Why is 99% of homebrew such fucking shit?

Why is 99% of homebrew such fucking shit?

if you have enough time to sit alone at home writing shit then you don't spend enough of that time socializing with people to find out how shit should actually work

99% of everything is shit and you're bitter

Just like 99% of every craft is shit.

Amateurs who just want to make something without actually going out of their comfort zone to study, learn, test and receive feedback so they can continue learning and improving.

Because you touch yourself

/thread

Sturgeon's law

A combination of these three, is the answer.

Like says, not enough peer review. Interestingly enough though, /r/UnearthedArcana has a very active and rigorous peer review community for 5e. Of course, this post will be ridiculed because our Jingoism won't allow us to conceive that Reddit would create balanced homebrew for any D&D edition.

Damn, spot on. But that doesn't answer WHY.

No self control, no attention to detail.

>Why is 99% of homebrew such fucking shit?
Why is the vast majority of the untested work of untrained and inexperienced hobbyists, who are largely crafting to craft, rather than out any directed design, "such fucking shit"?
Gee, I'm not sure.
It's probably Wayne's fault.

Okay but one of the guys in my group has made a homebrew and it sucks balls and I am the only one who realizes. And if we tell him it will fuck up his self-esteem, I'd love to help him improve it but honestly it's too shit for that.

>it sucks balls and I am the only one who realizes.
Confirm your view is as objective as possible first.
Even a perfect circle is a shItty square.
Do not confuse subjective taste for fact.
That said, I believe you.

>And if we tell him it will fuck up his self-esteem
You are not responsible for the self esteem of others.
Unless you're married to them, then it's debatable.
Just don't be a dick.

>I'd love to help him improve it but honestly it's too shit for that.
Best advice here: A slow and subtle version of this: Bitch wants to eat a rock?
Make Stone Soup.

It's like RISUS but more complicated and with horrid GM railroading (but that's not the system), the numbers balance is horrible yet it is supposed to be "balanced" later on even though it isn't.

why do you think, you dingalingding?

I'm subscribed to the unearthedarcane subreddit also, it sucks the codex got taken down but you can probably find it somewhere.

thank you for that well thought out, and detailed analysis that informs your opinion.

>rushed job
>biased opinions
>production quality.
>cant handle negative constructive feedback
>audience doesn't read it carefully

These are why 99% of most homebrews are shit. I find that most people try to homebrew things because their particular snowflake doesn't sparkle the way they want. While valid, a rushed job and crappy biased opinions takes a huge toll on most things made.

In tandem with the creators own shitty opinions, the reader who finds the homebrew inevitably has his own shitty opinions. And when he opens the document up all excited, only to find that the two shitty opinions dont match he hates it. Its the reason why when most people read homebrew stuff the instantly say "thats retarded how could you think this".

A bid one for me is production quality. I dont know how important this to other is but I really don't want to read your homebrew if it looks like a piece of shit.

The biggest problem though, as someone already pointed out is that most homebrewers never seek out feedback, and they absolutely cannot handle negative constructive feedback. At my LFGS I played homebrew warhammer codexies. It took some warming up on some people but eventually it came around (warhammer players HATE homebrew anything). But once I started doing it, there were two other guys who wanted to. And not only could they not handle any feedback, they SUCK at game balance (which granted, is hard), which is a shame cause I really wanted to help.

Lastly but not least, most people wont read a homebrew carefully and take into account all things considered. This kinda ties in with the "how retarded" comment, but it plays a significant role. I cant count the times someone balked before finished reading something.

Now of course cause I have to, here is an example of my homebrews. I dont recall if I have finished spell checking this one yet, its been a while since I worked on a warhammer codex.

Because most people are way too tryhardy and special snowflakey about it. They try to make shit too unique, as though uniqueness is a quality unto itself, and it ends up just being weird, annoying, inconsistent, and filled to the brim with self inserts and mary sues.

Because it's extremely difficult to get people to even read someone's homebrew material, let alone sit down and playtest it with them. Many people struggle to find games and groups with existing, well known systems. Pull out something you wrote yourself and the players will head for the door. Without the ability to get meaningful feedback it's impossible to improve anything.

