The slippery slope of house rules. When are there too many?

[Deadguy]

I wanted to pick up on something Jeff Wilder said:

(2) House rules that the DM doesn't realize are house rules; he or she is just screwing up a perfectly fine rule. Don't get me wrong ... if a DM chooses to change a rule, I'll evaluate it fairly, whether I like the rule or not. Similarly, I'm not talking about off-the-cuff decisions made to simply keep the game moving, which, as a DM, I completely understand are necessary (and even desireable). But if the DM is consistently making changes without even understanding the actual rules, it makes my skin crawl, and I'm out of there.

These sorts of misruling are the most troublesome House Rules in my experience. When the DM deviates from core rules because he can't be bothered to spend the time understanding the rules as written and so patches up this apparent hole with something else. In my epxerience this patch tends to grow and grow, as the ramifications of the DM's kludge become apparent in play (I can think of an example in an Earthdawn game I play in where the Ref's failure to read and understand a certain section of the rules has spawned effectively scores of individual side rulings).

Now, of course DMs are free to alter rules to suit the tenor of the campaign and their own design aesthetic. But when changing rules you must take the time to understand the rule as written first, and see what its ramifications are.

More generally, House Rules are too many when even the DM fails to remember them! Perhaps also when the consequences of the change are such that the DM never actually gets around to dealing with all those consequences, rewriting original material to suit the rules change.

 

[Quickbeam]

"When are there too many house rules?"

I have two answers to this questions:
1) Never.
2) When it becomes nearly impossible for the group to accurately recall and/or adhere to the myriad array of house rules.

In clarifying answer #1, I'd argue that if a group is willing to plug along inserting a never-ending stream of house rules into their game, then there is really is no such thing as too many. If the group is happy, then they've achieved the primary goal of RPGing.

As for #2, my personal take is that house ruling becomes excessive when:
a) I need to carry an appendix list of house rules to my sessions.
b) Frequent debates about what the current house rules dictate for a given situation occur.
c) Nobody can remember the house rules without items 'a' or 'b'.

And that's the opinion of this hasty Ent .

 

[Verequus]

This might be green grass syndrome, but right now if I could find a DM who had no house rules, I'd be begging to join that game. My current DM uses a lot of house rules and a lot of optional rules from all kinds of sources, and I really don't care for it. I just wanna play D&D, not some freaky flesh golem of a system that's been stitched together from a dozen or more different sources.

If a flesh golem system is hideous or not, depends on the internal consistency. If you succeed on this goal, the flesh golem won't look as originated of Frankenstein's lab. But this means not only to choose the optional rules carefully with a certain theme in mind, but also to eliminate the incompatibilities, which will happen alone through the design of the optional rules - how many authors take into account, that someone won't play a non-houseruled game, before their product is inserted? Not that many, like I wish (barring the question, if it would be even possible to that).

 

[Carpe DM]

Baaa!

Please, that's ridiculous.

I think this is an interesting subject, but I don't respond to rude behavior. That was uncalled for, and I don't appreciate it. That you disagree with me is fine. But perhaps some courtesy?

best,

Carpe

 

[Desdichado]

I think this is an interesting subject, but I don't respond to rude behavior. That was uncalled for, and I don't appreciate it. That you disagree with me is fine. But perhaps some courtesy?

Fine, I retract that Baa. Sorry. I knew it sounded a bit rude even as I posted it, but I was feeling a bit snarkish that day due to progressively worsening migraines, so against my better judgement, I left it in.

However, if you think anything else is too rude for you to respond, then I guess we're at an impasse. It was not the intention of my post to be rude or insulting, merely to express my opinion of your attitude, which I think I've still done coherently through the rest of the post. Your attitude completely baffles me, and unless I've interpreted it incorrectly, it's based on false assumptions anyway.

 

[Yair]

I used to have lots of house rules. Entire documents of extra feats and other additions, changes to rules, and so on. As I've grown older, however, I grew lazy. I don't LIKE having lots of house rules - as a player, they make the PHB less useful, and force me to learn another game rather than simply play D&D. As a DM, they are hard to remember. I now try to keep house rules to the bare minimum I can live with, but allow a lot of leeway if a player comes to me wanting changes.

Currently, my "house rules" are just:
1. character generation rules - 32 point buy.
2. flavor-related "supernatural abilities replace magic items" rules, with "money" as per DMG.
3. individual changes for specific characters, based on discussion with the player (a psion with Wis as prime ability, changed gnome starting spells, and so on).
4. faster XP accumulation (about 200%, XP granted due to supernatural or divine flavored encounters only; part of the campaign flavor).
5. Instant leveling up (is that even a house rule?)

And for my still-brewing Ars Magica PbP campaign:
1. Enc/3 to reduce the *penalties* for wearing heavy armor (sheesh!)
2. Faerie Magic rules, to be determined.

 

[dren]

When are there too many house rules? Well, depends upon you and your players. When you find they become too cumbersome to use and remember, it's time to re-evaluate whether D&D is really the system you want to use. There are LOTS of d20 systems out there, and if you look there is probably one closer to what you want.

