GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

This comes from a thread in the GURPS forum, about the supposed lack of fantasy settings for GURPS:
See, I still just don't get this sentiment. To me, it sounds like saying "I'm creative enough to make up characters, dialog, situations, and trivial world details, but I must slavishly follow someone else's creative vision when it comes to the big picture."

In the last 30 years that I've been gaming, I've come up with (conservatively) ten different non-Earth campaign universes (fantasy and space), most of which I created in the first ten years (jr. high through college). Only a couple of the worlds never got used. I've taken over a couple of friends' campaigns, but even then I altered them to fit my taste. If I'd continued gaming at the same pace, I'm sure I'd have created ten or more additional settings.

I've never found a published campaign that I liked enough to run more than an occasional adventure in*. Greyhawk is too wedded to the idiocies of AD&D. The very map for the Forgotten Realms annoys me. Hârn is too low-magic even for me. Yrth is another case of bad geography. Shadowrun's future history is completely implausible on so many levels. Middle Earth is bogged down by everyone's preconceived notions. Etc.

A setting has to be mine for it to fully hang together for me. Every aspect and decision needs to fulfill my tastes and creative vision for it to be satisfying. And even if it's not fully rounded out for the game's scale, at least I know where the loose ends are.

Yes, to "write or adapt [my] own" is an effort, but it's the fun kind of effort that doesn't feel like "work". And the process of world creation is a ticket to learning -- I can't tell you how many topics I've studied because I wanted to make my world better**. A lot of the impetus to get my B.A. in History I can attribute to wanting to make my fantasy worlds more believable (but then I'm the guy who thought the appendices were the best part of Lord of the Rings). I guess I hold to the auteur theory of GMing.

Is it really the case that most GMs prefer not to create their own settings? Are most GMs merely consumers of world product who then "resell" to their players?






* with the exception of Traveller's 3d Imperium, which I used before it accumulated so much canon as to be completely self-contradictory.

** Just off the top of my head: history (military & otherwise), geology, geomorphology, demography, physics, map projections, political science, economics, ship building. There are lots more.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Not in my experiance. <shrug> Pre-made worlds great when you're starting out, but if we didn't think we could do better, we probably wouldn't be making our own cooperative stories to begin with.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Well, if you ask me, I myself created 3 completely imaginary worlds on my own. Those were Artellon (high fantasy setting, unique races etc), Farkhendall (steam punk world) and the newest, Septanta (dark/high fantasy, completely new planet system, astronomy etc).

I tend to create the worlds a lot. It took me about 3 months to create Farkhendall, and I still do possess all the fact sheets, bestiaries, maps, gadget sheets etc...

I kinda enjoy it. Sure, it saves you a lot of time if you copy the already made setting and, as you say, modify it so it suits you, but... I dunno, I always kinda prefered the first option. The create a little, cute, yet mysterious and dangerous world on my own.

I must only admit that, while creating Artellon, I did read 3e GURPS: fantasy a lot, just to make sure I got everything covered. But with Farkhendall and Septanta, it was just me, pencil, notebook and random books that helped me in geography, history etc...

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Rhetorical Q: If you could write your own Sci Fi or Fantasy fiction, would you do most of it in your own setting(s), or would you write fan fiction that tried to act as mortar between the bricks of someone elses milieau?


Barring one exception, I have developed all of my own settings. I just find it easy to work with an uncluttered canvas.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Obviously, I would choose the first.

But in thread after thread on these forums, I hear over and over GURPS has no ready-made worlds I'd buy GURPS if there was a supported setting Making my own world is too much work blah blah blah waaahmbulance. WTF?

I mean, obviously people bought Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms in droves (and then shelled out major bucks for all that hack fiction set therein). Is this a symptom of GMs just wanting to be super-players instead of world creators? And what proportion of GMs does that cover?

