Houseruling to reinforce themes is better than houseruling to "fix" mechanics

[Asisreo1]

So, commonly I see this thing with houseruling in systems for the sole purpose of "fixing" what people think is broken about the system. Be it resting, build options (feats, powers, spells, or skills), weapons, and anything else that has a range of usability.

In some systems, this houseruling may be welcome at a table because it helps with the playstyle of the table or it helps balance the interparty dynamic.

But usually, this type of houseruling is incredibly...boring. It displays an ability to change the game to be more mechanically sound if done well, but it completely ignores the other aspect of letting houserules guide the themes of the story.

For a personal example, I have a implemented a dark souls-esque mechanic into the game: The ability to revive at a checkpoint. The players get to die once before the new moon where they must then survive without any means of revival afterwards.

This isn't a fix. The system isn't at fault for not having this type of mechanic, but it makes my campaign better because it allows me, as the GM, to display forces entirely and completely outclassing them while also being incredibly bloodthirsty and dangerous without worrying too much about a TPK. Which works perfectly for the despair that I try to convey through mechanics.

I think GM's would be wise to implement such houserules so that the campaign feels like how they want it to feel rather than letting the system force the campaign to be this single type of game optimized for the system.

[NichG]

Agreed. Pretty much everytime I run a campaign these days, I first build a system specifically for it - either heavy modifications of something extant, or something new from scratch. Generally plot hooks end up emerging from what gets changed, and that can drive the campaign and give ideas for what would be fun to explore.

[Martin Greywolf]

I disagree pretty strongly on the "better than" part of the argument here. Bottom line is that the only real measure of betterness a house rule should be judged on is whether or not in increases enjoyment of the game for both players and DM. Whether that is a mechanics or fluff rule is pretty much irrelevant, and depends very heavily on what kind of players and DMs are in that particular group.

If you play DnD because you enjoy the XCOM-like combat puzzles, you will want more of the houserules of builds and options.

If you play DnD to be a part of a story or experience a world, the fluffy houserules will be your jam.

If you play DnD and also know how its weapons really work, you will appreciate houserules that will, for example, make slings closer to what they were in reality (a weapon superior to any but the strongest warbows), even if that houserule will change very little in the grand scheme of things.

[MoiMagnus]

I agree with the underlying message of the post:

Houserules to reinforce themes are great, and one could even argue peoples don't talk about them often enough, the only exception being "gritty realism" and other variants for resting which are a recurring subject. And campaigns at my tables are filled with such houserules (last campaign has a stress mechanics to represent that we were not heroes, in the current one we have an astral with a 300 peoples crew to handle, resurrection is almost absent of most of our campaign because of the setting, etc)

But I feel it's unavoidable that those rules are less talked about, as GM who use houserules that reinforce themes are also the kind to heavily modify their settings, when it's not a fully homebrew setting. And as always "my table play like that because that works in the unique circumstances of that table" will always lead to less discussions than "my table do that and I believe most peoples should do the same as it makes 5e strictly better".

But I will disagree on the "better". It's not comparable.
The goal of a "fix" houserule is to help the game to be even better at what it aims to do.
The goal of a "thematic" houserule is to help a game to be better at what it didn't initially aimed to do.

[Batcathat]

But I will disagree on the "better". It's not comparable.
The goal of a "fix" houserule is to help the game to be even better at what it aims to do.
The goal of a "thematic" houserule is to help a game to be better at what it didn't initially aimed to do.

Yeah, this. As someone who usually focus more on the story than the mechanics, whether I'm GM:ing or playing, I probably use houserules more for story reasons than fixing problems, but saying that either is better than the other seems odd.

[Willie the Duck]

I disagree pretty strongly on the "better than" part of the argument here.

Agreed. Different avenues for solving problems (whether the problem is 'I don't like how this game accomplishes X, Y, or Z,' or 'what this game accomplishes isn't what I want to play') are not in competitions with each other. If your game is notably challenged by either or both issues, you solve them both (with the priority to the one causing the most problems, not some arbitrary conception of which solution is 'better').

