I enjoy building official sets and MOCs. I'll MOC when there isn't an official set that fits the need or the MISB is costly or I want a challenge.

As long as you're having fun, I don't think official set versus MOC matters.

As an AFOL once I get a layout going I probably won't include a CITY building set from the box anymore. CREATOR house sets maybe. I'll keep Exclusive modulars like GG and CC like they are, they look too good to be broken down (why mess with perfection? Ok, CC needs an interior but still!). My future layout will consist of Exclusive modulars, MOCs, and heavy modded sets. For example, my ongoing project is a Pizza Corner. With parts from the 7641 it's dressed up to match modular buildings and looks completely different from the basic 7641.

Vehicles are a different story. LEGO cars and trucks are very good right now, and they're cheap. They're filler for the streets. I'll keep some of them as they are although I would still probably do minor mods on some of them.

A 'classic' style town layout just won't do it for me anymore.

Edited January 11, 201015 yr by wooootles

Each to their own - perfectly applied here. The question is - why, seeing as we're all (supposed to be) grown-ups here can't we have something along the lines of "well, OK, if that's your way of seeing things, no prob", as opposed to showing just how wrong the other party is and precisely how much better / simpler / more original / you-name-it things can be. Come on boys... give it a break. It's a hobby, not a contest - and you partake in your hobbies to enjoy yourself first and foremost, and only after that comes the notion of comparing and ranking your stuff to others'.

So in that sense, why not just try to get along rather than turning this into a pointless debate. As long as, like Teddy mentioned, everything is done to scale and in the appropriate style, I don't see one single reason why MOCs shouldn't be mixed together with official sets. Besides, while constant MOCcing of buildings the size of the Green Grocer might not be a problem for members of bigger LUGs, there are also other LEGO collectors who have a dozen of sets but still love them to bits. What should those guys do - give up displaying them altogether? Doesn't quite make sense to me.

Oh, and as to me - I don't have a layout at home, and I'm more into MOCcing myself, so I rarely keep the original sets. My town layout will most definitely include some original sets (the Super Chief comes to mind), but I'd love to build as many original MOCs as I possibly can. On the other hand, we're preparing our first exhibition with my local LUG and we'll definitely be using the Cafe Corner, the Green Grocer and the Market Street - and I think that makes perfect sense, seeing as a) we're pretty limited in space and time for the project; b) not every member of the LUG does actually dispose of the bricks required to build a CC MOC and c) local audience isn't really that aware of the Modulars. Ralph has mentioned this, but I'm not really convinced that the CC has been done to death everywhere - I could very well imagine that's the case in the UK and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of CCs at every LUG exhibition in the US, but don't forget that there are still other countries that require popularization, and that's precisely what such official sets are good for.

Ok, for all this arguing...

Ralph S likes to MOC and doesn't like to have displays that include official sets. He prefers MOC-ed layouts as they make him feel more Special and ergo the layout more special. Teddy is pointing out that some prefer Sets if they are unconfident in their MOCing or just prefer to collect.

An all MOCed layout, an all set layout and a mixed layout are all equal in all estimations. Both required a lot of time and money spent, both are loved and regarded with pride by their owners. Kay?

Can everyone stop arguing now?

Snobbery is inherent in any and all modelmaking hobbies, model train fans who hand build everything look down on the people who buy theirs in a box, who look down on the "mundies" (muggles, norms etc) who own just a train set.

Scalextric fans who tweak and tune thier cars look down on those who have a simple boxed set.

As long as you don't force your opinions on others or publicly vilify (i.e. say mean things to/about them) for doing something you don't like its all fine.

Me? My planned layout (and first since childhood) is a MOC/Mod/Official mix because it is themed in such a way that only a few official sets fit in, so I have to make my own and modify others to fit most of the time.

Let's keep in mind that the discussion was in fact supposed to lead to some generalization on AFOL's habits. Certainly not to decide what is the best way to be an AFOL

One question coming to my mind as I read the posts is how many of you actually take part in public displays. This complicates things significantly, because even if I have seen public displays with official sets (mostly for commercial/promotional purposes) the typical Lego public event is focused on original creations. That's at least what I suppose, please correct me if I'm wrong... I will create another thread with a poll to ask how many people participate in public Lego displays; so far I assumed that only a relatively small minority of AFOLs actually have that opportunity.

Each to their own - perfectly applied here. The question is - why, seeing as we're all (supposed to be) grown-ups here can't we have something along the lines of "well, OK, if that's your way of seeing things, no prob", as opposed to showing just how wrong the other party is and precisely how much better / simpler / more original / you-name-it things can be. Come on boys... give it a break. It's a hobby, not a contest - and you partake in your hobbies to enjoy yourself first and foremost, and only after that comes the notion of comparing and ranking your stuff to others'.