>People want dice to be the unique thing about their system/reason to play, not the mechanics
>People don't get/want to playtest
>People don't understand math, statistics, or probability
>People don't understand technical writing
>People don't understand formatting
>People don't understand spellchecker
>People don't understand the subject material
>People have very limited experience with other systems, if any
>People won't kill their darlings/work in a hugbox
etc.

Yeah, I remember when a couple of autistic fuck fucks failed to understand Tolkein and created this homebrew abomination out of some shitty old wargame.

D&D is epic.
I fucking kill you if you DARE to talk badly of based D&D

A thick skin and the ability to glean the useful feedback from the pure hate is vital to any creative enterprise.

You don't start out with a fanbase, that's earned through blood sweat and tears grappling with their complaints.

Except for this guy, everyone in this thread is right.

all games are homebrews you muppet.

Homebrews made by big companies just have more people and money to get things done more nicely.

1a. People that do homebrew tend to not be seasoned game designers and are unlikely to fully understand the system "under the hood" before changing stuff; they see a flaw and apply a "fix" to it as a knee-jerk reaction without stopping to think how that change affects the rest of the system. Ex: "hit locations should be a thing; it'll take 5 HP to cripple a limb" in D&D ignoring scaling HP and turning every character past level 5 into a damage sponge with moldy toothpicks for limbs.
1b. As above, but replace "see a flaw" with "think they see a flaw." Ex: nerfing monks early in 3.X's life cycle because they looked at the class's long list of abilities and thought it was OP.
2. Homebrews often try to shove a square peg into a round hole. Ex: I personally have suffered through too many "D&D 3.5 but homebrewed to be gritty realistic with modern firearms and in-depth social rules and blah blah blah."
3. Homebrews simply aren't playtested before they're applied to a campaign; unless you've got multiple group and one is explicitly your "main" group and the other your "one-off testing group," the only way you can see if your homebrew works is by including it in your campaign, which isn't really a test at all.

>In tandem with the creators own shitty opinions, the reader who finds the homebrew inevitably has his own shitty opinions. And when he opens the document up all excited, only to find that the two shitty opinions dont match he hates it. Its the reason why when most people read homebrew stuff the instantly say "thats retarded how could you think this".

Holy fucking shit, this. If a reader's feelings don't match the writer's feelings, everyone gets upset and takes it as personal attacks. Since NOBODY has identical feelings, there will always be a feels-war.

yep. If you have money, you can out-advertise anything negative.

That's like saying all films are amateur indie films. A team of people that literally design games full-time for a living is going to have a markedly-different result than one guy working on a homebrew when it's slow at the office. The difference between the two will be much more than aesthetics, layout, and polish.

Of course, this isn't to say a team of professionals can't fuck things up royally (because they can, have, and will do so again) or that homebrews cannot be good (DtD40k7e, Artifice, etc.).

I wouldn't say 99% of homebrews are shit. Depends on what you're trying to achieve, and what your influences are.

People overwank "professional" game makers. If you're shamelessly stealing parts of other games you end having most of the aspects that need real testing.

This sadly is true. One of the largest table top roleplaying games in the the world came out of some neckbeards in their garage playing pretend with a half assed bastardized Tolkein rip off. If they can do it then why can't your homebrew do anything user?

Yup that is so true. One of the toughest parts about homebrew is knowing when to take feedback even if you think its bad, and when to stick to your guns cause you know its right. To much peer review can turns everything into shit, cause often your peer reviewers are the aforementioned people with shit opinions and who are shit at game balance. But if you dont make some compromises you never get a fanbase, and without one whats the point.


I remember when showing one of my very first homebrew codexes off I got that reaction. It was really difficult not to tell them how "no, actually they are shit" but that wouldnt have gotten me anywhere.

I would say most homebrew is about content not a system. Homebrew systems tend to have more dedicated writers and tend to be less shit than someones showflake.

>overwank
lol thats true. The only difference between homebrew vs professional in some cases is whether or not money is being made, and the inability to discuss the product with the author.

>napoleon conquered half of europe why can't you user?