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

On the one hand, sure, of course we want to make our own universes. On the other hand, is there time to do it among all the other commitments. A well made setting to buy is a lot less work, often, than the home made one, though I can hardly say that about my fantasy setting. All I do know is that I have time to work on very little (unless like today my load isn't ready till tomorow) so a made setting is a very handy thing.

If I put mind to it, I'm sure I could put together something grand, but at the end of a twelve hour work day? Not so much brain left over to untie my shoes.

I must admit, however, that early on I was very much in the rut of orthodoxy. Every game had to be played as it was intended by the author, and so forth. I read the AD&D DMG when I was 12 or 13 and thought it was difinitive and the highest authority. Other than related products, I didn't play anything other than TSR products till I was 16, and by then I was pretty set in my little ways. I was happily shaken out of my rut do some degree at that age and have been broader in horizon since.

Even so, only recently has it occured to me that I, even I, could probably put together a setting that folks might enjoy enough to drop a few cents on a PDF for. Having had that shocking notion, I have yet to actually begin work, but the possibility is nice.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

You're not considering one element of the equation: available time. Some GMs would love to create their own worlds, but would have to give up actually playing the game to squeeze it into their schedules.

I have very little face-to-face contact with my friends, mainly because they are too busy with their careers, spouses, and families.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Some of them. Others are painfully aware of their own strengths and weakness as a GM and are willing to pay for someone else to come up with things where they're weak (frex, grand overarching themes into which they can fit individual scenes, hordes of fully-statted NPCs, names that don't sound utterly silly, pretty maps, etc.), and some are just busy adults who, with full-time jobs and families and other competing hobbies, don't have the time and energy for prep they once did. None of these describe my own situation (though that last one comes close), but I am nevertheless sympathetic to those who have needs which do not resemble my own.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Hm. Perhaps that's because at this point for me, "world creation" is something that's mostly going on continuously in the back of my head*. What I guess most would consider world creation -- making maps, detailing nations, etc. -- either gets done bit by bit during downtimes or takes the form of improvised elaborated versions of cocktail-napkin notes (presently kept in a wiki on my webhost), so it's not very time-consuming. Actual game prep is usually an hour or two at most of making notes for the upcoming session, done the afternoon or night before the game.


* Recent example: the History Channel show "How the Earth Was Made" had a bit on the geology of the Matterhorn. In a capsule description of the capital city of the planet Mackay in my space game, I noted there was a horn-like peak at the head of the valley which is considered semi-sacred. The show got me to thinking about what could have formed it, which got me thinking about the general geology of Mackay, and so on and so forth.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Definitely. Back in the day I made up worlds for campaigns in my much more ample spare time. In recent years I wouldn't have GMed or even played anything without prefab settings and/or adventures. Time is a huge factor.

Also, I don't think I was ever into it as much as the OP seems to be. :)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

There it is. That's what happens when I write game scenarios (except without the wiki).

I find the threads that go on about how much work is needed to have a functioning world, or how to rigidly stat a Jedi mind-trick for a rules lawyer, or how to convert the monster manual, to be irrelavent.

Let the idea bubble; let events, TV, music etc. spark ideas.
Write down simple aide memoires only: who, what, when, where, why.
Mix McGuffins and unalterable world events. Relax.
Prep is to re-load this stuff jus before a game.

-and then be prepared to wing it all anyway, and to change everything.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Umm, should we consider pre-gen settings a resource for GMing-with-training-wheels?

On a personal note, we are just about to achieve five GM's out of five players in my gaming group. We ALL consider the solo creative aspect of setting part of the enjoyment. THEN we get to enjoy watching our friends trash it, take it apart, kill the carefully crafted NPC etc.

A metaphor could be buying a chainstore junk food meal, as opposed to cooking for yourself and friends. I'm being judgemental, aren't I...

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

A better metaphor would be eating out as opposed to cooking for your friends. There's no garauntee of quality either way.


