How do you present your house rules?

[Elodan]

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

 

[Psion]

I have an eternally in progress house rule document which I have never printed out or sent to my players because it's "not finished yet."

Ought to rectify that...

 

[ThirdWizard]

I have three basic sections in my document.

Table Rules

This is your basic what is expected at the table, the obligotory stuff. When we meet, what they need to bring, how we handle OOC conversing, what books they can look at during the game, and Turns, a system I found on the internet where someone can say "turns" and they get immediate attention which progresses around the table (useful for large groups which I don't really have anymore).

House Rules

Just a list of the house rules we have in our group. I have a brief explaination of what House Rules are (I have two newbie players) and why they exist.

Character Creation

Explainations of what is expected in a character in my game in terms of background and such. Then there's the rules of how we make characters (28 ptb, which races are allowed, which classes are allowed, etc). Then I go into a detailed description of alignment ('cause of the newbies - added after I found out they didn't understand it at all), and finally close it up with some brief character ideas.

 

[palleomortis]

I have never had any older more experience players, so for me, I just go along with them and when a question comes up, I answer it. I am the only one in my groupe with more that the basic MM, PHB, and DMG. So basically I let them have a look at my books, and whatever they want, I read aboute and familiarize myself with them. I feel like as the DM, it is my place to be the most knowagable of the lot. (sadly, I most definatly am not. My friend, wich is my DM, seems to have a photografic memory for things. At least he's my DM, not a player) So when someone wants to be sothing, I take all the info I can get, and start memorizing. The more I know of it, the better the groupe will play, and the more options and campaigns I can think of.

 

[RangerWickett]

I simply tell the group the easy house rules - in my normal D&D game, that means: Wound Points; Action Points (you can use them after you roll); all skills are class skills; stat rolling is 24d6, drop the 6 worst, assign 3 dice to each stat; and a good character concept encourages me to bend the rules.

If I have anything complicated, I write it up and host it online, then send my players the link.

 

[Drew]

I have an eternally in progress house rule document which I have never printed out or sent to my players because it's "not finished yet."

Ought to rectify that...

Yeah, I'm guilty of the same thing.

 

[sjmiller]

I created a comb-bound, color, tabbed booklet with all the informationin it that I added to the game, plus some charts and important stuff. It is divided into the following sections:

1. Basic Character Races (Brief descriptions from the PH/SRD)
2. New Races (added from Arcana Evolved and other sources)
3. Revised Ranger Class (Monte Cook's revision)
4. New Feats and Talents (Talents are 1st lvl only feats)
5. Spell Lists By Class (complete with new spells added)
6. Equipment (from PH/SRD with new equipment added)
7. New Spells Lists (from WotC website & Ronin Arts DM's Idea Pipeline)
8. New Spell Descriptions
9. Hero Points (an idea taken from Arcana Evolved)
10. Dieties of the World

It is roughly 85 pages and has a nice clear cover and heavy stock divider pages. Hey, I go all out, what can I say?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I have an eternally in progress house rule document which I have never printed out or sent to my players because it's "not finished yet."

Ought to rectify that...

I'm almost in the same boat.

Except back during AD&D 2e years, I had composed a near professional document in QuarkXpress with every single class option, race option, spell lists, weapon and nonweapon proficiency, and a list of all available kits. It weighed in at about 90 pages, double-sided. I worked at a Fortune 500 company's marketing department at the time, so I was able to print out about 6 copies, which I hole-punched and handed to my PCs in a binder.

They all loved them. But man, it was major work typing it all. I have them sitting in a bankers box in storage now...

Using the same format I used then I have done much the same with my D20 home-brews that I have yet to run. When I get the chance, I'll have handouts for them again. Even still, I tried to keep everything as close to core as possible, with the handouts mostly a list of the available spells, weapons, equipment, PrCs by region. I can't help myself, I own InDesign (part of Adobe Creative Suite), so I'm using it!

 

[HellHound]

For most games, I make a web page and include allt he house rules there for the players to read if they want.

I -also- create a binder, as above, for myown reference.

 

[The_Gneech]

Well, I try to keep my house rules to a minimum; what ones I use, I write up and hand out to the players in the first session (or if a ruling is made on the fly, at the beginning of the next session).

In the past, I would write up long booklets of character templates, spell lists, and so on, but I discovered that I was pretty much the only one in the group even reading 'em, much less using 'em. -.- So now I stick to the basics.

-The Gneech