As for me, I love the basic combat, skill, feat, progression and most of the spells for the game, yet, I have near four pages of home rules, but for me they are a natural evolution because it's the way I envision the world and the nature of magic/combat. My players seem to enjoy them, but it's probably because I describe both the problems and the potential resolutions better and there are fewer hassles as a result.

 

[Chimera]

Considering that I use a lot of House Rules to deal with 'no spell books', 'very few material components' and 'completely different economic system'...

I only have a couple of problems with large numbers of house rules, most of which others have mentioned;

1> When there are too many to even begin to remember.
a> Usually because they don't begin to make sense or (as someone else mentioned) they're to paper over the GM's complete failure to understand the original rules.

2> When they aren't spelled out up front. Give them to me in print and don't make them up as you go along. If you're making them up on the fly and/or just to screw me, I'm taking a walk.

3> When there are so many as to constitute a complete replacement of the original rules. Don't tell me we're playing D&D, then tell me to throw away my PHB and use your rules.

4> When they're designed to cripple PCs because the GM thinks that certain (core rules) things give the PCs too much power. Sorry, but that's not a problem with the game mechanics, it's a problem with your GMing ability! Oh sure, I'll accept a certain amount of this, but when there is a pattern of PC nerfing in place, I'm not playing.

 

[Carpe DM]

Fine, I retract that Baa. Sorry. I knew it sounded a bit rude even as I posted it, but I was feeling a bit snarkish that day due to progressively worsening migraines, so against my better judgement, I left it in.

Thanks, I appreciate it. We all feel snarky sometimes.

Now, let me try to respond a bit on the substance of the matter.

1. What I posted is a version of the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which is a theory worked out in the field of Public Choice. Here's the basic idea. Why do we like juries, or, why do we like decisions made by groups of people? Well, it turns out that groups of people have a magnifying effect on accuracy.

To do the math, let's say we're trying to decide a close issue. On close issues let's say we each have a 51% chance of getting it right: that is, we're only *slightly* more likely than not to get it right.

Now the idea becomes clear: I, personally, may be only 51% likely to get an issue right, whereas I am 49% likely to get it wrong. But 12 people are much less likely to get it wrong overall (their consistent average will be weighted toward the 51 not the 49), and 1000 people will very nearly never get it wrong.

So, on close issues, should one person decide, 12 people decide, or 1000 people decide? Well, the CJT says you opt for the largest decision-making group.

Now, concededly: some of the conditions for CJT may not obtain in any given scenario. Specifically, if a person believes he or she is much smarter than everyone else, he is unlikely to believe that using CJT gets to the right result better: if I am 99% likely to get it right, and everyone else is 51% likely, I will probably rely on my own judgment and not the group's.

But I, personally, don't believe I'm much smarter than everyone else who plays this game. So I rely on the CJT.


2. Information encoding

All right, this part comes from legislative theory. Here's the idea. The doctrine of unintended consequences is a constant. In complex systems, an alteration in one portion of the system usually has system-wide effects not immediately discernable.

Which means that to a person ex ante considering changes in the system, that person will rarely be able to discern all ex post effects of the changes. Whereas rules that are hammered out over time and in community often reflect an understanding of downstream effects.

In short, I've often seen houserules have unintended effects that cause more houserules, that cause more unintended effects, that cause MORE houserules...and you get the picture.

In sum:

Understanding group accuracy effects and understanding how to avoid unintended consequences does not mean just being a follower. If you think you know more than the group, sure, change the rules. You're more likely to be right.

best,

Carpe

 

[swrushing]

I use house rules with practically every game i run.

i view the core rules as a mass market appeal product that was built without specific knowledge of me, my campaign goals or my players and their wants. So, its not surprising that altering those mass market rules by someone armed with all that knowledge could make for a better fit.

Now, in general, i try and give a list of house rules at the beginning of the campaign and then do very little if any changes after that. Changes to classes to meet player character needs is one common house rule. This avoids the notion of "trying to keep up" with a continual series of changes being a problem. We pretty much start with a rule set and keep it. This includes things like classes available and PUBLISHED stuff as well. very little "new official stuff" gets in after we start.

There are of course two exceptions to the "no changes" after start rule. I tend to make these evaluations and corrections at six month intervals, as part of a regularly scheduled .campaign update.

if something is found to be "broken" it will likely be fixed after a while. More often than not, "broken" IMG means "too weak" not "too powerful." For instance, after 6 months i altered the core abilities of a couple classes in my stargate game, offering a replacement ability (player choice) in two cases for core abilities that had never been used. both were accepted and now those characters use their core class abilities frequently. These changes will be incorporated into the start-up house rules in my next campaign.

The other case is where something, some change, is requested by a player, usually to enable a story element that has developed in play. If others like it and I evaluate it as "not a problem" then it gets in. "Not a problem" is my usual standard. i know some GMs who turn things down unless there is "a very compelling reason to make the change" and who turn down most suggestions on that account. I am running under one such Gm right now. But my standard is that if it won't cause problems and a player is interested, its good. The fact that it will be more fun for the player(s) is enough "justification" as long as it wont cause issues with other players or the game.

So, i have house rules and find them helpful to the game.