Reinventing the wheel

I love making new rules.

Feats, skills, classes... mmmmm crunchy. Although I have accepted the will of the masses that new skills are bad! Bad game designer! You will always find plenty of the rest in any book with my name on it.

I see the occasional rant online by folks who want less of this sort of thing, or even none. Several popular books have been done advertising themselves as containing NO crunch *shudder*.

Before this turns into a crunch v. cream debate (and before I get hungry), let me say that I would never buy a book that contains no crunch and you can also take that statement as a pledge that I'd never write one (yeah, I'm one of those selfish bastard writers who writes the books he'd like to buy).

I know plenty of people think any monkey can write crunch and the real test of a writer comes in his setting material.

Maybe, but I still don't want it.

I don't GM to live someone ELSE'S vision. Certainly not some game designer. RE Howard maybe. But when I GM I play in my own world.

And for a long time that world has included crunch of my own design. From the klingon-esque High Orcs of my beloved home brew fantasy to junking the alignment and spell slot system for Legends of Excalibur, I have always wanted to open the hood... throw out the parts I don't want, and see if I cant make this baby go any faster.

Chuck