Homebrew, generally speaking. I love world creation and it allows me to make stuff that "feels right" (for the players as well as myself).

Wich isn't to say I haven't used published settings - Forgotten Realms in particular.

I don't like running settings without extensive and authoritative material acting as a framework with the  according definitions and limitations. If you can't give your players a book about it, it does'nt count as a full setting. Now, creating such a full setting requires time, work and research I usually don't have, so I vastly prefer to use other people's work over investing weeks and months of my free time to create a setting up to the standards.
Nowadays, I mostly run historical or pseudo-historical games anyway, using the greatest of all premade settings out there.

Used to be all homebrew in the old days ('80s), published fantasy settings didn't work for me (sf is different - obviously d6 Star Wars and Paranoia's undetailed Alpha Complex were fine).

Recently I've got into running published sessions, my long term 4e Forgotten Realms campaign plus using the Wilderlands for repeated short campaigns, which seems to fit its sword & sorcery roots. I also have a homebrew setting I created in 2008 based on fantasy Europe which is an accretion of published mini-settings & additions, with campaigns set in two different time periods (roughly equivalent to the Dark Ages ca AD 700 and late medieval ca AD 1400). It incorporates bits of 'Points of Light' and Gygax's Yggsburgh, for instance.

Even with a published campaign setting, the big fun comes from adding my own stuff to their framework. My FR campaign is avowedly non-canon, and in daily play the stuff that gets used is either made up by me or adventures that generally were generic ones with a lot of adaptation. I treat FR as a resource for tropes & ideas for my campaign, never as a straitjacket.

Edit: Big exception is Golarion - my Pathfinder Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, that I forgot though it is in my sig! Likewise my currently-TPK'd 1e AD&D Rise of the Runelords campaign. I think Paizo's Golarion world and Varisia setting is great, I wish they'd do more sandboxy stuff with it and less railroad adventures. I definitely enjoy it most when my campaign deviates from the scripted adventure, as at present.

Quote from: Beagle;789670I don't like running settings without extensive and authoritative material acting as a framework with the  according definitions and limitations. If you can't give your players a book about it, it does'nt count as a full setting. Now, creating such a full setting requires time, work and research I usually don't have, so I vastly prefer to use other people's work over investing weeks and months of my free time to create a setting up to the standards.
Nowadays, I mostly run historical or pseudo-historical games anyway, using the greatest of all premade settings out there.

That is an approach I cannot even hope to comprehend (not saying its bad just I can't comprehend it)

Quote from: jibbajibba;789672That is an approach I cannot even hope to comprehend (not saying its bad just I can't comprehend it)

I don't really understand it either. I can understand enjoying reading about settings for their own sake, but I don't understand giving players a book of setting material to read, when only a tiny minority of players do so. I have one player who reads my setting material on the blog for my Loudwater Forgotten Realms campaign, especially the NPC entries. But she's a fairly well known young-adult-fiction author and I guess she's a lot more interested in fictional worlds & personae than the average player. Most players won't read a half page handout, never mind a book. I guess I can understand enjoying 'extensive and authoritative material acting as a framework with the according definitions and limitations', although obviously it's an enjoyment I don't share. It's more the player-GM interaction under such constraints that I don't fully understand.

Let me try to explain: My tolerance for intellectual parasites who are not willing to invest their time and passion to the game I invest a great deal of time and passion in (especially as a gamemaster) but expect to be entertained nonetheless is very limited. Reading the average RPG sourcebook is not a particularly challenging activity, either. So I am very skeptical that a player who isn't willing to put enough effort in the game to do some basic research concerning the setting is willing or able to put in the effort to contribute to the game in a meaningful way. Roleplaying games are a group effort and require regular contributions. For these contributions to be meaningful, they need context. This context is at least partially provided by the setting to establish a framework of references for the actual game. Therefore, I like my game world descriptions to be comprehensive, detailed and consistent. I usually cannot provide these qualities to a satisfying amount on my own, especially because consisteny depends at least partially on persistency and that basically demands that the setting details are fixed in written form. While I am willing to sacrifice a significant part of what free time I have for the preparation of a great game, I think that time is better spent on more practical things than a mere background. Not that the background isn't important, but it isn't as important as the actual events within the game.

@ Beagle: I take it that you don't run one-shots at conventions (or similar)?

I do, even though not particualrly often, but I mostly use real world (or  pseudo real world) scenarios for that.

99% of the time it's homebrew.

Quote from: S'mon;789677I don't really understand it either. I can understand enjoying reading about settings for their own sake, but I don't understand giving players a book of setting material to read, when only a tiny minority of players do so. I have one player who reads my setting material on the blog for my Loudwater Forgotten Realms campaign, especially the NPC entries. But she's a fairly well known young-adult-fiction author and I guess she's a lot more interested in fictional worlds & personae than the average player. Most players won't read a half page handout, never mind a book. I guess I can understand enjoying 'extensive and authoritative material acting as a framework with the according definitions and limitations', although obviously it's an enjoyment I don't share. It's more the player-GM interaction under such constraints that I don't fully understand.

This is this is why I tried to squeeze the micro settings into 600 words because any more than that the PCs, and me to be honest, can't be bothered to read.
I find if you haven't snagged them after a 600 word pitch then you aren't going to.

My mum used to run a huge campaign world with 3 different groups of PCs at any one time maps of cities with index cards for each building.

I always found my attention wandering as stuff had to be looked up.
Classic one for me was a chase through a shanty town smashing through buildings slowed down by need to reference and look stuff up all the time.

