[Ari Marmell's blog] To House Rule or Not to House Rule

I just read Ari Marmell's blog, "I fought the RAW, and the RAW won" and I have to say that my trajectory is rather similar: More house ruling in the Elder Days of my RPG career, especially with 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, and less so with 3ed and 4ed. Actually, with 4ed--because it was after a few years gaming hiatus--I sort of re-capitulated my former trajectory of house ruling: I started out with none, then started adding them like crazy, then started cutting them away until...well, I'm thinking of getting rid of just about all of them except for my favorite one of all, which isn't really a house rule: DM Fiat. I just don't feel like it is worth the hassle, especially in terms of trying to balance house rules with everything else.

My biggest struggle over house ruling in 4ed is with regards to critical hits, which just aren't satisfactory to me, at least not until higher levels and you get the stacking effect. But in general, there is nothing more anti-climatic than a critical hit at a dramatic moment, followed by "You do max damage, which is 12 HP." I created a couple options, including an open-ended system where a natural 20 could result in larger amounts of damage, but I've found that in order to get the right blend of balance, drama, and lethality-without-going-overboard, my crit system got more and more complex. Now I'm thinking of paring it down and saying that a critical hit does what I--as DM--says it does (in addition to the RAW version). For example, a crit may automatically kill any non-Elite or Solo monster of less than a certain number of HP, or it may do double max damage against a major enemy. And so on. The idea being to bring the drama and excitement back into critical hits, and to make them really count.

But I digress. What are your thoughts about Mr. Marmell's blog? Do you house rule more or less with 4ed (or whatever edition or game you play)? And is house ruling more or less difficult with X-edition/game?

I don't House Rule a ton, but I suppose I still do it. Though I am not entirely sure, in his article, what definition of House Rule he is using. Simply changing rules or adding new ones to the game, or is he referring as well to customized game elements like unique weapons or powers designed by the DM?

In the case of the second... I absolutely still do use such things in 4E, just as I did in the past. And the level of balance in this edition is flexible enough that no issues have arisen from such offerings. But 4E seems to actively encourage that level of design on the part of the DM, and makes it relatively easy when you can compare races/feats/paragon paths/artifacts/etc to existing ones, and see pretty solid formulas for how to design such things.

In terms of actual House Rules... yeah, I do use them. And typically to rebalance elements in the RAW that I think are poorly done. Something like the Expertise feats, for example. Or, often, the same things that will eventually see errata from WotC itself. 4E is very well balanced, but some real mistakes definitely make their way into the books. WotC has done a very good job with eventually catching them and providing errata, but I still feel there is room to make fixes - and occasionally even the outright need to do so.

3.5e adopted several of my 3.0e house rules, so my book of house rules got significantly thinner.

Also, I discovered a few more elegant ways to get the game effect I wanted, and that allowed me to condense my rules further.


With regards to 4e, it's so big and has so many independently moving parts that my only house rules now consist of specific banned things... and that hardly counts as house rules, IMHO.

Cheers, -- N

Not at all for me, actually. I don't care too overly much about balance. Certainly no more than I did previousy. I guess I was never ignorant of balance before 3e, and I never got obsessed with balance during 3e either. At the end of the day, I like a nice, robust set of mechanics that works reasonably well, but I don't value it too much for its own sake.

And maybe that's where we differ a lot. I don't houserule to "fix" things very often; I houserule to change things. Major assumptions, mostly. Since I prefer a dark fantasy sword and sorcery to high fantasy wuxia or superheroes with swords, I've had to do a lot of tinkering with D&D to make it work for me. I prefer swashbuckling cinematic action to tactical fluency and battle maps. Again; have to do some work on things. I strongly dislike D&D style magic. I strongly dislike elves. (Although that's an easy houserule.)

So I houserule for reasons of style and taste, not because I'm an incipient game designer looking to put my mark on the mechanics at my table.

For that matter, I write very few of my own houserules. One of the main reasons I still play d20 at all is because there are so many alternatives in print that I can pick and choose like a massive a la carte buffet of options rather than having to write stuff on my own. If if wasn't for that, honestly, I'd probably be playing Savage Worlds or True20 or something instead anyway.

A few points if I may...

Regarding balance as a governing factor in D&D. I feel that this is one of the true dividing lines between editions and a hidden cause of edition warring. I submit to you that the edition wars, (Not trying to pick a side here or start one so please don't take this the wrong way.) are actually a tag team cage match between OD&D 1st and 2nd ed. and 3.0 3.5 and 4th edition.

