The Stakes of Classifying Games as Rules Lite, Medium, or Heavy?

[overgeeked]

Which is probably why another thread I am reading says that rule tweaks and home brewing is a red flag for the majority of people when they read campaign descriptions!

How weird. Must be a generational thing. During the TSR era house rules and home brewing was expected. Too bad the DIY aspect of the hobby isn't as much of a thing anymore. Or is it some weird appeal to authority thing where only official rules are good? There's a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3PP putting out great content. I guess they're not regular players and DMs like the rest of us. Their stuff is somehow special because it's in a PDF. Such a weird thing to turn one's nose up at considering the history of the hobby.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How weird. Must be a generational thing. During the TSR era house rules and home brewing was expected. Too bad the DIY aspect of the hobby isn't as much of a thing anymore. Or is it some weird appeal to authority thing where only official rules are good? There's a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3PP putting out great content. I guess they're not regular players and DMs like the rest of us. Their stuff is somehow special because it's in a PDF. Such a weird thing to turn one's nose up at considering the history of the hobby.

Yeah, while I'm aware there have always been people who disliked houserules, I find that kind of weird as can be. I tend to expect if you're doing house rules to know them in advance (and if they're of any extent, have them in print) but taking a pass just because there are house rules, rather than because you dislike the specifics?

 

[Neonchameleon]

How weird. Must be a generational thing. During the TSR era house rules and home brewing was expected.

During the TSR era THAC0 was an improvement over what had gone before. The standard for "better rules than TSR" was not exactly high. With WotC era the problems are seldom caused by individual rules so much as systems and interactions - meaning that they are far harder to fix and you need to make subtler and further reaching changes in many cases. When the car regularly breaks down you get good at fixing it. When it doesn't you don't need to.

Too bad the DIY aspect of the hobby isn't as much of a thing anymore. Or is it some weird appeal to authority thing where only official rules are good?

It's not "not a thing". There is, as you mention, a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3pp stuff. And Matt Mercer is the current benchmark for how to DM and he homebrews. DIY is a thing - it's just there isn't the expectation that the DM has to do it. It's no longer near-mandatory

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, while I'm aware there have always been people who disliked houserules, I find that kind of weird as can be. I tend to expect if you're doing house rules to know them in advance (and if they're of any extent, have them in print) but taking a pass just because there are house rules, rather than because you dislike the specifics?

I've found that, over the last 40 years, that if I'm having to make major houserules, it's just easier to find a different game that's better at what I want a game in that genre to do.
My houserules for AD&D in the 80's were a list of what I dropped... then I realized it was easier to run BX/BECMI with a multiclassing houserule than to list the stripdown from AD&D.
I didn't need houserules for T2K 1E. (I would now... but I've not run 1E since 1990)
I did need a couple houserules for T2K 2.0... I added 2 difficulty levels. I adjusted NPC and PC damage. That was in the 90's. I'd need several more now.
At the time, i used MegaTraveller with less than half a page total of houserules (but 4 pages of errata...) Last I ran it, I had >10pp total houserules.

Running T2K 4E, I only added one house rule: help after 2d12 adds ammo dice... Next I run it, it will have a minor revision of vehicle damage. It's a better game for 40 years and a new core mechanical system.
Running 2d20 Dune, I've not needed any house rules yet.
Running Alien, I don't need any yet; it's been a dead on for me. Same with Vaesen.

Tastes change over time; what I'd put up with from ignorance (the convolutions of systems like T2K 1E, Delta Force, Space Opera) I no longer care to, because newer systems do what I want without the need to do the work myself.

 

[overgeeked]

During the TSR era THAC0 was an improvement over what had gone before. The standard for "better rules than TSR" was not exactly high.

The standard for “better rules than WotC” isn’t that much higher.

With WotC era the problems are seldom caused by individual rules so much as systems and interactions - meaning that they are far harder to fix and you need to make subtler and further reaching changes in many cases. When the car regularly breaks down you get good at fixing it. When it doesn't you don't need to.

Well, it’s a game not a car. So what one person thinks of as working another might think of as broken. There’s no objective measure. Only subjective opinion. Either the rules produce the results you want or they don‘t.

It's not "not a thing". There is, as you mention, a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3pp stuff. And Matt Mercer is the current benchmark for how to DM and he homebrews.

