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

[Desdichado]

Rules don't exist to facilitate "pretending to be a magical elf". Rules exist to facilitate conflict resolution -- which is to say, when you want your pretend magical elf to do something which conflicts with the goals and aspirations of my pretend magical goblin tribe.

That isn't the only purpose of rules, though. One of the reasons I like 3e (compared to older versions of D&D and 4e both, although for different reasons) is that the rules also provide a fair amount of character definition. In the older versions of D&D (at least until "2.5" with full kits and whatnot) there weren't many tools within the ruleset to define your character, and with 4e, it seems to me that most of the definition is around combat... which isn't really character defining, actually.

In 3e in particular, there were a lot of weird things you could do with skills and feats you took, levels of different classes here and there, and whatnot, that really allowed you to define characters with quite a bit of granularity, and with quite a bit flexibility too, and a lot of those were things about your character that didn't have anything to do with combat (one of the most memorable characters in a recent game I ran made sure that he maxed out his Craft (Needlepoint) all the time because he was a rake and a womanizer and keeping his lace up to snuff was an important character quirk... to give one off-hand example.)

In fact, for me personally, that's much more important than conflict and challenge resolution, where I'm more prone to handwave a GM interpretation rather than rigorously apply all the correct rules to any given situation.

 

[Celebrim]

I currently have a 500 page rules document (based largely off the 3.0 srd, with a mix of 3.5) which I'm constantly tinkering. It's roughly as different from 3.0 as Pathfinder is. Actually, in some fashions, it's more different from 3.0 than Pathfinder. I don't honestly think I'd give it up.

I find 3e the most tinkerable rules set of the bunch, because the base is so flexible and solid that you can build just about anything on top of a d20 mechanic. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that today we have word processors making it infinitely easier to codify my house rules compared to the days when I had to write them down with a pencil.

This trajectory is pretty typical for me. I start off playing RAW. Gradually, as I get to know the rules set and how it ticks, I get annoyed by more and more small issues. Each time this happens, I find some sort of 'fix' for the problem, and eventually this results in a results set that is as much patch and new cloth as it is original. I don't know that this would happen to every rules set - as a player I'm generally content with whatever rules I'm provided - but it has happened to every rules set I extensively run.

With GURPS, a rules set that wowed me and wooed me away from D&D, this reached the point where I realized that to get rid of all my annoyances with the system would result in a game even I wouldn't want to play. The designs which at first seemed to me to be so cool gradually lost their savor, and I came to feel that the game design was fundamentally flawed. The same thing had earlier happened, though not to the same extent, with 1e. There the problem was that I quickly realized that to remove all my annoyances would involve a rewrite beyond my capacity to keep track of. I didn't have then what I have now - a word processor.

With 3e, I'm honestly beginning to feel that the end (so to speak) is in sight. I'm close to having a core rules set I'm completely happy with. I know its not perfect, but its flaws I can live with because I know now that there is no perfect system - there are always tradeoffs.

 

[Votan]

Character Builder.

A publisher I respect recently was lamenting about how the Compendium/Character Builder put a real hurtin' on the potential of 3rd party publishers.

It is a double edged sword. The character builder is popular because it is fast, summarizes all of the data in a single place and audits the character for legality. It's also supposed to simplify calculations, but I find it does a mixed job of that.

But it makes the effort in checking the details a high level PC much lower and makes maintaining characters pretty straightforward. But boy is it painfully hard on my system resources! Yikes!

 

[WheresMyD20]

Up to and mostly including 2e the rules were presented somewhat as guidelines - OK, here's the system; it's loose, somewhat modular, yet solid enough to withstand some changes: now take it and make it work for you, and have fun. And we did. I'd hazard a guess that among those of us on these boards who play 1e none of us are playing by the exact same rule-set, and so what? Yet we still identify as playing 1e.

Yup. This is my experience as well. When joining a new 1e/2e group, you need to ask the DM questions like:

"How do you roll up ability scores in your game?"
"Do you use the demihuman level limits?"
"Do you use max hit points at 1st level?"
... and so on ...

I think the default assumption in the older editions is that the rules are the province of the DM. If the players want to know what the rules are, they should consult the DM, not the books. Every DM tends to run the game a different way - and that's perfectly ok in the old editions. Actually, it's one of the things that makes each campaign unique.

