One of my pet peeves in RPGs (the other big one being the "I'm GM and therefore god" thing) is when a GM runs a game (particularly a well-known game) with extensive House Rules, but doesn't write these down. So, you're left in a position where the game is almost familiar, but not quite. This makes character management damn hard, since the assumptions you might make aren't necessarily valid.
One example I heard about: in a D&D game, a character was designed with high ranks in Concentration and the Combat Casting feat. The player intended the character to cast defensively quite often. (Never mind that the rules make this almost pointless - better just to take a 5 foot step away from your foe before casting.) What the player didn't know, until the first time he tried this, was that the DM didn't like defensive casting, and so had removed it. So, the feat and skill ranks were wasted, the character took an attack of opportunity, and nearly died. And all because the DM didn't write down the house rules.
Subsequently, the player of this character lobbied to be allowed to re-allocate the skill points and feat based on the fact that they were now useless. The DM agreed. However, the tale of woe doesn't end there. Some weeks later, the same DM, in the same campaign, decided that defensive casting wasn't as bad as he feared, and changed his mind. The player (and it really wasn't me) was livid. I think that game has since collapsed.
So, I think every campaign should really have some sort of written record of house rules. This should include everything that has been fixed, a note that anything that hasn't been fixed may change, and details of what happens if a new house rule breaks an existing character. Said record should also include a note of which supplements are in use, and which parts of these supplements are allowed. Naturally, as more things are allowed and banned, the record should be updated.
So, a typical record for one of my games might read:
Ruleset: D&D 3rd Edition
Supplements:
- Psionics Handbook (all)
- Oriental Adventures (use classes as per OA)
- Banned: Everything else
- House Rules: No Prestige Classes, Multiclassing Rule (I won't repeat it, since it's given below; normally the record would have to quote it), Check "Choriim Rules Digest" for races, equipment, etc (again, this is a long document, so I won't quote it here. It can be found on my website).
Opinions? Arguments?
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteDefinately, if you absolutely must fiddle around with the system you should atleast have the common decency to let your players in on your changes. Othervise it would be like playing football while everyone else is playing rugby, quite painful for starters...
Changing rules in the middle of campaigns is something I don't like either, unless the rule used is obviously broken and needs fixing, or you have played the campaign for three years running. Just note it down and try it in the next game your run instead of shafting all your players over by breaking their characters.
The list of house rules, together with guidelines as to what characters are accepted (i.e feats from such and such book and only basic races, etc.) should be made available to all the players before they even start making characters. Unfortunately in most game I've been in this has been a exception rather than a rule. Most of the time you find out the GM has changed something only when it comes up in game.