What could possibly go wrong?

[Michael Silverbane]

In another thread I've seen some folks advise caution to newer game masters when creating alternative or home-brewed material. Lest they fall victim to poorly conceived mechanics.

Of course it is desirable to use the best possible mechanics for whatever you are trying to accomplish. But the implication that the use of poor mechanics is unwise or might lead to some dire consequences seems a little... pessimistic.

So... What sorts of things do you think can happen when a bad new mechanic is introduced into an otherwise workable game?

What horror stories do you have of house rules gone out of control?

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[billd91]

I think as long as you're willing to keep modifying the rule if you find it's not working rather than obstinately sticking to your own personal quirks regardless of how the game is turning out, everything will be OK.

The main horror stories I hear about are DMs who make up quirky house rules and then stick to them over the objections of their players and virtually all common sense. As long as you can avoid being that DM, experiment with house rules. Just be willing to undo the damage you inflict if they do go wrong.

 

[Nagol]

It can end an otherwise workable game. Isn't that reason enough?

 

[Stormonu]

What could possibly go wrong?

It's the law of unintended consequences. Change one thing, and it negatively affects something else you didn't consider at all. In short, the whole game can fall apart if it isn't checked. But just some of the issues I've had over about 30 years of gaming (luckily for my games, I've been able to put the problems in check before they ruined my game):

- Characters that become unbeatable due to lopsided racial or class modifications (either by introduction of new race/classes or the removal of existing restrictions) - (f'ex, giving spell points instead of spell slots to wizards)

- Rules that punish players more than monsters (Critical hits & fumbles tend to fall into this trap; having your arm lopped off only affects a monster for a scene - for a player, it's the rest of the game)

- Too much wealth accrued by players, allowing them to "buy their way out" of encounters (f'ex, players at 5th level use their money to buy an item of Slay Living to beat the BBEG)

- Monsters that become too hard to kill because of a rule change that favors them, decreasing the player's fun (f'ex, all monsters do +2d8 damage with each attack, even at 1st level)

- Powers or abilities that are uncounted for in the game and make things too easy for the players (which leads to boredom) (f'ex, everyone in the party starts with permanent fly spells in a game dominated by ground-based melee opponents)

- Silly skills or checks that make easy tasks too difficult to accomplish or dangerous to attempt ("roll out of bed onto floor and die from a fumble" syndrome) - this usually crops up with too much of an attempt at simulationism (f'ex, character has to make a Climb check to climb up into a tree in the middle of the woods and upon failing, immediately takes falling damage - enough to kill the character)

 

[Jhaelen]

So... What sorts of things do you think can happen when a bad new mechanic is introduced into an otherwise workable game?

What horror stories do you have of house rules gone out of control?

What could possibly go wrong?

I'll start with an answer to the last question: Everything!

Regarding horror stories: Do you think you'd enjoy a 'campaign' that consists of aborted one-shots that usually end with a tpk and the DM chuckling and saying 'Well, looks, like I have to tune those critical hit tables a bit more...'?

Houseruling a system you don't have a firm grasp on is a sure-fire way to ruin it.

The greatest danger, imho, lies in alienating the players:
Most players don't enjoy being play-testers. They want to play, period.

Once a DM has lost the players' trust by fiddling with things she doesn't really understand it's very, very, very hard to regain that trust. It's a lot more likely they'll just stop showing up and look for a new DM elsewhere.

Unless you've told them beforehand, they're going to be lab rats for your crazy ideas, players will have certain, legitimate expectations about your game.

A _much_ better approach is to start playing the game as written and after noticing certain things you don't like, talk it over with the players and come up with houserules that everybody agrees with. Test them one at a time and don't be afraid to ditch them again if they don't have the desired effect.
Likewise, encourage your players to speak up about things they don't like and discuss if a houserule might help.
But don't go overboard with it! If your collection of houserules has more pages than the PHB, you've likely missed the point of playing that particular system.

 

[Heathen72]

It can end an otherwise workable game. Isn't that reason enough?

Well, no, actually, because it's implicit when house-ruling that one is addressing an issue that makes the game at some level unworkable. Also the OP suggest that dire imprecations (you know, such as "it can end an otherwise workable game") seem somewhat pessimistic. So, do you have you any actual examples of how a game has been ended by houseruling?

My group houserules loads of different things. I have yet to see a game ended by houserules. I can't say that it doesn't happen, of course, but I can say that I seen many games improved. As a poster indicated above, you just need to the good will of the players, and the understanding that if a houserule seems unbalanced - either your ruling, or a vote by the group - that you change it back.

 

[Nagol]

Well, no, actually, because it's implicit when house-ruling that one is addressing an issue that makes the game at some level unworkable. Also the OP suggest that dire imprecations (you know, such as "it can end an otherwise workable game") seem somewhat pessimistic. So, do you have you any actual examples of how a game has been ended by houseruling?

My group houserules loads of different things. I have yet to see a game ended by houserules. I can't say that it doesn't happen, of course, but I can say that I seen many games improved. As a poster indicated above, you just need to the good will of the players, and the understanding that if a houserule seems unbalanced - either your ruling, or a vote by the group - that you change it back.

Many.

One early game of AD&D, the DM decided he wanted a more "epic-y" feel and decided to grant every PC a started magical ability and powerful magic item. About the 3rd session, he realised that he couldn't threaten us since anything he thought would challenge us didn't and anything tougher killed us outright. Game never had a 4th session.

