So, I have started a blog on D&D. Specifically, modding, a term which I created this post to explain in more detail.
I don't know why, but I really dislike the word "homebrew." The only reason I really included it in the URL is because I couldn't resist that title :)
In all seriousness, though, it's also a restrictive term. Homebrewing is pretty much making stuff up from scratch, which is a very small part of the community it describes. There's also reflufffing, which is retaining the mechanics but changing what they represent (for example, a friend and fellow gamer wanted to play as a wolf as a tribute to one of the Zelda games, so he took the stats for Minotaur and interpreted them as stats for a giant wolf. Goring charge became leaping up and biting enemies, his weaponry became claws, etc.). Additionally, there's edition-to-edition conversion, taking something done in one edition of D&D and changing it to fit another edition, like updating the Greyhawk campaign setting's ruleset from 3.5e so that it can be used in a 4e campaign. Probably not last and definitely not least, there's houseruling, which is making up or altering rules from the original game for your campaign, like a DM banning Pixie NPCs, as mine did.
Looking at all these ways of changing, customizing and enhancing D&D, I knew there had to be a term to describe them. Therefore, I took the liberty of stealing the word "mod" from the video game industry. Like the term I want to describe, modding is customizing and enhancing a game, generally by adding original content. It fits perfectly!
So, from now on, on this blog, enhancing and changing the original D&D game will be referred to as modding. So there.
Also, if you're wondering why this looks like it was written at 2 in the morning, it's because I barely got a wink of sleep last night and I feel like my head's full of fog.
Yeah, that's my first post. Welcome to my modding blog :)
