Slightly surprised I didn’t get more disagreement.
A prebuilt system has one benefit: the players and DM come to the table with a shared set of expectations. This is crucial for things like adventurer’s league, where the players are all strangers, more or less engaging in a tournament without winners, each using the others to get their RPG rocks off, and can be useful to skip the mechanical design level of play-making. It also makes sense for a corporation to try to hit that lowest common denominator to maximise their audience.
However, I maintain, if no one at the table is creative enough to want to world-build beyond that, they might as well all just stick with consumer media. Those who don’t feel the drive to create aren’t suited to DMing, and a table without a DM is a hetero orgy without a woman.
I’m running a campaign now and jmit takes place in the Underdark. Guess what, they worship Lolth and are pretty evil. I’ve got some Duergar down there too. I took ideas of the Drow city straight from the Into the Abyss module. I didn’t use the exact city, but it was my base of ideas.
Additionally I’ve taken ideas from the Acquisitions Incorporated book and made the item “Orrery of the Wanderer” a key part of my story. The reason I did that was because I found it to be an interesting item with interesting lore.
Look at it like Legos. If someone handed you a big crate full of Legos you could build something really cool. In fact you could build anything.
However if, instead of a big crate, someone handed me three medieval sets and a ninja set. If I build them exactly as instructed, I still get a cool set. Sure I would have a hard time making a WW2 fighter out of the medieval and ninja sets, but that’s ok. And if I tweak the sets a little I still get something that is my own.
Slightly surprised I didn’t get more disagreement.
A prebuilt system has one benefit: the players and DM come to the table with a shared set of expectations. This is crucial for things like adventurer’s league, where the players are all strangers, more or less engaging in a tournament without winners, each using the others to get their RPG rocks off, and can be useful to skip the mechanical design level of play-making. It also makes sense for a corporation to try to hit that lowest common denominator to maximise their audience.
However, I maintain, if no one at the table is creative enough to want to world-build beyond that, they might as well all just stick with consumer media. Those who don’t feel the drive to create aren’t suited to DMing, and a table without a DM is a hetero orgy without a woman.
I’m also surprised and disagree again.
I’m running a campaign now and jmit takes place in the Underdark. Guess what, they worship Lolth and are pretty evil. I’ve got some Duergar down there too. I took ideas of the Drow city straight from the Into the Abyss module. I didn’t use the exact city, but it was my base of ideas.
Additionally I’ve taken ideas from the Acquisitions Incorporated book and made the item “Orrery of the Wanderer” a key part of my story. The reason I did that was because I found it to be an interesting item with interesting lore.
Look at it like Legos. If someone handed you a big crate full of Legos you could build something really cool. In fact you could build anything.
However if, instead of a big crate, someone handed me three medieval sets and a ninja set. If I build them exactly as instructed, I still get a cool set. Sure I would have a hard time making a WW2 fighter out of the medieval and ninja sets, but that’s ok. And if I tweak the sets a little I still get something that is my own.