A Campaign With No House Rules

[airwalkrr]

Suppose you were to run a D&D campaign using WotC sourcebooks with no house rules at all. Basically, whatever is in the books stands (latest versions of course). Anyone ever done it? Disaster? Success? Problematic?

Reason I ask is, I make so many house rules to my games it begins to look like its own system. I have been wondering if perhaps I should simply run the game RAW. What are your thoughts?

 

[hong]

I tried, but then my gearhead gene got the better of me....

 

[Sound of Azure]

I've been invited to run a game in-store at my FLGS, and it would probably have to be a no house rule game so that anyone can just plug in and play. I'm still not sure if I'm going to actually do it or not yet.

A friend of mine back in my home town ran an essentially open book game, the only house rules being stat and hit point generation. It was... pretty wild. The game imploded because as a whole, the combats were too crazy since he had extremely twinked NPC enemies.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm curious if anyone truly runs a houserule free game. I bet most people who think they do have a small houserule that's crept in and they may not even realize it.

 

[KeithCrimson]

This example isn't a house rule, but the group I brought it up to thought it was until I showed them.

It is always interesting to learn what rules people use when joining a new group for the first few sessions. Suprisingly I was the only cleric in the party. We started at 5th level. When we got into out first combat I moved, pulled out my weapon and attacked. The DM told me that because I didn't have quickdraw I couldn't draw my weapon as part of a move action. So I bookmarked the page in the PHB and at the end of the session showed him the rule. Since that time they have started using it as well. No one in the group believed that was actually a rule and not something I made up.

 

[The Green Adam]

I can't even imagine a campaign without house rules, regardless of the system or genre. In fact, I almost think they are one of the reasons we GMs do what we do.

 

[XCorvis]

I usually play in house rule free games. By house rule, I mean new rules that change existing rules. I don't consider "roll on the table" or "no psionics or Spell Compendium" or "you're all dwarves" to be house rules.

By and large, it's fine. Most people's house rules are either for flavor or streamlining, not to correct something horribly broken or impossible to use (though certainly that happens with some splatbooks). The rules work mostly OK on their own, they're just confusing and sometimes the DM just has to make an arbitrary call on it.

 

[Nyaricus]

I've done this before - save for my Weapon Group Proficiency system, which has been adapted into all of my games. Usually, all of my FR games are open book - anyone can use anything from anywhere. It's worked with varying degrees of success.

cheers,
--N

 

[Destil]

I tried, but then my gearhead gene got the better of me....

You and me both, hong, you and me both.

 

[Asmor]

I was going to say that the RPGA does that already, but then I realized no, no they don't... Every RPGA campaign has a published list of standards and "house rules" to account for the unique nature of the RPGA and its games.

I think it's highly amusing that even WotC's own campaigns don't use the RAW.