Some great ideas in there emminently stealable as well but I have always found making shit up and remembering it far easier and more fun.

Quote from: Beagle;789679Let me try to explain: My tolerance for intellectual parasites who are not willing to invest their time and passion to the game I invest a great deal of time and passion in (especially as a gamemaster) but expect to be entertained nonetheless is very limited.

I feel the same way about those bastards who watch TV shows and claim to be fans but haven't watched all the special edition DVDs with director's commentary and behind the scenes exposition, don't buy all the series guide books, and don't at least make an effort to memorize every minor character who shows up on screen.  

Participating in a hobby merely for entertainment and fun rather than as a work-laden intellectual challenge? What nerve! Not at my table.


EDIT-Oh, and usually homebrew, but I occasionally pick up settings that no one has ever heard of so that I can skip the work of world-building but not have to worry about some canon-monkey flinging their setting lore poo at me when I don't stick to the source material.

Does the personal engagement of a TV show viewer influence the quality of that show by any means? No.
Does the active participation (or lack of it) of any member of a small group during a group activity like playing an RPG influence the overall performance of the group? Yes.
So, are you comparing apples to oranges? You can probably answer that yourself.

I run a campaign like you buy a house or start a business LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.  The rest is all me usually, with inspiration from other published sources that get cheerfully mangled in their interpretation.

I started with B2, and so built up the areas around it, when Greyhawk came out I was enchanted by that friggin Darlene Map and thus my longest single D&D campaign was born.  I used all of the 1e modules in there at some point or another from "run as is" (Tomb of Horrors) to "well we share a map and that's about it" (almost everything else).

The Forgotten Realms Grey Box and the North sucked me in, so I ran AD&D there as well.

MERP was run, not surprisingly in...Middle Earth, but my two favorite campaigns were both Fourth Age.  One, where Sauron got the ring (yeah I did it before Midnight), and FA 126 after the last ring-bearer sailed to the West.

Not sure why you'd do Shadowrun, Deadlands, WoD or any of the 90's metaplot games outside the assumed setting, but aside from the tapestries on the walls, all the interior decorating was me.

Rifts, 40k, FASA Trek, Star Wars, all the same, playing in the same setting, but in the cases of Rifts and 40k especially, were highly altered versions of the setting (even FASA Trek was an Orion smuggling ship).

I've always been more of a tinkerer then a creator when it comes to the Main setting.  I was more interested in Biology, Literature, and History then Geography and I absolutely suck as an artist, so give me a good Map, suggest to me a Premise if you want, and off I go.

Coming up with my own fantasy world never struck me, there was always so much to do and explore in Greyhawk, The Realms, The Hyborian Age, Lankhmar, Scarred Lands (god I want to run that setting), Lovecraftian Earth, now Westeros and Thedas, not to mention Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Frontiers (Dralasites FTW!) and the list goes on.  

Even if I was going to do my own 100% homebrew setting, pretty sure I'd use the the Wilderlands as the map or snake some Pete Fenlon or Jonathan Roberts map.

I suppose the closest to pure homebrew was helping my friend detail his world, cosmology, gods, races, countries, etc. where I was co-creator.  In making one section, I took Harn and turned it sideways, then redid most of the interior in CC3. :cool:

Quote from: Beagle;789679Let me try to explain: My tolerance for intellectual parasites who are not willing to invest their time and passion to the game I invest a great deal of time and passion in (especially as a gamemaster) but expect to be entertained nonetheless is very limited. Reading the average RPG sourcebook is not a particularly challenging activity, either. So I am very skeptical that a player who isn't willing to put enough effort in the game to do some basic research concerning the setting is willing or able to put in the effort to contribute to the game in a meaningful way. Roleplaying games are a group effort and require regular contributions. For these contributions to be meaningful, they need context. This context is at least partially provided by the setting to establish a framework of references for the actual game. Therefore, I like my game world descriptions to be comprehensive, detailed and consistent. I usually cannot provide these qualities to a satisfying amount on my own, especially because consisteny depends at least partially on persistency and that basically demands that the setting details are fixed in written form. While I am willing to sacrifice a significant part of what free time I have for the preparation of a great game, I think that time is better spent on more practical things than a mere background. Not that the background isn't important, but it isn't as important as the actual events within the game.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've found that given a serious playing environment, most players will get serious.  In other words, once the random wandering adventurers get back to town with loot and treasure and have created a power vacuum in the surrounding lands by killing the bad guys, thus allowing the town to expand - humans get human.  

Factions, Religions, Clans, Races, good old fashioned Lust, Hate, and Greed can make a minefield in a post-success environment.  If players realize they are inequipped to deal with this environment, they either get the hell out of dodge or they do what adventurers are great at - adapting.  At which point they'll want to know more detail about the setting then you can easily provide, but they'll want it piecemeal, in focused applicable chunks, rather then an infodump.

Quote from: Beagle;789695Does the personal engagement of a TV show viewer influence the quality of that show by any means? No.
Does the active participation (or lack of it) of any member of a small group during a group activity like playing an RPG influence the overall performance of the group? Yes.
So, are you comparing apples to oranges? You can probably answer that yourself.

I think players can be active & participatory in play, without having to do a lot of work beforehand. They can contribute to building the world, say. Unless you've already predefined it, required them to read a big tome about it, and ban them from deviating from it.

I would tend to think that too much pre-play wordbuilding would inhibit player participation, not add to it. I know personally as a player I love it when the GM picks up my ideas and runs with them.