Yeah, it’s weird. He also home brews some of the most broken things.

DIY is a thing - it's just there isn't the expectation that the DM has to do it. It's no longer near-mandatory.

Right. But it also seems to be actively resisted. As you mention, there’s another thread where people are saying home brew and house rules as seen as a red flag.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've found that, over the last 40 years, that if I'm having to make major houserules, it's just easier to find a different game that's better at what I want a game in that genre to do.

Often true. But sometimes something is almost right, and sometimes nothing is really right, so you either hack something until it is, give up, or do it from the ground up (and not that many people want to do the latter).

(You sometimes need to make a distinction too for "This is houseruled because its dumb or at least produces undesirable results in general" and "This is houseruled to support specifics of the campaign setting". The latter is really just creating your own optional rules a lot of the time).

Tastes change over time; what I'd put up with from ignorance (the convolutions of systems like T2K 1E, Delta Force, Space Opera) I no longer care to, because newer systems do what I want without the need to do the work myself.

Yeah. There's games I was good with 30 years ago that, while I could probably be convinced to run them now, they'd never by things I'd choose myself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

During the TSR era THAC0 was an improvement over what had gone before. The standard for "better rules than TSR" was not exactly high. With WotC era the problems are seldom caused by individual rules so much as systems and interactions - meaning that they are far harder to fix and you need to make subtler and further reaching changes in many cases. When the car regularly breaks down you get good at fixing it. When it doesn't you don't need to.

It's not "not a thing". There is, as you mention, a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3pp stuff. And Matt Mercer is the current benchmark for how to DM and he homebrews. DIY is a thing - it's just there isn't the expectation that the DM has to do it. It's no longer near-mandatory

It was also often necessary in the OD&D era because the rules were, frankly, schematic to the point of being skeletal. There's minimalist, and there's "We don't even give you anything much to work with to figure out if a character can climb a cliff."

 

[Neonchameleon]

Right. But it also seems to be actively resisted. As you mention, there’s another thread where people are saying home brew and house rules as seen as a red flag.

I wasn't the one to mention this (that was @GrahamWills I think) - but I haven't on a quick search been able to find the thread. Could you point me to it so I can see what was actually said please?

 

[cowpie]

How weird. Must be a generational thing. During the TSR era house rules and home brewing was expected. Too bad the DIY aspect of the hobby isn't as much of a thing anymore. Or is it some weird appeal to authority thing where only official rules are good? There's a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3PP putting out great content. I guess they're not regular players and DMs like the rest of us. Their stuff is somehow special because it's in a PDF. Such a weird thing to turn one's nose up at considering the history of the hobby.

I think that newer players and DMs like having the rules spelled out for them, and given the larger number of new players in the hobby, they just don't have the experience of doing DIY.

D&D also evolved out of wargaming clubs, which in turn evolved out of military modeling. That entire hobby started out as DIY. You could buy model kits, but toy soldier painters often sculpted and cast their own figure molds. When the industry took off in the late 50s, a few mini manufacturers catered to the growing hobby, but those guys were all DIY enthusiasts turned entrepreneurs. Wargame clubs played the games, and all contributed figures so they could fight the battles, so groups would often build their own terrain, have club dues to buy materials, etc.

The first D&D game I played in as a kid, was at a D&D club that met once a week renting out an old-country buffet banquet room. They had 60 members, with club officers, dues, etc. The club "sergeant at arms" paired me with an older teenager to be my game chaperone, and we played in a very organized, old-school game (8 players, 6+ Hirelings, party caller, etc) through an old Judges Guild adventure.

Today's gamers grew up with videogames and casual gaming, without a commitment to another time-consuming hobby, so they just want to pick up and play, rather than spend hours prepping the same way a guy making a model ship, or painting 100s of Napoleonic figurines would. Plus, they don't belong to clubs of 10-50 players, who encourage prepping as part of the club mission statement.

 

[cowpie]

I'm afraid I'm hard pressed to describe "Its dumb, but its what the rules say" in any more positive term. If you know part of the rules you're using are broken but aren't willing to address that, there are a number of reasons, but none of them are complimentary.

Yes, but it could be something like -- hey, we've all had a stressful week, let's just have fun playing, nobody cares about addressing the rule loophole right now. If that's what the players want to do, and they all agree to it, they are not obligated to fix the rule.