So in that sense, why not just try to get along rather than turning this into a pointless debate. As long as, like Teddy mentioned, everything is done to scale and in the appropriate style, I don't see one single reason why MOCs shouldn't be mixed together with official sets. Besides, while constant MOCcing of buildings the size of the Green Grocer might not be a problem for members of bigger LUGs, there are also other LEGO collectors who have a dozen of sets but still love them to bits. What should those guys do - give up displaying them altogether? Doesn't quite make sense to me.

Oh, and as to me - I don't have a layout at home, and I'm more into MOCcing myself, so I rarely keep the original sets. My town layout will most definitely include some original sets (the Super Chief comes to mind), but I'd love to build as many original MOCs as I possibly can. On the other hand, we're preparing our first exhibition with my local LUG and we'll definitely be using the Cafe Corner, the Green Grocer and the Market Street - and I think that makes perfect sense, seeing as a) we're pretty limited in space and time for the project; b) not every member of the LUG does actually dispose of the bricks required to build a CC MOC and c) local audience isn't really that aware of the Modulars. Ralph has mentioned this, but I'm not really convinced that the CC has been done to death everywhere - I could very well imagine that's the case in the UK and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of CCs at every LUG exhibition in the US, but don't forget that there are still other countries that require popularization, and that's precisely what such official sets are good for.

Believe it or not, I never wanted this whole discussion to turn into 'yours is bigger than mine'. I just explained my preferences, but these were somehow seen as snobbish. I never once wrote that anybody who does anything else is in any wrong, childish or whatever or that what I do is better.

I'm sure there are plenty of people in the UK who haven't seen Cafe Corner, but part of the fun of building public displays is building something new. I might display the same thing once or twice, but then it's time for something new. Bricksboro Beach had its first outing at STEAM, parts of it will be on display in Brighton in February, but after that a lot of it will be disassembled for something new. The train builders tend to build a new layout every single time, although they may re-use elements.

Let's keep in mind that the discussion was in fact supposed to lead to some generalization on AFOL's habits. Certainly not to decide what is the best way to be an AFOL

One question coming to my mind as I read the posts is how many of you actually take part in public displays. This complicates things significantly, because even if I have seen public displays with official sets (mostly for commercial/promotional purposes) the typical Lego public event is focused on original creations. That's at least what I suppose, please correct me if I'm wrong... I will create another thread with a poll to ask how many people participate in public Lego displays; so far I assumed that only a relatively small minority of AFOLs actually have that opportunity.

You did ask for people's own approach though.

In any case, it's unlikely I would even be building city if it hadn't been for being a member of a LUG and for public displays. For years I have been mainly building large aircraft models and cars. I got back into building town when we had a small competition for a Christmas get-together that involved building a Cafe-Corner compatible building of our own. I didn't even have the Cafe Corner set at the time and few minifigs, but I really enjoyed building my own building and building a couple of 5-wide cars to go with it. At the event we lined up all the different buildings to make a collaborative street. It was fun and it looked good and it made perfect sense to display it at some future public event, so that's what we did. Various versions of this street, depending on who would be there and what new MOCs people had built got outings at a few events after that. In the meantime I kept expanding my own collection of city MOCs. Building all this stuff is what made me realise that city is actually fun. That's where I am coming from here. I buy city sets with the intention of using their parts to make my own stuff. If a set is really good I might keep it in one piece for a bit (Cafe Corner was probably built up for about six months, Green Grocer and the Fire Brigade lasted about two months), but then they go. The thought to take a built-up set and display that as part of my own layout wouldn't even occur to me.

I have since moved to another country, so I will not be able to participate in these large joint projects as easily any more, but I expect to take my own stuff (largely packed up in boxes at the moment) to events myself and have my own little city layout on display. In fact, I'm building new bits with that in mind.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited January 11, 201015 yr by Ralph_S

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking official sets, or people who like to use them. Like TheOtters said, each to his own, my personal preference is to build my own designs because I like to build big and Lego don't release sets on the size I build. With pirates and castle I will always build my own creations, but if I was to build a country landscape with railway, then I'd probably use the Emerald Night with it because Im terrible at building trains. It's a case of using official sets to fill in where I need. Plus I think the Cafe Corner style sets changed things with moc purists, because they were very detailed sets and most afols use them in their town displays. At the end of the day it doesn't matter how you use your sets and bricks, it's about creativity, imagination and having fun. It's been a nice long Xmas break from building, but if you don't mind, I think I'm gonna go and start building again!

