Never homebrewed!

[jester47]

Also, the cool thing about a homebrew is that I don't need to worry about:

• Players knowing the world and knowing where everything is. There is a sense of discovery there.
• Following someone's storyline. Although this is of course of your own doing, I always feel constricted to never add or remove too much.

I like my players to know a bit about the world. It helps them to create characters that have ambitions that I can work with. Besides, I homebrew backwards. I take a published setting and change bits here and there and give it a different feel. My FR campaign has a weirdness about it that blends Moorcock, Tolkein, Howard, Lovecraft, Beagle, the age of wonders from Time Bandits, the old Dragonslair laser disk game, the original greyhawk, and a background landscapes and locales from the D&D cartoon. I don't know if it would resemble what others think of when they hear FR.

I use the idea of concurrent storylines. Yes there was the time of troubles, but few have heard of the unsung heroes that in that time, stopped Orcus himself from entering the realms! (and thats cannon!) Like all history, its not the only thing going on. Durring the (american) civil war there was all sorts of stuff going on out west you never hear about that could have had big repercussions on the eastern seaboard. The storylinepresented in the campaign material is simply the stuff going on over there that doesn'treally have an effect on what the players are doing.

Aaron.

 

[darkbard]

I like my players to know a bit about the world. It helps them to create characters that have ambitions that I can work with. Besides, I homebrew backwards. I take a published setting and change bits here and there and give it a different feel. My FR campaign has a weirdness about it that blends Moorcock, Tolkein, Howard, Lovecraft, Beagle, the age of wonders from Time Bandits, the old Dragonslair laser disk game, the original greyhawk, and a background landscapes and locales from the D&D cartoon. I don't know if it would resemble what others think of when they hear FR.

Aaron.

and this is something i think many people miss about published settings: they are a springboard for ideas, not a straightjacket for creativity. no published setting, no matter how rich, can anticipate all the needs of every player. tinkering is required. this is what's great about published settings: find one that matches your style and don't worry about buying supplements to keep current--simply develop it as you see fit!

 

[blackshirt5]

I like homebrewing because it gives me a chance to kinda blend in the stuff that I like from a bunch of different worlds, plus my own stuff, into one sometimes harmonious, sometimes not, but ALWAYS fun, whole. Also, the creation aspect(except for mapping, which I suck at) is really cool for me.

I like having my own gods.
I like having my own cosmology.
I like having my own racial interactions.
I like having...well, you see where I'm going with this, I hope!

Basically, I like being able to do things my way. And also, it gives me much more to do in my down time than if I ran a published world. I still LOVE campaign settings though, because of all the cool stuff I can lift out of them.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I've homebrewed (long ago), and it was the work that made me appreciate published settings (which is all I'll use, now).

I'd rather make adventures than worlds.

'Course you could argue that as soon as I change a published setting, I'm essentially running a homebrew anyway.

 

[blackshirt5]

I've homebrewed (long ago), and it was the work that made me appreciate published settings (which is all I'll use, now).

I'd rather make adventures than worlds.

'Course you could argue that as soon as I change a published setting, I'm essentially running a homebrew anyway.

I've actually found that it's easier for me to design adventures for my own world. Something(at least for me) about having already laid out the groundwork of this world makes it much much easier to create hooks and dungeons.

 

[barsoomcore]

It makes me laugh, these "homebrew" discussions. Not at anyone in general, just at how different people's perceptions of the world can be.

Until I started posting here at ENWorld, I honestly didn't know a single DM who DIDN'T run a homebrew campaign. Like Templetroll said, we all just took it for granted that creating a campaign world was part of a DM's job. It was one of the reasons we wanted to be DMs in the first place.

Of course, when D&D first came out, there WERE no campaign settings, so it was homebrew or nothing. If you wanted to play, you had to create the world.

In twenty-five years I've never played or DM'ed anything but homebrew. Ever. For many years, I didn't really understand what Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms and Kingdoms of Kalamar actually were. I thought they were, like, module series. Like G1-3 and so on. We used modules sometimes, but always dropped into our own campaign worlds.

I'd never even heard the term "homebrewing" before I came to ENWorld. We just called it "DMing".

It's just funny, innit?

And I just want to second JD's comment that homebrewing doesn't need to take up any more time than pre-written campaign settings.

 

[Knightfall]

*puts up the sign "BUY Enigma of the Arcanexus! In stores now!"

Do you do this everytime you post. If so, thank you. If not, thank you anyway.

Cheers!

KF72

 

[LostSoul]

What motivates me to homebrew? I'm picky, I guess. I don't really like much of the stuff out there, so I turn to my own world. It's everything that I want it to be, and nothing that I don't. If something isn't right, I'll just change it, no harm, no foul.

I'd like to take this time to say that I'd like to see barsoomcore's homebrew world in some kind of print form.

 

[ToddSchumacher]

I've always pretty much homebrewed.

When I was in college, for an independent study (Graphic communication) I compiled a small world book of it....got a B.

Since then 3e has come out and I've added, tweaked, and tinkered...still do. I consider it a work-in-progress.

Here is a link to the PDF(746KB):

http://home.new.rr.com/scumachertodd4/Thorn.pdf

 

[Knightfall]

Homebrewing is my passion!

If you do homebrew, what gets you motivated?

Wow, that's an open-ended question. When it comes to my homebrew settings (yes, settings, as in multiple settings) almost anything can motivate me to work on it.

However, there is a difference between motivation and inspiration, IMO.

Motivation is hard. This is when a part of you feels that you should be working on the campaign setting so much that you find the time to work on the world - like it's second job.

1) My website is one of those things that motivates me because of the section that is devoted to my RPG campaigns called Walk the Road.

http://www.geocities.com/rielun/campaignsframe.htm

Here, you will find details about the different homebrew campaign settings that I've currently developing.

2) My Story Hours here on EN World have been my biggest motivators lately. (See under my sig.)

Inspiration is easy. When a great book or movie inspires me then I can spend hours working on my campaign settings. The book/movie doesn't even need to be fantasy based. It just has to turn on that part of your soul that drives creativity.

Music and art work the same way for me. I have several instrumental CDs which, when cranked, get my creative juices flowing. Art sites such as Epilogue.Net and Elfwood do the same thing.

Now, while inspiration is easy. Finding time to sit down and become inspired is another thing entirely. That you have to work for. Of course, I single and on disability so it's easier for me to find the time to become inspired. Those with kids and a job will have a lot more difficulty finding the time to work on a homebrew campaign setting.

Lately, I've been unable to work on my campaign settings at all due to my disability - bum arm/shoulder - but since I'm mouse hand dominant with the other hand I have bee nable to work on my world mapping somewhat. See the thread below:

Knightfall's CC2 Cartography Thread
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37224

Anyway, I have to stop typing now.

Later,

KF72