[False God]

These are clearly two different things, and both may be necessary for any given system, group or campaign.

[Asisreo1]

I disagree pretty strongly on the "better than" part of the argument here. Bottom line is that the only real measure of betterness a house rule should be judged on is whether or not in increases enjoyment of the game for both players and DM. Whether that is a mechanics or fluff rule is pretty much irrelevant, and depends very heavily on what kind of players and DMs are in that particular group.

If you play DnD because you enjoy the XCOM-like combat puzzles, you will want more of the houserules of builds and options.

If you play DnD to be a part of a story or experience a world, the fluffy houserules will be your jam.

If you play DnD and also know how its weapons really work, you will appreciate houserules that will, for example, make slings closer to what they were in reality (a weapon superior to any but the strongest warbows), even if that houserule will change very little in the grand scheme of things.
Naturally, "better than" is just an opinion based on my experiences but they draw on the fact that many houserule "fixes" miss the mark because they can start to be obstructive to the overall tone/theme of the campaign despite the mechanical benefits.

For example, lets say a DM decides to buff the Barbarian by giving him "manuevers" that let him do complex stuff throughout an encounter with important strategy. While this might be mechanically satisfying, to a player sensitive to the feel of the game it suddenly feels like the Barbarian went from a reckless powerhouse of damage and mitigation to a tactical character who has mastered many techniques to overwhelm his opponent. To me, this is a problem.

Its not like a fix houserule can't both be thematically and mechanically sound, but few of them can manage both.

On the other hand, thematic-focused houserules usually aren't horrible because the DM can easily adjust the stats and playstyles of their adventures to accommodate. Like for my previous example, medium encounters aren't scary enough and 6 of them is too much knowing that it will take another 6 to get them tired. Instead, I put encounters that range to the 4x to 6x deadly range so the players get to feel the weight of overwhelming oppositions.

Also, fluff and mechanical houserules can be thematic. In fact, both types are the ones I'm talking about. Technically, my example would be a mechanic houserule because it ultimately changes the numbers of the system. Same for houserules that let magic items take less time to craft in a world where magic items are basically the norm.

[NichG]

One thing I think is a lot 'better' about discussing houserules to reinforce themes than discussing fixes is that you're wading through a lot of implied but not explicitly stated preferences whenever you discuss fixes, because you're trying to establish some kind of objective good as the standard of discussion and evaluation, when actually people's desires for 'how the game should be' are often in tension. See pretty much any 'martial/caster disparity fix' threads, where they ultimately don't really resolve anything because some people like 'magical MacGyver', some people like 'Conan the Barbarian', and rather than discussing those as separate themes, there's too much effort to make those preferences objective (which of course is going to be rejected by people who know they like the other one and can tell that the 'fix' would remove the theme they like).

Whereas framing things in terms of themes means that the discussion can be placed off on the side and isn't a struggle about 'how the system should be', but rather becomes a workshopping kind of thing 'how can we help someone design something that does X for their campaign'. Basically, focusing on theme means that more of the discussion is going to be about creative problem-solving and design, rather than a negotiation about what the (singular) game should be.

[Pex]

House rules are fine. If you need your own Handbook to cover them play a different game system.

What matters more to me is the attitude of the DM in making a house rule, and it's more about how he regards his players. It's fine he doesn't like a specific rule. I don't care about the rule so much as how much he wants to control the players. It could be a matter of his tolerance level of how much power a PC can have. He can say he wants a "low powered" game, but that's subjective. I don't find anything wrong with a PC doing powerful things. PCs are supposed to be able to do such things, so when subjectively I find the DM taking away too much power I won't play. I play a game system because I enjoy the mechanics of it. It's part of the fun along with the roleplay, so any DM who boasts about "role players not rollplayers" is an immediate red flag.

[Asisreo1]

House rules are fine. If you need your own Handbook to cover them play a different game system.

