What's the strangest house rule you've ever heard of?

[ForceUser]

Here's mine: a DM who is now a good friend and long-time member of my game group once used to roll all the dice for a game session the night before and print them out on a sheet of paper. Then when the session began he'd just consult the sheet every time a die roll result was needed and inform us of the outcome. We found this an extremely odd way to play D&D, with no dice rolling at all, but merely consultations of his prerolled number sheet whenever an attack roll or saving throw result was needed.. We eventually convinced him to let us roll our own dice, but he maintains to this day that statisically it's exactly the same. I suppose it is, but it was just too wierd for us. Rolling dice is a big part of the fun.

 

[MarauderX]

a DM who is now a good friend and long-time member of my game group once used to roll all the dice for a game session the night before and print them out on a sheet of paper.

Actually, that's what I used to do for my dice rolls as a DM. Players still rolled their own, but as far as having 20 arrows being launched at the party from a horde of baddies, I just looked at the table and saw how many hits there were against certain characters' ACs. Tons faster for the game, and the players were soon comfortable that it was random enough and I didn't use it for every roll I had to make, just large volumes of them.

Anyway, back to the thread...
We had a DM that wanted us each to describe one another's PCs based on class alone. It was weird as everyone looked very stereotypical, and no one liked what was said about their own PCs, of course. We asked him why, and he said 'if you care about this much detail, then it lets me know how much you are into your character, which you shouldn't as you'll most likely end up dead.' Lame.

 

[Evilboy]

I don't know if it really counts as a house rule, but when a player created a monk and couldn't think up a name, he was immediately ridiculed (he had a bad habit of never making PCs in a timely fashion). Suggested character names included Choda Boy, Bob, Doofus, etc.

Unfortunately for him, by the time he decided on the name "Chang", it was too late, and everyone was determined to mock him for the rest of his session. Chung, Ching, robey-guy, etc. Finally, the player threw up his hands, "If you guys mock my name ONE MORE TIME...."

The DM looked at him... "One more time?"

A long pause later...

"THREE more times...."

So, the DM ruled that we split the opportunities between us.

Another "interesting" house rule came from a talented by lazy DM. Instead of actually calculating ACs or attack bonuses, the DM would just tell us to re-roll any result between 5 and 15 until we either succeeded or failed on a grand scale.

- Evilboy

 

[RangerWickett]

Two drink minimum.

 

[Agback]

G'day

In the first game I played, the GM insisted that all PCs had to be chaotic evil, and gave everyone straight 18s in their stats.

Regards,


Agback

 

[diaglo]

Two drink minimum.

when your next game. i'm in. i've got an aged bottle of scotch just screaming to play.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I had one DM that demanded we said "out of charcter" before any OOC statements or we'd loose xp. We also weren't allowed to roll dice for no reason, if we did what ever the roll was your character took that much damage. He also demanded we hand over any characters tht died. Which he stored for later use.

 

[Cedric]

Whoever got the killing blow for a creature or npc, got all the xp...

Weird rule, they got more tpk's just trying to kill steal from each other...if they were smart, they all could have gotten the "hook up".

Cedric

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Whoever got the killing blow for a creature or npc, got all the xp...

Weird rule, they got more tpk's just trying to kill steal from each other...if they were smart, they all could have gotten the "hook up".

Cedric

The same DM i talked about before did that too.

 

[Silver Moon]

The hosts of my first gaming group had a rule that if you were too loud and woke up their child during the game you were required to take the kid home with you. Don't think they ever followed through on it, but it sure kept the noise level under control.