Load Bearing Rules in TTRPG

[Lanefan]

If the game has any sort of action economy, your resource cost (how much it costs to create effect X) and resource throughput (how may resources you can spend per turn/round/whatever) are things you can't mess with.

Well, you can mess with them but you'd better know what you're doing and be aware of the knock-on effects.

That's why concentration in 5e is a rigid rule. It ensures you can't stack the bonuses (or debuffs) from too many spells at one time.

It's actually a source of deep imbalance in 5e. Reactions were never supposed to carry more weight than an opportunity attack. Any spell or feature that allows you to deliver damage via reaction on the regular is adding damage on top of a character's full output.

Concentration is a fine example of a rule I'd want to change. Make some of the buffs/debuffs (Fly, Invisibility, etc.) fire-and-forget with a fixed duration and simply get rid of some others. Allowing them to stack is fine; one Dispel Magic can still ruin your day (and that's a spell that's been too harshly nerfed IMO), and if the caster is burning their slots on buffs they're not burning them on something else.

Another load-bearing rule that people have been changing and messing with since day one is initiative or combat sequencing. You gotta have it in some form unless combat resolution is single-roll or fully narrative, but none of the versions presented thus far in the various editions of D&D have been much use.

So, in answer to the OP, yes: I'll change load-bearing rules if I have to, just like I'll change any other rules.

 

[dragoner]

Much like a load bearing wall, removing it means shoring up the floor above, at some point you cross over and it is a different game. Which is fine, as long as it isn't a bait and switch.

 

[Fenris-77]

I usually pick a system that matches the kind of game I want to run, which means the load bearing rules carpet usually matches the drapes. If I feel the need to change core rules I would think that might be a suggestion that I should just pick a different system.

Hacking rules is fun though, and there's nothing wrong with tinkering and exploring new things via rules design. As noted about that there are serious caveats there as regards balance and whatnot. Well-designed games are intricate things and you can break a lot of stuff if you start knocking them about. As long as we aren't overestimating our design chops this is fine too. Playtesting is how we figure out if these new ideas work.

 

[jdrakeh]

I try not to, as it will (usually) fundamentally change the game. This is specifically true of small games with laser-focused rules. For example, in my recently published I Swore the Oath, if you remove the rules for spiritual corruption, you completely change the focus of the game (it goes from being a game about holy warriors questioning their belief structure to just being a business as usual game about D&D-like paladins).

 

[aramis erak]

The more load bearing rules I feel the need to fix, the more I look at other games for doing that setting.

If I am going to tinker, it's usually in the task system.

In MegaTraveller: I change the attribute divisor from 5 to 3. That is, a +1 from attribute per 3 points of attribute rather than from per 5 points. To compensate and keep the Joe Normal odds the same, I shifted the TN's up a single point. (Joe Normal is attribute 7 to 8... ). I also changed the penetration breakpoints to better reflect the effects in Striker (MT is essentially CT Strikerized... Striker was the Traveller miniatures wargame)

In LUG Trek, I felt the system had the roles of attributes and skills swapped from what reflected TNG... so I swapped them when I run. Don't need to change anything else aside from ships...

Never got Decipher Trek to table as an RPG. But I like its ship rules slightly better than LUG's. I have played out some battles using its ship rules and NPC templates...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I usually pick a system that matches the kind of game I want to run, which means the load bearing rules carpet usually matches the drapes. If I feel the need to change core rules I would think that might be a suggestion that I should just pick a different system.

That's usually my feeling on the topic. Occasionally I'll run into a campaign nothing jumps out at me as Best Choice, but that's usually when I grab a generic system and see if it can be adjusted to fit (since usually they're set up with adjustment in mind more than more heavily purpose-built systems are (and that's almost inevitable in both cases).

Hacking rules is fun though, and there's nothing wrong with tinkering and exploring new things via rules design. As noted about that there are serious caveats there as regards balance and whatnot. Well-designed games are intricate things and you can break a lot of stuff if you start knocking them about. As long as we aren't overestimating our design chops this is fine too. Playtesting is how we figure out if these new ideas work.

One of the biggest problems with rules hacking is that at least in theory people who design games for sale or general use at least do some degree of playtesting (and ideally blindtesting, though I'm cynical about how often that's actually done) before its delivered to us.

When you hack a game, though, any playtesting is probably the actual use-in-the-field case, so you don't get to eliminate problem areas before they become problems where you care about. So you have to just kind of hope your perception and understanding allows you to see those coming.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think core mechanics count as "rules." "Roll a d20 and add a modifier" is not a rule,it's a core system. Changing a core system is inherently more dramatic and impactful that changing a rule.

For example, Advantage and Disadvantage is a load bearing rule in 5E per the OP. Changing it (going back to modifiers) requires a major shift in play but probably doesn't break anything. Switching the core mechanic to 2d10 plus modifiers would be a much bigger deal.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't think core mechanics count as "rules." "Roll a d20 and add a modifier" is not a rule,it's a core system. Changing a core system is inherently more dramatic and impactful that changing a rule.

For example, Advantage and Disadvantage is a load bearing rule in 5E per the OP. Changing it (going back to modifiers) requires a major shift in play but probably doesn't break anything. Switching the core mechanic to 2d10 plus modifiers would be a much bigger deal.

Why do we not think that the bit in the book that tells you what dice to roll isn't a rule? I'm not clear why you'd make that distinction.

 

[Reynard]

Why do we not think that the bit in the book that tells you what dice to roll isn't a rule? I'm not clear why you'd make that distinction.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't distinguish between some rule and the core mechanic of a game. A rule is an implementation of or a exception to the core mechanic.

But we did this thread a while back with similar blurred lines between the two.

 

[MGibster]

So my question is: Do you ever change load bearing rules?

That's going to be a negative. If I have to change a load bearing rule then I'm better off switching to a different game.

Years ago, I mentioned on a board, perhaps this one, that when running Savage Worlds I eliminate the Swimming/Throwing/Climbing skills and combine them into Athletics. Someone felt so strongly that it was important to have those three, seperate skills that they'd never play in any game I was running. We PEG revised SW guess what they did? They rolled Swimming/Throwing/Climbing into one skill.