What matters more to me is the attitude of the DM in making a house rule, and it's more about how he regards his players. It's fine he doesn't like a specific rule. I don't care about the rule so much as how much he wants to control the players. It could be a matter of his tolerance level of how much power a PC can have. He can say he wants a "low powered" game, but that's subjective. I don't find anything wrong with a PC doing powerful things. PCs are supposed to be able to do such things, so when subjectively I find the DM taking away too much power I won't play. I play a game system because I enjoy the mechanics of it. It's part of the fun along with the roleplay, so any DM who boasts about "role players not rollplayers" is an immediate red flag.
I agree that the attitude of the DM is...almost defining on how fun the campaign will go.

Often I find DM's who swear WoTC was on drugs when designing the entire system are the ones who don't quite understand the nuances of the system involved. When a DM is too proud to realize that WoTC does have people as competent or moreso than themselves, it signals that the campaign may start to fall apart to weird houserules that disrupt the flow of play.

On the opposite spectrum, when I see a DM change a houserule because he likes playing in a certain type of campaign but also doesn't act like his houserule trumps the rules as written, it usually signals the DM respects the system and is more likely to have taken balancing it more seriously.

One thing I think is a lot 'better' about discussing houserules to reinforce themes than discussing fixes is that you're wading through a lot of implied but not explicitly stated preferences whenever you discuss fixes, because you're trying to establish some kind of objective good as the standard of discussion and evaluation, when actually people's desires for 'how the game should be' are often in tension. See pretty much any 'martial/caster disparity fix' threads, where they ultimately don't really resolve anything because some people like 'magical MacGyver', some people like 'Conan the Barbarian', and rather than discussing those as separate themes, there's too much effort to make those preferences objective (which of course is going to be rejected by people who know they like the other one and can tell that the 'fix' would remove the theme they like).

Whereas framing things in terms of themes means that the discussion can be placed off on the side and isn't a struggle about 'how the system should be', but rather becomes a workshopping kind of thing 'how can we help someone design something that does X for their campaign'. Basically, focusing on theme means that more of the discussion is going to be about creative problem-solving and design, rather than a negotiation about what the (singular) game should be.
Agreed. Its more productive as well because a thread where a DM wants to run a game with a similar theme and therefore similar houserules, they'll get suggestions and discussions about the suggestions rather than deeply philosophical debates about the nature of game design and the history of fantasy.

[kyoryu]

My guidance on houseruling is "only house rule once you can make an argument for the original rule."

This isn't always valid, as some games are Just Broken, but most games are at least mostly functional and the rules that they have are there for a reason. By immediately houseruling you're robbing yourself of a lot of cool experiences.

Once you get to the point where you understand why the rule is there, you can also understand under which circumstances it might be better ignored, and can wisely modify the rules.

[Cluedrew]

I mean if there is some "silly" mistake that slipped due to copy editing or something that should probably fixed*, but still I generally agree. The "actually bad" problems usually get sorted out so most of the fixed aren't huge improvements... or not even universal improvements. Which actually means there is very thin line between the two, with maybe a transitional area of "house rules for playstyle" or something in the middle.


See pretty much any 'martial/caster disparity fix' threads, where they ultimately don't really resolve anything because some people like 'magical MacGyver', some people like 'Conan the Barbarian', and rather than discussing those as separate themes, there's too much effort to make those preferences objective (which of course is going to be rejected by people who know they like the other one and can tell that the 'fix' would remove the theme they like).I never figured out why some people continue to reject "well just have all of them".

* If you play Spirit Island, make sure to add an extra Blight to the Blight pool.

[Quertus]

Better? Huh.

Well, obviously it's better to make house rules for theme than to *have to* fix the game.

I've seen plenty of clueless GMs fail *hard* when trying to house rule to "fix" mechanics. Anyone with extensive experience with their "themes" counterpart(s) care to weigh in?