At some point in your life you need to accept that 40-60% of people are just better than you and some people are exponentially better than you are or ever will be.

Napoleon was in a good situation with the skillset he needed and in an environment where it would work and even then he still got fucked over by his women and completely lost.

Gary Gygax in comparison was some neckbeard in a garage goofing off with his obese neckbeard friends. So anyone should be able to do the same as long as they aren't an idiot.

Your view of reality disagrees with how reality actually plays out.
I'm going to have to side with reality over you on this one.

the market is more saturated now

Because 99% of the people who make homebrews aren't game designers and can't handle criticism without sperging out.

I'd argue being a game designer doesn't necessarily guarantee any level of competence. There are some real shit games out there made by "game designers."

Okay, being a racecar driver doesn't guarantee that they won't get into a car accident, doesn't mean that they aren't good drivers though.

Even the most professional game dev will fuck up, but at the end of the day, they still got their shit published, which is more than any random neckbeard on the internet can claim when pushing their shitty homebrew.

A lot of solid answer in this thread.
I'd also add that a lot professional games have pretty glaring problems. It usually ends up being math fuck-ups which is sort of odd since those are some of the most measurable elements of the game and should be easiest to fix by anyone being paid to do this shit.

But even with problems the game is still playable. People will play it because it's presentable. The fiction inside is written by professionals and probably doesn't sound too cringy. It has nice art, it's printed maybe even in hardcover. You don't think about the people who made it because the book looks complete enough in it's own right, or if you do they seem like the respectable type of people or the unspecific figure of "staff."

There is a basic trust that comes with using a professional product, the reader is willing to accept that it works. The players are willing to overlook flaws and make the game work because the game seems like it should work. If it's good enough to be printed it's good enough to play.

A homebrew doesn't have that authority. It's not printed, the guy who made it is distinct and very clearly some just some dude like us, the art is bad, non-existent or copy-pasted and over all it just doesn't instil confidence. The game itself might be unplayable but I think most often it's usually not to far below what we find in stores. It's just that without the dressing of professionalism it is easier to look at critically. There isn't the sort of trust necessary to make the game work.

Most of the guys who write these games didn't go to some special RPG writing school. They're hobbyists who took the next step and bothered to publish what they made. They aren't special, some of them aren't even good at their jobs.

There are loads of bad homebrews, many of which could actually end up being pretty decent with some revising and testing.
and this

>It usually ends up being math fuck-ups which is sort of odd since those are some of the most measurable elements of the game and should be easiest to fix...

Oldbeard here.

As somebody who's worked in the industry (TSR, WotC and have done playtesting for AEG, FFG and FanPro/CGL), I can tell you with a reasonable degree of certainty that the creative "idea" people who are absolutely vital to the process of getting product out the door are almost never - ever - people who are good at math. They're almost exclusively writers and artists, while most of their consumer base is made up of your aforementioned math people.

What gets the game devs out of bed in the morning isn't making sure the math is balanced. They do what they do because they enjoy writing and creating settings, characters, and stories. The math is a tertiary at the absolute best. Most of the time system-building math isn't ever really even run down systematically. It's written to a standard of, "this feels about right", and then handed over to playtest groups. The playtest groups aren't given instruction on how to break a game, it's not like software development. They're asked to give a report or two, and they're asked if the game feels about right and lets them play in the way the designers envisioned. If it does, then playtesting gets wrapped up and the product moves from layout to the printer.

You need a completely different layer of development to exist to get the math right, and pretty much no game company can support those extra people and their salaries. TSR at its heyday (~1994-ish) might have, but the will from management wasn't there to do it. For the foreseeable future, the math is always going to be the weak point of RPGs just because of the people writing them. Writers and creatives are usually bad math people, and math people are usually bad writers, and the economics of the game industry usually preclude both from being on a project at the same time.

>le 99% of everything is shit
>companies which put money into art and advertising automatically have better rules
>dudes neckbears who can't take criticism lol

Nice thread.

t. butthurt homebrewer

That does line up with the recent industry trends to lighter systems, or using stuff like Fate or PbtA systems that are mostly complete and don't have much math to really shit up.