Make It Yourself

[bloodtide]

Making stuff for your D&D game isn't high end restaurant cooking. It is throws burgers and dogs on the grill for your friends. Believing that creating elements of play is hard and something only the pros can do is a self-imposed limitation.

If you want to sell your work or otherwise widely distribute it, then you would certainly be wise to try and hold it to a higher standard. But if you are just trying to have a good time with your friends, give yourself a break. Grill the burgers and enjoy them.

Though again, not everyone can cook on a grill.

Sure you might have a small circle of friends that are great grill cooks...but not everyone can do it.

Millions of people would be lucky to even get the meat on the grill after dropping it in the dirt, grass and worse. Then they will burn themselves at least two or three times as they "try" and cook. And in the end they will have a couple of beyond chared rock hard lumps of what was once meat.

And that does not even count the couple hundred people that blow themselves up with their gas grills...and sometimes even kill themselves.

 

[Reynard]

Though again, not everyone can cook on a grill.

Sure you might have a small circle of friends that are great grill cooks...but not everyone can do it.

Millions of people would be lucky to even get the meat on the grill after dropping it in the dirt, grass and worse. Then they will burn themselves at least two or three times as they "try" and cook. And in the end they will have a couple of beyond chared rock hard lumps of what was once meat.

And that does not even count the couple hundred people that blow themselves up with their gas grills...and sometimes even kill themselves.

Perhaps I am cursed with an overabundance of optimism, but I think most people can do this stuff. All they have to do is try and be willing to accept "good enough."

 

[SJB]

In my experience trialling homebrew rules (whether as the designer or a player) is a great deal of fun. Most people understand that not everything will come off. Equally some elements that work well for the group are plainly not of a type that would serve for a wider population. The obvious example, to be found in many early games, is too much maths. The people I play with are fine with mental arithmetic but that’s not something a modern pro could assume.

At the very least, having a go oneself can be a good way of appreciating commercial games, as their designers skilfully solve problems that flummox the homebrewer.

 

[aramis erak]

You could say that about pretty much any game that isn’t D&D or an off shoot of it.

There are about 5 or 6 tiers of RPG publishers...
D&D-alikes are, to date, essentially tiers 1, 2 and 5... 5 mostly being OSR games.
Pathfinder, FFG Star Wars, and 40K RPGs seem to be the rest of tier 2... fully an order of magnitude more users than Hero, GURPS, or Savage Worlds on the VTT sides...

So, you don't like it, or it's missing. But you don't feel confident changing or making it yourself. Now what?

Check the SRD...

 

[Reynard]

Check the SRD...

I don't understand this response.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't understand this response.

A number of recent games have multiple games combined into one SRD, so the SRD gives you well tested options. Most notably, the Year Zero Engine SRD. the most recent version on my HD integrates Mutant Year Zero, Alien, Vaesen, and T2K elements as options within.

Hence, looking for other options in the SRD.

 

[loverdrive]

As someone who has design as their main hobby and TTRPGs as a secondary one, I both agree and I don't.

Yes, everyone can make games, but I feel like you either a making a game or playing one. Design requires iteration, and it's hard to iterate in an ongoing game, and if everyone is there to playtest first and foremost, then, well, the game itself becomes secondary.

 

[Malmuria]

As someone who has design as their main hobby and TTRPGs as a secondary one, I both agree and I don't.

Yes, everyone can make games, but I feel like you either a making a game or playing one. Design requires iteration, and it's hard to iterate in an ongoing game, and if everyone is there to playtest first and foremost, then, well, the game itself becomes secondary.

Creating a whole new game is a lot of work, as you suggest.
However, creating new house rules or small subsystems for an existing system is less work, because you can leverage the design that's already been done. You aren't designing the whole thing from scratch, you are expanding in minor ways upon the base system.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Creating a whole new game is a lot of work, as you suggest.
However, creating new house rules or small subsystems for an existing system is less work, because you can leverage the design that's already been done. You aren't designing the whole thing from scratch, you are expanding in minor ways upon the base system.

Though as someone who's done that, never underestimate the ability for unintended consequences to show up when you do that.

 

[TwoSix]

So, you don't like it, or it's missing. But you don't feel confident changing or making it yourself. Now what?

Complain on online forums about the inability of the official developers to laser focus their efforts on my needs, of course.