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

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by balzacq

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.[/SIZE]

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

[Sydney]

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)

[Steamteck]

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.

[Johnny Angel]

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"

[Michael Cule]

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.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

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.)

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.

[Mr_Sandman]

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.

[balzacq]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But by the time I was done, there was no question that this was MY Middle-Earth, to do with as I saw fit.

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".