House Rulebook Design & Sample HR Book Template

[Flynn]

Online Campaign Sourcebook...

I keep my OCS (online campaign sourcebook) available to my players via the web. Next campaign, I may or may not do that. Not sure yet. For those interested, here it is:
http://www.geocities.com/flynnwd/ocs/index.html

In the event that you'd like to share your House Rulebooks with me, please feel free to email me: jason.flynn.kemp ~AT~ gmail.com

Enjoy,
Flynn

 

[Emirikol]

I just did a stat check on my house rulebook:

13 pages
5451 words

Format
Page 1 - Cover page
Page 2 - Table rules (show up on time, role play, be ready, etc.)
Page 3 - Campaign background (Hyboria); Edition notes; Acceptable rulebooks
Page 4 - Character creation (homeland, ability scores, hit points, alignments
Page 5 - Character race index (common and uncommon) and race overviews (we don't use standard D&D races - only the 22 Hyborian races)
Pages 6-8 - Racial statistical bonuses, penalties, and favored races
Page 9 - Character classes (all classes listed from all acceptable books)
Page 10 - Feats, Combat rulings, Replacement Character rules, Action Points (modified UA/Eberron), Magic & Spells, magic weapons, modified turning rule
Page 11 - Languages, New Loot & Gear
Page 12 - Deity and Religion List (only the basics because we use ancient historical religions..i.e. the Hyborian religions)
Page 13 - World map, world map with cultures (oriental, western, african, etc)

jh

 

[Emirikol]

http://www.geocities.com/flynnwd/ocs/index.html
Flynn

Flynn,

That's a nice set-up.

jh

 

[Flynn]

Flynn,

That's a nice set-up.

jh

Thanks! Glad you like it. I haven't kept up with it in the last few months, sadly, due to work issues. Still, it helps during game play.

If you don't mind, I'd like to have a copy of yours, just to see how you've laid it out and how it looks. I'm considering doing my next campaign house rules as a PDF instead of a website, and so am curious as to how others have organized their efforts.

With Thanks In Advance,
Flynn

 

[Nyaricus]

Ascension - Paths of Power intro

My campaign booklet is coming along, thought I'd post the intro/pep talk for you people

Tell me what you think about it!

Welcome to Ascension - Paths Of Power, a campaign setting of my creation. On the continent of Amnerôn, the Dark Age is coming to an end - and yet chaos still holds sway in many lands. There is upset in the north, and more and more Tûllan pirates are raiding Kysmere’s fertile coasts. Orcs are driving the barbarian tribes of the Delzounians’ south and west, while their cousins the Velzuans are being pushed east. The tribes of horse-brothers, the Induskians’, are slowly expanding their great Empire north-east into Amnerôn from the bordering continent of Indusk, and the Dragon Crusades are coming full swing in the border country of Theska and its neighbor Tacland. There is unrest everywhere, and many great heroes are making their name heard far and wide.

Ascension is a world bearing many similarities to our own - if all the legends, folklore, and myths were true. In Ascension, your characters are the heroes of their lands - whether they be dwarf, elf, human or halfing. And where mythology has no basis, such as Orcs and Halfings, Tolkiens’ fantastic modern saga, LOTR, helps to fill in the gaps of some of fantasy’s main staples, while still being very thematic.

Ascension is a sometimes brutal and gritty world - but great tales of valour and champions survive beyond mortal lives - and you have a chance to be one. So come and join Ascension, a world ripe for adventuring. Come in and wander these Paths of Power!

 

[azhrei_fje]

Here's how I/we do it...

Thanks, Emerikol, for getting this discussion started.

I have phpBB2 installed on my web site and I keep campaign notes there. Our group is about 15 players if everyone shows up, but that's pretty rare. In fact, our group tonight was 5 + DM.

Because our group is so large, we have 5 DMs who rotate through their campaigns. When a DM is feeling burned out, we rotate to a different campaign. Let me tell you, that's tough! It's difficult to remember the characters from one campaign to another and their special abilities and tendencies.

Because of that, the phpBB2 forums are broken into large categories, one for each campaign. Each campaign is further broken into topic categories such as "XP Log", "Proposed Rules" and "House Rules", and "Campaign Info". I've given each DM "moderator" status and they can add topics to their campaign category, if they like.

In addition, I'm testing an interface that let's the DM award XP via a link on the site. The player chooses their character's name from a dropdown list and the web site produces a summary of all XP awarded so far. It's integrated into phpBB2 so that it's themed like the rest of the site. There's a checkbox so that the moderator can edit the values for a given PC or the entire group (this doesn't work completely, so I have to add XP values using SQL ). Each entry for the group has an overall description, and each entry for a PC has an XP award and a description of their contribution towards earning that award.

There are "sticky" threads for each campaign where the DM can post player handouts and such. Plus, because our groups uses DMGenie pretty heavily, players can post their exported sheets so that other players can play their PCs when the player can't make it (we award XP to those PCs who are active during the session). The DMs can then import them and printed character sheets can be made available at the last minute, if needed.

Two of the DMs (myself and one other) also post recaps of the session when it's over. This produces a kind of campaign log, although it's entirely OOC. That's kind of a bummer, but I'm not interested in spending the writing time with it. I do try to describe the recap without using game mechanics, though, so that it reads like a story.

I'm also interested in see what some of the other house rulebooks look like.

 

[Uder]

I'm currently running a Greyhawk game, so my house rules document is easy - one page, double sided.

The first side has character creation, a couple of rulings, rules for extra credit xp, rules for raking yourself over the coals, er... replacing characters, and an "anti-ad" for a couple of specific d20 publishers.

The second side lays out my thoughts on prestige classes and a (huge) list of banned PrCs.

 

[the Jester]

Holy crap! That's a lot of work...

The fact that I work at a FedEx Kinkos makes it easier to do all this- I get a discount on the stuff I do, and I do it myself so I know it's going to come out how I want.

 

[Flynn]

Looking for a free blog site for the next campaign...

Good Morning, All,

I'm thinking that I would like to use a Blog for my next campaign's website. I'd like to find one that is free to use, of course, and which allows me to post HTML pages and/or downloads as support files to supplement the journal entries detailing the adventures as they come to pass. (May as well do it all in one place, right?) While I like the above, I'm more likely to update a blog than to post stuff to the website for some reason.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated,
Flynn

 

[Emirikol]

My campaign booklet is coming along, thought I'd post the intro/pep talk for you people Tell me what you think about it!

I like it. I wouldn't lift the veil however by mentioning Tolkein. Stay in the theme so players keep the feeling while reading it. The other thing you could do is noe that anything in the intro is fair game for reference too (maybe hand out x.p. to anyone who can tell you who the horse lords are (do it online so that everyone has a chance). The intro blurb is always a lot of work, but it seems to only get read once so unless it's part of a useful reference, keep it short or only for new player motivation about your world.

jh


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