Personally, I prefer home grown, but mostly due to the idea of creative control. I ran Forgotten Realms for a long time, but got really tired of seeing things get world bombed frequently. The only really advantages to running a pre made setting are time and common frame of reference. When you begin to diverge from the published setting you begin ot loose the common frame of reference. That really just leave time as the advantage, but I found that a lot of time is spent on confirming facts or trying to find out if something is defined in the world source.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

What do you mean by "world bombed"? Isn't the common frame of reference a detriment in the long run? Personally, I would absolutely hate having a player say "but wait, in [canon source] it says [fact] -- how can you say [fact-prime]? What are you talking about? This isn't [campaign]!"

That's why I won't run Star Trek, Star Wars, Middle Earth, or the 3d Imperium. A "common frame of reference" means I can't freely make my own creative decisions -- and besides, I'm perfectly capable of building up a common frame of reference in the minds of my players that pertains to my worlds*.


* Example: toward the end of the first League of Tarregon campaign, I had some mountain tribesmen show up outside Startown with a herd of sheep. The players immediately commented that that seemed fishy, because the tribes only drove their sheep down during the rainy season, which it wasn't. (The tribesmen were in fact a war band there to raid the city.) I felt so proud. :)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I feel so lazy compared to most here. When I GM, get the ideal of a place and make the rest up as I play. The ideal consist adventure set in some genre and as the player like the game I move where they want. I just write down Npc names and what they are doing in game. I do let ideas from books, comics, games, life, and TV filter themselves into the game. I do admit that the private throne room is my ideal chamber.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

*shrug* No more a problem than rolling your own and, without something everyone can refer to, and get "but wait, during [some other adventure] you said [fact] -- how can you say [fact-prime]?", followed by someone else saying "Hang on, didn't he say [fact-double-prime]?" and ending up in a long argument about established or not-so-established fact. Everything's a trade-off, and this sort of thing depends on your players as much as anything else. The people I game with would be pretty forgiving about contradicting established fact either way.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I'm neutral on this question.

I've run campaigns in Glorantha, the interstellar world of 2300 A.D., the solar system of Space 1889, the Hong Kong of the World of Darkness, Transhuman Space, the world of In Nomine, and the Pearl Bright Ocean from GURPS Cabal—all settings created by game writers that had enough texture to strike me as worth exploring. I've run campaigns in the Uplift universe, the world of the Rick Brant YA series, the DC Universe, the world of Atlas Shrugged, Zimiamvia, Middle-Earth, the Buffyverse, and the Discworld. And I've run a dozen or so campaigns in worlds that were entirely my own invention. I have no problem with making my own, but if someone else's playground has enough rides to give my players a good time, I have no problem with using it instead.

Bill Stoddard

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

The hell you can't. Fanfic writers have the acronym "AU" for a reason.

When I ran my first Middle-Earth campaign, I spent the first two sessions getting the PCs together, with a guarantee that they would come out at the end with exactly the traits that were on their character sheets: no deaths, no new lasting injuries, no new enemies. And I took them on a tour of Middle-Earth: Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Pippin, and Eomer dead at the Battle of Minas Morgul; Faramir killed in the final defense of Minas Tirith; Eowyn leading the Rohirrim refuges away from the overrunning of Rohan; the ents burned to death when Sauron captured Isengard; the Beornings slaughtered by orcs from the Misty Mountains; Elrond driven mad and opening the gates of Rivendall to the invaders; the Shire enslaved; the ships at the Grey Havens burned. It shocked ME what a grievous spectacle it all was. But by the time I was done, there was no question that this was MY Middle-Earth, to do with as I saw fit.

Bill Stoddard

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I've been running my own setting since about 1985 or so, I was 14 or 15 at the time, the family was poor and couldn't afford to buy settings, much less adventures. I have dabbled here and there with published settings, but have decided that I do prefer to work with my own material, though I see the appeal for others, especially the GM with little time on their hands or the Beer & Pretzles* crowd of gamers.

*used to signify more of a casual gamer, not as a perjorative, many in my group are of this style.

