Customizing a Setting

Before deciding to go down the path of publishing Heirs of Argax, I spoke with a lot of people in the designer and OSR community about what they like to see from a published setting. A few times the topic of customization came up. Namely, is it "just" a setting or will it include new custom classes and rules supplements for the game system? And whilst I plan on publishing an accompanying rules supplement that details the house rules I use for my OD&D/Swords & Wizardry campaign in the setting, I am unsure about custom classes.

In a previous post, I spoke about setting limits and parameters for players in your campaign setting. Adding more classes to the mix seems counterintuitive to my stated goals, unless I were to eliminate some classes to not have an overload on class (and thus NPC) options. That being said, the greater question rests upon me as to what the intention of a published setting should be when made of another system.

If I look at the setting of Dolmenwood (which is amazing BTW), it has its foundations in Old-School Essentials but has become its own "OSE house rule" game where unique classes and races are expected. But this is not my intention for Heirs of Argax. It is not supposed to be its own game. I want it to be a campaign setting for use with Swords & Wizardry (and similar). To function as thus, I believe the setting shouldn't necessarily make the options in the S&W books redundant...they should be usable in a published setting.

Gods of the Forbidden North (also amazing BTW) is a campaign with a setting designed for Advanced OSE. This product adds setting flavor to the existing options found in OSE along with some rules supplements, but it does not load you up with a bunch of new custom classes and races. It's intended to be used with the OSE options and not instead of them.

Right now I believe the best path forward for Heirs of Argax is to offer referees and players an emergent sandbox campaign setting where they do not need to add new rules and player options to what they have already paid for. However, I am open to idea down the road. Leave a comment with what you prefer from a published setting that is designed to be used with a separate game system like Swords & Wizardry. Do you want/expect new class and race options or possibly just some supplemental rules one could use with the setting?