How Much Houseruling Are You Willing To Do?

[Argyle King]

I voted "some." I do not expect rules to be perfect. I'm not even really sure what perfect would mean anyway since not every table likes to play the same way; perfect for me might be total rubbish in the eyes of someone else. I'm ok with tweaking things to better suit my own tastes or the tastes of the group. An example would be that I run skill challenges in a way which looks only barely similar to the stock engine if you lift up the hood of my game. I do not mind house rules to improve the game.

However, there comes a point where I starting asking myself why I'm not playing a modular game or one of the 'toolkit systems' (GURPS, etc) if I'm going to rebuild a system anyway. There comes a point where it makes more sense to me to use a game which can build what I want rather than using a game which I have to tear apart and then rebuild for it to be able to do what I want. There have been a few points during my time with 4E were I edged over that point; that's actually how I ended up actually playing some of the games I play now. The house ruling I've had to do with D&D would still be pretty mild in comparison to some of the work I had to do to keep some of my old Rifts stuff playable though... loved the game, but the mechanics could be all over the place sometimes.

 

[KesselZero]

The gist of my instructions to new players is: "Go forth! Go wild! Have fun! Don't break the game. Try not to create anything annoying."

My message is the same, except that if my players try to break the game I'm more than happy just to throw harder encounters at them. I almost see it as a reward. My rule is more that you can play anything you want as long as it's a character and not just a bunch of numbers.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I voted "a lot." I usually start running a game as written then slowly add and take away as I gain experience with the system, sometimes ending up with something very different than what I started with.

That said, I'll start with whatever system I can find that's closest to my desired play experience. If there's something closer to the D&D experience I want than 5E, I won't be using 5E.

 

[Li Shenron]

You forgot the standard last option: "cheese".

Missing that option, I went for "NONE" but the truth is that I have practically been there, done that as ALL your options at some point. OTOH, between running games with different degrees of house rules and playing in someone else's games ditto, at my age I have become convinced that house rules should be introduced for the fun of it, not to "fix" something, and for me the "fun of it" nowadays is not anymore to try and put my favourite concepts into the game but rather to try out what someone else proposes. So this is what I'm going to do with 5e: play as-is, no house rules, at least until we get bored and some new ideas come up.

None: This is the option for people who don't houserule at all. Voting "None" means "If I don't like it right out of the box, I will probably just play something else." It is very important that the new edition be as close to your ideal as possible.

Just a note here: the last sentence doesn't apply... It is very important that the new edition feels like D&D to me AND it is light & easy to run, but it definitely doesn't need to close my ideal (which probably doesn't exist anymore anyway).

 

[rogueattorney]

I distinguish between types of house rules.

What I think of as "additive" house rules - adding rules for things that the printed game doesn't cover, I love doing. It's one of the things that I enjoy about running a game. So, new spells, new monsters, new classes/races, kit-bashed rules for interstellar combat, etc. All cool, groovy stuff that I like to play with.

What I think of as "amendments" - changing the printed rules to something else - those, I try to avoid. I generally figure that if I have too many of these, I'm probably playing the wrong game and that there is probably a better game out there for me and my group. I greatly prefer being able to hand the players a rule book and say, "These are the rules."

 

[Agamon]

How do splats work with this? Is pre-emptively banning any and all splats considered "houseruling"? What about retroactively banning certain ones? I don't often go too much further than that, though I have run human-PC-only games.

 

[Greg K]

How do splats work with this? Is pre-emptively banning any and all splats considered "houseruling"? What about retroactively banning certain ones? I don't often go too much further than that, though I have run human-PC-only games.

From my perspective, adding or banning non-core material is a house rule as it is optional material (even when the mantra is "Everything is core").

 

[was]

We have a lot of houserules, so I'm not adverse to fiddling with a new version of the game. However, all of our houserules are voted on by the group, so I'm not really making the change on my own.