Is house ruling fair to the game or gamers when first introducing it?

[jmucchiello]

I go to an occasional boardgame gamedays held by a couple different folks I know. The games are newbie friendly if you're a boardgame geek kind of newbie - new to a particular game, have lots of experience with and love for the boardgame genre, and think more about "resource management" than "playing a game".

How can anyone posting to a RPG forum complain about the complexity of any Euro board game? RPGs are notoriously more complex than tax laws. No board game comes even close to that complexity (not even Advanced Squad Leader).

As for "how do new games compete with Catan?" They have different ways of hiding the complexity. Someone mentioned Endeavor above, you should really check it out. Catan is 15 years old and Euros no longer look like Catan.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I think you're missing the larger picture of games.

Look at some of the classics: Tic-Tac-Toe is simple (so simple as to be mathematically trivial). The rules of Go are simple (but gameplay is anything but trivial). Mancala is simple. Checkers is simple. Blackjack is simple. These are not normally part of Gamer Geek play, in my first guess because they are so simple.

Catan is simple compared to other games found in current gamer geek culture, but compared to the real simple games of the world, it just isn't.

You're moving the goal posts: You said that Catan was more complicated than Monopoly. It's not.

But now you're claiming that Catan is more complicated than Tic-Tac-Toe, Mancala, Checkers, and Blackjack. This is true. But Monopoly is also more complicated than those games.

I'm not really seeing any kind of significant different in the complexity of Catan and the complexity of Monopoly.

 

[pawsplay]

Running an RPG without "house rules" is cruel to gamers and kittens.

 

[Umbran]

You're moving the goal posts: You said that Catan was more complicated than Monopoly. It's not.

Please look again. I said Catan was not a simple game, period. I then used Monopoly as one among now a handful of demonstrative examples. The single example itself is not the goalpost.

I'm not really seeing any kind of significant different in the complexity of Catan and the complexity of Monopoly.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.

 

[karlindel]

I don't think that I owe the game itself anything. However, I do believe that I owe something to the players to make sure that they can properly judge the game. This does not mean that I should not house rule the game, but it does mean that I should try to keep house rules limited at first, and should mention ahead of time that I have made some changes to the rules. In general, house rules should be mentioned ahead of time, but I may just mention that I have house rules and explain what they are as they come up, depending on how complicated the original rules are and how likely the change is to come up. For example, skill rolls fail on a 1 is a house rule that should be explained from the start as it is easy to understand and likely to come up, a modification to the 3.5 grapple rules should be explained if it comes up as this may be hard to understand and is unlikely to come up (and probably not bother explaining what the actual rules are other than that they're different and somewhat complicated).

I do not believe that house ruling is a problem when introducing a new game to players, as long as the house rules are laid out from the start.

Personally, when introducing a new system to players, I usually do not use any house rules, or stick to very minor things that will simplify the game to make it easier to learn or to speed up play. For example, I ran a Champions game, and so I started out using only some of the rules, and slowly introduced more complexity as the campaign progressed, so that the players who were all new to the system would not be thrown into the deep end before learning to swim.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Fairness to a Game

The only way to be "unfair" to a game, IMHO, is to present it in a completely different light than its creators intended. The way I see it, fairness, which is, ironically, a loaded concept, can only be judged impartially by comparing what actually happens with the obligations derived from social contracts. You can't have a social contract with a game, just as you can't have a social contract with a Stop sign -- a game is not the right kind of philosophical entity. But you can have a social contract with the game's creators, who have done this and that thing in order to provide a game experience which has these and those characteristics.

You're still playing D&D in the same general way even though, say, you allow clerics to take rogue paragon paths (I know, I know; bear with me). But you'd probably be pushing it if, say, you rolled a d30 every time the game calls for a d20. And you'd probably be violating the social contract with the game's creators if every creature was a minion, they all carried treasure many levels above their own, they were only encountered by characters a couple levels above that, and everyone was rolling d100s instead of d20s.

The game is what it is. The game designers have presented it just so, and I'd say deserve to have the game given a fair shake as is. Contract fulfilled. After that, if you find your experience of the game (not the game itself -- your experience of it) improves with some (or many) modifications (or complete overhaul), then go for it.


Fairness to Your Players

Is everyone having a good time? Are your players aware you have modified the game's rules?

If "yes" and "yes," you're being fair to your players.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Please look again. I said Catan was not a simple game, period. I then used Monopoly as one among now a handful of demonstrative examples. The single example itself is not the goalpost.

By implicitly abandoning Monopoly as an example of a simple game accessible to the hoi polloi as soon as someone pointed out that Catan isn't any more complicated than Monopoly is, you are, in fact, moving the goal posts of where "simple games" begin.

Furthermore, attempting to claim that a game of Monopoly-level complexity isn't accessible to the general public is, frankly, a ludicrous position to take.