necessary. It's possible for stories set in a world to be about some massive transformation of that world, but it's not necessary. Likewise for campaigns.

Your campaign can be The Lord of the Rings, where the story is about massive transformation in the world at large, or it can be Conan the Barbarian, and just detail the adventures of heroes in a world that is largely static. Is one style better than the other? Not at all. Both can be tons of fun.

One of the qualities I like in campaign setting materials are the stories I see already implicit (whether intended by the designer or no) in that material. It's THAT quality that draws me to them and has me mangle them into appropriate shape for Barsoom.

 

[Nightcloak]

Home brew all the way.

In 25 years I've ran a publish setting once (Dragonlance back in the 80's).

But...

One of the qualities I like in campaign setting materials are the stories I see already implicit (whether intended by the designer or no) in that material. It's THAT quality that draws me to them and has me mangle them into appropriate shape for Barsoom.

That’s why I import matterial from other settings...

And fight the compulsion to continually expand my d20 library

A battle I frequently lose

 

[TheAuldGrump]

There should be a 'Both' category, I have two games running right now, one in the Iron Kingdoms and the other (OGL Steampunk) in a homebrew.

The Auld Grump, mmmm, steam power...

 

[Akrasia]

Oh, I'm pretty much in your boat, fusang -- my campaigns used to almost always be built to tell ONE great big humungous story. I may not know exactly what that story is when it starts, but that story is implicit in the setting, as you say.
....

I kinda do this as well, although I try to keep to the same world, and my "big humungous story" for any given campaign generally affects 'only' one kingdom or region at a time.

If in one campaign the players radically change the history of the Kingdom of Olbian, for example, then I will either set the next campaign somewhere else in Ilmahal (e.g. a southern desert realm instead of the northern island kingdom of Olbian), or advance the world ahead 20-100 years to a time when the last campaign has become part of 'history'. It is kinda neat to have former PCs become important (NPC) political figures, or people of legend.

 

[Nightfall]

Explain my love for the Scarred Lands? In less than fifty words?! Impossible!

But I can give you my reasons: 1) Druids and clerics are separate. This was something that continuously annoyed me in 2nd edition. No matter how far off the path I got in terms of a druid that wasn't near any gods, all I got was some lousy "oh he's a nature cleric" type deal. 2) The monsters. I mean how cool truly is a Fire Wrack Dragon? Sure red dragons aren't that much different but with it's abilities plus draconic form, very cool. 3) The influence of the gods. I've played in a number of "generic" 2nd edition games where the gods were "Oh this is so and so" or "This is the mighty dwarven god of fruits and bread." The extremes annoyed me and I also was disillusion by a friend's DMing. Now though, with the Scarred Lands, I have more. I have a guy like Vangal that not only is CE, he predicts the future of his own actions. (See Hollowfaust). 3) Hollowfaust. A city of Lawful necromancers that believe undead can be useful, provided they have no intelligence. Probably why I like movies like "C.H.U.D." and Night of the Living Dead. It makes sense. This is also why I hate the idea all undead are evil. It's no different than having a machine run a human body with no "soul." (Yes Universal solider was another favorite. Sue me.) The point here is why did I choose the Scarred Lands. Because not only was it different it sung to me about what I wanted in a campaign setting. More heroes, tougher challneges, magical and unnatural distasters, arcane magic that was a little unhinged, divine magics that were distinictive yet still within the core of 3rd edition.

So in conclusion, that's why I like the Scarred Lands. That's also why I don't homebrew. Because for me, Scarred Lands has become my homebrew.