New Campaign Woes

I'm starting a new campaign, which means I need to generate my usual array of documentation, website, and other assorted nonsense. Which is actually quite good fun.

However, I rapidly ran into difficulties when it came time to write up the house rules document. See, I wanted to allow various things from the supplements, but at each step I found I wanted to add just a little more, and then some more, and then a bit more, and...

The problem is that I don't believe the game works terribly well with too many house rules, and since I very rarely use supplementary rules as written, I have to be wary not to totally bamboozle the players.

See, I initially wanted to use the Expanded Psionics Handbook. This then led me on to Sandstorm (for a desert game), Defence Bonuses ('cos they're cool, and for a desert game), and Swashbucklers ('cos they're cool).

However, the setting is Forgotten Realms, so I had to make a decision on races, and felt I might add some, from Sandstorm and the XPH mostly. So I thought I'd do that.

Of course, you don't want to use Defence Bonuses from Unearthed Arcana without also using the other really cool parts of UA: weapon groups and paragon levels. And then there's the magic ratings - the closest we've come to an actual fix for the multiclass spellcaster problem.

Using weapon groups means you need to rewrite a bunch of feats, so why not also fix metamagic? Oh, and Combat Casting. Plus, you might as well throw in Exotic Armour (from Arcana Evolved), because that's a really great idea.

If you're using Swashbucklers, let's see if any of the other classes from the Complete books are worth having. Well, yes, the Warmage, Scout, Spellthief and Favoured Soul are all excellent. The Warlock is also good, but requires a tad more work that I think it's worth. The Hexblade is non-good, which means I don't want to use it, and the others are from Oriental Adventures, so don't really fit.

And so it goes on. Individually, these are all pretty good ideas. Together, they would make for an unwieldy document for what should be a fairly simple game. So, I'll add them to the file of things I would change for the next edition, and restrict myself to a very few good things:

Swashbucklers, Scouts, Spellthieves, Warmages and Favoured Souls are in.
Defence Bonus is in.
The experience system is changed, although experimentally at first.

And that's it. Eight pages, as opposed to about 80.

And, again, I don't get to use Psionics. Pity, since I quite like them, but they would have just added too much complexity. Maybe next time. (Anyway, psionics work best in a setting build on the assumption that they exist. So, Eberron is better than Forgotten Realms, although still not that great.)