The 2e Wild Mage was hecka fun, with a Table of Doom™ built in that you never knew when it would trigger - or whether it triggering was a good or bad thing. The 3e version was… dull and boring by comparison. But at least 3e was so much better balanced. :smallamused:

In short, I'm all about "build your game for fluff, give the players plenty of diverse tools, and leave it to them to balance to the table".

But… not all mechanical fixes are about *balance*. And there, I think I'd have to argue that mechanical fixes for the sake of sanity are probably "better" (more vital) than ones for theme. Although I'm drawing a blank on examples.

[NichG]

Better? Huh.

Well, obviously it's better to make house rules for theme than to *have to* fix the game.

I've seen plenty of clueless GMs fail *hard* when trying to house rule to "fix" mechanics. Anyone with extensive experience with their "themes" counterpart(s) care to weigh in?


I think probably the most broken mechanic I made was a sort of supernatural embodiment of disease damage type where all sources of it dealt only 1 damage, but it recurred each round for a certain number of rounds doubling each time. But the worst ones were attempts to build rules for things like army battles, which were bad enough that despite having written the rules myself I conspicuously avoided situations as GM where they'd come up whenever possible to avoid having to actually run them. Those were both motivated by theme, not by trying to fix something.

But I guess this is more a point about a philosophy to approach house-ruling with. If you look at it as primarily for things that are wrong, that framing takes you to a different mindspace than if you think about writing rules as something you do to express things about the setting. One concept of prestige classes for example was that each setting, each game would have its own particular ones associated with in-game organizations unique to that GM, but there doesn't seem to be a level of comfort for doing that kind of thing that matches the level of comfort people have in fix-driven rulesmithing.

[kyoryu]

I think probably the most broken mechanic I made was a sort of supernatural embodiment of disease damage type where all sources of it dealt only 1 damage, but it recurred each round for a certain number of rounds doubling each time.

OUCH.

Never heard the story of the King of India and the chessboard, huh?

[NichG]

OUCH.

Never heard the story of the King of India and the chessboard, huh?

I was intentionally trying to evoke that, actually, to make it scary. What happened instead is that things without the ability to make Heal checks could be automatically slain.

[Ignimortis]

I prefer to call fixes and rewrites houserules, and new original rules homebrew. And they are in no way opposed to each other, so having better balance and pronounced themes is still something doable.

[Asisreo1]

I prefer to call fixes and rewrites houserules, and new original rules homebrew. And they are in no way opposed to each other, so having better balance and pronounced themes is still something doable.
Indeed doable though the combination makes it much more complex.

I consider rewrites as houserules as well. And rewrite houserules can be for theme too.

But I also like to homebrew mechanics, some with new ways to approach combat altogether while still keeping the original design of combat the same.

[MoiMagnus]

I've seen plenty of clueless GMs fail *hard* when trying to house rule to "fix" mechanics. Anyone with extensive experience with their "themes" counterpart(s) care to weigh in?


Most thematic houserules I've seen suffer from variant of the Goodhart law (or as we call them, "are not munchkin-proof"), meaning that they only work as long as players use them as intended. Then, depending on the GM, the houserule starts actively contradicting the theme or become a constantly changing mess when you explore the corner cases.

But the hardest IMO is to have a good balance for the relevance and time passed using the houserule. Advanced rules for creating armies are great, but if it takes too much table time, the players are gonna notice that the gameplay isn't that deep and the nearby pile of board games are much better designed than the one you are trying to improvise. On the other hand, it's easy to have those thematic houserules to fall out of relevance as sessions pass, and be mostly underwhelming.

[Kane0]

I would say both types are equally important. One serves to fine tune mechanics and broaden viable options, the other serves to fine tune feel and elicit the reactions you want in your players.

This is especially true if the system doesnt already handle the specific thing you want all that well, on both fronts.

