YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE

The situation is as follows: your group has gathered for a session zero. You haven't even decided which system to use yet, but you've all come to the conclusion that no existing system will be 100% adequate for the sort of game you're all interested in.

>A: you're one of the players.
Option 1 - The DM offers to run a game using a system he's homebrewed from the ground up.
Option 2 - The DM offers to run an established, familiar system with some homebrewed houserules.

>B: you're the DM.
Option 1 - Offer to use the system you've homebrewed from the ground up.
Option 2 - Offer to homebrew some houserules for an established, familiar system.

Explain.

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I already run a half homebrewed system anyways

If everyone gets together and discusses all these options then whatever gets chosen should be good.

Option 2. Always option 2. I once dropped an energy drink and my Adderall pill in the evening one day, made a thread about it, said I was going to hyperfocus on any project Veeky Forums was going to give me, and got started on a Calvin and Hobbes RPG.
I got to namefag unashamedly as Adderall-kun for about a week.
I vomited out this weird, really rough d100 ruleset that was basically a hybrid of Lasers and Feelings and Everyone is John.
4 months later I discovered Primetime Adventures, which had the exact resolution mechanics I was looking for, and only needed some ruleset tweaks to work splendidly for the tone of Calvin and Hobbes, and recreate the overarching feel of the comics.

Nothing else equal, option A2 and B2 are better. As long as the existing system is good, modifying it to suit our tastes is easier and more reliable than creating a wholly new system.
On the other hand, if no system is adequate for the game we want to play, maybe we will gain nothing from basing it on another system. If this is the case, options A1 and B1 are preferred.

Which of these options would you put forward as your preference, when it's time to discuss this with your group?

>Whatever you guys decide is fine by me
is pleb tier, user.

Why not just use GURPS, God's gift to mankind?

Using GURPS is basically option 2.

Option 2

Most people can't fucking manage grammar, much less systems and a proper game. Even popular games are busted 90 percent of the time. I don't trust the goatee'd retard that dropped out of highschool to make a system.

Because you know as well as I do that running GURPS means everyone needs to be familiar with GURPS, and the tedium of the system is far greater than what the modern gaming market is looking for.
In short, everyone who was already gaming back in the day is now married, elmployed, and busy with their lives.
Everyone else is new to the hobby and prefers systems that are more easy to jump into and having fun faster.
In short, GURPS, while not a difficult system, is a time-consuming one, and simply can't compete with faster, more simplistic systems from a practical standpoint. Same goes for the BRP system, unfortunately.
Games like 5e, Genesys, OSR Retroclones, and Savage Worlds are dominating the market because they manage to hit a kind of sweet spot of simplicity and function.

>Option 2. Always option 2. I once dropped an energy drink and my Adderall pill in the evening one day, made a thread about it, said I was going to hyperfocus on any project Veeky Forums was going to give me, and got started on a Calvin and Hobbes RPG.
>I got to namefag unashamedly as Adderall-kun for about a week.
>I vomited out this weird, really rough d100 ruleset that was basically a hybrid of Lasers and Feelings and Everyone is John.
>4 months later I discovered Primetime Adventures, which had the exact resolution mechanics I was looking for, and only needed some ruleset tweaks to work splendidly for the tone of Calvin and Hobbes, and recreate the overarching feel of the comics.
I remember those threads. You did good!

option 2 is almost always the correct way to go about it, but sometimes you don1t have the large enough knowledge base to pull from, so you go with option 1

A2 and B2

Its simply less work and I've yet to meet a DM that makes a framework thats actually better than an existing product.

That sounds even worse "I don't know enough about systems to find one that's good, so I'll try to create my own system without the knowledge of how a good system really works!" Swallow your damn pride and use something someone with a LOT more experience than you made.

In this day and age there are so many games out there, almost all easily accessible, that it is literally impossible to not find something that comes close to any idea of game. At the very least, there are dozens of generic systems that could be tweaked to get close to that 100%.
So basically what I'm saying is option B, with a large dose of lurk moar to go with it.

Option A for both cases.

If you homebrew a game you understand fully what the design decisions and purposes of each are. Playing somebody's homebrewed high fantasy action published system to run a horror campaign would be fucking terrible.

This is the caveat that the DM is either me or someone else who I know has skill when designing rulesets and systems anyway.

The truth of this is though that what "a system with houserules" and "a homebrew from the ground up" have no actual clear inbetween. If you're playing a game with a d20 + modifiers and roll high to succeed you could argue that's a D&D homebrew, despite it being generic enough to work in almost any system.

>implying option 1 isn't going to end out being the same as option 2 but shittier anyway

Option 2. I don't know why this would even be a question. If I'm a player I don't want to be playtesting my GM's half baked homebrew, even with someone I trusted to actually properly design systems I wouldn't want to be in one of the first groups to use it. If I'm running the game I know better than to try and build a full system myself, it would be mediocre at best and probably awful.

>If you homebrew a game you understand fully what the design decisions and purposes of each are

Experience proves otherwise.

>A1
>B1
I'm a masochist.

Your experiences sure. The fact that homebrew has become a dirty word on Veeky Forums shows what brand worshipping fuckjobs really lurk here. Literally every single system ever made was some faggots homebrew to start with. If you can't learn to make games, why are you on a board about traditional games?

There is homebrew of parts of a game you know, and there is the delusion of knowing better than people who do design professionally because reasons.
Dunning-Kruger is a thing, you know.

>and there is the delusion of knowing better than people who do design professionally because reasons.

What is the "delusion"? The delusion that I think I don't like their games and want to change a few things or make my own? You implied here that it's "delusional" to think that my game which exists as a separate thing can somehow match or exceed a "published" game, despite my game not trying to directly compete.

You also seem to forget that roleplaying games do not have to be perfect at all. Rules are literally secondary to the experience, and can and should be mutated on the fly in case problems arise halfway through a game. Why would I bother learning and cobbling together a frankenstien system instead of making my own, simpler one that I fully understand?

Why do you assume or seem to believe that a published game is somehow automatically better then my own, or one you could create? People on Veeky Forums CONSTANTLY bitch about problems created from published systems. They are quite clearly flawed creatures, ESPECIALLY when tied in with the freedom and worldbuilding of a tabletop game that may not be to you or your groups taste. It's not even like a book or movie or video game where objective things like the production quality or graphics or amount of content can be objectively said to be better; literally everything of value in a roleplaying game can be made by you and you alone and be just as good as anything some "published" designer makes.

You are worshiping people who either began the hobby, or people who are lucky or connected enough to get publishing jobs. These people are not necessarily real designers. But the fact you even mentioned Dunning-Kruger at all shows you are a massive fucking brainlet anyway, so what do you know?

Enjoy your dole dippers, shitposter.

>four dungeon masters
>one player

It's just that nine out of ten homebrews that were designed from scratch are fantasy heartbreakers.

indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/

...

Yeah, definitely didn't mean Option 1 as a good decision, just the decision you go with.

Although if nobody did it, we'd never get any new games to then mod with Option 2.

Did someone reject your shitty homebrew?

Option 2 both times. Making a system is hard

I play in a group and our GM uses his own homebrew system which he’s refined over several years. It’s decent enough for our purposes but it’s a little bloated and a lot of the attributes overlap.

I’m planning on GMing an upcoming campaign though, and at first wanted to develop my own system but after seeing what a mess it was I decided to look into some OSR systems and maybe homebrew a couple of rules. Most of our group has only played in our GM’s homebrew system (most of the veterans moved away) so I’m excited to introduce my fellow players to some new systems.