Edited to add: I did have a gamer once accuse me of not playing D&D properly because I ran a homebrew setting and not Forgotten Realms (he couldn't look up stuff from his multitudes of books as he had every 2e FR book that was out there)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I've always run my own settings and world. It gives me and creative freedom that prebuilt worlds don't. Heck my super hero campaign isn't even set on Earth but another world with its own complex history connected to my multiverse.

The trick is to start small and to add on as things are needed orcome up in play. We've been playing in my particular multiverse of multiple genres for over 20 years real time and its gotten very rich.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

When I first started playing and GMing, no one I knew really thought much about "settings" or "worlds." D&D was played in a series of dungeons and towns, in a vague default D&D setting. Traveller was played in a random series of GM made up planets in a vague Traveller setting. Villains and Vigilantes was played in our home town, but our characters had superpowers.

So at the start, I never purchased setting materials and the only prepared dungeon I ever bought was "Dark Tower." Most of the games I've run in a commercial "setting" are those where the game itself is tied to a particular setting: James Bond 007, Paranoia, 2300 AD. I also ran a fairly "off the shelf" GURPS Mage the Ascension campaign.

I've also run and played many games in completely homemade worlds, or worlds adapted from books.

What I have found to be the advantage of a published setting isn't that you don't have to build your own world, that part is fun. It is that is is easier to achieve that "common frame of reference." It is much less work to get players to read a relatively attractive, comprehensive, professionally written and edited book that describes the world they will be playing in -- especially if it has new skills, powers, equipment and other toys and fun concepts that they can use to create their characters, than it is to compile my scattered notes and ideas into a comprehensible document and then persuade players that they have to wade through all my intricately thought out setting concepts before they can sit down and have fun playing.

The alternative is to just give a quick verbal description of your world, tell player what they can and can't do when making a character, and dole out setting information as it comes up in play. That works against a really immersive world though, since players wouldn't know many basic things that their characters would, for example, tribesmen only drive their flocks into town in the rainy season, or technology malfunctions around wizards, unless you tell them when it comes up.

So to sum up, I like making up My own completely original world, but getting players immersed in it takes more work that way. If someone comes up with a really cool idea for a setting, I'm open to paying a little to use it, as a means to get a shortcut to player immersion and common knowledge base. This could be either through buying published setting, or using a setting that all the players are already familiar with -- from novels, TV, movies, or history.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

But all that sort of proves my point -- you weren't using Middle Earth off the shelf in a period in which its history is known (as did MERP). Doing that much of a change to an established setting is almost as much "work" as creating your own, and alters enough things that the "common frame of reference" must be established anew.

Perhaps I should have said "that's why I won't run canonical Star Wars, Star Trek, or Middle Earth."

ETA: On reflection, I suppose I wouldn't have as many problems running a published setting that didn't try to do too much -- Roma Arcana, for instance, is more of a "campaign frame" than a fully fleshed-out campaign, giving much more room for my creativity; I could see myself running "Bryan Lovely's Roma Arcana".

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

The FR has been reset at each major revision of the (A)D&D rules, complete with in-game reasoning, gods and major characters dying/changing/appearing, map alterations (sometimes major), book tie-ins, plenty of new rulebooks to buy, etc.

I've played in plenty of Star Wars and Star Trek games and have yet to have anyone whine about canon issues. Maybe it's just the groups I've been in, but everyone seemed to accept that in our adventures, things may be different from the sources.

That doesn't force things to change, though. One of my favorite Star Wars adventures was when our group of "honest businessmen" had the misfortune of taking a delivery to Alderaan. Captured by the staff of everyone's favorite small moon, we escaped when some farm kid came by to rescue his girlfriend, or something like that. We grabbed a few stormtrooper outfits and worked our way back to the hanger. There was a tense moment when we ran into the folks who unwittingly let us escape; we decided to shoot at them but intentionally miss so as to not blow our cover. Once at the hanger we sneaked back into our ship and got the heck out of there in the confusion.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Pre-gens could reach the level of Japanese 'table-talk' games, where (reputedly) the game is scripted. Apparently these things exist for the 'training-wheel' reason.