[NichG]

On the other hand, I have far more positive examples than failures both from games I've played in and games I've run. One of the most persistent set of houserules involved a system of 'cosmic taints' from another GM's campaign, that got adopted and extended in my games and those of other players who were in that campaign and went on to GM. So I'd say that was pretty successful since we keep bringing it back in various forms. Basically, these are simple 0-10 scales which only get modified by very specific cases and interactions, and tend to have both positive and negative effects, though some are pretty bad and some are strictly good. When added to a game like D&D where pretty much there are no such things as long-lasting persistent consequences at high level, having a few tracks which you can't just increase or decrease with Wish or Heal or Greater Restoration or other such things is useful. Plus, since some taints are desirable, and by now there's something like 50 of them, it can be a motivation to go in search of those sources that can provide them. It's also a good short-hand to quickly theme an arc to pick a particular taint and make its origin or latest avatar into an antagonistic force - you can have the Haunt arc that deals with horror movie tropes and cursed locations, the Doom arc that deals with countdowns and fates, the Oubliette arc that deals with things being forgotten, the Paradox arc that deals with time shenanigans, etc.

Another one which I've used in a few campaigns is the concept of grouping effects like stealth and invisibility, various forms of DR/resistance/immunity, sources of miss chances, etc into broad categories, and then having certain kinds of (relatively easily produced) environmental effects which act as broad reductions or counters to those things. So for example, there are Revealing Environments of Rank 1, 2, or 3. Rank 1 would be things like powders suspended in the air or water pooling on the ground, means that all forms of auto-success or auto-bonus stealth cease to provide advantages when someone is moving and interacting with reality. Rank 2 removes the benefits even when someone is still, and Rank 3 (which generally requires supernatural circumstances) actively makes the hidden visible even to those without the senses to normally perceive them. There's similar things like Weather which interferes with all forms of flight, or the more exotic 'Death Song' which lowers the rank of immunities (where immunities get classified into Rank 3: makes you stronger when exposed, Rank 2: inherently nonsensical for this to pose a danger such as a fire elemental's fire immunity, and Rank 1: immune via protection) and can be produced in setting-specific ways. It leads to a more 'improvise stuff with the environment to counter an enemy's schtick' kind of play suited for some games, especially things that are meant to have a kind of swashbuckling feel.

[DwarfFighter]

It seems to me that OP is mixing up two house rule issues into one, decrying house rules that change existing mechanics stuff and lauding house rules that add new mechanics: The former is "boring" and somehow mutually exclusive with the latter "thematic"?

I don't think any group should feel bad about introducing house rules they feel fix issues with the game. If the GM truly believes longswords should be 1d6 damage and katanas should be 4d12, fine. I don't agree with that, but it's not something that is at all comparable to having players characters regenerate 1hp an hour in sunlight or whatever.

Saying one way to house rule the game is "better" than another way is comparing apples and weather patterns.

[Anonymouswizard]

A (good) houserule to fix is always to theme, and houserules with the intent of theming do so to fix some issue that isn't too theme. This is because the rules, setting, and theme are, in an ideal world, not in conflict.

In writing my own homebrew system (or really two very different ones) in the past year I've gained a new appreciation for hour much rules matter to theme, and how that's more important than realism or arbitrary coolness.

An issue that comes up sometimes it's people trying to 'fix' D&D 5e by weakening natural characters. This likely isn't because they don't realise that martials are better at feeling damage because they lack the utility of their magical compatriots, it's because in their ideas theming a fighter isn't as during as a wizard, and the fact that the wizard gets outdamaged isn't too their theming. This might got against the ideal theming of must of this board (where martials only need a bit of luck surviving a few spells while they beat up the wizard), but that doesn't make it a bad rule.

The most common houserules I see are those that eliminate something the GM/group's preferred theming doesn't want to deal with, likely encumbrance or tracking consumables. I personally like ones that limits the 'death as a failure state' tendency, making other consequences of failure the main ones.

[Asisreo1]

Most thematic houserules I've seen suffer from variant of the Goodhart law (or as we call them, "are not munchkin-proof"), meaning that they only work as long as players use them as intended. Then, depending on the GM, the houserule starts actively contradicting the theme or become a constantly changing mess when you explore the corner cases.

