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Old 09-17-2015, 10:01 AM   #26
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: When to homebrew and when to use the system?

To me this is a question not of "right" but of efficient use of my time and effort.

On one hand, whenever I run a campaign, I almost surely have house rules. These may be chosen from optional rules within an existing system (GURPS has tons of optional rules), or they may be new optional or alternate rules that I make up to get a specific effect. That takes some careful thinking to make sure I don't unbalance the system, but it doesn't take a lot of slog.

On the other hand, there's the question of having mechanics to cover a set of magical practices, or superpowers, or advanced technology, or something else of that sort. Building anything like that takes a lot of time. So first I'm going to look and see if one of the existing systems already does more or less what I want (for example, my current GURPS campaign uses path and book magic). If it works right generally, I may add in a few specific new effects: new spells, new rituals, new tech, whatever. If I don't find what I want, I'm going to see if I can build what I want out of what already exists—for example, creating a magic system using the powers rules. That already has a fair bit of slog to it; see Chinese Elemental Powers for an example. Only if I can't figure out how to do that will I set out to create something entirely new. I did that once for a faerie-based campaign, defining an entire system of magical effects and ways of accomplishing them, and it was really a lot of work.

You always have to trade off "how much effort is this going to cost me?" for "how vital is this to getting exactly the narrative or dramatic effect that I want?"
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