I am a homebrew snob

[Desdichado]

Indeed! But I'm just trying to demonstrate a point, not claim that I have any real data to back me up.

Besides, without a good, objective definition of what is or isn't "good" those statistics would be meaningless even if I hadn't just made them up.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I am a rules snob; I have no use for prepublished rules and I don't understand those who do. The idea of using game rules and dice that some designer has made makes me itch uncontrollably. Role Playing Games are the pre-published path to creative ruin! Why on earth would I want to play someone else's GAME RULES! I don't know where those have been!

Hear my cry, hobbyists!! Throw off your D&D/Modern/GURPS/White Wolf/HERO shackles! Forsake OD&D (1974 edition)! Stand up as one and show the love for a good old fashioned afternoon of Cops & Robbers! Stand up with pride as you argue about who killed whom!

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[Agamon]

I am a rules snob; I have no use for prepublished rules and I don't understand those who do. The idea of using game rules and dice that some designer has made makes me itch uncontrollably. Role Playing Games are the pre-published path to creative ruin! Why on earth would I want to play someone else's GAME RULES! I don't know where those have been!

Hear my cry, hobbyists!! Throw off your D&D/Modern/GURPS/White Wolf/HERO shackles! Forsake OD&D (1974 edition)! Stand up as one and show the love for a good old fashioned afternoon of Cops & Robbers! Stand up with pride as you argue about who killed whom!

What a great thread.

My homebrew rules. My players tell me so, so it must be true. But we're having a ton of fun playing RttToEE as I prep the next homebrew campiagn. Making the published products your own is the key to having fun with it.

 

[TheGM]

I'm a homebrewer too. I buy modules, glance at them, and toss them on the shelf. The only good campaign is one where the BBEGs are smart, focused on the party, and stick around for more than one adventure.

Three homebrew worlds running, a couple in boxes in the basement. One primary one that is like an old glove.

 

[The Shaman]

*snip!*

Make it Cowboys and Indians and you're on!

(Excuse me, I have to go warm up my "air bow"...)

 

[MonsterMash]

The only thing that beat a good game of Cops & Robbers is a good game of Doctor.

Doctors and nurses is better!

 

[amethal]

My campaigns have all been homebrewed, not because I think my worlds are superior to the published campaigns, but because world creation is what I enjoy most about being a gamemaster. Also, I don't think it is that much more work - for me it's mostly a sort of structured daydreaming. I spend a few minutes thinking about what each of the major NPC groups are planning to do, and also from each characters perspective, so that everyone will have a hook for the adventure.

My players aren't overly interested in the background - so I just have to come up with a broad overview of the world (usually my favorite part) and a layer of detail for what they will definitely encounter in the next week. More planning than that is usually a waste of time, because my players like to go off in their own direction.

For me, it usually takes about as much time to prepare for a prepackaged module, at least if I don't want to be as surprised as the players about what happens on the next page.

This was what I was going to say, so I'll just quote leporidae instead.

I don't know if my homebrew is any good or not, but I'm definitely a homebrew snob. One of the things I like about Eberron is that many of the details are so vague I could happily run a campaign there ... but only if I wasn't such a homebrew snob.

Actually, any time my players (or I) get fed up with my homebrew then I'll switch to any published setting of their choice (as I seem to own most of them, for one reason or another). Of course, by the time I've finished with it large parts of it will be unrecognisable.

I do think the difference between a published setting and a homebrew is that more people are involved in a published setting. I'm sure many of my ideas wouldn't get past a design team, cutting out a lot of self-indulgent crap but maybe also cutting out the one idea which would have made the setting a success.

 

[DonTadow]

I don't think the question is whether we love our homebrew or not, it wouldn't make sense if we didn't. It is there any usefulness you can get from a published adventure. I don't think any of us if that good, professional or otherwise, where we can't use good ideas and inspiration. I love my homebrew, and like many I don't think you can take a published adventure and put it directly into your campaign. But I don't think I"m the greatest and I think that humbleness makes me a good DM. I can't think of every great plot and adventure and I don't kid myself by thinking that my plots and adventures are the best in the world.

To say theres no room for improvement is to admit failure. I guess I"m kinda of irked at the arrogance that some think their adventures can get no better and need no inspiration. The best writers read. The best artists watch their peers.

 

[Slife]

Let me get this straight, let us play a game without rules? Everone make up their own rules? This is ... well it just doesn't make sense. By defination you can't have a game without rules, nor will you have agood game making them up on the spot.

It seemed to work for Calvin...

 

[fusangite]

I don't think the question is whether we love our homebrew or not, it wouldn't make sense if we didn't. It is there any usefulness you can get from a published adventure.

As I said in my post, in the past, I have found published adventures to be useful; published settings, however, I have found to be less so. It is important to distinguish that it is the latter that we are discussing here.

I don't think any of us if that good, professional or otherwise, where we can't use good ideas and inspiration. I love my homebrew, and like many I don't think you can take a published adventure and put it directly into your campaign. But I don't think I"m the greatest and I think that humbleness makes me a good DM. I can't think of every great plot and adventure and I don't kid myself by thinking that my plots and adventures are the best in the world.

To say theres no room for improvement is to admit failure. I guess I"m kinda of irked at the arrogance that some think their adventures can get no better and need no inspiration. The best writers read. The best artists watch their peers.

Nobody here is suggesting that they create settings out of their own minds and nowhere else, like the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. What I am saying, at least, is that published setting materials are a very inefficient way of picking up ideas for one's homebrew. Supplements like Joe Browning's Magical Medieval Society, for instance, give you tools for constructing a homebrew more efficiently. Similarly, if one is looking for inspiring ideas, I find that reading a novel, or real world history or mythology is far more likely to produce new and interesting ideas for a homebrew than reading published settings is. Yes -- I'm sure that there are ideas in published setting materials that could make my homebrew better but there are fewer of them per 100 pages than I would find in the various other sources I prefer. For instance, I am currently filling notepad after notepad with fascinating ideas from the book I'm reading now: Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Smoking Mirror.