What could possibly go wrong?

[Twichyboy]

When i introduce a houserule, or allow something a player suggests i tell my players that the rules can and will be subject to change if i don't think their working or need to be changed.

that way if a rule happens to not work, all i do is say i'm retracting the rule. if someone happened to center around that ruling, i simply let them re-spec or such. No harm no foul

 

[Wik]

An important one - discuss the house rule with your players! Sometimes, just talking with your group will let you figure out whether it's worth the effort of introducing the rule.

Two examples:

1) When we first got 4e D&D, I read through the books, and made a few house rules before we ever started playing. The first was "Shuriken are called throwing knives. Anyone who calls them shuriken gets punched in the face". My group agreed. The second was "Sun rods only illuminate 10 squares, instead of 20".

The group discussed it. I mentioned how this could limit ranged attacks, especially for rangers in some encounters. But I told them I really hated the idea of a sun rod effectively illuminating 200 feet in diameter, and yet not being so bright at the core as to burn out your eyeballs. And they fully agreed. So we nerfed the sun rod.

Never had a problem with it... of course, it was a minor change (we made a few tweaks later on, after we had played for a bit, that were a touch more drastic).

2) If your group has a problem with a rather large aspect of the rules, discuss ways you can change it. Make that re-writing a GROUP effort, rather than just a GM's tinkering, and it will probably work better in the long run. After all, the group will have more input in the rule, and it will benefit from the scrutiny of a group as opposed to one sleep-addled GM.

With us, this meant taking the damage system in Savage Worlds and swapping it out with something a bit closer to the damage system in D&D. If my group ever decides to put work towards making that system, we'd probably wind up playing that system over any other.

 

[irdeggman]

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?

Actually in my experience house-rules more often come from how the DM wants his world to be - that is they are "color" based rules not changes to rules that don't fit or work well.

For example:

The DM "decided" that elves would be allergic to cold iron and that any weapons made of such material would cause them extra damage. Cold iron was a way of manufacturing not a material type (basically the real world definition). I had to prompt him for what should the elf PC being played by another player would recieve as a racial benefit to compensate for this. This was 3.0 and then when 3.5 came out and more clearly defined material types it caused him even more issues with his vision of the world. He ended up granting a sort of animal companion feature to the PC. It really sucked because the PC in question was an archer and since "steel" wasn't commonly available he had great difficulty making arrow heads to use.

Same DM, same game - humans had subraces each with their own traits. One PC (1st level) recieved the benefit to sleep in her armor with no penalty (3.0 before the endurance feat basically granted this ability for the armor in question), also she had a fleet of highly trained war horses that were much more effective in combat than the PCs were. One other subrace received basically a souped up katana to reflect his culture, the other PCs got nothing whatsoever since their cultures were never fully developed in the DM's mind first (even though that was the basic land the group was starting in). The sleep in armor issue became huge since the DM was fond of having the party attacked at night and surprised no matter how many guards we had awake (strict rulings on the Spot/Listen checks enforced at that time),

Same DM - wands required "masterwork" wand to be enchanted. So any PC who wanted to craft a wand had to either go buy a masterwork quality wand to enchant or craft his own using some sort of craft skill depending on what it was to be made of (again a vague ruling on what this process was) - and the material cost of the masterwork wand was to part of the overall cost of crafting it. My questions on this which were never answered were - what special benefits are granted to the "wand" for being masterwork since all masterwork items are granted some bonuse fo their non-masterwork components, how is the cost affected of crafting a wand (clearly spelled out in the DMG) affected if you craft your own wand material versus buying one?


The list goes on and on for this DM inserting house rules that were not truely thought out and him not understanding the 3.0/3.5 rules to know how he was effecting them. He was a very, very experienced player and DM in the 2nd ed rules and unfortunatly he based his house rules on that rule set instead of first understanding how the 3.X rules actually worked.

I have had several other DMs who did the same thing with house rules - inserted house rules with game mechanic properties to fill in "color" issues of the game and not looking at "balance" {if you take something away from a race or class then you need to give some equal to them to make up for it} or the infamous "domino effect" where the implications of the house rule affect another game mechanic which impacts a different one, , ,,

 

[DumbPaladin]

It's funny, because this applies not only to RPGs, but also board games & card games. House rules in Uno pretty much make the game never end; Free Parking in Monopoly makes an already poorly-designed game possibly never-ending ... and the people who suggest house rules NEVER have any understanding of game theory, nor do they seem to even attempt to ponder what might go wrong. That bugs me.

