How do you present your house rules?

[glass]

Yeah, I'm guilty of the same thing.

Me too, but at least I'm not DMing at the moment, so I have a bit of time.


glass.

 

[azmodean]

Mine aren't really codified, and my players are cool about it so I can just tell them (and remind them if necessary) about it. I have a few munchkin types, and if they try to spring something on me I just make it not work and then possibly allow it starting the next game, after I've had time to look it over. They usually don't try to spring things on me anymore

One major thing though, any spells outside of the PHB have to be found in game or researched, even for divine casters, keeps the unwieldy mass of spells in check.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm in the middle of writing up my house rules. I plan on including things like character creation rules, allowed races, classes, feats, etc. and from which sources, as well as a brief history of the campaign world.

I was wondering how and what you have included in your house rules. I have questions such as, Do you just give your players a document with just a list of books and what's allowed from them? Do you flesh things out like what role a class or race plays in your world? Do you present them in the order they show in the PHB or jumble things together?

Thanks.
Tom

Back in 1st edition, I generally didn't present my house rules to the players. Since the only rules that I figured that the player's needed where those on character generation, I think that the only document on the house rules I ever handed to the players was a sheet on the abilities of evil humanoids for a 'from the other side of the dungeon' campaign.

3rd edition is alot more player centric, largely because players have so many more choices in how they create and advance thier characters. For example, in 1st edition, I could keep spells I created for the campaign secret until I wanted to reveal them to the players. In effect, this let me keep new spells back as 'treasure' for the party spell caster. In 3rd edition, I can't completely do that because Sorcerer's need to know what options are available to them whenever they gain a level and some of the spells I've created are rather generic and appropriate for sorcerer's. So, the player gets more options, but I the DM get to present the PC's with fewer surprises, and fewer 'oooohhh neeeeatttt' moments of discovery.

And it goes on and on. The mechanics of combat manuevers have to be explicitly spelled out to players, because the players need to be able to evaluate whether or not to take feats that enhance thier ability to use those manuevers. The full range of abilities available needs to be shown, because players need adequate time to prepare to climb a feat tree. This means I have to be fairly careful about deciding what feats - if any - I will hide from the players, which in turn means that the players will face fewer foes whose abilities seem new and fantastic to them. Altered spells need to be explicitly tabulated, because I can't always wait until the players find and can cast the spell to tell them that it works differently than the books.

So, for the first time ever I'm drawing up a list of house rules to present the players. Right now, its in three or four documents that are totalling close to 100 typewritten small font pages. I suspect its going to get larger. Part of the problem is that I'm so picky about the things that I let into the game that I can't just point to a few books and say 'Everything in there is OK', because outside of the PH, I can't think of a book that most everything is ok - and even the player's handbook has some revisions under the rules. PArt of the problem is that and Ranger, Druid, Monk, Paladin have been dropped from the class list, and I've got eight classes (six homebrew) to put in thier place, and Halfling, Gnome, and Half-Orc are gone and I've got at least four homebrew races I have to detail to put in thier place. In other words, after several years of playing generic 3rd edition, I'm finally trying to go through the work of fully converting my homebrew 1st edition world over to 3rd. I'm trying to put everything in the same order it would appear in the PH. Honestly, 15 years ago, I wouldn't have been going to all this work even if 3rd edition had come out then, because in the age before easy to use and widely available word processors it would have just been too much work. Even so, I doubt that I'd be going to this much work except that I need the results every bit as much as my player's will.

I draw a line at presenting the players with any alteration in monsters, treasures, etc. in the campaign. For one thing, I tend to think of the monsters in my campaign as being unique - either unique individuals or truly unique creatures - and believe that monsters should almost always have surprising (and terrifying capabilites). I strongly want to avoid the, "Oh, its a slobbering hairy multi-tentacled mound of fanged mouths, breathing fire. These things only have 12H, no sweat, we can take it." syndrome that seems to plague groups of players that have been playing a while.

 

[Ruined]

For the current campaign, we talk regularly on a private forum I have just for that game. At the start I posted threads related to Character Creation, House Rules, and some background for the setting. They are always there in case my players have questions or want to peruse them. We also stay active on the msg board, not for RP, but for coordination of game nights. Ah, the perils of RL after 30...

For the upcoming campaign, I have MediaWiki installed on my website, so I have a place where they can go and look up information about rules, races, etc. It's been fun populating the information and makes for an easy reference.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

I post our house rules on our website:

House Rules

Actually, when I first bring up a house rule, I post a rough draft of it in our forum area. This gives myself and my players a chance to talk about it, see if we like it, or make any changes. Once it has sat for a couple of weeks in the forum area and no more changes are made to it, I move it to the permanent House Rules page on the website.

I keep a printed copy handy when we play games.

 

[Desdichado]

Web page

 

[francisca]

I'm in the middle of writing up my house rules. I plan on including things like character creation rules, allowed races, classes, feats, etc. and from which sources, as well as a brief history of the campaign world.

I was wondering how and what you have included in your house rules. I have questions such as, Do you just give your players a document with just a list of books and what's allowed from them? Do you flesh things out like what role a class or race plays in your world?
Do you present them in the order they show in the PHB or jumble things together?

Thanks.

Tom

My friend has given us space on his message board, so we hash it all out in the forums, then when I hit a quiescent point, I put together a PDF. One advantage of this is we can see how ideas evolved over time. This has led to us revisiting things after play, and reviving what we had previously thought of as a dead end, development-wise.

 

[MonsterMash]

At the moment it's a word document - mainly with setting specific notes (class race combos, languages, character backgrounds) as when I started running the campaign I hadn't used 3.5 enough to know what I felt like houseruling. As there is a hiatus while we're playing CoC with that group I've got time to work out the houserules and present them - probably still as a wp document though.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

well, for each campaign we have certain concepts we play with. We pretty much allow any class/race that fits the current campaign. We don't limit to certain books or such.

We do have a list of certain house rules that are not in the books. Rules we've made up because we like how they make the game play. Sometimes we play with hit location rules or "dead at 0" instead of the normal "dead at -10" rule. We used to have a lot more of those sorts of rules in 2e, though.

 

[Ace]

I have a house rules sheet that I hand out to the players. It is in update mode right now but I always have it ready before play