These could be fun for a change, too. Tho' I don't think my group would wear it...

The risk of the players trashing your carefully-constructed world and plot is irrelavent to someone having fun, and vital to prevent for 'controllers'.

Anyway; I certainly find the consensual creations more satisfying.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Do not be ashamed of laziness, grasshopper: rather call it 'efficiency and self-sufficiency' ;)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

For me roleplaying is a cinematic journey. IMHO, the task of GM's is to try to set up interesting circumstances, settings, and NPCs with which to interact, and to cope with the chaos which ensues when you let players lose in it all. Not deal with, just cope. If the players are having fun running an orphanage, an inn, or a brothel, rather than dealing with the Big Bad, heck that is the campaign you have, rather than the soul-less scripted sketch plan you might have come up with weeks or months earlier.

The real question is "do the players enjoy playing in the setting?" If the answer is yes, then it is mission successful. If it is enjoyable for the GM, he or she might do it again some time. Like next week...

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

That is golden. Very nice cat cradling.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

There are eight million stories on the naked Death Star. This has been one of them.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

So that's why the stormtroopers in the chasm couldn't hit Luke and Leia (and what the heck is a chasm doing in a space station, anyway??). Bummer about the one that fell down the hole, though. Or was that a real stormtrooper that you pushed down?

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

It's required by code. All villainous lairs must have an infinite pit.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Right before that there's a bit where a group of stormtroopers runs away from Han and Chewie. When Han comes charging around a corner there's an ambush. That was us. We ran into an officer stormie who made us turn around and set up for said ambush.

After that failure, we were directed to the ventilation shaft or whatever the chasm was. Officer guy spent the time asking us if we'd had our weapons checked out lately, since we couldn't hit the broad side of a bantha with them. We asked if he would take the lead and show us how to do it right. Things kinda went downhill from there. (For him, especially.)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Until recently, I have subsisted on published settings. Every game I have successfully run before 2008 relied on a book or books to provide the world.

In the fall of last year, I gathered a group to try out the D6 System, just to see if it was as bad as people were saying. But I didn't have any settings for it. So I wound up "rolling my own" and am surprised with how well it has turned out.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

As a GM, I like to create my own, or just use any published one as a framework. As far as the latter, I don't bother with any type of conversion, don't see the point. I make up stats for people/things as I go along. However, admittedly, I have grown to love the Plot Point Campaigns by Pinnacle Entertainment.

Now, if using a published setting for a game system I'm using, my wish would be they publish a setting with the player's guide and GM's guide or use Pinnacle's model of setting book with Player's Guide PDF with license to print 5 for your players...

As a player, there are times I wish the GM would use a published setting. My most recent experience of someone running a "home built setting" resulted in being handed a manuscript of 150 pages, poorly written, boring...with your character creation rules spread throughout so you couldn't get out of reading it unscathed. They were deeply proud of their setting and the history they created, their wife regaled us with tales of previous adventures they had in the setting...so, I can support the idea of published settings.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

On topic (which I haven't been before - sorry), I can run pregen adventures quite nicely. The players like the way I modify the flavor text to better suit whatever's supposed to be going on (come on, when you're seven floors beneath the surface of the world, and all the light you've got comes from two torches, are you really going to be able to make out the golden scrollwork at the tops of the thirty-foot-tall double doors?).

However, I found that most existing worlds, in both of the genres I've run games in (D&D and superhero), fall short of my desires in some ways. Accordingly, I've been creating worlds for both for some time. The fantasy world includes a pantheon of nine deities, one with no PC worshippers (because I don't let chaotic-evil types be PCs in my games), plus one whose worship is officially forbidden (Technos the Uncaring, God of the Machine, blamed in popular mythology for the Godswar that brought an end to the Old World, untold aeons ago....), as well as a number of "support groups", as it were, for various types of heroes - think of them as guilds. They're a wonderfully easy way to separate adventurers from their money - if you want the support of the Union of Shieldbrothers, you pay the 500 crown/lunar month membership fee.