I'm fine with a house rule if some thought was put into it. I used to host a monthly board game night, and one of the regular attendees seemed to be obsessed with changing the rules (or IGNORING rules!) of nearly every game we played, but NOT in any way that made the game
a) more enjoyable
b) equitable for all players
or c) do anything but completely break down

After having a couple of different games get derailed by her "ideas", I politely pointed out that game theory was a field that, despite my interest in it, is still fully beyond my grasp ... and completely beyond hers. And we almost never instituted her "ideas" into future board game nights. (By derailed, I mean: in one game, her suggested "house rule", which was blindly agreed to by half of the people at the table, actually made it impossible for anyone to win the game, or for the game to ever end.)

A DM that treats a house rule as a sacred cow, especially in light of evidence and data suggesting it IS broken or CAN BE broken, is a definite liability to a group.

There are some house rules that are so innocuous that they cannot possibly mess anything up -- changing magic missile to instead shoot out little yellow stars with sound effects, but not changing any other stats of teh spell, for example. Some house rules are designed to benefit the players and their characters equally, which should always be within the DM's purview -- like allowing characters to choose half the value of their hit die rather than rolling, or automatically ensuring they cannot receive less than half.

But when you start doing things like radically altering classes, adding powerful feats, changing combat rules, and the like without any playtesting whatsoever ... recipe for disaster, given how few people even bother to think of all of the potential ramifications. Heck, even RPG system designers don't seem to be able to come up with all of the potential ramifications ...

 

[The Shaman]

My son and I play the boardgame Kids of Carcasonne pretty often, and while I win more often than not, when he wins he beats me fair and square - I don't ever 'let' him win.

A month or so ago he announced he wanted to change one of the rules; if a player closed a pathway then only that player's pieces could be placed on the closed path.

He'd clearly picked up on one of my strategies, to place some of my pieces adjacent to his so that if he closed a row I could put my pieces on the board as well. My son figured out a way to prevent me from doing that, and added an interesting new wrinkle to the game.

By the way, did I mention that he's four years old?



You don't need a degree in games theory to house rule . . .

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

My horror story involves zero-level PCs and a DM who didn't understand game balance.

...Okay, that's not much of a horror story, but zero level was pretty boring. I've never seen house rules ruin a game.

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.

I house rule a lot, and yeah, this is the golden rule. Of course understanding the rules first, or at least asking the advice of D&D forumites is a good way to avoid bad rules in the first place. But at the end of the day, flexibility is the real wisdom.

Also, communication. Most players are okay with trying a new rule if you simply mention it before the session starts. "Hey guys, I've been thinking about the 5-minute workday and how to fix it. So today, nobody starts with an action point, but you'll get one after every encounter."

 

[Janx]

After having a couple of different games get derailed by her "ideas", I politely pointed out that game theory was a field that, despite my interest in it, is still fully beyond my grasp ... and completely beyond hers. And we almost never instituted her "ideas" into future board game nights. (By derailed, I mean: in one game, her suggested "house rule", which was blindly agreed to by half of the people at the table, actually made it impossible for anyone to win the game, or for the game to ever end.)

A study I heard about a while ago, noted there was a difference in males and females in how they play games.

males played to win.

females played to extend the game.

The theory was, boys being competitive were looking to do whatever was expedient to ending the game in victory. And that girls, being more social, were looking to prolong the social experience.

The house rule example smacks of this, making rules changes that prolong the game.


I don't think it takes a degree in game theory to design games or change rules (given that >20 years ago, such a degree didn't even exist yet good games were made). But it does take the right mindset for it.

