Who else is a maniac who cannot but tweak all gaming stuff?

[MonsterMash]

Usually at least minor tweaks to fit with my campaign setting and campaign history, e.g. I don't use the Greyhawk pantheon, and it fits with the Judges Guild setting that always encouraged GMs to customise the material, in fact because of relatively little detail required some GM work.

 

[solkan_uk]

I tweak quite a bit, usually just on the small side - currently playing Spycraft and about the only thing I've tweaked there is to make the remain conscious save for taking wounds 10 + wounds taken, instead of 15.

Normally in D&D I use facing rules and hex based maps for D&D, remove Use Rope from any skill list (surely an aspect of survival, or climb). Sometimes I'll use vitality and wounds depending on the feel I'm going for, quite often use a system for 3' hex, with more detailed reach rules.

Having said all that I'm running a D&D game (Eberron) and going standard rules, but then I think I made the mistake of allowing too much and there's some twinked feats in there.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Tweak top-to-bottom. I mostly adjust player options, by house-ruling character creation, racial mechanics, class features, and adjusting the effects of certain feats.

For more central game mechanics, I draw heavily on Unearthed Arcana, but I even tweak the variants.

 

[skippy_the_witch]

I don't really do a lot of tweaking as such, I symthesize instead. I have become very adept at taking a bit of material from here, adding some more from there, making a few minor rewrites for consistancy, and BAM...something different on the whole from it's original source material.

My current Homebrew is a prime example of this. I could not find a post apocalyptic technomagic game that I wanted to run, so I started with the perpetrated press's Arsenal and Factory, added in straight 3rd ed D&D (that quickly became 3.5), a dash of Dragonstar (most of which has since been replaced with better ideas and material...I think only the schools, a few spells, and a couple PrCs survived the final cut), and got a deal on ebay when I was trying for a copy of OA and ended up with OA, Rokugan Campaign HB, Magic of Rokugan, Samurai book, Ninja book, and Creatures of Rokugan (all for $65), so Taint (which I already wanted to add in like the chaos from Warhammer) got added in. Since I love the artwork and miniatures of WH40K Eldar (and much of the fluff material), I made them into the new elves, and the shugenja and samurai from OA and Rokugan were perfect for them. Add in IK mechanika rules, spice with various d20 Modern materials and PDFs from RPGnow, a bake in my brain for too many years. All while trying to actually run the game.

So far my players seem to find the recipe quite tasty, but it may still end in disaster, as I think I am beginning to drown in material. It is frustrating, finding that perfect rule, spell, whatever, but it needs to be modified to be consistant with this other rule, spell, whatever that you got from a different source, which naturally changes other things.

ARGH!

Anyway, I could stop at any time. I do not have a problem, and will be finished modifying the rules as soon as I can get my hands on Races of the Wild.....oh wait, maybe I should also add in dragon material from complete dragonkin....but then Sandstorm is coming out....aaaaaaahhhhhhhh Help me, I am drowning in a stream of consciousness!!!!!

Hi, My Name Is skippy, and I am a RPG Material Tweaker...

 

[Y.O.Morales]

I voted for 'Cannot live if not altering anything in some way.'

I tweak or rewrite almost anything. I'll be starting a campaign in a month or so and so far I've elaborated a Classless system from UA's generic classes concept. Also replaced the standard races for entirely new ones, except for the humans of course.

Added several UA variants, including Spell Points and Sanity variant (but tweaked with Ravenloft's Fear, Horror, and Madness). Also double-checked what monsters, spells (bye bye to Find the Path), and feats are available in the campaign. Heck, we'll even use a Hex grid.

So, yeah, I like the game changed after so much playing. Particularly when most players are almost completing a 35th level campaign (started from 1st level)

 

[jeffh]

"Cannot live if not..."

It's basically impossible to read a class writeup in my game and take it directly to the table.

Says a d4 for hit die? I abolished that, use a d6 instead. Here's a couple of additional class skills; oh, and by the way, you get three skill points instead of two. You can skip the Weapon and Armour Proficiency section - it's completely replaced by this proficiency system, here's the handout on it, here's three pages of cool stuff you can get *besides* weapon and armour proficiencies. Oh, and for those bonus feats, take anything from this list (gives them a HUGE handout) that costs three Option Points or less. By the way, those Option Points completely replace the standard way of gaining new feats and ability score points with character level; keep that in mind when you level up.

I think my players appreciate that all the changes tend to give them more stuff, but it drives them nuts sometimes too.

 

[HellHound]

Hard-Core Tweaker.

I have a MASSIVE collection of house rules for CyberPunk 2020...

I re-wrote the chargen system and damage system for Gangbusters (and played it 3 times)

I added home-system generation rules and new guns to Star Frontiers

I -ONLY- added a bunch of guns to Top Secret

I write d20 stuff all the time

I re-wrote the weapon damage and armor systems in Dream Park

Changed the initiative system in Masterbook

Adopted the societal change system from Underground to just about every other RPG out there.

D20 modern now only has one class in my games, and incorporates combat skills from BESM

Have a small booklet of optional rules for deadEarth (and 500+ mutations that we wrote up ourselves)

Lots of house rules for Vampire... but decided to scrap them all when Revised came out, and ran by the canon rules. For once.

Lots of new races and damage rules for Shadowrun

Entirely new chargen and background system for TMNT

and the list... well... it goes on.

 

[Arnwyn]

A friend of mine today pointed out to me, that I cannot use any gaming material without twisting and tweaking it in some way. Well, over time I have grown used to keep the game mechanics as they are (no houserules). However, I do add classes and feats form other sources, adapt modules from different games, combines settings, etc.

If you consider that "tweaking", then that's what I do.

As only one example of many, I ripped up Shou Lung and plunked down Rokugan in my big campaign multiverse.

 

[Narfellus]

Oh, yeah, i'm a tweaker. I like a lot of the ideas in the core rules (except magic and item creation) but then i see supplementary books with even BETTER ideas. I'm currently redoing the magic system for my Midnight campaign, but i'm implementing 3 or 4 systems of magic depending on the character. One will use default Midnight rules, one is a psychic from Green Ronin, another is some house rules i wanted to explore. I want to test all systems in-game and see how they compare.

 

[Beowolf]

I admit that i tweak a little bit of the rules sometimes but mostly i just add more and more small stuff like a single class or monster from something like dragon or from the net.
the problem is that eventually they all add up and suddenly i need to refrence more than 20 books to see one magic item or PC race.