The superhero one includes a rational for why the supers didn't win WWII all by their lonesomes (basically, each side had its own groups, which kept all the others busy; the only parahuman who made a real difference in the war was the US's Major Victory, who died delivering the first A-bomb to Hiroshima), and a legal structure enabling costumed parahumans who've chosen to register with the Bureau of Parahuman Affairs to testify in court without having to compromise their secret identities. (If you don't choose to register, it's your own affair - but you get no help from the government, and of course there's no secure way to establish your identity, so anyone you send to jail might not have to stay.)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

That's not a problem inherent to homebrew settings, that a problem inherent in disorganized GMs -- I won't say "bad" GMs, because presentation of information is a different skill than running combats and so forth, but it's a necessary one nevertheless.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Personally, I love to create my own worlds. That is one of the main reasons I started playing GURPS - it seemed more friendly toward sandbox style/world building GMs.

However, as someone who is new to the system, I think it would be nice to have some sort of premade product to look at. (I picked up Banestorm for this reason.) In particular -as I've mentioned elsewhere on this very site- it would be nice to have a GURPS suppliment which goes into more detail about creating monsters and creatures. (There probably is a product like that, but, if so, I'm not aware of it.) I'd like to have something which is part monster manual and part "For Dummies" book. I don't consider myself to be stupid, but being completely new to a system tends to have the side effect of things not being quite as obvious as they are to people who are more familiar with the system.

For example: The product might have a centaur already statted out, and with a racial template ready to go and everything. It would then go into detail and explain how the centaur was put together using the GURPS rules. Be sure to note that the creatures in the product are only one possible vision of a creature and that GMs should feel free to create their own visions of creatures. The last part there might seem obvious to you and I, but that doesn't mean it's obvious to other people; sometimes it can be a little scary to step off the beaten path -especially for new GMs.

I don't think it would hurt for GURPS to incorporate a few more examples into some of their books. Many of the products contain a lot of information, and the information is great information, but sometimes -for someone new- it's like "well, ok, that sounds cool, but now what do I do with it?" or "what can I do with it?" The answer with GURPS is to do whatever you want with the information, but, again, I feel that a few examples would be nice in many cases.

Also, there are some topics which aren't exactly obvious to figure out because the information is in several different places. Trying to figure out how to train an animal took me looking at 3-4 different sections. Some of the sections such as Animal Handling skill were very obvious. If I were not familiar with the system, I would have never thought to look at the study rules to figure out how many skill points an animal earned.

I could have probably said all of this with less text, but I think what I'm trying to get at is that a nice product (in my opinion) for GURPS would be a premade setting which is part setting and part training wheels for people who are new to the system. Make the setting intentionally vague and leave room to expand upon the setting and add your own material. As I said with the MM idea, have a few sections which explain how certain things in the premade setting were built with GURPS' rules. "This is Lord Wutzit; this is how he was created... These are some of the creatures common in Lord Wutzit's realm; this is how they were created... etc; etc; etc"

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I have created my own worlds: I'm in the process of doing so right now with a REIGN campaign.

But I like to take other people's worlds and treat them as 'found art': here's something pretty I came across. Let's see what fun I can have with it.

Next week I'm starting a HEROQUEST game set in Glorantha. I'll have fun there too.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

For 3rd ed., GURPS Bestiary has a four-page chapter on that, and GURPS Fantasy Bestiary has eleven pages. GURPS Space Bestiary only has a single page, but it includes one of my favorite lines about GURPS: "in GURPS, species is a special effect".