 

[Stalker0]

Yup, so I'm thinking making blog comments and forum posts the same thing. That shoudn't be too hard.

When someone makes a blog post, it cross-posts here. When someone responds here, it cross-posts to the blog. They'd be essentially the same data set, but presented in two different ways (i.e. one's blog would be a slection of one's lengthy posts that you'd like gathered together for people to view).

Sounds good to me, honestly I think I've looked at one blog my entire time here at enworld, its just not how a browse.


Back to the OP, I think balance like anything is a matter of degrees. Wildly unbalanced is not desirable, but neither is being a slave to absolute balance. Sometimes something is a bit stronger than another, but if its not wildly so generally the game moves along just fine.


As for houserules, I'm still an avid houseruler but I've become a bit more refined in my tastes. Now my goal is to create maximum effect with fewer houserules in general.

 

[Stalker0]

It is a double edged sword. The character builder is popular because it is fast, summarizes all of the data in a single place and audits the character for legality. It's also supposed to simplify calculations, but I find it does a mixed job of that.

I don't really blame the character builder for being so rigid...at this stage of the game. It has already become the best electronic dnd tool I have ever seen, and the one I most commonly use.

Eventually though, to obtain true "dnd oneness" it will need to cater to user house rules...but creating software to cater to user customization is not easy, and takes time.

 

[Aus_Snow]

With 3e and since came a shift to the rules being presented as Rules, with tinkering (outside of a few limited areas) being at first subtly and later not so subtly discouraged.

I disagree.

What's more, so do (at the very least) the 3e DMG and MM.

I won't speak of 4e in this context, because - although I've read the first three core books, once each, quite some time ago - I can't remember enough details to say either way for sure.

 

[Psion]

I disagree.

What's more, so do (at the very least) the 3e DMG and MM.

Really?

I seem to recall a statement that got changed between the 3.0 and 3.5 DMG that showed a shift towards "trust the designer".

If I weren't so lazy and had stuff to do today, I'd look it up. Anyone got that one at their fingertips?

 

[Aus_Snow]

Really?

I seem to recall a statement that got changed between the 3.0 and 3.5 DMG that showed a shift towards "trust the designer".

If I weren't so lazy and had stuff to do today, I'd look it up. Anyone got that one at their fingertips?

I've no idea about any statements that might've been made.

I simply own the 3.5 DMG and MM, and in both of them, there are heaps of examples of "make the game your own", and even plenty of '... and here's some examples of ways you can, if you like: ..." type things as well. In both books, it's made abundantly clear that, for instance, you needn't use Prestige Classes at all, and if you choose to, the best way is to make your own. Then there's the guidelines for making your own monsters. Some advice on making your own base classes. Rule 0 right near the beginning of one of them. . . though that might be the PHB, actually - still. That's just off the top of my head. Unfortunately, I don't have any of my RPG books to hand, and the SRD doesn't really cut it. So. . .

I leave it to whoever else wishes to see just how open, non-dogmatic, and in fact encouraging towards house ruling and making your own mind up about things, 3e really is. (Or.. . was, for those who have left it behind.) It's all there, statements and/or rhetoric on forums be damned (I don't mean you btw, Psion, just so that's clear. . .)

 

[Imaro]

I've no idea about any statements that might've been made.

I simply own the 3.5 DMG and MM, and in both of them, there are heaps of examples of "make the game your own", and even plenty of '... and here's some examples of ways you can, if you like: ..." type things as well. In both books, it's made abundantly clear that, for instance, you needn't use Prestige Classes at all, and if you choose to, the best way is to make your own. Then there's the guidelines for making your own monsters. Some advice on making your own base classes. Rule 0 right near the beginning of one of them. . . though that might be the PHB, actually - still. That's just off the top of my head. Unfortunately, I don't have any of my RPG books to hand, and the SRD doesn't really cut it. So. . .

I leave it to whoever else wishes to see just how open, non-dogmatic, and in fact encouraging towards house ruling and making your own mind up about things, 3e really is. (Or.. . was, for those who have left it behind.) It's all there, statements and/or rhetoric on forums be damned (I don't mean you btw, Psion, just so that's clear. . .)

I agree, and let's not forget that 3.5 also had an entire book of house rules (with many explanations about why and impact) called Unearthed Arcana...