Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;790431I may be atypical, but I find that using published material rarely saves me much time.  By the time I've read and grokked the material, and (inevitably) altered it to suit my taste and my game, I could've created something of my own, AND I would know and be able to run it better.  (This may also be affected by the systems I use -- if I was using a much heavier/crunchier system with a lot of overhead to monster and NPC definition, then published adventures might offer move time savings.)

To me, the value in published material isn't really about saving time, it's about injecting ideas that I might not have come up with, or stealing useful bits to use here and there (a map of an inn, a manor house, ship plans, a barrow and its wight, et cetera).

Yeah, that's me exactly. Re heavy crunch systems - with 4e D&D it definitely saves time to use their monster & NPC stat blocks with minimal tweaking; the monsters are complicated and the stat blocks have everything you need in them. 3e/Pathfinder is a lot iffier since the stat blocks reference tons of stuff that you need to look up, that is very easy to miss, and that may be trivial (feat gives +1 damage once per encounter) or vital (Favoured Enemy bonus gives +6 hit/dmg for all attacks vs the PCs). Running published adventures with particularly convoluted NPC builds is a huge pain & time sink IME, not a time saver. There is no great solution with high level 3e/PF but I find that using good generic stat blocks for combat NPCs and maybe using my quick NPC system for other NPCs (the ones who rarely need stats) works best. A lot of 3e/PF generic NPC stats are garbage, but the ones in Paizo'd Gamemastery Guide work well for this purpose.

For simpler systems like BX D&D, something like the Quick NPC system works best -  give the NPCs a moderate bonus in their best 1-3 stats, maybe a few appropriate magic items if they're high level, and maybe a roll on the wondrous items table to give special NPCs something interesting.

A mixture, as long as it's not pastiche or crossover of licensed properties. I can't stand either of those.

It might be published, but customised (like we do with Mass Effect or playing Mage in a historical period), and we're currently playing a completely homebrewed setting.

My preferred setting, though, is history.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;790431I may be atypical, but I find that using published material rarely saves me much time.  By the time I've read and grokked the material, and (inevitably) altered it to suit my taste and my game, I could've created something of my own, AND I would know and be able to run it better.  (This may also be affected by the systems I use -- if I was using a much heavier/crunchier system with a lot of overhead to monster and NPC definition, then published adventures might offer move time savings.)

The 'crunch' factor is clearly significant for many 3/4e D&D refs, for instance. Back in the day, Chaosium actually sold booklets of RuneQuest monster stats (mainly computer-generated).

QuoteTo me, the value in published material isn't really about saving time, it's about injecting ideas that I might not have come up with, or stealing useful bits to use here and there (a map of an inn, a manor house, ship plans, a barrow and its wight, et cetera).

I think campaign format can make a big difference.

An original-style dungeon/underworld can get indefinite reuse out of a good portion of what you put into it, and something like Wilderlands of High Fantasy or City State of the Invincible Overlord delivers a lot of replay value in the old form (what some call 'sandbox').

Nowadays, more people are running event-ordered scenarios for which the usual material has less reuse potential. On top of the basic write-up format, you've typically got the notion that player-characters won't be building local relationships but will instead be moving along on a grand quest that's more or less a whirlwind tour of the continent.

I prefer home-brew, but I'm also happy to use published settings (or specific areas of published settings) that I like.

I developed a home-brew setting about 12 years ago, "Ilmahal," and used it a few times for different campaigns of varying length over the years (D&D 3e, AD&D, B/X D&D, Crypts and Things).  Now I'm not that interested in using that setting anymore, but haven't had the time or inclination to come up with something new (yet!).

Quote from: snooggums;789639Homebrew, as I remember the names of things I come up with far easier than stuff I read.

I do read published settings for inspiration.

Same here.
I do draw from published stuff sometimes. For example, in Traveller I use (a version of) the official Traveller universe.
Other times I'll read published setting info for inspiration, but like you, I have a hard time remembering all the fiddly details of published towns, cities, nations, etc. Much easier to remember if I'm the one who came up with it all.

Quote from: Haffrung;790425That's a popular sentiment around here, but it effectively confines the hobby to those who have a lot of spare time, and/or for whom RPGs is the main leisure activity in their life.

If you have 2-3 hours a week for gaming activity - including playing, then making up all your own material is not going to be practical. I play D&D once every 3-4 weeks. Usually I can pull together another material in the interim for a 6 hour session. Sometimes I can't. If I eschewed published material altogether, I'd either have to push back the sessions even further out if I was a having a busy week with real life, or clear the deck of all other leisure activities (boardgames, cycling, going out for beers, etc.) in order to devote myself to prepping.

So it's like saying the whole point of music as a hobby is to write and perform your own songs. Aren't people who plunk away on a guitar or piano playing cover songs musicians also?

I think the musician analogy is the best I've seen in a while.

I also think, because I use game and setting work to calm myself and as my major creative outlook, I can still use all of my own stuff.  But I also know it is one of the reasons I don't pick up apps/computer games etc.

I use both, though there are VERY few cases where I don't tweak things a lot.

And I prefer broad outline settings, or settings that leave a lot of unexplored space (Numenera for instance, gives you a lot of room to play with).

Even on settings I have used, I've erased parts of the official background, locations, or ideas to make room for what I want to run. I use published settings more like a starting point rather than being slavishly loyal to them.

The only real exception for me is Star Wars. But that has more to do with my extreme love of the source material outside of RPGs warping my behavior, than actual RPG preferences.