I'm wary of any rule that:
seems complicated
seems to drastically change the game
tries to make it "more realistic"
makes your PC more powerful

That said, in 2e, I had a house rule that gave you more arrow attacks (because it was realistic that in 1 minute round, you could fire more arrows). The math worked out based on dex (divided by 3) so that for the most part, you got 2 arrows, but at high Dex (like my PC had) I got 3 shots. It worked out OK, and didn't seem to unbalance or diminish melee weapons (I still used my longsword just as much). My logic at the time was that medieval archers really could shoot a lot of arrows and hit, and that 1 minute couldn't represent a flurry of blows when my inventory clearly showed I only used 2 arrows. Considering that 3e basically gave more attacks per round at higher levels regardless of weapon type, this concept was along the same line. When we instituted the rule, my PC was already higher level, which also minimized the unbalancing nature of a 1st level archer getting more attacks than a 1st level swordsman.

The conflict the rule had was really:
it made my PC more powerful. that was the whole point of the idea
it was aimed at being "more realistic"

These are warning signs when you get any house rule idea.

I like somebody's else's point (the guy I quoted I believe), that it should make the game more fun, or simplify, or rectify an imbalance.

 

[Stormonu]

The conflict the rule had was really:
it made my PC more powerful. that was the whole point of the idea
it was aimed at being "more realistic"

These are warning signs when you get any house rule idea.

I like somebody's else's point (the guy I quoted I believe), that it should make the game more fun, or simplify, or rectify an imbalance.

Likewise, that house rule also failed to take into effect swordsmen taking multiple swings (and possibly connecting) in the same span of time.

In other words, it favored one sort of action over another type.

 

[karlindel]

There are a number of things that can go wrong when a bad mechanic/house rule/etc is introduced into the game:

It can make characters over or underpowered, resulting in encounters that are too easy to be fun or that are overwhelming and so shorten the campaign.

It can alter the balance between archetypes, which can lead to resentment from players that like a particular archetype which is now unplayable or strictly inferior to others.

It can grind the game to a screeching halt as the group tries to determine how the new item interacts with other rules. It can also cause problems as players take actions based on their understanding of how the rules should interact, then the GM interprets it differently.

It can be difficult to remove options. Players may build characters based on the new rules/element, and require extensive changes to accommodate. It can hurt verisimilitude as characters are no longer capable of feats that were once routine. People may disagree as to the power of the new rules element, leading to arguments.

 

[The Shaman]

I'm wary of any rule that:
seems complicated
seems to drastically change the game
tries to make it "more realistic"
makes your PC more powerful

That's not a bad checklist.

With respect to the first, a finely honed Occam's razor should be in the toolkit of every prospective game designer, including aftermarket designers (aka referees) - think simplicity and elegance.

With respect to the second, I tend to think of myself as a rules 'tweaker' - a number of my house rules consist of fixes to corner cases or add-ons to existing systems rather than whole-sale creation of new subsystems. I feel that the less a gamer familiar with the system needs to unlearn-and-replace, the easier a house rule is to integrate.

With respect to the third, this depends on a couple of things. Every game abstracts the physics of the game-world through its rules, and I can understand why someone might be tempted to fiddle with the granularity dial if the rules-as-written produce results which fail the smell test for whatever they're intended to simulate. The key here is to understand how twisting that dial affects other systems: character creation and improvement, combat and skill performance, rewards. It's possible to make a change to one set of systems but not consider the cascade of effects of the change on others - this is why playtesting and critical feedback are important.

But tweaking a system to enhance the unique qualities of a setting can, if it's done well, add considerably to the experience of the game, so I don't think every attempt to tweak the abstraction dial is inherently game-breaking. As irdeggman notes upthread, many or most house rules are intended to reflect some aspect of the game-world; many of the house rules for my game take abstractions in the rules intended to emulate 17th century France and make them more specific to the 1620s where this game is set. In most cases my house rules open up additional options for players; only one specifically narrows a player's option with respect to character creation.

With respect to the last, I think it's important to understand and respect balance without being shackled to it, and to consider any change in light of how powerful the adventurers will be vis-a-vis both their opponents and one another. This is another instance where playtest, playtest, playtest should be the designer's mantra - frex, take a half-hour each game-night to set up a side-game specifically for testing your house rules before you introduce them into your long-running campaign. Get feedback, from the players in the playtest, from on-line forums, from the designer of the game.

Both professional and amateur for-market designers are capable for turning out complete stinkers as well, even with what should be a more intimate knowledge of the system; I reject the notion that aftermarket designers are inherently inferior in their command of the rules.