I am a homebrew snob

[Wayside]

Some folks apparently missed the Humor tag I attached to the thread - this is meant to be lighthearted stirring-the-pot, so let's not make it a [phallus]-swinging competition (and this includes you ladies out there in Internetland, 'cause that would just be traumatic for us guys... )

Of course nobody missed the tag! Some folks are just thread tag snobs. They have no use for existing tags and don't understand those who do. The idea of tagging a thread with something that some other poster (or worse, posters!) is using/has used makes them itch uncontrollably. To them the Humor tag seems like a pre-fabricated road to comedic ruin.

 

[The Shaman]

Of course nobody missed the tag! Some folks are just thread tag snobs. They have no use for existing tags and don't understand those who do. The idea of tagging a thread with something that some other poster (or worse, posters!) is using/has used makes them itch uncontrollably. To them the Humor tag seems like a pre-fabricated road to comedic ruin.

Touché!

 

[Bront]

I love a good homebrew, but a good homebrew needs a lot of extra material on the world, so the players can know where they are, who they can and can't trust, resources available to them, and all sorts of other info.

I normaly don't like a premade setting, but I'm enjoying running some Eberron games with my own home twists. Players can read about information they may already know, and don't need me to make it up off the top of my head. I want something interesting? I can base it off something that has the background already. I want to change something? No problem, since in many cases, what is public knowledge is wrong, so maybe the reason that everyone talks of NPC X like that is because he's been blacklisted by group Y, and he's actualy following this instead.

Generaly, I'm a pretty creative guy, but it's hard for me on the spot, so I need to prepare some stuff. And I can use a prepublished setting to help. However, I do prefer to create my own adventures, but that's mostly that I've not been able to do well in running a prepublished adventure unless I've played in it first, and that's hard to do since I only have 1 group, or if I do have 2 groups, there are many crossover members.

 

[Runesong42]

I have LOTS of use for published adventures. The idea of spending dozens of MORE hours preparing for a 4-6 hour game every week makes me want to cry. The Adventure Path seems like dozens of hours of time saved.

I look at books filled with campaign modules, and I find lots of ideas I may have never thought of on my own. Why on earth would I want to spend hours statting out minor NPCs when someone else has done the work for me. Pre-generated NPCs (and BBEGs) are a Godsend . . . I can take those pregenned critters and make them my own by applying my own style and creativity to them.

I agree 500 percent. I have my own homebrew (which only gets played once or twice a month), but I have DM'd a homebrew campaign using pre-published material. By proxy, mix and matching various pre-generated adventures creates a type of homebrew. What you add in between the pre-made adventures is where I tend to shine.

 

[pogre]

I used to spend hours on my campaign worlds. I created deep backgrounds, populated cities, detailed weather patterns, created fiction - and then I realized: My players don't care. No, really - they don't. Give them something beyond a page to read for background - they won't. Ask them to remember details of campaign history on rudimentary level - they won't.

My players want to show up and have an entertaining game - that's it. Immersion has no real appeal to them. It took a few years for me to figure out, but I finally got it. They are uniformly unconcerned about campaign world consistency or believable politics of any kind. Now, I still do homebrew - but pretty much all of my efforts are for me.

It sounds like I'm crying about my players, but I'm not at all. They're great and easy to satisfy - they just want to play. Nothing wrong with that at all!

 

[Evilhalfling]

I heart home brewing - 4 complete worlds 1st ed, 2nd ed, 3rd ed. and even a 3.5 although each world lasted a campaign or so into the publication of the next revision. and the last one was shaped more by the fact that I was taking a break from DMing and had bought the MS: western europe and Ecology books from XP

also darksun, and spelljammer (when feeling silly - 3 halflings, a boat that looked like a swan and mayhem)

I started a game straight out of the book RttTEE but when I and the players grew bored with the infinate dungeon crawl - it mysteriously exploded. The next year of gametime had refrences to the cloud of ash, and envir/tidal aftereffects.

and I have used 2 WotC website adventures - both heavily retrofitted where the encounters were similar, but all reasoning and backgrounds had shifted.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I used to spend hours on my campaign worlds. I created deep backgrounds, populated cities, detailed weather patterns, created fiction - and then I realized: My players don't care. No, really - they don't. Give them something beyond a page to read for background - they won't. Ask them to remember details of campaign history on rudimentary level - they won't.

I doubt this is particularly uncommon - any more than certain DMs who run fun games (as pogre obviously does) who nevertheless try to pack their worlds with details the players find trite, hackneyed, boring, or even offensive in one way or another.

Hell, I'd rather be in pogre's shoes than have my players find my setting to detract from the game.

 

[Barak]

I.. I used to be a homebrew snob wannabe. *cries*

Then I realized that I needed to make a bulleted list

-I don't like DMing. I do it because I dislike it less than the rest of my group.
-While I have lots of cool ideas, the part I dislike the most about DMing is the prep work. It feels like homework to me, and I always hated homework. I don't mind running the game on game night, though.
-Just like back in high school, I procrastinate doing homework, until there isn't enough time left to do it, and then I say "Well it's too late, screw it"
-Unlike high school, I don't get zeroes, we just play boardgames instead, or I wing it, which, just like doing a presentation in high school without prep, usually sorta suck.
-And unlike high school, in D&D, it's legal to download the homework off the net/buy the homework.
-Of course, like all such things, you still need to look at it and make sure it doesn't suck. But non-sucky D&D homework -is- out there.

Lists are nice.

 

[fusangite]

I used to spend hours on my campaign worlds. I created deep backgrounds, populated cities, detailed weather patterns, created fiction - and then I realized: My players don't care. No, really - they don't. Give them something beyond a page to read for background - they won't. Ask them to remember details of campaign history on rudimentary level - they won't.

I've had that problem and solves it two very different ways:
(a) find players who do care
(b) world design, as a GM, should be a fulfilling act in and of itself that brings you pleasure regardless of what your intended audience thinks

I agree with those who say that published adventures help one learn to be a better DM. I bought a lot of them when I was in my teens and learned a great deal from them. I remember my published adventures I learned the most from were the Pavis and Big Rubble scenario packs for Runequest second edition because each adventure was written up in a completely different style so that one could see all the different ways of producing adventure notes depending on campaign style. I got to sample about 10. -- Dead opposite of the standardized D&D styles by period.

That said, I have never found published settings to be any use at all, again, aside from the small exception of old RQ2 cult descriptions. 60% of my joy in GMing comes from creating worlds, 40% from running them so I cannot identify at all with published setting consumers. I haven't even learned any new ideas of what to record or how to record things from these things. I just cannot see the allure at all of the published setting. If I want to steal world ideas, non-gaming fiction, myth and history always tend to go off better. I agree that statting NPCs all the time is a bit of a pain but that's about it for the inconvenience of making one's own worlds.

 

[JesterPoet]

I've never played in a homebrew that was anywhere near as good as its creator thought it was.

And I've played in quite a few homebrews. Some that took years to develop.