Pre made or homebrew?

[kronovan]

I'm somewhat compulsive (I think I can honestly leave off the obssesive part) about homebewing worlds. The only premade settings I can find any enthusiasm for our the World of Midgard, Middle Earth, the Traveller verse, Greyhawk (mostly for nostalgia) and the Interface Zero 2.0 verse for which I was one of the setting writers. I've brewed up 9 worlds to date that cover a wide spectrum ranging from Heroic Fantasy to Military SciFi. My most fleshed out is what I consider Psychepunk, and having been brewing it for about a decade it's rather large. It contains 3 Virtual Reality worlds which are based upon the Cyberpunk, Historical Fantasy and 30s Pulp genres, within which players can fully explore as jacked-in avatars. To date I've run 5 lengthy campaigns in it. I'm semi-retired only working 3 days a week, so I do have time to brew.

I do from time to time use prewritten adventures, but only if they look to be a good fit or adaptable into one of my worlds. If they aren't low cost enough, or previews or reviews can't tell me how suitable they'd be, I'll take a pass. I do tend to brew my worlds as geographically, politically and culturally diverse, so the possibility of socketing in an prewritten is reasonably good. That said, I much prefer to outline or sometimes fully write out my own adventures.

As ansstet said, you can start out small and just fill out the rest or world as your players explore. Three of my worlds were created that way and they evolved into very playable and explorable settings.