Homebrew Your Setting

Setting Value in Your Game is Important.

I am an acknowledged tinkerer and do-it-yourself amateur re-designer of almost every game I have played, especially the role-playing games. I cannot help myself. It's a weakness or an obsession of perhaps a strength? Ideas just come to me as I am reading or playing the game - ideas that seem to me to be an improvement over the game as written and ideas that I really want to try at the table. Many times, they turn out to be not very good ideas and I toss them aside and hope to learn from the experience, but then a "better" idea comes to me and off I go again. The long suffering players that have been present at many games I have refereed know well that this will be a part of the gaming experience when they agree to let me sit in the referee's seat. 

Perhaps, in light of my previous statement it is needless to add an admission that I almost never run any adventure module, or setting "as written". Again, those pesky ideas involving improvement of one kind or another that pop into my brain unsought for, but seem so compellingly good (at least they do at the time) and that I find that I can't resist taking things "off script" and for better or worse (time usually will tell) into the realms of my personal imagination.

Adapting material to suit my own tastes and to include my own ideas is a common way that I play as referee. What is even better, I think, is to create something uniquely our own. Yes, it takes some thought, planning and work, but I have so many published products from which I can draw inspiration that I seldom want for ideas. Over the years I have learned what I like and don't and my own creations reflect my values better than anyone else's work can. 

In defense of the homebrew approach I will merely point out that it hardly matters in such cases if a player is familiar with the published module or setting material, because through my revisions I will provide surprises aplenty and referee in such a manner so as to be (hopefully) entertaining to all. Established Canon aside, the inclusion of my own material, even when dealing with a personalized riff on a famous setting like Middle-earth, will encourage my own enthusiasm and result in my being a more dynamic referee to the ultimate benefit of all players, especially me! (And yes, it is important that the referee, who is also a player, enjoys the game!)

I find that at least for me, the best way to play a role-playing game is to use a setting that reflects my own values and not just those of another. To referee is to homebrew.