Homebrew or not?

[virgil]

I keep mentally going back to d20 for the potential new campaign on Fridays (in about two months). Like many a Denner, I have house rule notes from myself and others on hand that are larger than many RPG books, and I have opinions when it comes to how both the rules do and should work.

If I actually make the decision now, I could realistically print out a physical book of Mage in Black to be handed out to the players by the time we'd start playing. It’d have setting, classes, feats, magic, etc. It would only be missing art, ‘tis all.

The problem? Mage in Black is a Fantasy Heartbreaker. There’s a nonzero chance my players would prefer me slapping down some 3.5/Pathfinder books and telling them they shall begin in the modron ghetto of Sigil (known as Gear Row).

Blech.

[...You Lost Me]

I have this problem too. Some people I hang out with would rather play 3.5 because they can fall back to the CharOp they know and love or they have a sourcebook in mind. But I have another group that I know just wants simple rules and will take whatever homebrew I give them unless it's complicated.

Only solution I have is getting a read on your players and offering what you know they'll play. Multiple years have not led me to convince more than 1 person to switch opinions.

[Sigil]

I was pretty lucky that the group that I occasionally now game with were complete neophytes when I introduced them, and I started off with a bunch of Tome material. The kicker was that, by this point in time, I could print out a stack of material and hand it to them and say "we're using the classes in this book, and the combat chapter in this book, and the feats from this book, Everything else comes from the normal players handbook" so it wasn't vastly more complicated than referencing rules normally. Even though they're now comfortable with homebrew, they really start to lose interest if I start to add other subsystems from other sources. I had a game get real hard to manage because I was using the Tome pdf (the older one) AND red_rob's magic items system. It was even harder for me to manage.

If you do it, I'd really recommend getting all of your shit together before hand, putting it in one document or place, and presenting it to them that way. If you present it as a whole replacement RPG that just happens to also be d20 based, they'll probably fall in line. If you make them work to play your homebrew, they might not.

I got a group to play Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition because it was all in a single document.

[Meikle641]

Gear Row, huh? I'd have gone with Junkyard or Gear Box, if they live in a tenement/apartment building.

[virgil]

If you do it, I'd really recommend getting all of your shit together before hand, putting it in one document or place, and presenting it to them that way.

That was stated as what I would do if I decided to right now, because a couple months is enough time for me to produce an After Sundown analogue. Hopefully such a version would actually avoid the cropping issue I previously had.[quote="Meikle641]Gear Row, huh? I'd have gone with Junkyard or Gear Box, if they live in a tenement/apartment building.[/quote]The modrons don't do nicknames, and their neighbors are low-level Guvners known for their lack of creativity.

[Dogbert]

You're the GM, you're free to run what you want. If the players don't want what you have to sell, then any of them is free to run the next game.