Premade or Homemade

[Oni_Sloth]

Hello, new to posting on the boards and this is my first post. So I was lurking for a bit and I have a question for the community from my loitering. Do you prefer to use premade dungeons and monsters, or do you prefer to use homemade dungeons and monsters, and why?

I can start this off by giving my preference. I have always preferred home made to premade. This probably comes from my upbringing, raised on homemade monsters and dungeons. It also comes from seeing so many players crack open the monsters handbook mid battle. I think this is a great loss to everyone because it removes all mystery from the game, and now it just becomes executing strategy 7A from some random person’s guide. I understand though that each group is different, this is just something I have noticed in my experience.

So which do you prefer?

[Eltacolibre]

guess it depends how you play...the group I play with never opens the bestiary while we are playing. And we are actually using the knowledge rules, as in if you roll enough for the cr, you get the basics and every 5 above the dc, you get one piece of information. You could know the monster ooc, doesn't quite matter to me but in character, you better act like you don't know a single thing until you roll that check.

But anyway, not like it matters, I love monsters a lot and I use their ecology to use them the way they are supposed to be use, so I twist them and play around with them, adding class levels, templates, adding hit dice etc...look at their tactics and strategy and use it to my advantage. Playing all the monsters like a video game rpg actually doesn't quite do them justice. Some monsters just focus on hit and run tactics, Black dragons fighting in a pool of acid, Aboleth using illusions and domination to be unseen and controlling party members to kill each other...

[CraziFuzzy]

Definitely home-made. the ability for the story to completely follow the events make the events, and party actions, seem so much more impactful. Some of the best campaigns I've been a part of the GM had no idea where it was going when we started.

[DHAnubis]

I may use a few things that are from the bestiary here or there, either just as statistic bases or fully used. But most of the time, for the big encounters of the night, the enemies are homebrewed. I had a recurring villain who was a humanoid chimera that may or may not have had a bigger, final form. He was entirely homebrewed, but the creatures that fought with him were straight from the bestiary.

[thejeff]

Homemade campaign and classed villains, but generally monsters out of bestiaries.

We've always been pretty good about separating metagame monster info from character info and there are always plenty of real mysteries in what the bad guys were up to and how they could be stopped without worrying about mysteries of monster stats.

[Bwang]

In '76 0r '77, I had a player buy the module I was running and cheat to get the best weapon. Since, even if I use one of the scads of modules I've bought, things get changed. In 3.0, my players were stunned when I ran several monsters right from the book and even a module with little re-write. They couldn't figure out when I was going to take it off the rails. The truth is that I was too tired to prep, but they were certain I was baiting them.

[Melkiador]

I used to do it all by hand because I was poor. I now prefer to use modules just because I don't have the hours of free time it takes to make something from scratch.

[gamer-printer]

I exclusively do homebrew, but then at least in one case, I've published one of my homebrews as a 3PP Pathfinder setting, modules and supplements - the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG). So some of my home-made has become premade.

[PSY850]

Though recently I've been running alot of premades, I really do love running and being in home made games and settings. Or even just taking an existing setting like golarion or forgotten realms or iron kingdoms(my 3 favorites) and just tossing your party in with no plans whatsoever except to help them write the best story possible.... That is truly the best kind of fun

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

I generally prefer premade settings. The best settings have lots of really cool places, people, monsters and ideas, far more than I can come up with on my own. A solid fanbase with an interest in homebrew expansion and details gives me tons of stuff to fall back on. New ideas, plots or adventures I can steal, people to discuss the setting with etc.
A detailed setting makes it a lot easier for me to get invested in the character and game. If I can read up on a setting beforehand I feel more connected to the game than "class/race; generic monster killer". Not that homebrew settings can't be fun and detailed, it just takes a lot longer to get into and the ones I've experienced generally aren't as detailed or fun as prefabs. With prefabs, you have a shared vision and it's easier to learn about the setting on your own.

Monsters...doesn't really matter. The problems of creatures are problems no matter what their origin. I like lots of the premade monsters because they are fun. I'm sure there are plenty of fun homebrew monsters too.

[voideternal]

I like premade because I don't have enough time to do homemade.

That said, I do have enough time to modify the premade stuff to fit my players better, so I kinda mix the premade with a bit of homemade.

[SmiloDan]

I like homebrew campaigns because it can take me out of the story if the GM changes something canonical that I know about.

If it's all homebrew, I don't have access to contradictory source material. That makes it easier to stay in character and in the moment.

[Bwang]

SmiloDan wrote:

If it's all homebrew, I don't have access to contradictory source material. That makes it easier to stay in character and in the moment.

Perfectly put! Kuddos!

[Zavas]

Mine's usually homebrew that's cobbled together from various published settings, along with my own touches.

Example: Boccob is the neutral god of magic, Mystra is the good (NG version), and Vecna is the evil.

[kestral287]

Premade is easier, and there's a lot to be said for taking work off the head of the GM. But homemade is fun.

I have a folder full of monsters that I put together for a (non-PF) game. Some are totally homebuilt, some are built using game-provided tables, some are modifications or upgrades of existing monsters, some are a mix of all three of those. However, that same game has an entire faction's worth of enemies who are pretty much all going to be one of a dozen or so monsters; besides a single new enemy type I built for that faction (technically, I built two new enemies, but I accidentally made one of them a combat monster that would overwhelm even high-level PCs so that one won't be used for a looong time).

But at the same time... that set of homebuilt stuff was a lot of work, and that campaign has been more or less dropped for the time being because of how much work it put on me. Now I'm looking into picking up one of Pathfinder's published APs and coming back to my world when I'm better suited for it.

Of course, that doesn't mean that AP won't be twisted and manipulated all kinds of ways. But that's a sight less work than my last game.

[Aleron]

Home-made here, but I admit I readily use pre-made materials. Especially for maps which are my biggest weakness probably. I also use them for inspiration and to save time when I need. I'm a big fan of refluffing monsters into something different to keep players on their toes.