Homebrewers: How Publishable is Your Brew?

[Lanefan]

Yes, this poll needs a clause "if copyright were not an issue", as that's where most people seem to be running aground.

Telenet, my first homebrew world, might be publishable if copyright were no object...the deities in particular I swiped from wherever I could find 'em.

Riveria is just the NW corner of the FR continent reworked to suit my needs; most other parts of the setting would be publishable (again ignoring copyright) but the actual map other than the "local" area has already been published. Several times.

Axenos-Decast, if-when it ever gets done, will probably be the most original of the lot; except that by "original" I only mean it'll have less of other people's stuff in it as I'm going to steal a bunch of my own ideas from prior games and adapt to suit.

Lanefan

 

[Sound of Azure]

I voted for "Another GM could use my setting, but it would require tweaking to publish", but it's really some where in between that answer and the one below it.

I had some funny ideas a while ago about just how much my players would like to read before playing in (one of) my campaign worlds.

In the process of preparing for that game, I created the "Player's Guide to Selan", which was more or less in the same style as the Player's Guide to Faerun, just a lot less polished, with no pictures, and more than likely even less balanced than that product (There's also fair amount of purloined rules from already published settings/rulebooks, so that's another stumbling block right there).

What a lot of wasted effort that was! It was just one of those many times I got carried away with a creative effort I guess.

It would be nice to get Selan published for real, but I hold no illusions as to whether it's of enough quality to get published (it isn't).

 

[Ace]

My homebrew was entered into the big WOTC contest a few years ago and was in till the near the end (though it was not a finalist) -- I would need some work to go professional though.

My biggest problem is that the world has been used for like 5 systems at different times and it shows in places.

also the social stuff is pages of mind numbing details -- city names, gawds, trivia about countries and not enough "adventure" stuff

 

[Mercule]

I don't think I actually have that much IP issues -- so long as it was published as a D&D setting. Even that is mostly convertable to, say, Hero.

The real problem is that 85%+ of my world is in my head. I have a continental map (I'm actually pretty good at cartography). I have a list of kingdom names. There is quite a bit of correlation between the two and some pretty solid borders, but my gray matter is the only repository for these. That's about how my adventures look, too.

From there, it gets somewhat less, um, verbose.

Personally, I'm happy that I have a write-up for all my gods, complete with portfolios, domains, names, etc. The only problem is that the last cleric played in my homebrew was in 1987. Dunno.

 

[Edgewood]

My homebrew could be used by other DM's but in order to publish it, there would have to be some changes to avoid copyright infringement. But, my homebrew is pretty vanilla so it wouldn't offer anything different that another published setting already offers. I think it would remain unpublished.

 

[green slime]

I steal from the best.
I wing all the rest.
Forever free... unpublished!

Cheers, -- N

Me thinks you are far too modest Nifft.

Some of your stuff you have provided in the house rules section, I value very highly indeed.

 

[TerraDave]

Its publishability ebs and flows...but over all

-Is it using a bunch of stuff copywrighted by others? No.
-Can other DMs use it as is? Yes.
-Have they? A little.
-Do I think the current lay out is that user friendly for third parties? Ehh.
-Could it be published sucessfully in todays "D20 climate? Truly a long shot.

 

[Shadeydm]

Mine is not at at all publishable. Mostly because it is plagiarized bits of many different intellectual properties.

Same here.

 

[an_idol_mind]

Mine is published...sort of. It's been used in the fantasy novel in my sig. It could certainly serve as a published setting, but I don't see why it would be. It doesn't exactly have a big hook to make it different from, say the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. The main draw is the characters, which is why I use it for stories.

 

[diaglo]

um... it is OD&D(1974)

which means... well some of the adventures could be put into print.
but i ain't converting them.