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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snoweel" data-source="post: 3194283" data-attributes="member: 4453">I've only just realised why I keep tinkering with my homebrew, specifically the cosmology (which actually leads to sweeping historical, religious and political changes).It's that rat-bastard Tolkien.I mean, I'm no fanboy (I've only read The Hobbit and the first hundred pages of FotR), and I don't consider myself an expert on the ins and outs of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, but I have a fair grasp of the general cosmology and history (really the same thing in a good internally-consistent setting) of the setting and I just feel I'm thwarted at every turn.Middle-Earth is just such a brilliant setting. It's the setting I wish I had've come up with.However it's not the setting I came up with. No really. I just co-authored most of his splat-books.So anyway, since the birth of my homebrew (about 15 years ago) I've tried more and more to make it not-just-another-Middle-Earth clone. Which has been hard, because so many of the prominent D&D monsters (and nearly all of the races) are ripped straight out of Middle-Earth. Look at the Forgotten Realms - an excellent setting, but it just feels like Middle-Earth for D&D.What's a n**** to do?So I've tried to focus more on the iconic D&D elements that aren't inspired by Tolkien - Beholders, Illithids, Goblinoids (I know, I know), Yuan-ti, non-Balor Demons, etc...But when it comes to religion/cosmology, it's very hard not to imitate Tolkien. Even ideas I thought I came up with by myself have turned out to have already been done by Jimmy Ronald Reggie Tolkien himself.So the best I've managed is to steer my campaign flavour away from faux-Medieval-Europe, giving it a thin veneer of Aztec-chic, feudal Japan and ancient-Babylon/Persia/Sumeria/etc. And I like it. I really do.But it's a setting that's meant primarily to be gamed in, so its main culture must predominantly include the D&D3e implied social model (ie. 21st century liberal Western society with high prevalence of magic). If you don't look too deep, it can be shoehorned in fairly easily. Not too much problem there.But at the end of the day players who want fantasy expect Medieval-Europe with magic and Dragons. It can be hard to convince them to just play the game when they feel a cultural disconnect. Maybe I should just game with Japs, Arabs and little brown guys from Mexico?So anyway, my rant is that Tolkien's world is so damn good that trying not to imitate it is forcing me to constantly take the second-best option at every stage of homebrew creation.Has anyone else experienced this?</blockquote>

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