What level of house rules are you comfortable with?

[Quasqueton]

With all the talk of house rules this week...

You are looking to join a new game, and you ask the DM about his house rules.

"I have no house rules. We play straight out of the core books."

"I have no house rules. We use the core books plus A, B, C, D, E, . . . X, Y, and Z books."

"I have a few [less than a dozen] house rules, but they are mostly minor tweaks [clubs can deal non-lethal damage with no attack penalty]."

"I have a few [less than a dozen] house rules, and most are major alterations [new magic system]."

"I have a 23-page document explaining my house rules."

"I have a 256-page document explaining my meshing of several editions of the game into a barely-recognizable hybrid."

What level of house rules are you comfortable with, as a Player? What level of house rules would turn you away from a game? Is there one particular house rule that would turn you away?

Quasqueton

 

[diaglo]

there are no rules. the sky is the limit.

players get no books to use.

they play their characters and the referee worries about making the calls.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I'm comfortable with a high level of house rules - I do play in Hong's game, after all.

That said, I prefer Hong's kind of house rules - using a given set of variant rules (in his case, Oriental Adventures) as a basis and tweaking from there.

 

[Aus_Snow]

So, is this like a poll without the poll?

Anyway, there aren't many house rules that would turn me away. I wouldn't care if the GM had somehow managed to house-rule D&D 3e all the way to being Traveller meets Feng Shui or what have you.

And, as it so happens, when I am DMing D&D, I allow and use supplements right through the alphabet and back again several times, and have maybe closing in on 10-12 pages of - neatly laid out & typed - house rules on top of that. Not a problem!

 

[ThirdWizard]

As long as the DM is upfront about them, I'm fine, amount doesn't really matter. If they start to appear mid-game, that sets off warning bells for me. If the House Rules look poorly considered, that's also an issue; for example, if the DM HRs that rogues only get 1 sneak attack per round, then he probably is very heavy handed and quick to make judgements, so there are more warning bells there.

 

[MonsterMash]

How comfortable I am probably depends on how much I agree with the house rules. Probably up to the 23 page document level - more than that and are you still playing D&D?

 

[Zappo]

It isn't a matter of how many house rules. It isn't even a matter of what these house rules are. The points are different.

1) Why did the DM introduce the house rule? Good reasons include: it reinforces a specific flavor; it streamlines gameplay; it makes gameplay more realistic; it makes gameplay more detailed; it provides better balance; it shifts control to the DM; it shifts control to the player. They are all good reasons, in different ways. The presence of a good reason proves that the DM isn't tossing around house rules just to screw his players, that he isn't changing stuff because he saw it in the latest manga, that he isn't changing stuff just to spite the RAW, and that he doesn't have a compulsory habit of adding house rules just because. I've seen all these, uhm, "styles" of houseruling, and none of them work for me.

2) Did the DM think through the implications of the house rule? For example, damage to body parts is a good way of making combat a lot more realistic. It also means that I can probably kill or maim anyone with true strike followed by a called shot to the eye with a scorching ray. And that regenerate should probably be lower level. And that armor should become part-based too. And that you need specific parts for every nonhumanoid monster. And rules to see when/if you can hit giants in the head. And... if the DM changed something important and left everything else as is, chances are that I wouldn't have fun there.

 

[Thanee]

As long as the house rules make sense and don't require a week or more to study, and if they do not turn the game into something completely different, I have no problems with house rules.

I generally prefer a game with a few house rules over a game that plays straight out of the book and keeps all the rules, that are not well thought-out (and there are rules like this in almost every book), just because that's what is written in the book.

If the house rules are so extensive, that they need to be organized in chapters and such, just to keep an overview, it's overdone and too much.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Arnwyn]

It isn't a matter of how many house rules. It isn't even a matter of what these house rules are. The points are different.

Very well-said, and that's how I feel on the matter. The number of house rules doesn't faze me... but what those house rules are does.

So... yeah. What Zappo said. I point to his post above and say "read it again!".

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Speaking as a recovering houserule-aholic, I'm torn on this issue. On the one hand, I honestly believe that house rules can make individual aspects of the game "better" (for various reasons someone else already listed). I like house rules. I recently trimmed my 12-page house rules document to one page (and four house rules, none of which are major, and all of which are in place for "flavor" or PC survival reasons).

On the other hand, I'm not sure that house rules are good for the game as a whole. It's so easy to get in situations involving cascades of unintended consequences. (Another poster illustrated one example, but the real danger lies in the consequences that aren't nearly so obvious as his example.) Past a certain point, also, players and DMs begin to lose track of their own house rules. (Or at least we did, and everyone in my group is very bright.) Finally, I really believe there's more value in a shared uniform rules set than most folks give credit for.

All of that said, I think my criterion for accepting house rules is more a matter of "whether I like the house rules" than "quantity of house rules." I'm much less likely to play in a game with a hit location system, for example, than I am to play in a game with the magic system lifted from Arcana Unearthed.

(I wrote and submitted this post on my Treo 650, from my neighborhood Starbucks. God, I love technology. Please forgive typos.)