Several games attempted to introduce Fumble mechanics. The fumbles were generally annoying, but not game-breaking until you hit outliers on the chart. Then a character (or 2) died (or worse). Games typically ended and/or had the rules yanked and session retconned at that point. Even with the retconn, player satisfaction dropped since some players had to live with their previous results and the more recently affected were given a pass.

Several games tried to introduce "better and more wild" wild magic and fell apart once all the original arcane casters died or were retired and no one was willing to play one any more.

One DM had a lot of ideas he wanted to explore in his game. Rules were added and removed every session. Player fatigue set in and the group turned to someone else to run.

One game tried to introduce mechanics for land-owning and political control and set the PCs up as minor nobles of a region. The bookkeeping was tedious and the PCs felt constrained from adventuring as a group. That was OK though since the PC could take his retainers and deal with the opportunity/threat themselves Since 80% of the players didn't want to sit and watch someone else's adventure each week and the DM wasn't running every night so that each PC could run once a week individually, the game collapsed.

 

[Mark Hope]

Like billd91 says, the key is to remain flexible. Nothing wrong with trying out a new houserules, but be prepared to abandon it if it isn't working out. Otherwise, yeah, the main issues will be a game that is a headache to DM, or players who are unhappy with the new way the game runs.

I've had one minor issue of this type as DM and one a little more annoying as a player.

For a while we tried out the "clobbered" variant from the 3e DMG. If I remember it correctly, it meant that if you take half your current hp in a single blow, you can only take a standard action on your next turn. We thought it would be neat. Nice idea, but eventually it became a hassle to track, kept slowing the game down when we remembered that someone was supposed to have been clobbered by a specific blow, and so we ditched it after a couple of sessions. Keeping it would have just lowered the quality of the game.

As a player, I was in a game run by a DM who is usually excellent. I made a fighter/cleric built around the idea of casting enlarge on himself and then using charge in combat to deal lots of lovely damage.

I was really looking forward to laying the smack down on my foes until, halfway through the first combat, the DM announced out of nowhere that a Large creature (as I became after casting enlarge) needed twice the usual distance to charge (20 feet or four squares instead of 10 feet). Given that most of the combats were taking place in human-sized dungeons, I suddenly found that I was almost never able to utilise my character as intended. Not only was this houserule sprung on me out of nowhere, but the DM refused to change it and wouldn't let me rebuild my character. So yeah, that kind of sucked.

We're good mates, by the way, and were taking turns at DMing in that group, and the campaign was otherwise fun so I took it in my stride and let it lie. The DM in question later agreed that it wasn't his best call, so no harm no foul in the end. But that's a clear example of how a rapidly-adopted houserule can sour elements of a game if its adhered to without flexibility.

 

[invokethehojo]

I'm a big fan of house ruling, but I have such a horror story.

It was a few months after 4e came out. My group had played it several times, but we were all still getting used to some of the changes, and we were rusty because we had dropped 3.5 when the splat books got crazy with the new classes. I was the DM for the group, and I wanted to get more experience with the system so I went to the LGS and found a group that was playing that friday night. The DM was a woman in her 40's, and the group consisted of her and her husband and a kid whose name I can't remember. They were trying to get the party to a size of 4 so I jumped in and the DM ran and NPC. She admitted she wasn't all that familiar with the system herself, but had been reading the rules and felt confident she could handle it. Sounded ok....?

I show up to play with a tiefling rogue. The DM announces to everyone that she is implementing a house rule, because she has a heavy background in fencing (and martial arts, and other such BS). As long as you remain adjacent to a creature you can move as much as you want without provoking opportunity attacks. So the only time you provoke when moving is to move away from a target. She likens this to fencing, where you circle each other constantly. Within a few rounds I realize my rouge is no longer a viable character, because many of my powers use shifting. The ranger also has a shifting power, which is now nerfed. By the end of the session it had fallen apart and I never gamed with them again.

If she had played the game a little longer she would have seen how prevalent shifting is in the powers of some classes. However, let me state, 4e (IMO) is a very unforgiving system for house rules, meaning one little change can screw up everything. There are others systems which are easier to fiddle with, such as Mutants and Masterminds.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I can't think of a true rules related horror story. Every bad call made or mechanic adopted provided amusement in one form or another. The ones that didn't work or were found to add nothing worthwhile to the game were dropped.

You can't always tell which ideas are going to be great and which ones will be recalled later as being so bad they were funny. For a while after reading an article in The Dragon, I thought keeping track of damage to weapons & armor would be cool. It was amusing at first but got tedious after a little while so I stopped bothering with it.

To new DMs I give the following advice:

1) Don't be afraid to try stuff out. New ideas and participant input are the lifeblood of the game.

2) As others have mentioned, be flexible. Use new ideas but keep them in play only if it makes the game more enjoyable by doing so.

3) Do net let anyone convince you that using ideas which were not written by some game designer will automatically ruin your game.

I sometimes see posts in game forums ( this one and others) discussing a particular system and someone will mention that they would like to have X in their game but they don't because the rules for X have not been published yet.

Over the years I have created sub systems, classes, items, spells and misc. stuff for games that didn't include them in the rules. Sometimes another version of what I made up would be published for the game later.
Depending on how much I liked what was published I would either start using that version, stick with my own, or use the bits from both that I liked the best.

Never stop trying to build a better mousetrap if you enjoy doing it.