Why do you homebrew? or Hombrew blues

[Raven Crowking]

Why cook a meal when you can microwave a TV Dinner?

The prepackaged campaign world, like the TV Dinner, might be serviceable if that's all you have the time or inclination for. But the meal you cooked -- if you have any skill in cooking -- is almost certainly better.

RC

 

[MarauderX]

I do the homebrew so the players don't know every nuance in the world and have mysteries to discover and problems to solve. Plus I can do lower magic & power the way I want. I spend very little time goofing around with the campaign world; I simply decide if something fits or doesn't. The adventures move forward from what the characters see as the more important things to do, and say yay or nay to tasks as they wish. Sometimes they send NPCs to their death and sometimes they die themselves just because they, like everyone in the campaign world, isn't sure of the CR involved for adventures in the world.

And if you get tired of designing adventures steal, steal, steal ideas and critters to form your own frankenstein farce of some adventure you half-read.

 

[Blackwind]

I homebrew because world-building is my favorite aspect of being a DM. I draw inspiration from published settings and other people's homebrews, but in any given setting there is always *something* that turns me off, that just seems counter-intuitive, or dumb, or simply doesn't sit right with my aesthetic sensibilities. Not that my homebrew is better, I just like it better because I made it. I have to have complete creative control over the setting in my campaigns, or I am not happy and have trouble taking the game seriously.

Right now I am getting back into DMing after a (relatively) long hiatus, and I'm actually running Eberron. It's internally consistent, well-designed, and has a distinctive flavor. Certain things, like the dragonmarked houses, make me go "Shoot! Why didn't I think of that?" Other things, like the warforged, don't interest me so much. After we finish the current series of adventures it will be back to the homebrew - or maybe a short campaign in Ptolus. Other people's settings are fun for me to play around with and, of course, steal from, but ultimately I keep coming back to the art of homebrewing, because that is where I find the deepest satisfaction as a DM.

 

[Quickleaf]

Hmmm... I don't know if you realise this or not, but you're asking more than one question here.

1) Why do you create your own settings?

2) Why do you use your own homebrew settings rather than using a published one?

3) Am I still homebrewing if I'm borrowing elements from other settings?

4) If your homebrew setting is so vanilla that it's practically indistinguisable from hoardes of other such settings, then why bother creating it?

My answers...

1) Why do you create your own settings?

For three reasons. First, in the process of creation (which I share with my players) I gain familiarity with the setting which helps me to portray it better. Second, I don't feel held back by an established setting "canon" - I have complete creative freedom and can tailor the world to the type of game/character we want to play. Third, I wanted a certain feel to Ythra, A World Afire that I wasn't finding elsewhere (though I'm greatly intrigued by Glorantha at the moment); for more about what that feel is follow the link. Oh yeah, and it's fun.

2) Why do you use your own homebrew settings rather than using a published one?
Honestly, it's less work. I know it sounds ironic, but I feel that it's easier for me to remember what I've created in the heat of the game than to interrupt play flipping through a book to find the answer to a player's question. Of course, once the setting gets to a certain size I'll probably have the same problem of information overload.

3) Am I still homebrewing if I'm borrowing elements from other settings?
SpiralBound hit the nail on the head.

4) If your homebrew setting is so vanilla that it's practically indistinguisable from hoardes of other such settings, then why bother creating it?
I agree with SpiralBound that the details are crucial. I remember reading through HeroQuest and seeing this line "Your Glorantha May Vary." That should be put into every game setting book. We may play the same setting but run it in vastly different ways.
However, I'll also add that an un-detailed vanilla homebrew has no appeal to me, and I'd much rather play in an un-detailed exotic homebrew (though only for a game or two, as I like detail).

 

[ssampier]

To me it's the little things about published settings. I could run Forgotten Realms--and I have run FR exclusively in the past--but why? The advantage of a published setting, to me, is familiarity. My players will know what to expect. If I want to change any of those notions, it's not really FR, but a homebrew. That's fine for some, not for me. If I'm homebrewing I'm might as well go all the way and create something different (not necessarily original).

 

[Aaron L]

The joy of creation.

And I can make it exactly how I want it.

Seriously, this is like asking "why draw a picture yourself when you can just go look at someone elses?" or "why write a story when you can just buy a book?"

Every so often I see people asking this question and it always baffles me.

 

[Arkhandus]

Spiralbound has good points, and I concur with them pretty well.

1) Why do you create your own settings?
2) Why do you use your own homebrew settings rather than using a published one?
3) Am I still homebrewing if I'm borrowing elements from other settings?
4) If your homebrew setting is so vanilla that it's practically indistinguisable from hoardes of other such settings, then why bother creating it?

My answers.......

