D&D 5E Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Official Campaign Settings

[Mind of tempest]

How is this any harder to pitch to players than "Come play in my homebrew setting?" IME, homebrew isn't any harder to pitch/sell than something canonical.

well with homebrew you have only you to sell it with a premade setting they might already like it a thus be more willing to select you over other possible dms.

 

[prabe]

well with homebrew you have only you to sell it with a premade setting they might already like it a thus be more willing to select you over other possible dms.

Well, yes, but @TwoSix implied (I thought) that pitching a campaign in an out-of-print setting would be a harder sell than pitching one in a homebrew setting.

Also, some published settings have strong enough ... flavors, for lack of a better anology, that there will doubtless be some people turned off by them.

 

[MarkB]

Also, some published settings have strong enough ... flavors, for lack of a better anology, that there will doubtless be some people turned off by them.

Yeah, but so do most homebrew settings. The difference is that, with a published setting, you stand a better chance of knowing whether it's to your taste before you start playing.

 

[prabe]

Yeah, but so do most homebrew settings. The difference is that, with a published setting, you stand a better chance of knowing whether it's to your taste before you start playing.

You'd think.

Maybe it's the quasi-perpetual DM shortage, but I've had to turn people away from my homebrew-setting games semi-regularly for years.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Well, yes, but @TwoSix implied (I thought) that pitching a campaign in an out-of-print setting would be a harder sell than pitching one in a homebrew setting.

Also, some published settings have strong enough ... flavors, for lack of a better anology, that there will doubtless be some people turned off by them.

One way they might think is: with a homebrew setting, the dm made it and therefore the dm will be willing to change it to accommodate an idea from a player. With a published setting, the dm might be concerned with sticking to the 'official' version - and that's somewhat more likely to be true if they want to stick to an older setting that hasn't been updated.

Of course, if they already know the dm they'll know how flexible the dm is already, but if you're trying to find new player to join your game homebrew has a slight edge over published-but-not-recently.

On the third hand, I doubt this is going to be a major factor for anyone's decision about which game to join, unless they really like a specific published setting already.

 

[prabe]

One way they might think is: with a homebrew setting, the dm made it and therefore the dm will be willing to change it to accommodate an idea from a player. With a published setting, the dm might be concerned with sticking to the 'official' version - and that's somewhat more likely to be true if they want to stick to an older setting that hasn't been updated.

Of course, if they already know the dm they'll know how flexible the dm is already, but if you're trying to find new player to join your game homebrew has a slight edge over published-but-not-recently.

On the third hand, I doubt this is going to be a major factor for anyone's decision about which game to join, unless they really like a specific published setting already.

That all makes sense, especially your gripping-hand conclusion.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

How is this any harder to pitch to players than "Come play in my homebrew setting?" IME, homebrew isn't any harder to pitch/sell than something canonical.

I'd say it's linked to the availabilty of information to the potential players. If players want to engage with the setting and not see it only as a vaguely uninteresting backdrop for their adventuresof course it doesn't really matter to them. They want to fight crime, solve mysteries, cast spell and kill the BBEG, and they don't care if they do this for the Laeral Silverhand in an official setting, King Boranel of Breland in a published setting or Lord Garrdakan from a homebrew. If, on the other hand, they want to involve themselves with the setting... they must be able to get information about it.

Before joining a game, for official settings, there is a large chance they have heard of it before and know the themes of the setting. A published, but non-official setting has less audience so they won't be immediately familiar (I know nothing of Mystara, for example, and I don't know if it would click with me). If it's a homebrew... you have to trust the GM. If you want "high fantasy" and the GM is putting you in a gritty world, you'll be disappointed. Leaving at session 0 would be bad form...

And if the pitch is good and they want to get involved... Being published means the player can ask "what book should I read?" to answer the most common question... what does my characters know about X because it would be everyday knowledge? Should I be awed by someone casting Magic Missile? Should i reasonably suspect the assassin to be potentially invisible or will I look like a moron by spraying flour over the room? These questions can be solved by reading a setting book... which you can't do with a homebrew, for which the only solution is to pester the GM.

That's why people are picking Candlekeep Mystery despite the obvious flaw of not mentionning Foggy Bottom in any form, shape or fashion.

 

[Azzy]

There's one thing you left out: interconnectivity of dichotomous polarities.

Sounds very Doaist.

 

[Malmuria]

Prestige. And finally I come to the most important factor when it comes to name brands. This is what brands spend the major money on; associating the brand with prestige, with a good life, with a luxury lifestyle. Why buy the off-brand sugar water when you can buy Coca Cola and its Polar Bears? Don't you know that buying off-brand sugar water kills Santa? But you usually see this effect more with true luxury goods; if you've ever been in the market for a luxury car, expensive bottle of booze, high-end leather goods, watches, or anything, you understand that you are paying partly for the increased cost of production, but partly for the exclusivity; only certain people can afford to have it. Prestige matters. Buying an off-brand Rolex is cheaper than a real Rolex, and drinking good sippin' tequila will cost you a lot more than drinking Mr. Boston's well liquor.


D&D emerged in the 1970s as a hobbyist game. TSR was late to the idea of selling adventures because, in their estimation, what D&D gamer would want to run someone else's adventures? It used to be common to mix & match between official product, different rulesets (OD&D, B/X, AD&D, Boot Hill, Gamma World), semi-official product (Dragon Magazine), homebrew, 3PP (The Compleat Alchemist, Arduin Grimoire, Grimtooth's, etc.) and so on.

aka. Consumer Culture, which devours folk culture (hobbyist, indie, whatever you want to call it), turns creativity into business, and creates brands that govern not just our wallet, but our emotional life.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, yes, but @TwoSix implied (I thought) that pitching a campaign in an out-of-print setting would be a harder sell than pitching one in a homebrew setting.

Also, some published settings have strong enough ... flavors, for lack of a better anology, that there will doubtless be some people turned off by them.

I was saying that, yes. Pitching an out-of-print setting is harder than pitching either a pure homebrew or a current setting.

IME, people don't generally want to read a lot about the setting, and if they do want to read, they generally want to play something they read recently. I couldn't get my group interested in an Eberron game in 2015, it was a completely different ball game in 2019.