How much tweaking do you do in your world?

[Nightfall]

I tend to flavor my Scarred Lands idea with various good d20 products, such as Legions of Hell and various magic books. I DO eliminate all the class book Pr-classes and FR ones as I figure they aren't need or known. Feats I allow from the books but only subject to my approval. PHB and spells from R&R are allowed but I keep a tight lid on what else I use.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

My thirst for altering never runs out.

Most published worlds are altered between every new product and some are altered between every other published novel

I tend to have less respect for 'offical canon' alterations (you think I don't notice those little 'we changed our minds'-parts ),
than my own tweaking, but if offical tweaking is good, I am all over joyfully enjoying those great ideas.

I consider tweaking better term for creating house-rules and stuff. I do alter rules somewhat, mostly little things, like 'harm' has save and 4 skill points for those classes to would only get 2, and little things like that.

 

[bwgwl]

i don't like changing rules, but i don't mind changing other components of the game.

the world i'm working on now is based on a middle eastern theme. there's a monotheistic Islam-style religion. the world only has 3 gods (LN, NG, and CE), with the "Islam" religion being the worship of the LN god.

i've thrown in just about everything i like from the eastern mediterranean, the middle east, africa, and south asia. so i have a classical greek culture, desert nomad and urban sedentary arabs, phoenician merchants, a theocratic egyptian empire, an aggressive persian empire, an indian subcontinent, turkish steppe nomads, and african iron kingdoms.

i've just about totally reworked the races.

humans are the same.

dwarves are slightly different (main difference is a Dex penalty instead of Cha, but an armor bonus from thick skin).

none of the other PHB races exist.

goblinoids are the only humanoid race, and are not genetically or even usually culturally evil. goblins have game-mechanical stats similar to halflings. trolls are just Large size goblins, and hobgoblins are people with a mixture of goblinoid and human blood. goblins and hobgoblins are very common and available as PC races.

aasimars, tieflings, and genasi (the beni azalim, beni umashim, and beni djinn as they are called in this world) are all templates so they can apply to any race and not just humans.

all PHB classes are in, as are the samurai (called the kshatriya) and shaman from OA. many classes have one or two additional class skills.

druids (renamed kahins) don't have that silly armor and weapon restriction, but are only proficient in simple weapons and light armor.

bards (renamed rawis) get 6 skill points per level, but their perform-related abilities are now almost all language-dependent (since rawis give extemporaneous speeches or tell stories rather than sing or play music). this is a bigger limitation that it might first seem because this world lacks the concept of a "Common" language.

paladins (renamed ghazis) can choose to have their detect and smite abilities work against chaos instead of evil, since the only god that allows ghazis is Lawful Neutral and thus actually more concerned with fighting Chaos than Evil. ghazis can freely multi-class with cleric of the same deity.

monks are now explicitly tied to certain religious orders, and may freely multi-class with cleric of the same deity.

rangers can choose to focus on melee, missile, or mounted combat. melee gets TWF at 1st level and Ambidexterity at 2nd. missile gets Point Blank Shot at 1st and Precise Shot at 2nd. mounted gets Mounted Combat at 1st and Ride-By Attack at 2nd. these aren't "virtual" feats; they aren't limited by what type of armor the ranger is wearing. they are bonus feats, which means you must meet all prerequisites to gain the benefits. so no dual-wielding rangers unless they have Dex 15+.

sorcerers power their magic internally, and thus don't need to use material components unless they are given an explicit gp cost.

wizards power their spells by bargaining with outsiders: azalim (celestials), umashim (fiends), or djinn (any type of elemental genie). this is just a special effect and doesn't have any game rules, but if anyone runs a wizard in this world, i'll make sure to have this affect the campaign in subtle (or maybe not-so-subtle) ways.

i've decided not to use any official prestige classes -- only homebrewed PrCs that are based on organizations or cultural "fighting styles" or "magical traditions."

i have my own aforementioned celestials (the azalim, who are any Lawful instead of any Good), fiends (the umashim, who can be CE, NE, or CN), and djinn (all types of elemental genies). i'm also making up my own dragons (who are elemental-based instead of metal- or color-coded) and giants.

whew! i guess i'm changing more than i thought. i didn't realize how long this was going to be when i sat down to write it. i had been thinking my changes weren't all that extensive.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Depends on the setting....

