Missing Rules

[Reynard]

NOTE: This is just for fun and not meant to be an invitation to dog pile on any particular game.

Have you ever discovered, after some play, that a RPG was missing a rule or a class of rule? For example, you started with local adventures and when it is time to move farther a field you discover the game has no travel rules. Like that.

Has that ever happened to you? What game? What rule? How did you resolve it?

 

[Thierry-Advent]

One thing that bugs me about Fantasy AGE, is that Green Ronin decided on purpose, that they wouldn't give daily travel distances and any guidance for travel. It's not listed in the index. 'It's just not that kind of game' they answered to my question.

But there is a page for Home & Heart that describes such things as: "Bed frame: A wooden framework with a net of rope woven among them to provide support for a mattress. Blanket: Though it wouldn’t stand up long under the rigors of travel, this cotton blanket will provide considerable comfort at home. Bowl: A simple dish for serving or eating food, available in a variety of materials." Weird priorities.

I use my muscle memory and recall D&D travel info.

 

[R_J_K75]

I ran a campaign for the GI Joe RPG by Renegade Games. It wasn't terrible or unplayable but there were a lot of rule omissions. Most were easily hand waved. At the games launch there was only the core book I believe. One thing I found pretty glaring was that there was no supporting NPCs, such as doctors, scientists. civilians, soldiers, law enforcement, first responders, etc. There was a short chapter in the beginning that gave text descriptions of maybe 30 of the well-known Joes but no stats in the book for them. I wasn't looking for a full roster with stats, but a brief outline on how to build them per the character creation rules would have gone a long way minimize the guess work.

 

[Reynard]

I ran Marvel Multiverse and I was shocked to discover there were no rules for (death)traps in it. They apparently came out with the X-Men expansion. But traps are a mainstay of superhero comics. it felt like an egregious omission.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Have you ever tried to play any Palladium games, like RIFTS? So many missing, nonsensical, and/or contradictory rules. And I don't mean it lacks rules for weird edge cases or obscure nonsense, there aren't clear answers to 'what if I want to attempt something that has a skill associated with it but don't have the skill?' 'what if I want to move while making multiple attacks?'or 'how do I even dodge in combat'? And you get weird-but-correct things like the way that scaling between MDC (MegaDamage Capacity, what big magical monsters, mechs, and high tech armor use) and SDC (Standard Damage Capacity)/hit points works means that if you have a basic 1d4 damage laser pistol that's a pitiful backup weapon for guys adventuring in regular armor, you'll vaporize ordinary people (who have under 100 hit points) because 1 MDC = 100 SDC/HP.

I've heard TMNT doesn't suffer from this to the extent the rest do, but all of their other games that I've seen definitely do, and RIFTS pretty much jams a bunch of rules systems together so inherits all of the problems. They might have produced a rules update in recent years that I'm not aware of.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

NOTE: This is just for fun and not meant to be an invitation to dog pile on any particular game.

Have you ever discovered, after some play, that a RPG was missing a rule or a class of rule? For example, you started with local adventures and when it is time to move farther a field you discover the game has no travel rules. Like that.

Has that ever happened to you? What game? What rule? How did you resolve it?

The One Ring TTRPG has no rules for languages. Love the game, running a great campaign, but I suddenly realized early on that when I said "the note is written in Sindarin" there was no way to tell who could read it in the game rules.

Which is really freaking odd for a Tolkien-based game!

My solution was to house rule that everyone spoke their native language and common, and for every point of Lore they could name another language they spoke. Simple and works well. No idea why the base rules decided not to at least do this

 

[500 Toads]

I haven't actually run it yet, and this is one of the reasons why: the 2018 publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha specifies that a lot of rules regarding such things as heroquesting, chases, NPC reactions, rune metals, vehicles, and what-not are all in the RuneQuest Gamemaster's Guide. Not only does that book still not exist as of this writing, but there is no release date or even a release year.

 

[Koloth]

I have had rules/spells/items not make the trip from a previous version to the current version. Sometimes we just assume the thing did make the trip. Or if a board game, we finish this game using the previous rule then note the change going forward.

 

[jdrakeh]

The absence of a description for the "Detect Invisible" spell in B/X D&D is notable, mostly because it is referenced at different points in the rulebooks.

Oh. I forgot one. Palladium games in general but specifically NONE of them, for decades, actually told you how to make a d% skill roll. It was implied, but never actually stated.

 

[Celebrim]

Virtually every single game I've ever ran.

For example, I've been running Star Wars D6 for about three years now and the rules are surprisingly Nar focused for a game of its era.

Travel takes as long as would be cinematically convenient. The length of time spent on successful repairs are determined by what is cinematically convenient. There are no serious attempts at modelling what happens when you get a hyperspace jump wrong because you treat it just like dusting crops. The assumption of the rules is that the storyteller has written out some sort of narrative script, the players read part of that script, then they play a scene in that narrative script, and that leads to the next scene. The intention is to create the experience of being a rebel on military mission that feels like a movie, with tightly focused objective and a progression through A->B->C.

This breaks down significantly I think the more into an open world you get with more diverse campaign ideas, despite the fact that all the source material WEG was releasing promised to support more open world with more diverse campaign styles than the default rebel alliance military volunteer/operative that the core rules support.

And that's not even getting into the fact that there was no real editorial control over categories of in world objects like equipment, vehicles, races, spaceships, monsters, etc. So you have an almost unusable hodge podge of different ways to handle things - something like three separate rule systems for how to handle powered armor as documented in the description of individual pieces of equipment by different authors. Cybernetics are even worse. But even for common items and ships, prices, power levels, and balance is all over the place.