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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8474524" data-attributes="member: 75787">Tons of reasons. here are a few:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Humility: Just because I think it's a bad rule, doesn't mean it actually is. When I change a "bad" rule I am saying "I am a better game designer than this guy who has is lead designer for a major RPG system and has decades of experience". That's a pretty strong statement and so I often think "well, this isn't great, but if Rob Heinsoo can't think of anything better, I guess I'll go with it".</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tooling: If I'm using a VTT or char gen app (hello 4E!) it will often be very hard or impossible to modify.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Embeddedness: Some rules are just too embedded in the system to be changeable. Fixing them means fundamental changes to the system.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Consistency: My players play in multiple games and in Living Campaigns. Dealing with different rules for different GMs is a pain for them. If I'm running a Pathfinder module, it is generally a terrible idea to turn up with a set of rules you are going to ignore / change / add.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fun: Stopping a game to work out a better rule is not fun to me and my group. Or most groups I've been in. So even if we decided we really needed to change a rule, we will always accept it and move on at least temporarily.</li> </ul>To change a rule you therefore need -- at a minimum:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">To be confident you are better at designing this part of the game than the original designer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">This rule not to be part of your game tools or applications</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It's not a fundamental part of the system</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You and you are players are not playing the same system with other people</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You are doing this between sessions</li> </ol>Rules-heavy games are more likely to have digital support and apps that make tweaking hard and the quadratic number of interactions between rules means that if you change one rule, you need to consider all the interactions that it will allow, so you are doomed if it's a central rule, and even if it's not there is a great chance you overlooked that combination of rules that means your "fix to a bad rule" has led to a worse rule. If you are playing a popular game like D&D unless you are a cloistered group of gamers, it's almost certainly better to stick with the bad rule than require players to have a folder of "Graham's Tweaks", "Thomas's Tweaks" etc and then get continually irritated trying to remember which tweak is for which game master.Which is probably why another thread I am reading says that rule tweaks and home brewing is a red flag for the majority of people when they read campaign descriptions!</blockquote>

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