1) I've always loved to design, build, tweak, and generally 'create' things, even if only in my imagination. As a kid I played with LEGOs, and I sketched, and occasionally wrote down my ideas. Nowadays, living in Arizona (as opposed to my hometown in Michigan) kills my artistic spirit, so my only creative outlet is devising roleplaying game-related material. I try out different ideas and see where they lead me after a while. There are so many different ideas I want to try working on and see which ones turn out cool.

2) Originally, around 8 years ago IIRC, I devised my first D&D homebrew setting, Azeria, for 3 reasons, but the main reason was that I didn't want to be getting flak and problems as a newbie DM and D&D player. If I used a published setting, the players would inevitably know far, far more than I did about the setting, and I had already, in my brief experiences as a player, seen what kind of arguments and other problems cropped up when that happened in other folks' games. Some people just won't accept what the DM does with a published setting if the DM ignores (whether by choice or simply by not knowing) even one little piece of published background/story/rules involving that setting.

So, by concocting my own somewhat-vanilla 'everything but the kitchen sink' homebrew setting, I wouldn't be disadvantaged to the players when it came to world-knowledge and creative freedom. The players and I could all have fun and discover things through the course of a campaign, and not have stupid arguments about this or that obscure little published fact. We could use any cool or fun ideas we had without being restricted by published setting material, and I was free to allow or ban anything as necessary for the continuation of play.

3) Absolutely. Even if all you do is use the basic description of elves, dwarves, and such from the Player's Handbook, you're essentially using material from another setting. And besides, I tweak everything a bit, even if only in background. Hell, if you use typical fantasy elves and dwarves these days, you're pretty much borrowing material from J.R.R. Tolkien anyway, unless your elves are unusually and drastically different from the Norse alfar myths Tolkien drew from (or the svartalfar ones drawn on for Drow in D&D's Forgotten Realms).

4) The fun of creating it. The intellectual and artistic enjoyment of the creative exercise. Also, as others have said, you play it because of its differences from other vanilla settings, for the things you designed it to 'do right' in your own opinion, for your own preferred style of play. You play it for the neat little quirks or fantastic locations you built into it that are missing from all the other vanilla campaign settings you've read about. You play it because it's your baby, and no one knows it better than you, and no one's more familiar with it than you, and you have complete creative freedom to have fun with your own game setting. And maybe the rest of your gaming group loves it too; maybe they even worked with you to create it.

 

[Nellisir]

I see so many vanilla homebrew fantasy settings...why bother? Why not use a published vanilla D&D setting? Is your setting so unique that it hasn't been done? What keeps you from just simply using a published setting?

I see you've been reading my homebrew.

As many others have said, it's an exercise in creativity and independence. I like a different, more "run-down" (not low-magic) feel in my campaign than FR, Eberron, or GH give me. My empires have all crumbled, and even the kingdoms aren't doing so hot.

I "feel" it far better than I could ever feel a published setting, and I can improvise without confusing the players' assumptions. One of the benefits, IMO, of a published world is leveraging the knowledge the players already have. If you're going to deny that knowledge, then you might as well homebrew.

 

[Emirikol]

We Don't Like The Conan Rpg

Our group decided to "homebrew" the Conan world because we didn't really care for the Conan RPG rules. So..we're 'kind of homebrew.'

As to the others being homebrew, DM's get tired of greyhawkers or some dude who knows more about FR than Greenwood coming into their games and spouting quotes about how much the DM doesn't know.

I used to do a clean homebrew based on the "Where the Evil Dwells" book by Cliff Simack, but gave it up to do Greyhawk (when it was a dead world)..now...it's back to yet another alternative.

jh

 

[catsclaw227]

1) Why do you create your own settings?
2) Why do you use your own homebrew settings rather than using a published one?
3) Am I still homebrewing if I'm borrowing elements from other settings?
4) If your homebrew setting is so vanilla that it's practically indistinguisable from hoardes of other such settings, then why bother creating it?

I think there's another distinction that needs to be made as well. I see a "homebrew" campaign as mixing and combining ingredients from many other sources to create your own unique world. I call a totally custom, personal world with nothing added a "homegrown" campaign.

I spent almost 15 years during the end of 1E, and into 2E only using a homegrown campaign and not really even using published adventures. My friends and I had different worlds that we mashed and kinda made the same world/cosmology. It was creative, unique and we loved it.

Then we got jobs and girlfriends, went to Universities, and the time changed everything. We didn't play 2-3x per week anymore, though we each did DMing at our respective Universities with new players, and the homebrewing became a different thing.

Then I stared homebrewing, taking things and making my own worlds, but that still takes some time.

These days, I use pre-published settings, and tweak them to my own game. It's not because I am less creative, but simply because I have an enormous life outside of gaming as well. D&D is my favorite hobby, and I dedicate as much free time to it as I can, but my wife doesn't game so that means less time to myself to homebrew.

I wish I could, but now, well I am very happy with grinding up another setting and using it for my game.