House Rules and You

"You are technically correct. The best kind of correct."


I have a complicated relationship with house or alternate rules. On one hand, they can make a game feel really different and can be a breath of fresh air. If a system gets stale, a game with a few alternate rules can be just what you need. On the other hand, this is the tool armchair developers use most often. Everyone knows how much I hate those guys by now. I've seen systems so fucked up by house rules that they were unrecognizable, like a burn victim.

Now, I know Wayne isn't reading this. We didn't really know each other that well. Just on the off chance he is, though? Don't take it personally, dude. We all make mistakes. Even gigantic abortions of good taste and game balance.

My point is, an armchair developer will eyeball a system, declare something "unbalanced" or wrong, and come up with a solution on the spot without thought to ramifications. The vast majority of the time, this is what's happening. No research, no testing, no nothing. They lazily wave their gold scepter and potentially fuck up the whole game. Often, players will just slump their shoulders and deal with it because they'd rather just game, even if it kind of sucks now. The same lazy armchair developers will jump to "Well, YOU run then." when challenged. Maybe that's just my experience. Laziness and demanding everyone do everything you want before you'll run probably go hand in hand, though.

Other times people won't research their decisions because of something everyone seems to despise, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Math. Lemme be clear on one thing: My experience with gaming as well as anyone who's known for being a "power player" like Dale, Mike, Maestro and Flux  is vastly different in part because I fucking love math. Mike's even got a B.S. in Mathematics, so I imagine he, at least, feels the same way. I love sitting down and figuring out the probability of something, or how valuable a particular ability is, or if a class REALLY performs as well as we think it does. Part of this is logical analysis(such as, applying the what's likely to happen in an average game) but a lot of this is math. People don't want to do it, so a solution or change is taken at first glance then never looked at again.

So yeah, before we get into the bullet pointy part of today's post, the advice is to never make a snap decision, and don't be bullheaded if something's not working out. Talk over rules changes with the group, and for God's sake, don't use alternate rules or house rules to try and balance the party. I've had people spring this on me in the past, and even under the guise of "finding new rules" in the books or "discovering" that "we were doing something wrong".

Ahem. That's the second piece of advice. House rules may be a viable way to repair a concept or rule in a game that's proven problematic, but in general changing the rules to try and balance the game better is a fool's errand. I promise you that, at best, the players will feel cheated and/or see you as a cheating jerk. At worst, your attempt to "balance the game better" will end in unintended consequences. Keep making house rules, and consequences will keep piling up. The rules of the game are an arbiter between the GM and the players, and not a tool for the GM to alter to his whim. Never forget that. The GM is allowed a certain amount of fudging, but he isn't allowed to alter the rules wholesale just to suit his needs. Doing so makes you look like you're just trying to "win" the game. That's not what house rules or alternate rules are for.

Here's a few things they ARE for.

Patching holes in systems. So yeah, every once in a while there will be a problematic rule. Either something is just bad and slipped through, or more likely something ends up abusable because of your group's play styles or current understanding of the rules. When altering a rule for this reason you really want to consult with the group and not act like the Grand Pontiff of Games. Come to a conclusion and fix the rule, but understand that this might end up being temporary as your group understands the system better. Other times, though, something's just out of place or highly abusable, like Mutants and Masterminds and its damage/stun rule. No amount of playtesting can find every single abusable thing in a system. I just firmly believe that it finds most of them.

Adding or Removing Complexity. So yeah, sometimes it's less that something is abusable and more that the group just doesn't want to deal with something. This can alter tone pretty heavily(see below) but sometimes a few tweaks or prepackaged alternate rules and speed up gameplay or remove complication. Even though they're easy to understand now, Attacks of Opportunity were a pretty popular target for these. So are skill systems, consolidating them further than PF or M&M does. Or, sometimes the group really wants something dense and slow and adding a few things to worry about is best. Of course, sometimes all you need to do is to find and apply some of the things you usually handwave. ECM/ECCM details, optempo, encumbrance, legality rules...there's a lot of things people skim past in even great systems.

Tone and Feel. I want you to consider this 90% of why you use alternate rules. Things like class defense bonus or armor as DR primarily alter the way a game feels before how it plays. Hero points or 4e's Second Wind system can easily be balanced around, but the players will act and feel differently. This can be the master stroke your game needs to get tone across. Ravenloft feels super different than 3.X because it has the players worrying about fear, madness, and the true intentions of people via moral alignment being undetectable. You could do that. Adding another layer to a game like presenting rules for downtime activities to consider can really hit home the tone of a themed game. Playing a bunch of gangers in Shadowrun is one thing, but having the players come together once a session to decide the direction of the gang and the assigned activities of the rest of the gang can really make them feel like leaders of a street gang. Craft carefully and discuss with the group and this could be the difference between a good game and an amazing success. Hell, if you're all getting sick of the same system but can't seem to agree on a new one, this could be a decent compromise.

So yeah, all in all I do have a love/hate relationship with alternate rules. They can be super cool, but 90% of the time when you meet one of those people determined to control every aspect of the game, they're going to be doing this shit over and over. I heavily recommend you stick to published alternate rules like the sort of thing you see in Unearthed Arcana, Pathfinder Unchained, or Shadowrun Companion. This is because they've ostensibly seen some sort of playtesting, and even if not, there's going to be less bias going in because nobody in your group created the rule. Nobody's going to be "attached" to them.