Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Adventures YES, setting NO?

The DIY attitude is something that old schoolers often talk about. Building your own campaign world is often part of what many old school DMs write about. Creating your own world like Gygax, Arneson or even Tolkien himself. Interestingly, the same Old Schoolers will often praise many of the old adventure modules.

My preferences are a little different. I love the published settings. Blackmoor and Mystara in particular, but also many of the other D&D worlds. On the other hand, I have very rarely used modules. Back in my early days of gaming we never used them. We loved drawing up dungeons and populating them with monsters. Since we didnt have much money back then, it seemed like a waste to buy something that we could easily make ourselves. Later I have gotten to appreciate modules more, but I rarely run them as is, but rather use the elements I like and tweak and warp them as to fit my tastes and the needs of the campaign.

Are there two schools of DIY? The Setting way and the dungeon way? If so, which one do you belong to?


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-Havard

3 comments:

  1. A bit of both for me. I like to make my own adventures and worlds but will readily use published works that I like as well (i.e., Hommlett or the CSIO). "Toneeze Wurld" (Hackmaster ref! and Garweeze Wurld #162) is a bit of a Frankenstein. But it has a lot of my own stuff in it.

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  2. Yeah, a bit of both. I have no problem using bits of others' creation that happen to appeal to me within or alongside my own.

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  3. I think every DM running a campaign should create there own setting at least once, and only flesh it out as much as it needs to be for each upcoming game. That I think should be a cretive process every DM should have.
    But, there's every reason in the world to branch out into published settings too. There some great stuff out there cough::Blackmoor::cough. I don't see it as a one or the other thing at all. At this point though, any new setting has really got to have some unusual qualities to be wothwhile for me. Blackmoor is really the only reimagined fantasy europe I need. There's far far to many settings that are just reinventing that wheel.

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