Here’s one I never imagined I’d see.
What’s better- Making your own setting/campaign or buying one someone else made? Believe it or not, this is something of a dilemma for me. I pride myself on creating campaigns and worlds, which I then intend to sell on the World Wide Interwebs. Am I a bad gamer for loving my own creativity so much?
Let’s separate this out a bit. There are adventure modules, campaigns, and campaign settings or worlds. I can create an adventure within the framework of a pre-made campaign set in a premade world. I can create a series of adventuress (*sometimes referred to as an “adventure path,” within a premade world setting. Pathfinder is a great example of these two. However, homebrewing or creating all three facets myself equates to a lot of work.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
Disclaimer: This is my approach. Your Game Mastering style may be different. That’s cool. Mine is not the only way. Please do what works best for you and your group.
If I’m desperate for a single night’s adventure within my usually homebrew campaign, I might pull out something by my friends at Goodman Games or Alderac Entertainment. I have a lot of old modules from several systems/games I can convert to anything. Pre-made adventure modules are pretty handy for the Dungeon/Game Master with a busy life. Again, Pathfinder works wonders for this with their adventure paths because they comprise an entire campaign’s worth of adventuring.
Right now I’m pretty excited about the World of Myrr by Cawood Publishing. I haven’t been this into a campaign world since I backed FateForge by Studio Agate. We see a lot of campaign worlds float by in the industry and there are a lot of wonderful settings worth checking out. Like I said, I want to join the ranks of the realm creators someday. I have entire binders full of ideas that just need to be expounded upon. Of course, there’s also my beloved Dragonbane with the Core Rules adventures and Path of Glory, too.
The one hard and fast disadvantage that I see to pre-made campaigns is they’re available for everyone to read, and there’s usually forums, databases, etc full of canonical lore for the players to research. My homebrew sidestep around this is I change up canonical details all the time. I once ran a 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons Greyhawk game where we kept the map and some of the town names. By the time it was said and done, I had imported elements from World of Warcraft, Rokugan, and Everquest into Greyhawk along with a bunch of stuff from Alderac, Goodman, and Kenzer. I also made my own artifacts and regions.
This is a silly argument to me because it depends on what works best for the DM/GM. Some people have busy lives with jobs, kids, other hobbies (gasp,) and so on. If you have time to create and prep entire towns, dungeons, map regions, political climate, and kingdoms- that’s great! If not and you need to grab something that’s all ready to rock and you just have to read it- that’s great, too!
Create it your way. Play it your way. Just have fun regardless.
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Jeff's Game Box 