How do you pick your setting?

[Cedric]

almost 50-50 split on published v homebrew AOMV.

Interesting, id have thought there would be more homebrew

JohnD

Actually with all of the support material out for Published settings, I figured they'd have a strong lead. I kind of thought Homebrewers like myself were a dying breed.

 

[Cergorach]

It could be me, but the choice of campaign setting usually depends on the wishes of the group and my time restraints. If i expect that i have lots of time on my hans in the moths following the start of the campaign i might go for a complete homebrew or a heavily modified version of an official setting. Same goes for the wishes of the part, if they want a low magic setting, then FR is out, etc.

A couple of months ago i found this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=167614
And will now be using a lot of ideas from that source (in addition to some i thought up). Chances are that i'll be doing an extensive 'homebrew', because to be honest, my current crop of players just know to much about FR to keep it interesting (to many expectations, if you know what i mean). But then again my players might change or my time restraints might change...

 

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

It was the fact that all my campaigns were homebrew, with ever increasing levels of detail, that caused my wife to encourage me to submit material to Dragon way back when. All my early articles were based in my homebrew campaign of the Sovereign Kingdoms, where the name generator articles I wrote were standard for each race, the Charcoal Burners Guild was a psionic conspiracy, herbalism was an important part of a witch tradition, and several npc wizards were vying to create the most interesting spells.

My professional material is a good deal more removed from my homebrews nowadays, and the Sovereign Kingdoms are long since over (replaced by Halcyon, the Tiered City, the Middle Kingdoms, EverStar, and now Mutant Age), but a lot of my playtesting is taken out on my own players even today. And occasionally a home game concept sneaks into a book I do.

 

[Psion]

I picked I use a publish setting with a large number of homebrew aspects, but I really mean I connect published settings together like Voltron and subsume them into my setting (being a multi-planar setting, though one of my worlds stitches together smaller settings like Freeport, Bluffside, and the backdrop of AEG's Mercenaries.)

 

[Mystery Man]

I use pubished settings done by those with better ideas than mine then I'll add new stuff or change as needed.

 

[Mallus]

I make settings, which get more detailed as time goes by, but never to the extent that they should be (I voted "homebrew/loosely skteched/different from published materials").

Or perhaps I should say; I create scads of detail, only some of which has any direct bearing on play. But boy is it atmospheric.

You can see the results for yourselves if you read the Story Hour in my sig.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I'm like Mouse, I've done 'em all and depending on my mood I bounce from one to another.

 

[wayne62682]

I have neither the time nor inclination to do a homebrew game so I stick with published settings and I try to keep the "feel" of the published setting.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

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.

I generally use a mix of fantasy campaigns for D&D. In my last campaign, I pulled in elements of DragonLance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk and ran Dungeon Crawl Classics (setting-neutral) adventures. I threw in a bit of Star Wars and Cthulhu as well.

Right now I'm waiting on the Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign world, and I want to sew it together with Wilderlands of High Fantasy under the governing umbrella of the Greyhawk campaign setting. As for adventures, I'll be using Dungeon Crawl Classics again, along with World's Largest Dungeon. If I get the cash, I'll pick up some spare Dungeon mags for Greyhawk adventures, Shackled City, Rappan Athuk: Reloaded and Ptolus.

Ideally, I'll be pulling in several Conan supplements as well, making the whole setting "medium magic" but making the Conan material "high magic" relatively speaking. Cthulhu mythos stuff will be sewn into the Conan stuff naturally.

Then I'll run it with a hybrid of Castles & Crusades, Hackmaster and FUDGE. So... to make a long answer short, I use lots and lots of published campaign world, but add in so much of it that it barely resembles any of the original pieces.

 

[Xyanthon]

I said that I use a homebrew that is very detailed and close in flavor to published settings (meaning that it has a medieval-renaissance period feel, D&D monsters (mostly, I do have several I created), fairly close to core, but with my own gods/towns/npcs/organizations).

So nothing earth-shatteringly new, but not a carbon copy of anything published either.