But the hardest IMO is to have a good balance for the relevance and time passed using the houserule. Advanced rules for creating armies are great, but if it takes too much table time, the players are gonna notice that the gameplay isn't that deep and the nearby pile of board games are much better designed than the one you are trying to improvise. On the other hand, it's easy to have those thematic houserules to fall out of relevance as sessions pass, and be mostly underwhelming.
The chance of failure is not exclusive to fix-type of houserules, true. But the overall fun of the campaign and how the group proceeds in play from that failure is important as well.

If thematic mechanics fail, they can usually be safely removed or modified with understanding that the original rules are satisfactory to lean on if need be. The DM may be frustrated but that frustration is born from the failure of the houserule more than the failure of the entire system.

If a mechanic meant to fix a problem ends up failing, this usually means the DM will either feel that they must concede their game to the system's ruleset which they disagree with, change the ruleset again in a blind-dart pattern, or drop the game entirely which is undesirable.

It seems to me that OP is mixing up two house rule issues into one, decrying house rules that change existing mechanics stuff and lauding house rules that add new mechanics: The former is "boring" and somehow mutually exclusive with the latter "thematic"?

I don't think any group should feel bad about introducing house rules they feel fix issues with the game. If the GM truly believes longswords should be 1d6 damage and katanas should be 4d12, fine. I don't agree with that, but it's not something that is at all comparable to having players characters regenerate 1hp an hour in sunlight or whatever.

Saying one way to house rule the game is "better" than another way is comparing apples and weather patterns.
It's not about changing V. adding rules. Its about the purpose behind the changes.

Houserules that change existing rules for thematic changes, like changing the resting rules so that they can only rest inside a town helps with theme of outside being especially dangerous and towns being a safe haven.

Houserules that add existing rules would be like if you added a new status effect to the game and had spells or even a whole subsystem based on those effects which might help the theme of an area being plagued by this effect.

Either works fine. In fact, the mechanical difference between a houserule made to fix and a houserule made to be thematic may be absolutely none, just the way the DM goes about the situation might determine the purpose of the houserules.

[Batcathat]

If thematic mechanics fail, they can usually be safely removed or modified with understanding that the original rules are satisfactory to lean on if need be. The DM may be frustrated but that frustration is born from the failure of the houserule more than the failure of the entire system.

If a mechanic meant to fix a problem ends up failing, this usually means the DM will either feel that they must concede their game to the system's ruleset which they disagree with, change the ruleset again in a blind-dart pattern, or drop the game entirely which is undesirable.

I very much doubt every GM (or even most of them) would react in those fairly specific ways to their houserules failing.

[martixy]

I've seen plenty of clueless GMs fail *hard* when trying to house rule to "fix" mechanics. Anyone with extensive experience with their "themes" counterpart(s) care to weigh in?
...
But… not all mechanical fixes are about *balance*. And there, I think I'd have to argue that mechanical fixes for the sake of sanity are probably "better" (more vital) than ones for theme. Although I'm drawing a blank on examples.


Most thematic houserules I've seen suffer from variant of the Goodhart law (or as we call them, "are not munchkin-proof"), meaning that they only work as long as players use them as intended.

Oddly, I never had individual rules fail, even though I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of houserules over time. The problem was always just the amount of rules (in general, not ones I added/changed). I'm not sure if this counts as a success story in this context, or still a failure.

What I can say is that I went in with the intent of fixing mechanics. With an overarching goal, but mostly fixing crap I didn't like or I wanted my game to feature. The subset of rules I touched in favour of the theme I wanted was fairly minor.

[Pex]

Oddly, I never had individual rules fail, even though I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of houserules over time. The problem was always just the amount of rules (in general, not ones I added/changed). I'm not sure if this counts as a success story in this context, or still a failure.

What I can say is that I went in with the intent of fixing mechanics. With an overarching goal, but mostly fixing crap I didn't like or I wanted my game to feature. The subset of rules I touched in favour of the theme I wanted was fairly minor.

