TL;DR: People write their own TTRPGs because:
Existing games don’t scratch their specific creative itch (wrong vibe, clunky rules, unique setting needs).
They’re nerds for mechanics and love tinkering, experimenting, or fixing perceived problems.
They want freedom from big companies, full creative control, and maybe use open licenses like Creative Commons to share freely.
It’s about community: sharing ideas, building on other indie games, and creating spaces for like-minded players.
It’s personal: a fun creative outlet, a challenge, or just making the perfect game for their own table.
Basically, it’s a mix of “This isn’t quite right,” “I have a cool idea!” and “Let’s build something awesome together, outside the mainstream!”
Step into any friendly local game store or browse online TTRPG communities, and you’ll likely see the titans: Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, casting long, impressive shadows. They’re fantastic games, gateways for millions into the hobby. But peek just beyond those shadows, and you’ll find a buzzing, vibrant ecosystem teeming with something else entirely: homemade, bespoke, often wonderfully weird TTRPG systems. While countless players happily adventure within established rulesets, a growing number feel the undeniable itch to tinker, to build, to forge their own way to play. This urge isn’t just about being contrary; it stems from a fascinating mix of creative drive, mechanical curiosity, a desire for independence, community spirit, and the simple joy of making something uniquely yours.
One of the biggest nudges towards the designer’s chair comes from a place of, well, wanting something different. Sometimes, the big-name systems, for all their strengths, just don’t feel right for the story you want to tell. Maybe the heroic derring-do baked into D&D feels off for your planned gritty survival horror game where finding clean water is the main challenge. Perhaps the intricate combat rules feel like trying to chop vegetables with a sledgehammer when you really want a game focused purely on delicate social maneuvering and political backstabbing. It can be a Goldilocks problem: this system’s too crunchy, that one’s too light, and the designer decides the only way to get it “just right” is to cook it up themselves. This dissatisfaction often pairs with a powerful creative vision. Got a world that runs on dream logic, involves sentient fungi reclaiming ruins, or requires intricate rules for magical bureaucracy? Existing systems might only stretch so far before the seams show. Crafting custom mechanics becomes the only way to truly make the rules reflect the unique reality of the setting, ensuring the game feels like the world it portrays.
Beyond just making rules fit a theme, many budding designers are simply captivated by the nuts and bolts of how games work. They look under the hood of their favorite TTRPGs and start wondering, “What if initiative worked differently?” or “Could we resolve social conflicts with a push-your-luck dice pool instead of just a single skill check?” Designing a system becomes an intellectual puzzle, a playground for mechanical experimentation. They might want to explore novel ways to handle character creation, magic, or progression, not necessarily because existing ways are “bad,” but because exploring the possibilities is exciting. It’s like being a mad scientist in a lab full of dice, cards, and tokens, gleefully testing hypotheses about what makes play engaging, surprising, or emotionally resonant. Sometimes, this experimentation is aimed at solving perceived problems – trying to streamline notoriously slow combat, better integrate investigation clues, or make resource management genuinely tense and meaningful.
Then there’s the pull of autonomy, a desire to step outside the established ecosystems built by large game companies. Creating your own system means complete creative control. No corporate overlords, no brand guidelines to adhere to, just your ideas brought to life exactly as you envision them. For some, this is also an ethical or ideological stance. Concerns over business practices or restrictive licensing agreements – the historical kerfuffles around Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game License (OGL) being a prime example – can motivate creators to build something truly independent. This is where licenses like Creative Commons (CC) become incredibly important and appealing. Unlike more restrictive licenses designed primarily for commercial control, CC licenses are built with sharing and community in mind. Choosing a CC license (like CC-BY or CC-BY-SA) signals a desire to contribute back to the hobby, allowing others to freely use, remix, and build upon your work, fostering a truly open and collaborative design space. It’s a powerful statement about wanting to build with the community, not just sell to it, ensuring your creation remains accessible and part of the hobby’s shared toolkit, free from the whims of corporate strategy.
This ties directly into the community aspect. The indie TTRPG scene thrives on shared inspiration and mutual support. Designing and releasing a game, even a small one, is a way to participate in a larger conversation. Designers constantly borrow clever mechanics, iterate on interesting concepts seen elsewhere, and contribute their own innovations back into the collective pool. Think of it as a vibrant design potluck where everyone brings their best dish. Game jams, online forums, and Discord servers become hotbeds for this cross-pollination. Furthermore, releasing a unique game often attracts a specific group of players who resonate deeply with its niche premise or mechanics. Suddenly, you’re not just a designer; you’re the catalyst for a new micro-community. Your game provides the shared language and framework for people to connect, share game tales, offer feedback, and even create their own supplementary material, building a dedicated space around a shared passion.
Finally, the reasons can be deeply personal. For many, game design is simply a powerful form of creative expression, combining writing, logical thinking, and sometimes even layout and art. It’s challenging, rewarding, and a fantastic way to learn new skills. Sometimes, the origin is practical: a Game Master starts tweaking rules for their home group’s specific preferences, adding house rule upon house rule until, eventually, it makes more sense to just codify it into a distinct system perfectly tailored for their friends. Others might design with accessibility or inclusivity at the forefront, creating rulesets intended to be easier to grasp for newcomers, better suited for players with specific needs, or inherently supportive of diverse character concepts and stories. And yes, sometimes there’s a modest commercial hope – sharing the game on platforms like Itch.io or DriveThruRPG, perhaps earning a little coffee money while putting their creation out into the world.
In the end, the decision to strike out and design a new TTRPG system is rarely driven by just one factor. It’s a rich tapestry woven from creative necessity, mechanical fascination, the pursuit of independence, the desire to connect and contribute, and the sheer personal satisfaction of building something new. This vibrant undercurrent of independent creation is vital to the health of the tabletop roleplaying hobby, constantly injecting new ideas, exploring uncharted territory, and ensuring that there’s always a game out there – or the potential to make one – for every imaginable taste and story.
If I may jump in, there’s another reason as well, one that’s a mix of ethical sense and parental duty (diligentia boni patris familias). Let me explain: when your teenage children grow up surrounded by completely wrong role models that promote values entirely opposed to the ethics you were raised with and are trying to pass on to them, as a good father (or mother) you have the duty to teach them what’s right and what’s wrong. But when you see that the fight is unequal, because you’re up against the whole world trying to prove you're right, then you start looking for other ways to share this situation with others. If, like in my case, you have a passion for role-playing games, then you use that as a vehicle to try to convey the values you believe a teenager should learn… of course, all wrapped in fun and play!
P.S. With this answer, I’m not denying that all the other elements you rightly listed are also part of it! (They’re just a bit less important in my eyes, though!)
I got started in designing my own system(s) because I was (am) fascinated with using TTRPGs as a means of creating stories. As a writer, I find rolling the dice to determine some/many/all events (depending on what my goal is) to be thrilling and creatively empowering. Ironsworn is my go-to game for writing, but as its not mine I felt the need to design something that would fill the niche the way Ironsworn does, but belong to me. The problem is that I have too many ideas and its almost impossible to make a one-system-fits-all situation.
I have a file on my desktop called “Dice Powered Stories” that I look at as a cross between the emergent story-telling of a traditional paper and dice game, and LitRPG (except there’s a real system backing every mechanical bit in the “game world”). One day, I’ll make it happen…maybe.