No tweaking at all for my main campaign, more or less due to player response---the words "D&D" instill certain expectations w/ my players. A homebrew 2nd ed. setting which had no divine magic at all, & no clerics, didn't do to well---1 player was insistent on using a character concept which simply didn't exist IMC; another (the mage) wound up taking the role of healer (since in that setting, mages had access to all spells--they just had to learn them), which he didn't like. A few other things like no gnomes or halflings, the dwarves being more gnome-like in stature, & the fact that trolls were more like orcs than the standard D&D kind just couldn't work into their ways of thinking---from what I could guess, the words D&D were too prevalent in their mind playing the game.

However, there's an unlimited amount of tweaking when it comes to my upcomign campaign setting, Lankhmar, but that's more out of necessity. No divine magic at all, very limited spellcasting/low magic setting, psionics are a great rarity (& NPC-only, to boot), a basically different monetary system, virtually no non-human PCs, etc.

Hopefully, I think this setting will succeed due to a few things---first, it has it's own degree of name recognition, & second, I've stressed that this is a grim-&-gritty low-magic setting, much in the vein of other pulp fantasy (Conan being a prime example). Hopefully the theme & feel of the game, along with the tweaked mechanics, will help ease players into the game.

On a side note---Nice Brittania site, hong. I'm a big fan of Ultima as well, & the only other site I've stumbled across (which I think yours has a link to) doesn't provide that much stuff at all. Considered making a conversion of Ultima as well, though a lot of it would have been notes for campaigns in the different ages. Keep up the great work, man.

 

[nameless]

I've got a homebrew setting full of new races and classes and whatnot (which are kinda specific to the setting) and an altered cosmology/pantheon. There is one rule I applied that I'm particularly proud of, though:

Silver and gold, in large quantities, prevent divination and astral travel respectively. This gives the rare metals inherent value and gives a reason to have silver/gold for their own sake. The formula I use is as follows: (Weight of the metal in lbs.)^2 / 100. This gives the radius from the center of the metal in which divination and teleportation are prevented. So 100 lbs. of gold (5000 gp) prevents teleportation into a 100 foot radius. 500 lbs. of silver(2500 gp) prevents scrying within 2500 ft. There's also the cool paradoxical side effect that it requires silver in a mirror to scry in the first place.

I've found that this rule makes the game much more playable at the levels where Scrying and Tepelortation become possible. It doesn't take a powerful wizard to protect a fortress from long-distance assault, but it is still infeasible to carry that much metal on a personal scale. It makes people more useful than magic in warfare.

-nameless

 

[bwgwl]

There is one rule I applied that I'm particularly proud of, though:

Silver and gold, in large quantities, prevent divination and astral travel respectively. This gives the rare metals inherent value and gives a reason to have silver/gold for their own sake.

you should be proud; that's a very clever idea! i might just have to steal it...

 

[Kichwas]

Well I use a setting of my own so I guess I'm tweaking right from the ground up.

Setting wise it's based on a different core premise than the usual fantasy thing. Being more 'classical' in it's roots. Meaning based off of bronze and iron age soceities rather than medival. But with mostly medieval era technology (more advanced in a few areas though).

Rules wise I've tossed out both arcane and divine magic and thus all classes that use either. Inserting a number of classes from sources like Sovereign Stone to fill in the gap or making changes like the variant non magical Ranger suggested in Rokugan.

I've got three custom races at present. I'm working up a backgrounds system that syncs in with setting.

In actual play though I'm pretty hard on sticking to the 'rules of play'.

Everything I use either exists in a published source somewhere or is there for setting specific reasons (like the three custom races).

I haven'tmade any custom prestige classes. I'm not likely too until the next game I run gets itself to a level where they come into play. I'm between games at the moment so am instead focusing my efforts on world design; filling out the parts of the world that I skipped over last campaign, and by player requiest, designing a series of Iconic characters to highlight different key points of the setting.