I think I'm a pecular case in that a lot of the fun I have with Lego is designing collections and thinking about which sets to buy and how they belong in each collection. So I have:

Modular Buildings. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether Market Street belonged in my collection, but decided against it because the faces on the people weren't the classic smiles, so they wouldn't fit in with the rest of the population. Also... the building looked kind of MOC compared with the other buildings.

Indiana Jones. Only the first three movies, not Crystal Skull. Partly because I enjoyed the original films much more than Crystal Skull, partly because the 1940s look of the vehicles in the original films doesn't go with the older look of the fourth movie. I rarely build all the sets at once, since it's hard to explain how a temple in Cairo can be next to a temple in India and a temple in Peru. Usually I build all the vehicles and only one of the locations. It still looks weird though because the locations are generally internal, and how do you fit a biplane in the Temple of Doom?

Pirates. I build the main things according to the instructions, but the miscellaneous sets, like the BrickMaster book, the Advent Calendar and the two impulse sets get pooled into a Random Pile of Assorted Pirate-Themed Pieces. And then I use these RPoAP-TPs to make some kind of MOC structure, usually a tower of some sort. This is actually the only range where I do any MOCing, because this is the range where it is easiest to build some kind of haphazard structure and explain it as a ramshackle pirate lair. My pirates can stick two planks together to make anything.

City. I'm building a small farming town. Boats or coastal sets don't fit because my town is inland. Freight trains go through it (or more usually, around). There is a small airfield, not big planes, only small ones. Big fire and police stations are way too big for my small town. If I think it's the sort of structure or vehicle that belongs in a small town, I'll buy it. Occasionally I will buy a large set, like the Police Command Centre, because it has one building or vehicle that fits perfectly in my town, in this case the small police outpost. There are quite a lot of trucks, and a small construction site. I actually started this collection because I wanted to get the Emerald Night and wanted some small farm sets for it to circle... and then the farm sets turned into a village, and I actually prefer freight trains to go through it rather than steam trains. So I didn't get the Emerald Night after all.

Castle. This is a new range for me. I wasn't going to buy any, but I saw MMV in a toy shop and had to have it. Then I had to get a couple of other castle sets to go with it - only human stuff, no skeletons or goblins. And now the 2010 castle sets look exactly like what I need, so now I'll have three castle factions - the Fantasy Era humans and the two new human factions. I think the Fantasy Era human kingdom will be situated between the other two warring factions. They will be trying to keep the piece, because every time fighting breaks out, they literally get caught in the middle.

Anyway... I could write about this stuff all day. As I said, quite often I enjoy thinking about how to build my collections than I enjoy the actual lego.

Edit: By the way, I think the best way to deal with confrontations is to not escalate a conflict. Or if you want to reply to a comment you find disagreeable, but you think that your reply might provoke an even more disagreeable reaction... sometimes it's better to let the comment slide. There is a lot of conflict in this thread that I think could have been avoided. There is NO wrong way to play with lego, whatever a person wants to do with their OWN Lego is ALWAYS right, even if it seems childish and simple or unnecessarily methodical and clinical to someone else.

Edited January 11, 201015 yr by David Thomsen

I like both official models and MOCs, and have a good mix of both on my display shelves (at home). When I buy a set, it is usually something I intend to keep together for a long time. The bulk of my MOC parts come from Bricklink, or occasionally from extra copies of sets.

Part of the joy of putting together a layout can be enhancing or improving official sets (eg, I always replace the cone and 1x1 round plate flowers on Creator houses with more classic foliage like proper flowers and trees as I find them more visually appealing).

This is something I like doing too. I have a lot of official sets built up and almost all of them are modified in some way. Some mods are trivial (filling up holes in spacecraft cockpits), some are more substantial (adding functions to Technic models), and some are closer to MOCs but are made of largely the same pieces.

Edited January 11, 201015 yr by CP5670

Just a couple of more things that came to my mind: let's not forget that there are also AFOLs who have limited time for the hobby, and MOCing requires certainly more time, at least until you're good at it. Furthermore, AFOLs who haven't been in the hobby long enough yet may not have easily enough right bricks for even starting most of the ideas that come to their mind. Therefore let's not be too hard in judging those who mostly build official sets.

Let's see"

Army Builder: Yes

Build Mid scale to large Pirate themed MOC's: Yes

Build large display: Yes

I must be an AFOL!

I agree with what many have said here but I think Svelte probably expressed it in a way that I most closely related with. I really like custom MOC's both my own and the amazing stuff others here create. I think the MOC's are the heart and sole of this site but I also love many official sets as I can tell many of you do as well. I don't keep many sets together long, infact Eldorado Fortress and the CC buildings are the only official sets I have currently together. I think using an official set in a larger layout is perfectly acceptable and in many ways very cool. I also think that MOD's are very cool and can look really nice on their own or in a larger layout.