Extent of Houserules?

[Rechan]

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that keeping house-rules and custom changes to a minimum is the best strategy. Not everyone agrees on what is and isn't a good change, so keeping as much as possible to the base rules gives everyone a common ground to work from.

Do others find this the case?

I've gotten the impression that a lot of DMs houserule the heck out of games. I know a few folks who think that a system SHOULD be houseruled right out of the gate, to suit the playstyle of the group and to overcome the system's shortcomings.

And not to mention back in The Day, 1e/2e games were held together with house rules, where the game was different from table to table.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, to be fair, I think Kzach was talking about online games.

With online, I agree, that houserules are not so good, though I always support restricting sources in play.

With home games, the field is much more open, with the group collectively deciding what are the best rules, or assumptions about how the game will run.

I know that if I sat down at a pick-up game at a store or at a convention, I would hope the game would be runs as close to the rules as possible, just so I know what is going on.

But online, lots of odd rules are a real turn-off for me.

 

[Kzach]

With online, I agree, that houserules are not so good, though I always support restricting sources in play.

I think the finer point is not so much online play but what online play represents, that being a large disparity between cultures and individuals coming together to play.

The larger the disparity, the less likely you are to find common ground.

When you're dealing with a group over a long period of time, house rules become part of that group's play experience.

So my point was really that you need to START from a common baseline and work towards house rules as a group. Starting with a lot of house rules and a lot of requirements is always going to narrow the field and turn away players, simply due to differences of opinion and preferred play-styles.

As trust grows in the group, and people become invested in the game, they're then a part of the changes rather than them being a square peg trying to fit a round hole.

 

[jdrakeh]

Do others find this the case?

I've gotten the impression that a lot of DMs houserule the heck out of games. I know a few folks who think that a system SHOULD be houseruled right out of the gate, to suit the playstyle of the group and to overcome the system's shortcomings.

And not to mention back in The Day, 1e/2e games were held together with house rules, where the game was different from table to table.

It all depends on the game, really. I've houseruled the hell out of OD&D and BD&D (as evidenced by my .sig), but things like d20 Modern, Call of Cthulhu, and Runequest I don't think I ever instituted a single houserule for.

 

[Siberys]

I've a page of house rules for base 4e, tweaks for a number of books (things like slight mods to races, etc.), a rewrite of multiclassing, a graft for the domain system, and a ton of homebrew material.

Most of the non-numerical tweaks are either for flavor (Switching Tieflings to Con/Int, to allow for better infernalocks compared to feylocks), or are necessitated by my homebrewing (I redesigned shifters, as I don't like their 4e incarnation; Whenever a book has something for shifters, I have to revise or disallow it).

But almost all of my houserules are only important during character creation, meaning they don't interfere with play.

EDIT: I seem to have forgotten my point.

Houseruling is my primary hobby, actually. Playing happens only occasionally for me, but I can work through the intellectual problems posed by trying to redesign something at almost any time.

 

[The Shaman]

You can see examples of my house rules for d20 Modern here and for Flashing Blades here.

If you look at each, what you'll find is that my house rules fall roughly into the following categories:

• rules for actions not specifically covered in the original game (frex, parachuting for d20 Modern, venality in Flashing Blades)
• expanding on existing rules (frex, skill synergies for d20 Modern, background details for Flashing Blades)
• rules which offer new or revised options for charcters (frex, new and revised skills for both games)
• rules for items or equipment not available in the original rules of the game (frex, mapmaking software for d20 Modern, blunderbusses and galleys for Flashing Blades)
• rules which add color to a specific setting (frex, the Feral starting occupation for a d20 Modern 'Darkest Africa' game I contemplated running, the more historically accurate lists of Royal Army regiments and knightly orders for Flashing Blades)

My personal philosophy of house rules is to stay as close to the original intent and implementation of the published rules as I can: for example, instead of adding a 'Parachuting' skill to d20 Modern, I made it a function of existing skills applied to the activity, much the way Balance is used in that game to handle riding a bicycle. I think of it as working with the grain of the game, making house rules that are easy for the players to grasp because they tweak the way existing systems work, rather than replacing them with new systems altogether for the most part.