(In fact I need to get off these boards and get back to finishing up Pedra, an Earth Mage and slave with the University At Coinic.; the only such institution in all the Western Kingdoms.)

 

[Plane Sailing]

I tweak absolutely everything. I review everything and decide whether it fits into my campaign setting or not (and what changes are needed if any).

To get some idea of the scope of this, feel free to check out my website

 

[hong]

Depends on the setting....

No tweaking at all for my main campaign, more or less due to player response---the words "D&D" instill certain expectations w/ my players. A homebrew 2nd ed. setting which had no divine magic at all, & no clerics, didn't do to well---1 player was insistent on using a character concept which simply didn't exist IMC; another (the mage) wound up taking the role of healer (since in that setting, mages had access to all spells--they just had to learn them), which he didn't like. A few other things like no gnomes or halflings, the dwarves being more gnome-like in stature, & the fact that trolls were more like orcs than the standard D&D kind just couldn't work into their ways of thinking---from what I could guess, the words D&D were too prevalent in their mind playing the game.

Yeah, I've seen this happen. The knowledge that it's a D&D game creates expectations of a certain style of play, for good or ill. The good side is that it means everyone is working from a common set of assumptions (spell and combat mechanics, demihuman races, clerics being healers, undead are evil, and so on), so there's less chance of conflict. But it does mean extra work if/when you want to change things.

However, there's an unlimited amount of tweaking when it comes to my upcomign campaign setting, Lankhmar, but that's more out of necessity. No divine magic at all, very limited spellcasting/low magic setting, psionics are a great rarity (& NPC-only, to boot), a basically different monetary system, virtually no non-human PCs, etc.

Hopefully, I think this setting will succeed due to a few things---first, it has it's own degree of name recognition, & second, I've stressed that this is a grim-&-gritty low-magic setting, much in the vein of other pulp fantasy (Conan being a prime example). Hopefully the theme & feel of the game, along with the tweaked mechanics, will help ease players into the game.

That's a good point. It's all well and good to have a strong vision in your mind about what you want your game world to be, but unless you can persuade your players to come along for the ride, it's wasted. Some groups have been together for long enough, or some DMs have enough charisma, that the players will sign up no matter what. For other people, though, I can see how it's an issue. Assuming the vision isn't completely whacked out, this is a communication problem, and using a published setting (even if it doesn't have any official D&D rules) is a way of solving the problem.

Robin Laws alludes to this in his _Robin's Laws of Good Gaming_. He advocates getting players to read everything they can about the setting, even stuff that's nominally for DMs only. This is because while it's easy for the DM to _describe_ situations, it's hard to evoke a desired _instinctive_ reaction unless everyone is thoroughly backgrounded in the material. It's like the difference between saying that you're fighting a powerful lich who commands armies of undead and other fanatical servants, and saying that you're fighting Szass Tam. The one is just a sterile description, while the other brings with it a context of its own -- one carries all sorts of implications for the setting and for the PCs. It's a lot of work to create that context, if you're starting from scratch.

On a side note---Nice Brittania site, hong. I'm a big fan of Ultima as well, & the only other site I've stumbled across (which I think yours has a link to) doesn't provide that much stuff at all. Considered making a conversion of Ultima as well, though a lot of it would have been notes for campaigns in the different ages. Keep up the great work, man.

Thanks!

One reason I settled on Britannia, other than that I think it's a great setting, is precisely because it's a published world with a history and background of its own. I think that, ironically enough, there's more scope to tweak things if you use published material than otherwise. This is for the reasons noted above -- tweaking is easy enough, but instilling the necessary feel is hard unless you have a base to work from.

[pimp]
While we're on Britannia, I've written up a couple of material types for the setting -- blackrock/blacksteel, and Britannian steel. I'm looking for some feedback for how to cost items made from these materials. The thread in the House Rules forum is here:

http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11383

Any feedback and comments would be appreciated.
[/pimp]