Your campaign -- Hangups with generic material

[kengar]

Hehe. Weren't there were-kangaroos in one of the Howling movies?

TANK GIRL!

 

[The_Gneech]

I was wondering what those of you who run homebrews or other non-mainstream (i.e., non FR/Greyhawk) worlds might be having with supposedly campaign neutral d20 system fantasy material or general D&D material? For example, do creatures, magic, and cosmology rules unique to your world cause you problems when using such material.

My current homebrew world is basically standard D&D with the dwarves, gnomes, and halflings removed (although the dwarves were actually wiped out by the drow, rather than just plain not there, so there are still dwarven artifacts and the occasional enclave of survivors); so most of the time, generic materials are pretty easy to use, I just flick off all any dwarves, gnomes, or halflings who pop up.

For the next game I intend to run, it's going to be much more of a challenge; it's going to be a low-magic (or more accurately, subtle-magic) world, which means I'm going to have to wreak havoc on the frequency and power of spellcasters, magic items, and monstrous ecologies. For that setting, "generic" supplements aren't going to help much, because they default to the D&D Big Magic Standard.

What's most painful, I think, is that I am not a halfway decent programmer, so I can't make an equivalent of E-Tools for my game. The math is going to make my poor brain get all throbby-throbby.

-The Gneech

 

[Gothmog]

I very rarely use modules, but when I do, I have several things to consider:

1. No non-human PC races, so that has to be altered, but its minor to do that.

2. My world resembles a dark ages version of our own, so I do have to take cultures into account to some degree.

3. I completely revised the spellcasting classes, making 9 traditions of magic, so I have to convert given spellcasters to one of those traditions.

4. No underdark, dark elves, etc- so those adventures that utilize those heavily are heavily modified.

5. I use monsters less often, so I try to make them more in line with mythyology and folklore, so they often get some extra or altered abilities.

 

[der_kluge]

My biggest problem with lots of "setting neutral" material is no matter how neutral it appears to be the designers always do something like throw in a new major race or tech level or magic that is far from neutral.

One example is Bluffside with the odd bird creatures that are a rather big component of the city.

Really? Actually, you could remove the Sixam quite easily.

 

[der_kluge]

I enjoyed Eldritch Might 2, and was able to integrate most of it into my world. Bluffside was *excellent*, and I've freely adapted much of the Scarred Lands and FRCS.

Great! Our mission with Bluffside, and all our products was to make them as generic as possible. It's good to hear that you were able to easily adapt it despite the quirks of your homebrew game. Glad that you like it.

Yes, there are things unique to our "world", like new races, and gods, but you can chunk them out the window. In fact, the Bluffside has a little section on the gods and tells you to toss them if you don't want them. Threads like these intrique me because I love to see what kinds of things people are doing with their own homebrew worlds. The more we know about what kinds of things people do, the more we can write our products to be compatible. Dragons and gods seem to be a big sticking point. Elves as well. Interesting comment on werewolves.

 

[Psion]

Threads like these intrique me because I love to see what kinds of things people are doing with their own homebrew worlds. The more we know about what kinds of things people do, the more we can write our products to be compatible. Dragons and gods seem to be a big sticking point. Elves as well. Interesting comment on werewolves.

re: Dragons - yeah, I can see why they might be a problem for some people. I use the bog standard dragons for a long time primarily because I have already used them. But I am also cutting back on the occurence of dragons so I can insert "alternate" dragons and not feel like the setting is getting too crowded with dragons.

re: Werewolves. Yeah, that was just my specific foible, but in general I expect that most GMs with well established homebrews will have an idea of which of the creatures in the game are an important component of their game worlds. It seems like if you give your world any thought at all, there would be a great many creatures that won't have a home or role in your game and are an uncomfortable fit at best.

I have a long list of creatures that I use in my game (and by implication, a list of creatures that I don't.) For some reason lycanthropes are an unusual sticking point. Due to my reason for excluding them (i.e., it wasn't lack of interest, it was a world history thing) they were the creatures that weren't on my list that I was least comfortable making exceptions for. At the same time, it's a creature type that I see come up in a lot of adventures et al. (shrug)

 

[jester47]

Wow, I have to say that you guys put a lot of work into your campaign. Lots of changes and exclusions. Wich is not bad. But I go the other way.

Demi humans - They are all there.

Lycanthropes - love em. Mainly the rats and the wolves.

I love the greyhawk pantheon. Especially since I made hextor and Heironious different aspects of the same child god.

Airships? yes.

Dragons in all their colors? yes.

Dragon subspecies? yes

D&D standard planar cosmology? Hell yes.

This way, if I like somthing I just toss it in.

The biggest problem I have is with the one degree alignment shift. For god worship. But that is pretty minor.

My problems with generic stuff are these:

Oftentimes there is only one planned way to deal with a problem.

But over all I decided long ago that trying to exclude things made things harder and less plausible than if I included things. WIth exclusion you have to exclude from everything that uses the original set. So every module is not going to fit. With inclusion, you dont exclude anything (as long as it is just not RIGHT OUT). It allows you a lot more creative flexibility I think. Things can be as off the wall or gritty as you want. It just depends on where you are in the world.

Aaron.

 

[LGodamus]

no no no....they were not kangaroos...they were tasmanian tigers, a now extinct marsuial that superficially resembles a wolf with tiger stripes.

 

[Samothdm]

I dislike the Race = Culture fallacy and that Races are given Alignments. Cultures may be Chaotic or Lawful and outsiders Good and Evil. A Race is neutral and every member should NOT be branded as anything else.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I've never been a fan of the Elven Forest Kingdom where all the elves are chaotic-good or the Dwarven Mountain City where all the dwarves are lawful-good. In my world, the races share the same living space. A kingdom is just as likely to have a human ruler as an elf or dwarf. An empire with a human emperor is very likely to have cities with goblin or elf mayors.

Same thing with religions. It seems in most RPG stuff, the humans have several different pantheons of gods to choose from depending upon where they live, but all of the demi-humans throughout the whole world are expected to just follow one pantheon (the gods of the Dwarves, etc.). Whose to say that all Dwarves follow the same gods? And, why can't elves and goblins and dwarves and humans follow the same religion? So, I also have elves and goblins and such acting as high-level priests in the same religious system.

These sound like nitpicks but most "generic" RPG supplements assume that:
1) Each demi-human race has its own "kingdom" or empire or whatever and they don't live alongside the other races, and
2) There are black-and-white rules to religion that somehow preclude different races from worshipping the same pantheon.

The world that I submitted for the setting search actually was based upon the idea that all of the races are having to live together and share the same space and so have to overcome all of their inborn prejudices and try to cope with their differences.

 

[ForceUser]

I haven't disallowed any monster except for the usual suspects that have Oriental equivalents. The majority of the D20 material I own are sourcebooks, and those have generic enough material that I can present them in an Asian light without a problem. I don't run storebought adventures in my campaign, so trying to rewrite one of those to make it fit is not a problem.