I know we have "Rules Lawyers", but what

[Vegepygmy]

Sometimes I long for the 1e days when only the DM had read the DMG, and the rules were USUALLY house rules on the fly, and we all just had fun and didn't care much what the rules said.

Not me. I have a lot more fun these days...and that's saying something!

Three cheers for consistent rules!

 

[Nightfall]

Iam,

That was pretty amusing.


Tree,

Well maybe you need to find a different group..or else hire someone to kidnap people to play in other games.

Grunj,

That's a good analysis of Rule 0 as I've heard in a while. Good stuff.

 

[Treebore]

Based on Treebore's description, it sounds like his DM has control issues and may make up house rules on the spot to retain control. I've met a lot of DMs who behave that way and it really has to do with ignorance or misdunderstanding of the rules. My recommendation is to share the relevant rules offline. Also to document these new house rules. And definitely use it against him. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

But as far as providing written house rules ahead of time? In 29 years of D&D I have received house rules from only one GM in addition to the ones I maintain. All other games used "tribal knowledge", i.e. everyone knew them and didn't write them down. And yeah, it is pretty annoying to learn about these house rules in the middle of combat only to realize that my character is suddenly sub-optimized. But you know what? At the end of the day it really comes down to trust and fun. Do you trust the GM to not screw you over? Do you enjoy his or her's campaign? No amount of house rule documentation is going to resolve these questions.

For those of you who get all hot if not handed a house rules sheet in advance, I say "get a life." That is the ideal but in my personal experience it is the exception. If the rest of the group is OK with the unwritten rules then vote with your feet or shut up.

I get irritated with surprise house rules as much as the next player. Therefore I work very hard to ensure my own house rules are as complete as possible. But we really need to pick our battles. Not every fight is worth fighting. And if you're going to resort to name calling, then just get the heck out of the campaign. Walk away while you still have some dignity.

Generally I can agree with your opinion. Just in my case I asked about house rules before we began. Plus, when this "house rule" showed up, no one knew about it other than the DM.

So when I am essentially told there are very few house rules (he only told me of 3, all having to do with character creation) when I very specifically ask about them, I am going to take exception.

Plus, I am willing to work it out. He is the one ignoring my e-mails and hiding from me on Internet Messenger.

Even so, if he talks to me, and we can have a good conversation, I am willing to stay in the game. I was having fun until this came up. There were irritating things along the way, but I ignored them because the fun far outweighed the irritation. However, this sudden house rule, which so directly effected my character, plus being insulted for daring to question it, just once, to be sure that is how he wanted to handle it, is not something I am going to ignore, or let slide.

So I could handle not knowing about house rules, if I didn't specifically ask about them, maybe even if the other players knew about them. Definitely if someone told me, "Yes, we have house rules, but we haven't written them down and we'll just have to tell you about them as they come up."

I could have handled that, because I would have had reason to expect a rules deviation, and I would have just asked if this was one of the house rules I was warned about, they would have said yes, and we could go on.

However, that was far from the case. So I came here essentially to ask if I was/am right to be bothered by it. To make sure, as best as you can on a messageboard and other related conditions, that I wasn't being unrealistic in my expectations.

So now, with the opinions given here, my calmer thoughts on the matter, and the DM's apparent desire to avoid me, I think I have every right to be annoyed in this instance.

To the point of no longer playing if the DM cannot even talk to me about it.

 

[Hussar]

Yup, Calvinball.

I truly loathe this sort of thing. Look, for the most part (with a few exceptions), spells are what, a paragraph long? It should take all of ten seconds to look it up and read it. It's not like web is even all that difficult to adjudicate. You might have to look up the rules for being impeded (or whatever), but, come on, that's just part of play. Heck, I expect my players to do that work for me.

Saying, "Oh, it works this way, just to make things go faster" is just lazy.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

My first thought was "jerk" (actually my first thought was not grandma friendly enough to post).

If you are going to come up with house rules for D&D at least have the decency to let your players know about them before they come up. Some rules changes things that much that they can influence players combat actions, character class choices, feat selections, etc.

How would you feel if you had spent hours coming up with a character specialised in two-weapon fighting, only to find out halfway through the first fight that the GM had changed the rules so that the concept wasn't remotely useful any more? I wouldn't be too pleased to say the least.

I give all new players a hard copy of the house rules before they roll up their character. I also let my players know that my house rules aren't set in stone and that if they have an issue with any of them or would like to change something I am open to discussion.

Olaf the Stout

I heartily agree any HR should be spelled out ahead of time. I'll take it one step further - I think DMs should tell the players what books they may draw feats, classes, spells, and magic items out of. Personally, I name the books and exactly what PrCs, base classes, spells, and feats are allowed from those books.


But in my experience, it still really doesn't matter. Players rearely pay attention to any of this.


I am running a game now. Before we began game, I poured through all the books I was going to let PCs pull from - PHB, Complete Arcane, Adv, Wr, and Div - and made a spreadsheet of every available feat and class I was allowing. Since magic works a bit differently, I wrote up a brief magic explanation and went to the trouble of making a spreadsheet of every player-available spell from all five sources. I made it sortable by school, subschool, type, spell level, class spell list, and spell name.

I posted all of these documents to a website, emailed out the URL, printed this out in a campaign primer along with any HR, and handed it out to the players two weeks before game began.
We used it extensively during character creation.
And yet, despite all this work, players will come to game with their levelled up character with a feat or spell that is not one the allowed list. Invariably, I will call them on it and they will say "Well, why isn't it allowed and how was I supposed to know it wasn't?"
Then, in what has become a famous answer, I wordlessly pull out my primer and hold it up, walk it over to him, open it as if he were a five year old, point to the feat/spell list and ask him if he sees it on there.

He did this three sessions in a row (well not in a row, but three sessions in a row that were sessions in which the PCs brought levelled up characters to game). I know what he is doing when he levels..he is just going through the books and saying "OO..that looks cool and beneficial!", writes it down and never checks to see if it is allowed.


So yes, DMs that don't share their HR or allowed material are not being very good DMs. But players that don't use the material they are given are a big problem too.

 

[Nightfall]

Yup, Calvinball.

I'm so going to use that some day at the gaming table.

Saying, "Oh, it works this way, just to make things go faster" is just lazy.

Yeah seems we have a rash of lazy DMing of late.

 

[Phlebas]

Lastly, most DM's reserve the right to make a quick ruling. 50% chance, rules, quick skill checks, etc come to mind. Saying the DM has undisclosed house rules, when all he's doing is resolving something he didn't want to take the time to lookup, so he can keep game momentum going is a bit extreme.

As a player, your job should be play the game. If the DM is making a ruling that seems out of reach of the rules, and you know the RIGHT rule, you might mention that it doesn't match the RAW. If he wants the real thing, he'll ask you.

I made a lot of house rule and loose rule interpretations when i started as i was getting used to 3,5 - even though there were people in the group who knew the rules better than me we always agreed to play DM's interpretation, and look it up outside the game. in the first few weeks i was apologising almost every session for a misinterpretation the week before. We could (and sometimes still do) have a quick break to double check something, especially if it could have a major effect on an encounter, but normally the pace of the adventure is more important than the letter of the RAW (IMHO)

However, as a DM you have to be willing to listen to the players about what they want from the game - and if theres a difference of opinion at least allow a bit of tinkering or character re-writing with concepts, feats or spells that no longer have the same effect - maybe the problem here isn't rules lawyer vs rules re-writer but a simple lack of communication...........

 

[Nightfall]

*still think there are too many lazy DMs/GMs out there.* but that's just me.