The whole balance thing is a function of game design that only makes sense from a game publisher perspective imo. A balanced product as a whole appeals to a wider audience I would think. I do also happen to think it's interesting that there are certain parallels to a certain Blizzard Entertainment product and 4th edition however. Mainly because of the intense focus on balance and the way errata has taken the form of "patches" to the product so to speak.

I think the people who are going to remain in favor of houseruling are going to start falling to the wayside more and more however as older gamers both leave the hobby and as the generations that are exposed current trends take stewardship of tabletop gaming more and more. The DDI suite only hastens things as it also makes it just a little harder and harder to houserule.

Personally I don't want balance to the nth degree. I like 4e but the balance conceit is something I could frankly do without.

IMO, this is the crux of the thing:

Mouseferatu said:

And the problem is, once Balance became a major part of my process, in terms of creating RPG materials, I lost the ability to turn it off.

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It's a tragedy.

It's like someone who studied English because they loved stories no longer being able to just friggin' tell a story.

It's like someone who studied Film because they loved movies no longer being able to just go to a friggin' movie.

As so often in life, I find the words of Kurt Vonnegut to be transcendentally liberating on the general topic:

Kurt Vonnegut said:

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own *, so to speak.

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Cross out "literature" and replace "rules," (or, really, any other creative process -- it works for 'em all!) and you have one of the big maxims by which I create.

Ari Marmell is a very good D&D designer. The fact that he can't surrender all his learned over-thinking about balance and caution in order to spice up his own bleedin' home game, like there's Balance Police in his own brain, is a testament to the ability of intellectualization to absolutely crush innate, productive creativity. The creativity of those high school years, of D&D's target audience, of wildly unbalanced fun.

I think it's really sad that his home games are barren of the rich, verdant fields of off-the-cuff ruling and tweaking that are the hallmark of any great D&D campaign, the thing that makes D&D yours, and not someone else's, whatever balance quirks or fudging blah or unintended consequences happen.

Seems like he's come to a similar conclusion, since that post ends with a sort of longing for innocence ripe for a dorky version of William Blake.

This is the tension between cold, sterile, keen, efficient logic and rampant, wild, destructive, creative chaos. I think it's sad that Ari's home games have lost, for the moment at least, the dangerous wilderness.

This is D&D. We're D&D players. The dangerous wilderness should be what we seek out.

And when there's no more dangerous wilderness, it's usually time to retire, at least for a time, to that keep you liberated so long ago.

Kamikaze Midget said:

It's a tragedy.

It's like someone who studied English because they loved stories no longer being able to just friggin' tell a story.

It's like someone who studied Film because they loved movies no longer being able to just go to a friggin' movie.

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I vehemently disagree.

Knowledge of a media may prevent you from enjoying the lowest common denominator of that media, but what it grants you is the ability to appreciate things which are better.

A knowledge of art history -- and a significant amount of time spent painting -- has not dulled my ability to just draw a friggin' picture[/u]. Quite the opposite.

Kamikaze Midget said:

Ari Marmell is a very good D&D designer. The fact that he can't surrender all his learned over-thinking about balance and caution in order to spice up his own bleedin' home game, like there's Balance Police in his own brain, is a testament to the ability of intellectualization to absolutely crush innate, productive creativity. The creativity of those high school years, of D&D's target audience, of wildly unbalanced fun.

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I also disagree with your assertion that unbalanced = fun.

IMHO 4e is very hard to house-rule (relative to other editions of D&D), so the fact that Ari has suffered frustration trying to house-rule it makes total sense to me -- and has nothing to do with over intellectualization, or with balance being some kind of boogieman.

Cheers, -- N

Nifft said:

IMHO 4e is very hard to house-rule (relative to other editions of D&D)

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Ok I agree, but why do you think so if it isn't relative to balance?

.5 Elf said:

Ok I agree, but why do you think so if it isn't relative to balance?

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Exception-based design.

To house rule a class in 4e, you have to edit (or at least review & grok) 2.17 metric buttloads of Powers.

Cheers, -- N

Nifft said:

Exception-based design.

To house rule a class in 4e, you have to edit (or at least review & grok) 2.17 metric buttloads of Powers.

Cheers, -- N

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Pardon me but I don't get that at all. Wouldn't exception based design eliminate the need for the process you describe? Unless you were shooting for balance relative to other classes and powers? Or are you saying that by nature of the design if you change something you have to sift thru loads of powers to make it a consistent change?