Hello, how's it going? I'm a Pathfinder GM looking for some advice on homebrew content and it's place in Pathfinder. So, to get down to brass tacks, I really enjoy creating homebrew content, whether it's spells, additional skills, or variant rules for stuff like special materials. But with that being said, I've recently run into certain roadblocks while GMing Pathfinder and trying to create stuff for a homebrew world.
An issue I've recently been finding to crop up more and more frequently revolves around the amount of stuff that Pathfinder 1E seems to be chalk full of. The game I run revolves around a homebrew planet I created which may or may not be in the same universe as Golarion (It's implied that it is, but the location of this world is in a different solar system). When I first began creating the gods of the planet, I initially focused on making gods I thought would be interesting. It wasn't until one of my player's chose to multiclass into evangelist that I learned about deific obedience. Around this time I started doing more research on core Pathfinder deities. Oh boy, I really underestimated how much information there was.
Gods have specific colors, weapons, deific obedience rules, rules for clerics and paladins/etc. My point is that there's a lot there that I presume was added throughout the course of content being created for the system during it's lifespan, to say nothing of the 200+ archetype options for all of the available classes. I tried to have a general level of development for most of the important stuff (countries, a history/etc), but I'm finding that more archetypes and class options relying on a specific deity or place don't work unless I come up with something to replace it. I think having a system with so much depth is really cool, but... I'm one guy. While I do enjoy making custom content, I don't really have that much time to almost make an entire game on my own to that degree. It's made me wonder if maybe I would enjoy running a homebrew D&D 5E game (with fewer defined rules/gameplay aspects that wouldn't overlap with homebrew) as opposed to a Pathfinder homebrew game. The thing is, I still really like a lot of what Pathfinder offers, I just prefer to run a game in my own setting with some tweaks to a few existing rules/etc.
Am I taking the work harder approach as opposed to the work smarter path without knowing it? For fellow GMs, how do you guys create content for your homebrew worlds/games so that things don't overlap, or if they do, how do you handle it? The game I'm currently running is having its last session soon so now is a good time for me to re-evaluate the system I used and how I run games. IF there are any questions I'm happy to answer them as best I can, or if context is needed I can provide that too, I'm just looking for some advice here, as I'm genuinely unsure if at this point I'm a bit out of my depth trying to make a world from scratch.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Steal mechanics shamelessly.
Find gods similar to the ones you're using and lift their nuts and bolts wholesale. Tweak them slightly for campaign flavor if you want. Don't do the work for any gods not currently in use by players or antagonists and only worry about the NPC's info as the pc's will come into contact with.
Or just don't allow those prc's thats an equally viable option.
Don't waste prep. And Paizo kindly did all that prep and put it where you can access it for free. Use it. Homebrew is great. Free content is great. They can have a great marriage.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to write a reply, I appreciate your words on this. I definitely agree with 'appropriating' good mechanics/etc from other sources (within reason of course), and I may need to be more firm on allowed character types (summoners have been hit and miss for me so far). I may need to have players take on a bit more of the story and background related work as suggested; that would be quite a big help. Regarding the prep I consult pfsrd and archives quite often and I'm really glad they're available, it makes finding information so convenient for this type of process.
At this point I'm unsure if Pathfinder is the game I want to continue GMing (at least for now), but I was quite pleased to read everyone's comments. Thanks again for the input!