A 4th ed. Bestiary series is on the e23 Wish List, and a lot of players' personal wish lists.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I believe that there is no point in re-inventing the wheel. All the work I don't have to sink into world-building is energy I can be using to create characters, situations, stories, and such. If there is no world that suits my needs, I create one, but if there is, I'm happy to use it. I enjoy, also, experiencing other people's ideas.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

No, the real reason is that Darth Vader or Grand Moff Tarkin had got someone to plant a tracer on the Millennium Falcon, in the hope that Princess Leia would be rescued and lead the Death Star to the location of the rebels' secret base. And whaddyaknow: it worked. It would not have worked if Leia or the people with the keys to the ship had been killed or captured. So Vader and the Grand Moff, being cluey guys with more forethought than Prometheus, would naturally have ordered the storm troopers to make damned sure that they didn't shoot anybody.

It always amazes me that no-one gets this. It is an important plot point that the bad guys' plan was to let Leia escape and to follow her ship. Of course the storm troopers were all going to miss.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Well, it's a good thing that my RPG group didn't mess up the plan then. :)

(Ignoring that, I think many of us get it. It still makes for some great jokes, though.)

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

No, these comments are too accurate for RPG forums. Only Star Wars sites are so precise.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I always thought it was tragic that no one thought to rescind that order afterward.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

We only post in single file, in order to hide our numbers.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

So who would you say is the better shot with laser weapons? The Agents of Cobra or The Empire's Storm Troopers?

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I actually just recently quit World Of Darkness, I dont agree with how Werewolves are portrayed there, and I just dont want to play in that companies vision of their world. First thing I thought was GURPS, and making my own setting. Another thing I cant stand, if you dont buy all of the settings materials, you can contradict the whole setting, so when you do pick something else up, your like... "oh, great".

Theres always something wrong in some setting that I dont like, and to me, if I change one thing, I might as well change it all, or create my own.

Creating gameworlds is a big part of the fun of being a GM, I wouldnt want to keep paying someone to do what I would do for free and personaly enjoy.

I started with gurps 3ed, so its hard to try to play something else when I read their settings. Its like reading a competeting GMs ideas, and I tend to critize it as so.

I do buy world settings from gurps though, they usually have ideas on how to change things to your likings, and I do need some worldbooks to get ideas and learn to write my own when it comes to structure, timeline, and other important factors for creating a setting.

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

I never felt that kind of inhibition. When I ran a Mage: The Ascension campaign, I set it in Hong Kong, with five indigenous Chinese schools, one of which I totally made up to get the correspondence with the five elements. I used the stuff I wanted from published books, and ignored the rest; in particular, I made no use of the WoD Hong Kong book. I made up an entire new magical element, Society, which I had the Technocracy using in place of Prime. And I decided from the outset that Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, and Wraith were not canonical for my campaign, and if there were going to be shapeshifters or ghosts I would make them up myself.

If one of my players had brought in some White Wolf book and said, "You're doing this wrong, because of what it say on p. X," or, "I should get to take P for my character because it's in an official supplement on p. Y," I would have pointed out that when they agreed to play in my campaign they agreed to accept my variations on the official rules and setting, and that nothing was official unless I personally approved of it. And if they didn't accept that they would be welcome to leave. Fortunately, I've never had a player who tried to pull that sort of thing.

Bill Stoddard

Re: GMs -- Don't we all want to roll our own?
 

Personally, I hate doing pregen settings. My ex-girlfriend has been bugging me for years to do a Firefly game. I actually started laying down ground work for what I felt would be a fun and original game in the Firefly universe. It got shot down almost immediately because it didn't feel like Firefly. I've run a couple of Star Wars campaigns, but they were really just my own little stories and settings with Jedi in them.

On the other hand, there is a huge amount of demand for the nostalgia type games. People love LoRT, Star Wars, Firefly, Star Trek, Rocky Horror Picture Show, etc. I've played in some fascinating games based in familiar universes, and loved every moment of them. Particularly at points where major players in the original story made cameo appearances in the game.

The lack of GMing pregen settings has to do more with my own personal lack of skill. I am unable to create a unique and entertaining game in a world that has already been developed. My hat goes off to the GMs that can (At least those that do it well. There are plenty of crappy GMs that do both homebrew and pregen settings).