This tells me you never found a game system you like. You keep changing things and are never satisfied. You need to figure out what it is you actually want and research the game system that gives it to you, but you stll might be making changes for the sake of making changes. Perhaps as an exercise make your own game system. Use your own ideas. Maybe you'll be fortunate to have it published. Maybe it's just for fun. However, if you find you keep changing your own rules over and over there's something else going on I'm not qualified to say.

I can speak from experience of an old 3E DM. The group lasted for 12 years. In the latter years the DM kept adding house rules, tinkering with how magic worked, new feats, giving PC new class abilities added on to what they had. Some changes stayed. Some changes went away. It eventually bled into the gameworld. He had us hopping into different Prime Material planes that were essentially What Ifs, tried out different cultures and sometimes new game mechanics. By the third campaign sometimes it was our game world but an illusion. "I disbelieve the world" was a viable option and the correct thing to do. I suppose it was inevitable, but the 4th campaign was post-Apocalyptic where his intent was to start over. It was too late. He had burned out, ending the campaign and quitting DMing. He was never satisfied with the rules. Obligatory: It was never about "balance".

[MoiMagnus]

This tells me you never found a game system you like. You keep changing things and are never satisfied. You need to figure out what it is you actually want and research the game system that gives it to you, but you stll might be making changes for the sake of making changes. Perhaps as an exercise make your own game system. Use your own ideas. Maybe you'll be fortunate to have it published. Maybe it's just for fun. However, if you find you keep changing your own rules over and over there's something else going on I'm not qualified to say.

Some peoples ultimately chase novelty and creation, which requires a constantly changes.
My 5e GM probably created a dozen RPG systems, most of them for a single one-shot scenario (played multiple times by different tables), one of them being almost a decade long project with multiple hundred pages of rules (which vastly changed from the beginning to its end), and another one slowly starting to grow to a similar size.
All of them span vastly different gameplay styles, from light FATE-like systems, to deeply technical ones, going through some where combat is an after-though but diplomacy and investigation is central.

And I'm not even counting the big boardgame he is working on, and all the small subsystems that were created to handle a single encounter of a campaign. (Like a set of rules for the epic defence of one fortress)

[And I'm co-designer of a good half of those rule systems]

[FrogInATopHat]

...To me, this is a problem...

There's the rub.

[martixy]

This tells me you never found a game system you like. You keep changing things and are never satisfied. You need to figure out what it is you actually want and research the game system that gives it to you, but you still might be making changes for the sake of making changes. Perhaps as an exercise make your own game system. Use your own ideas. Maybe you'll be fortunate to have it published. Maybe it's just for fun. However, if you find you keep changing your own rules over and over there's something else going on I'm not qualified to say.

I can speak from experience of an old 3E DM. The group lasted for 12 years. In the latter years the DM kept adding house rules, tinkering with how magic worked, new feats, giving PC new class abilities added on to what they had. Some changes stayed. Some changes went away. It eventually bled into the gameworld. He had us hopping into different Prime Material planes that were essentially What Ifs, tried out different cultures and sometimes new game mechanics. By the third campaign sometimes it was our game world but an illusion. "I disbelieve the world" was a viable option and the correct thing to do. I suppose it was inevitable, but the 4th campaign was post-Apocalyptic where his intent was to start over. It was too late. He had burned out, ending the campaign and quitting DMing. He was never satisfied with the rules. Obligatory: It was never about "balance".

I may have misspoken. Technically, yes, it's an ongoing process, so "accumulated" isn't exactly wrong, but the ratio is like 95% stable rules, up to 99% for the most used. The rest is minor tweaks to esoteric rules. I also include additions, for those that make a distinction between houserules and homebrew. You can think of it as lazy initialization. A player, or me the DM, will decide they want to use a specific class or feature. We will then look at that feature and figure out what kind of problems it could have. The two class reworks from my signature originated from that process. There are more I haven't posted to the forums.

