Time. I can either create an interesting world or interesting encounters and people for the PCs to interact with.

1. Time or no time I always homebrew. I have used published liscensed settings twice. My players universally prefer my homebrews- and so do I.
2. I do have actual academic training that touches on this stuff, but I've been doing since long before I had even the foggiest idea what a continental plate or a pastoralist was.
3. in regards to the first post, why is it that so many people (I can think of several on this forum alone) that use published settings have hostility issues towards those that don't? I've heard the same type of negative generalizations pretty much any time the subject comes up. I have no issue with anyone who uses published settings- although I'm sure some people suck at it, and suck hard; I am not compelled to dismiss the efforts and results of thousands of players with a blanket statement like,  "because all published setting suck, and if you use one, you are a sucky halfassed GM" that would be lame and stupid.

Quote from: estarMy own version is the howling empty wilderness of Greyhawk's 30 mile hexes.

That too.

So to reach the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, you have to cross 140 miles of Keoland. Overland adventure time!

Let's take a look at the gazeteer. Okay... Keoland... 600 heavy cavalry... light infantry... trade cloth...

Uh, you come across a cloth caravan guarded by, uh, heavy cavalry.

Quote from: estarOne reason why I used Wilderlands as my starting point. And why I so glad to help bring it back nearly 20 years later.

We didn't use the Wilderlands when we were kids. But we should have.

Quote from: StuartWith a homebrew you don't really need to detail the entire world, as long as you have enough material prepared so that the players choices in that world are meaningful.  At the beginning of a game the "world" can be the town and the dungeon.

Most times we play (particularly D&D), I create a new world from scratch and do just this. Create a bit of stuff here and there, then fill in as needed.

Seanchai

I like to think I'm bottom-up. But honestly? I'm top-down.

I decided that for my next campaign I'd rather choose my own sucky world than someone else's good world because even with a sucky homebrew campaign the pride of accomplishment is worth the effort.

Strawman, Pundit!

The REAL and ONLY reason to play published settings is:

Network Externalities.

This thread can be closed now.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI like to think I'm bottom-up. But honestly? I'm top-down.

Is this where we gratuitously insert "between the sheets"?

-clash

Well I never. A little more gravitas here, Clash.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityWell I never. A little more gravitas here, Clash.

I'm an anti-gravitas generator, chock full of levitation.

-clash

Quote from: RPGPunditMy Answer: because unless you do a shitload of hard work and planning, and have the skills to think it through both in terms of world creation, and creating a setting that will be interesting for its Roleplay possibilities, your home brew will suck.

There are plenty of excellent resources out there for world building that condense the basics down, both on the web and in books, for anyone who cares to do it right.  And a lot of GMs get decent results simply by having a good intuitive sense of what to steal from others.

For my money, the good thing about pre-made world is reusability.

When I make homebrewed worlds, they're always very campaign-specific. The process I've managed to refine is this:

- I work out what sort of thing I want to do with the campaign, and recruit interested players. I present them with a bare-bones summary of the setting, in which I've done my best to slip in the sort of thing that I'm particularly interested in tackling in this campaign; I also make sure the interested players know what I want the campaign to be about. So, for example, if I want to run a gritty fantasy campaign in which the PCs play the kingpins of a struggling, threadbare thieves' guild which is trying to stay afloat in the middle of a strange, occult war, I make sure the players know that, I give them some details about the guild's home city, current events, major factions, perhaps a handful of important NPCs, stuff like that.

- The players go away and come up with character concepts, and decide what they would like to get out of the campaign - for example, player A might want to play a struggling hedge wizard who spends a lot of her time searching for occult secrets, player B wants to play a con artist and master of disguise who occasionally gets tangled up in aristocratic intrigue, player C wants to play a tough guy with a big mouth and a gambling habit, and player D wants to play a sneak thief who's out to avenge the death of her father.

- I flesh out the world further, making sure to include the sort of elements which will work well with the character concepts (so that's some occult mysteries and magical treasures for A to uncover, some juicy aristocratic cliques for B to infiltrate, a few gambling dens for C to frequent and some NPCs for him to mortally offend, and a father-murderer for player D to avenge herself on). I also add an additional sprinkling of extra elements which I'd enjoying springing on the PCs and players in question ("Hmmm, I reckon this NPC would get a laugh out of player A... and what would happen if player D broke into someone's house and found this?"), plus some last-minute things that I just think are cool, and the setting's good to go.

The upshot of this process is that my homebrew settings tend to be well-tailored for the campaigns I run them in (if I do say so myself), but only for those campaigns: they're meant to be run with the particular concept I decided to run with, for the particular group of players that took part, with the player characters that those players devised. Using the setting for a different campaign wouldn't quite work, unless the concept and characters were very similar.

For me, the biggest disadvantage of using a published setting is also its biggest advantage: that is to say, I enjoy published campaign settings less because they aren't fine-tuned to the campaign concept and PCs I'm dealing with, but at the same time I appreciate being able to use them with multiple campaign concepts and PCs.

Quote from: Old GeezerFor the same reason that when I'm creating software, I find an existing piece of software that provides a basic framework, and modify it.

Never write what you can copy.

Yes! Precisely right.

RPGPundit

Quote from: CallousOf course the same applies to published gameworlds.  If they're not designed with skill and planning, then they suck just as much.  And aren't free...

Touche. You make a good point, sir.

There are lots of published gameworlds that clearly weren't very well thought out. But gameworlds like most of D&D's are; excepting maybe Eberron and Dragonlance for two very different reasons.  Even these two can be ripped off of, though, and still make it easier for you than trying to make your own world from scratch.

RPGPundit

i'm with the slaad on this.  i'd prefer to homebrew, but time demands don't allow it.  so i just tweak existing settings, like the Third Imperium.  start with their base and go from there.  and it gives us an easy "pick up" game, with everyone knowing the basic foundations of the setting.