I'm pretty happy today.
A few weeks ago in my Kingmaker game, we were given (or at least offered) templates by the GM, except my character, because my GM wasn't able to find something that fit and made sense for my character. He still wanted to give me something, though, so we researched templates for a few days.
When we met again to see what each of us had found, we still weren't satisfied, and we both wanted to homebrew something at that point, so we gave ourselves a few more days to brainstorm and meet again. In the end, I only had one idea, but we both preferred my idea over his, so he helped me put it into mechanics, and then I put the template together with a few balance adjustments (with help from long-time GMs). As we didn't know in advance that we were getting templates the first time and that we didn't know what they were ahead of time, and because it was more fun that way, I kept the concept and mechanics of my template secret from the other players until the big reveal.
Yesterday, we finally played out the situation where my character gets the template. Now, it took 20 minutes for other players to get (or refuse) their templates, so we were expecting a 20 minutes deviation from the main story.
We ended up derailing the game for two hours of pure RP, which meant we didn't have time anymore for what the GM initially planned for the session.
Now, I didn't want to derail the game that much, and it was mostly the other players that kept it that long, but as a creator, I can't help but feel proud, because while the way the others were getting their templates was most of the RP around it, it was the way mine worked that caused the biggest uproar, as the others didn't understand what was happening. They spent two hours trying to understand what happened, whether whether it was reversible or not, how it worked, etc.
So I'm proud, because I take that as meaning that my template idea and its mechanics are interesting beyond gameplay, and has much RP potential.
That is great. Good roleplaying/story bits are a welcome distraction sometimes.
Templates can be a lot of fun. It is cool that your GM worked with you to create a custom template that works with your concept.
It's not so much custom as it is homebrew, in the sense that it was made to work for most creatures, and that I'm publishing it publicly for free once it's finished and playtested.
I've got to make a stat block for one of the abilities.