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

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ammocase

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".

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