How do you pick your setting?

[Cedric]

Just as the question is written, how do you pick your setting when you run a game? If you use several of the above options, try to pick whichever you'd say you favor.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Wow. Depending on the campaign... All of the above. I've done them all, and I expect to continue to do them all.

Maybe not a helpful answer, but there it is.

 

[Cedric]

Wow. Depending on the campaign... All of the above. I've done them all, and I expect to continue to do them all.

Maybe not a helpful answer, but there it is.

I probably should have made it a poll where you could pick multiple choices. However, I was going for what you "typically" do.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I probably should have made it a poll where you could pick multiple choices. However, I was going for what you "typically" do.

I don't know if I have a "typically," honestly. I do homebrew more often than published settings, but it's not such an overwhelming majority of the time that I'd feel comfortable saying it's "typical."

 

[reanjr]

Has anyone ever thought of creating a metapoll? Indicate what data you are trying to collect and then set up a poll to ask how best to create a representative poll?

 

[Crothian]

I've done it all as well, but now a days when I run D&D I perfer my own well developed (or so I like to tell myself) setting.

 

[Shemeska]

I've used 3e Planescape in my last two campaigns, largely because it caught my attention shortly after I got into D&D. Since then I've taken that published meta-setting (and many of the connected worlds) and [j/k] proceeded to heavily drink, smack it around while telling it I love it, and make it mine. Lots of changes over the course of the two campaigns, I'm not afraid to break my toys so I can rebuild them again.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

If forced into a 'typical' choice, I'd say 'homebrew, very different, loosely sketched.'

Spelljammer is a sort of hybrid of homebrew and published; you can GO to the published settings, but probably won't stay there, there's lots of homebrew stuff to explore, and the flavor of the game and what's out there diverges rather wildly from the norm. In 2e I would have called this 'published, loosely sketched, moderately changed' - although by the end, I played it with Rules Cyclopaedia rather than AD&D, so it was a homebrew even then. Since I advance the Spelljammer timeline by about 50 years, even a lot of the setting elements are heavily changed.

Ivalice, although based on existing source material, was definitely a homebrew. For the sake of the setting, it had a substantial amount of restrictions and changes (no elves, dwarves and the like, goblins were changed but playable, etc.), and because of the aspects I played up, magic was rare and dangerous (ala Vagrant Story more than FFT) and guns were available (from Romanda) and heavily employed.

Animus War drops the non-human races, incorporates mecha and superhero-like powers (albeit the latter in a heavily restricted fashion) and has a completely homebrewed monster suite. It also has firearms and is based on more of a d20 Modern/Past core than D&D, albeit with elements of both.

I don't flesh out the details of any of these settings before play. In Spelljammer, it's simply impossible to cover the territory available, so I usually just have a stock of concepts to explore as the PCs wander the known spheres. The others I handle similarly - sketch the nations/regions and their customs and go from there.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I typically take a published setting and use as much as I can from it without using any of the critical stuff; my players can read every word published on the setting. It won't help them or divulge any secrets because all of those are manufactured by me.

However, I keep the modules I use locked in a specially made polycarbon chamber buried 4 miles deep in the ocean.

 

[Aeric]

I've run few enough campaigns to not have a "typically" answer. The last game I ran was Eberron, straight out of the book. The one before that was a friend's homebrewed world. Before that was a slightly modified published setting (Mechwarrior's Inner Sphere, using the Mekton II/Mekton Zeta ruleset).

My preference would be completely homebrewed settings, but I tend to get caught up in developing the world...it seems like it's never developed enough to start running the game. If I can find a published setting that I like, I will use that, because it's less work for me. However, there are very few published settings that I like without major revisions (my next campaign will likely be Eberron tweaked so drastically that it will barely be recognizable as Eberron), so I guess my answer will be "a published setting with moderate changes to customize it."