Legwork and the Home Game

A few years have passed since In Praise of Legwork came out. Long enough for the analysis and suggestions in there to become more commonplace in day to day discussions. Sam's piece was grappling with products being published for sale. Yet, I have seen a good number of people apply that seem methodology to their work for their home games that they will never end up publishing. This is an awful lot of pressure to put on one's self for a game that's probably going to be weekly or bi-weekly. There is legwork for a campaign but often it's not the full scale assault of making an entire city stat with countless NPCs or modeling the years of history in an empire, usually the prep a home game craves is all about fleshing out what's about to be played. The frame of mind for the home game is the long voyage at sea that you and your crew can adjust to as needed. Products are thrown out into the world and have to stand for themselves. It's easy to get the commercial advice twisted with the hobby…