I admit I'm a bit puzzled that some gamers take issue with house rules. Much of what you see in my own house rules are adding features which don't exist in the original rules; are gamers supposed to just ignore aspects of the game world that the designer didn't cover? Should I ignore Barbary corsairs and crusader knights because there are no rules for galleys in High Seas? Can no one jump out of plane in d20 Modern because skydiving isn't in the core book?

I'm a firm believer in rulings before rules, but in some cases codifying a ruling as a house rule makes it possible for a player to better understand how the game-world works in a way that her character would, and allow the player to make an informed decision thereby, such as taking ranks in Jump for a character who enjoys skydiving.

I also believe house rules help to bring the game-world to life. Once upon a time, long, long ago, 3.0 D&D prestige classes were intended to be used for this very purpose. For my Flashing Blades campaign, I re-vamped the composition of the Royal Army regiments and the knightly orders expressly for this purpose; the core rules present generic soldiers and knights that are intended to cover the whole of 17th century France, and instead I chose to drill down a bit and make them (1) better conform to their historical peers in the specific period of the campaign and (2) increase the options available to the players and their characters while (3) still keeping close to the way the rules are presented in the core rulebook.

So no, I have no problem with house rules. I use them, and I expect the referees of the games in which I play to use them.

 

[Alisair Longreach]

When I make house rules for an RPG I first fix the worst flaws and shortcomings of the system. I always try to streamline the most needlessly complicated parts of the rules. Then I add some minor boosts to races, classes and other stuff and ban the obviously broken stuff.

My philosophy as a DM with my house rules is to first empower my players rules options so I then can be an impartial but nasty Rat Bastard DM.

Being a Carebear DM who carefully balances each encounter and fudges rolls in the endgame to avoid TPKs is too much bother for me. When PCs dies in my campaigns it's because severe stupidity and really bad dice.

I don't treat rules as holy writ carved in stone because I know that the designers are also fallible human beings who has to meet deadlines and sometimes suffers from caffeine overdose.

 

[aboyd]

I have tons of house rules for my 3.5 edition campaigns. I post them into a forum over the course of my games, and revise as needed. Every now & then I drop a few that don't work out or seem to be more trouble than they're worth. Overall, I'd say I have many house rules.

I've learned that if you are going to have more than 5 to 10 house rules, the players will never bother to learn them. Since I probably have 100, I'm way past their interest level. So I've become adept at writing the house rules in such a way that they work even if I'm the only one that remembers them. I try to put very little on the players.

 

[Nagol]

I strongly agree with the original quote -- particularly in the case where the game is played infrequently, i.e. once a week or less.

I much prefer choosing a system as close to the experience I want at the table and keeping house rules to a minimum -- generally a single page.

House rules add yet another required mental check to the GM and players.

 

[Ariosto]

keeping house-rules and custom changes to a minimum ... keeping as much as possible to the base rules

Noting the emphasis I added, I will say that I agree.

I would also note that I tend to start with smaller sets of printed rules than WotC-D&D, and less emphasis in the first place on players manipulating abstractions as their mode of playing (rather than addressing things from their characters' perspectives).

So, my approach boils down more to keeping formal rules "to a minimum as much as possible". It really does not make much difference to me whether the rules came from a Hasbro hardbound, a magazine, a forum, or out of my own fevered brain.

"Is this trip to a rule-book necessary?" One problem with formal rules is the tendency to feel obliged to use them. Once write down a ruling that seemed meet in a particular circumstance, and you may get stuck looking it up every darned time there's even a remote chance it might apply.

That's especially true of stuff that worms its way into a turn sequence, like legacy code in a computer's boot-up batch file. If you even need a checklist, it's probably too long IMO.