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

[der_kluge]

According to the Sage at GenCon a few years back, pinpointing spells like fireball with precision accuracy was certainly within the rules, but the DM could do the same thing.

If you don't like that, Weird Wars d20 (I think that's the name) has an interesting mechanic for grenades.

Basically, you roll to hit, and then if you miss, you roll a 1d12. The d12 in this case acts like clock directions to determine where the grenade went. If you roll a 6, it came up short, if you rolled a 12, it went long. Sometimes, you might miss, and end up getting it where you wanted anyway.

You could do the same basic thing with fireballs. Ranged touch attack, then d12 if you miss. There was some mechanic to determine how many feet off you were. Like 1d4*5 or 2d4*5 feet to determine how far off. Not too terribly difficult.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Everyone remember weapon speed? Well we played for several years in a game where initiative was calculated by brief algebraic equation to generate a number between 1 and 10

[(10+ws)/2] - dex bonus, with multiple attack happening half way toward te end orf the round.

I don't see any "absolute value" operators, so it's still not as complex as the First Edition initiative rules.

-Hyp.

 

[Silver Moon]

i guess i just don't have a problem with OOC comments....gaming night was the only night we ever got to see one another, so it was just as important as a social gathering as it was a role-playing event. if there was something we wanted to discuss, we did. if that meant we only got an hour or two of gaming in that night, so be it.

I fully agree with you on this one. Our group has quite a bit of OOC comments. We have one player who frequently overdoes it, but generally the OOC comments fall during a lull, so don't actually disrupt the flow of the game. When the comments happen during the action they are usually jokes that relate to what has just happened. I include many of these in my "Story Hour" write-up, which some people have citicized me for, but as they also add to the overall humor of that particular gaming session the players and I would like to remember it.

Now back to the topic of silly house rules: On our group's campaign world, as well as the campaign world of a prior group that several of us were in, all deer make the sound "Gerka, Gerka". That relates to something one of the players was told by his father at a very young age, and it seems to have stuck.

 

[MaxKaladin]

HAH! What some of you are describing as people mapping out their moves is nothing compared to someone I've played with. I've only played D&D with him once and he didn't have a spellcaster _THANK GOD_, but he does this in every game he plays and I've played plenty of board/card games with him.

Quite simply, he calculates every possible move he can make, including the odds for any die rolls involved, before he declares an action. Some guy taking 20 seconds to figure out the best spot to place a fireball has nothing on this guy. If he was playing a caster, he'd be figuring out the optimum placing for _each_ _and_ _every_ _one_ of his spells _and_ how much damage he was likely to do vs the likelihood the targets would save/resist/etc the spell as part of the process of selecting the absolute optimum action to take.

There are board (bored?) and card games I simply cannot bring myself to play anymore because he made playing them such a painfully boring process of waiting for him to make up his mind.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

Not too weird, but...

I still play under this DM in a 2nd edition D&D game.... whenever one of the PC's runs into a trap or ambush, or encounters a decision that the character would have to make on the spur of the moment, the DM will start counting to 3 (basically, 3 seconds). If you don't tell him what you are doing, then he assumes that your character has done nothing but stand there.

Example:

PC: "I walk into the forest."

DM: "Okay. Do you follow the path?"

PC: "Sure."

DM: "You're walking along and - ONE, TWO.."

PC, now panicked: "I dive forward to the ground!"

End Example.

He also has an malfunctioning artifact that sucks PCs into it at random (basically, characters whose players are not attending the game session). The PCs can't get rid of it, because it can be used to free a very powerful mage who was trapped in it aeons ago, and it is possible to set him free by a rather simple incantation.

 

[Angcuru]

He also has an malfunctioning artifact that sucks PCs into it at random (basically, characters whose players are not attending the game session). The PCs can't get rid of it, because it can be used to free a very powerful mage who was trapped in it aeons ago, and it is possible to set him free by a rather simple incantation.

Not a bad Idea. So what are the characters doing while they're in there? Playing strip poker, sleeping, getting busy, what?

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

Not a bad Idea. So what are the characters doing while they're in there? Playing strip poker, sleeping, getting busy, what?

That's the downside: the characters are doing absolutely nothing.

The idea behind it is, when the player returns next game session, they have things explained to them in character, as they have no memory of the time in-between.

The upside of it is, the PC is in a sort of suspended animation - allowing you to bring in any character you can think of. The world we are gaming in is a sort of post-apocalyptic Earth, with the current culture/technology being mostly Greyhawkish. We have in our game a Roman legionare and a Erol Flynn-type swashbuckler who used to sail with Blackbeard. It's pretty cool.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Oh, here's a bizarre one.

Dragons are sources of primodial might. They are power incarnate. And they are apparently delicious.

Being power incarnate, some part of a dragon holds that power within itself, be in the blood, the bones, the teeth or the heart. Indeed, any part of the dragon from it's liver to his eyes could hold its power and lucky is the adventurer who finds said part and consumes it, for they gain some permanent ability.

This led to us hunting dragons, blowing them out of the sky, then literally leaping upon them to discover what part of this particular dragon was magical. Then fight over who go to consume what. This led to such glorious exclamations of valor as 'It's in the heart! The heart!' - everyone dives for the poor beasts heart, carving chunks of raw dragon and bolting them, then waiting for the effect to take place. 'Wow, I can see in the dark!' or 'Man, I'm a lot stronger all of a sudden'.

That sounds kinda fun, actually. Isn't that why those mean ol' snake oil salesmen were trying to kill Pete's dragon?

 

[Angcuru]

That's the downside: the characters are doing absolutely nothing.

The idea behind it is, when the player returns next game session, they have things explained to them in character, as they have no memory of the time in-between.

The upside of it is, the PC is in a sort of suspended animation - allowing you to bring in any character you can think of. The world we are gaming in is a sort of post-apocalyptic Earth, with the current culture/technology being mostly Greyhawkish. We have in our game a Roman legionare and a Erol Flynn-type swashbuckler who used to sail with Blackbeard. It's pretty cool.

Now all you need is Matlock, Archimedes, The Count of Monte Cristo, and a Bard named Kevin Smith.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

This one isn't all that unusal, but I thought it was pretty grating, although from what I understand, pretty common.

DM starts game at 1st level. Players play game for 8 months. PCs are no between 18-25th level. DM invited new players. DM says: "You start at 1st level". New player starts game. New player makes new PC after 1st round of 1st fight during session. New player introduces new PC. New player makes new PC after 1st round of 2nd fight during session. New player introduces new PC. Repeat.