If you're anything like me than chances are at some point during the many, many times you've been skimming your source books, learning about places that exist only in the minds of gamers and designers, you've had this thought: I could do that way better.
Sure most roleplaying games involve creating your own material to some extent depending on the goals of a given game but there's usual somethings that are left alone.
In D&D, one more or less assumes that the Drow live in the Underdark. Or that Dragons horde treasure, after some fashion and humans, elves, dwarves, etc. exist in more or less the same fashion. In Old World of Darkness, one does tend to assume that Caine existed or that lower generations means more power. When we make our own adventures we tend to stay within these established traditions. Like a coloring book we may use any amount of colors but stay within the lines.
Sometimes we want to be preschoolers. The lines make the world boring sometimes and everybody knows the "rules".
So we flip everything over. We don't just make up our own stuff, we take the old stuff and make it different. Now all that "knowledge" is nothing but a stumbling block because the stereotypes aren't relievent in the least.
This is a thread dedicated to DMs (or players, why block people out) who have gone off the beaten path and twisted a game system so far around it's neck came close to snapping.
There's two conditions: #1) the game you "made" needs to have worked, that is the players need to have had fun, and #2) it can't be something created out of truly whole cloth. This is for mutations of existing games, not your personal creations.
My biggest success at this was an inverted Underdark in Dungeons and Dragons 3.0. I rewrote the races completely including racial bonuses, favored classes, size in some cases, and their roles in mixed society. Drow, drueger, and other dark baddies ruled the surface world while the PC races toughed it out underground.
This lead to a campaign of expansion as the players explored new caverns, continually looked for new resources (food, fresh water, ores, and building materials (not alot of lumber in the Underdark)), and interacted in a society with a siege mindset.
The players had a great time playing the "strange new" races and encountering problems that weren't used to. I'm currently trying to rewrite the setting for D&D 4E.
