How much has world-creation been important to you?

[Nebulous]

i started w/ the gray FR box (well, i played before that) but i loved having a setting filled with ideas i could change as i needed. The biggest problem with FR was the presence of high level NPCs who could do everything BETTER than your low level PCs, so i just downplayed or removed that aspect. Done. And when PCs did meet Elminster at some point, it was a fun and special moment in gaming.

 

[Mengu]

I pretty much just run homebrew, so extremely important. I change things, even if it's just names. I renamed Thri-kreen to Killik in my world (technically they were in my world before Thri-kreens were in 4e), and changed their appearance a bit.

Even when I ran Forgotten Realms 3.0, the only thing I took was the locations and gods. I populated the world (or rather the Dale lands region which was the only region relevant to my campaign) with my own NPC's and story lines, and everything else.

If there were customization options for homebrew worlds, built into the system (or rather at this point, the character builder), I would be ecstatic.

When I tell my players about my campaign world, I don't want it to be just generic D&D world #459. I want a sense of wonder, a fresh feeling. So... yeah... Every new addition, I find myself trying to create and incorporate a race or two into the system, my own character features (call it theme, background, paragon path, prestige class, whatever), my own "spells", my own magic items, etc.

 

[Nebulous]

When I tell my players about my campaign world, I don't want it to be just generic D&D world #459. I want a sense of wonder, a fresh feeling. So... yeah... Every new addition, I find myself trying to create and incorporate a race or two into the system, my own character features (call it theme, background, paragon path, prestige class, whatever), my own "spells", my own magic items, etc.

and that's great, and you can do that no matter what version of D&D you are playing. If you as a DM have the time and incentive, you can tweak it to whatever you want. The new DMG should clearly lay out these rules for DMs, they are the final arbiter for the game they want to run. From what i have seen so far, that is one of their design goals.

 

[Incenjucar]

The World Builder's Guidebook was an awesome book - the map sheets still see use in Pathfinder.

The Auld Grump

Love that book. I would love to see a reprint with additional materials added to it to cover some new ideas that have cropped up over the years.

 

[Aramax]

Ive spent 30 long years working on my world w/ love.
My son uses a simplified version of it.
My players revolted when I tried to stop using it.
Its small and restrictive but filled w/ flavor(in the main city there is a bonus to climb buildings because the Thieves Guild pressered contractors
to put a special pattern in the outer walls)
I have 30 year old maps older than my adult children.
Im not sure what I would do w/out it.

 

[BryonD]

I find Anthropology books, History Channel, Discovery Channel, novels, movies, etc, helpful for ideas and inspiration. However, I find products that help me to, mechanically, implement those ideas and inspiration to generate new ideas, or distill the information into gaming related terms to be just as helpful or moreso.

Exactly.

There is a vast world of options. The potential for inspiration is nearly limitless. For game system to try to serve as a direct source of ideas and imagination for a vast audience of people would be a fool's errand.

But a good enough system can absolutely provide the tools for creating a mechanical construct that is NOT just something that you can paint your flavor of the month on top of, but instead consistently and reliable models the behavior of whatever you think of in a manner that directly reflects the unique nature of the items being modeled. That is the pie in the sky ideal of utopian RPG. How close a given system reaches toward that is an important metric.

 

[Tallifer]

I love creating worlds. But I always borrow heavily from history and literature, and I usually run published adventures and steal encounters and fluff from published D&D campaign worlds.

The only non-customized worlds which I like inhabiting are Middle Earth and Arthurian Britain.

Mind you, if I could figure out a way to duplicate the feel of Dark Age of Camelot...

Edit: and how can I forget Westeros?

 

[Lord Mhoram]

It is probably the most important thing for me as a GM. Players build the character, I build the world. And I like game mechanics to help me do that.

I've never run a published setting in my life*. I've borrowed pieces from many though. The closest I ever ran was Spelljammer, but even then it was about half my approach and half published.

* For any system I've GMed - not just D&D.

 

[kitsune9]

I've long since stopped making my own game worlds. I like published settings, there are a lot of them out there that are pretty good and give me what I need--Golarion, FR, Iron Kingdoms (my favorite), and Planescape.

 

[radja]

I've developed worlds of my own.. thing is.. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a world, a storyline etcetera. I'm now using a published setting I really like, but since it's a 3rd party 3.0 setting originally, it's not wel known. I'm also changing things to fit the story, so playing in the same setting twice it's quite possible to find differences. Not that my players will really notice. only 1 played the setting before, and that was a 3rd edition game that unfortunately exploded (literally... luckily nobody got killed).