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Sorry to reawaken a thread that fell asleep a week ago, but I just found this and had some thoughts:
- Most of today's professional game designers started by homebrewing. People upthread called Pathfinder a "homebrew of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5"; likewise Dungeons and Dragons itself in its original form was a homebrew system building on the game Chainmail, and I'm fairly sure Chainmail started with people messing around with rules for more traditional wargames (IIRC the term "Armor Class" was borrowed from a naval term for the quality of armor on a battleship). How you practice game design and tweak and adjust for your group, and so on, is by homebrewing. So basically, without encouraging homebrewing, we don't get new game designers, and the industry dies.
-- So, at the risk of sounding terribly dramatic (I'm not trying to be), if homebrew is a dirty word, and we discourage it, we destroy our hobby. So I'd say, no, it shouldn't be a dirty word in the least.
-- Does this mean all homebrew is inherently good? Of course not. Part of the point of homebrew is we're testing, building, trying new things, seeing where rules boundaries do and should lie. As part of this process, we're going to come up with stuff that's crap.
-- But, ideally, we process through the crap to eventually achieve the good stuff. Hack homebrewers might make broken stuff just in hopes of cheating or making things break for the fun of it. OTOH, talented homebrewers with the potential to become tomorrow's game designer solicit feedback on their homebrewed items and tweak it constantly to make it work right.
- So we need homebrew, and talented homebrewers should be encouraged to develop and improve their skills.... BUUUUT this does not mean we must homebrew everywhere, all the time. There is a time and place for it: namely, in my opinion, in the hands of relatively experienced players who are already familiar with the rules-as-written. I favor this advice in many arenas, RPGs included: learn the rules before you break them....
DEEEEEEE-QUUUEEEEEEUUUU~! How are you?! Long time no see! :D
EDIT: For ninja's, page changes, and clarifying who I was talking to for a more comprehensible nicknaming~!
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Good to see you too, Tac! I've been staying quiet on most threads (outside the Fallout 4 forum and PBPs), but this looked interesting to me. :)
Glad to see you around! :D
EDIT: Submitted before I was finished, 'cause I'm ADD and got distracted by wonderful family.
*Ahem*
... because I always love your posts! :D
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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One man's homebrew is another man's RPGSS or Wayfinder entry.
I used to homebrew more, but as I've grown older and more involved in my professions, I have less time to do so. That's why I mainly do APs and PFS. The quality is there and it's pre-packaged, so it cuts down on how much I need to come up with on my own. Even so, when running (or playing!) an AP, I'll usually come up with some of my own content, even if it's just a magic item or spell. Or I'll come up with some mechanic to fill a hole in the rules.
I am a little leery of homebrew races, because a race implies that somewhere in the game world there's a bunch of these people running around and somehow you've never heard of them until just now. It's not impossible to fit a homebrew race into an existing world, but it does take some shoehorning; sometimes I'm willing to do that and other times not so much.
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- Likewise, I wouldn't homebrew with folks new to the game. Again, I think it's important to know the rules before changing them. I've been screwed up myself by playing games where a GM homebrewed tons and then joining another GM's game to realize I totally didn't know how to play at all. Or at the very least, it's important if teaching rules to someone, to be clear on what are the rules-as-written and what's homebrew.On this point, one of my friends did a great job with a "learning curve" homebrew, where he started his players on a light version of the game (for example, without AoO or Concentration checks), and reintroducing removed mechanics one at a time (usually with a specially crafted encounter) until the players got to the full unmodified ruleset around level 3.
Certainly there will be exceptions to almost anything I pointed out. If the purpose of the homebrew is rules-teaching in an easy manner, obviously that covers the part of being clear about what are the rules-as-written. :)
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I'd say once you enable ANY house rules, your game technically becomes homebrew.
Also, imagination yields creativity, creativity yields innovation, innovation yields homebrew.
You can't play this game without imagination, so homebrew results, no matter what.
I would submit that EVERY game is homebrew in some way.
Just my 2 cents worth.
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I'd say once you enable ANY house rules, your game technically becomes homebrew.
Also, imagination yields creativity, creativity yields innovation, innovation yields homebrew.
You can't play this game without imagination, so homebrew results, no matter what.
I would submit that EVERY game is homebrew in some way.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Absolutely, but then it's not my homebrew that's the problem though (even when it is!) it's everyone else's horrible overpowered and weird mishmash of illogic and other bad things!
Joking aside, there is probably an element of truth in that. We are often blind to the faults in our own creations (at least initially), but quick to see them in someone elses. Some won't even recognise their houserule as homebrew.
Any comment on this subject should be taken as a broad sweep, rather than all-encompassing absolute belief I imagine.