For context, the system I speak of is 3.PF (a combination of D&D 3.5e and PF1).

I would confidently say I have found the system I like most. I probably have not played as many as some people here, but I do love my version.

I have also never houseruled explicitly for the purpose of balance. Not even for ease of DMing. It was always with the intent of what I, as a player would want my character be able to do. It has caused me difficulties in DMing in the past. My desires as a player tend to be towards fulfilling power fantasy, which means sometimes these characters would be hard to deal with on the DM side.

I wonder if you can call "having impactful stuff to do" a theme. In my efforts, "fixing" the martial-caster disparity was never a goal. You want to become a god - you play the wizard. The difference is I embraced the wuxia nature of high level martials, and worked towards letting them(and me) fulfil that fantasy. My players frequently said how "anime" our campaign was. The majority of houseruling efforts (homebrew included) were focused on allowing players to spend character resources on cool **** they want to do, not on being competent enough to contribute.

[Asisreo1]

There's the rub.
Although the post was titled with a declarative statement, the purpose was to gauge what others feel about the subject, agreements and disagreements welcome.

In context to why I think its a problem, its frankly a bit...arrogant of the DM to "fix" things while they're much more amateur than the actual professionals. Its like if someone took someone else's art and "fixed" it on twitter. Or maybe like if your spouse tears down the plumbing system for a different system that may work but uglier.

[NichG]

Although the post was titled with a declarative statement, the purpose was to gauge what others feel about the subject, agreements and disagreements welcome.

In context to why I think its a problem, its frankly a bit...arrogant of the DM to "fix" things while they're much more amateur than the actual professionals. Its like if someone took someone else's art and "fixed" it on twitter. Or maybe like if your spouse tears down the plumbing system for a different system that may work but uglier.

I mean, I'll agree with you that rules for themes is a lot more interesting, but I don't think DMs owe anything to the original creators of rulesets after purchase. And you don't become good at something without trying...

[FrogInATopHat]

Although the post was titled with a declarative statement, the purpose was to gauge what others feel about the subject, agreements and disagreements welcome.

In context to why I think its a problem, its frankly a bit...arrogant of the DM to "fix" things while they're much more amateur than the actual professionals. Its like if someone took someone else's art and "fixed" it on twitter. Or maybe like if your spouse tears down the plumbing system for a different system that may work but uglier.

If the professionals (who were all amateurs at one point) don't want me to fix their rules, they can simply not make rules that don't work. Not always as easy as it sounds and sometimes impossible to check without a level of play-testing that can only be called unreasonable.

And how is it the same as fixing someone's art on twitter? In the first instance, art is entirely subjective, a rule not working isn't always so. In the second, unless the professionals are playing in my game, I haven't exactly confronted them with my fixes. Even many of the professionals who work on specific systems use house-rules when they play those systems themselves. Is there a hierarchy regarding which professional is correct? Can you list it out for me?

[MoiMagnus]

In context to why I think its a problem, its frankly a bit...arrogant of the DM to "fix" things while they're much more amateur than the actual professionals.

It's arrogant if they're convinced that their fix will work on the first try.
But because of the constrains of being an employee designer (deadlines, priority on new content over fixing the old one, potential pressures from higher-ups or the marketing dep, etc), it's pretty reasonable for an experienced amateur to eventually improve a published system.

[Modders "fix" issues of video games all the time. And while it's difficult to say whether or not a big mod was better than the original game, community patch usually lead to games that are objectively better than the original games.]

[martixy]

Although the post was titled with a declarative statement, the purpose was to gauge what others feel about the subject, agreements and disagreements welcome.

In context to why I think its a problem, its frankly a bit...arrogant of the DM to "fix" things while they're much more amateur than the actual professionals. Its like if someone took someone else's art and "fixed" it on twitter. Or maybe like if your spouse tears down the plumbing system for a different system that may work but uglier.

I passionately dislike this attitude. Yes, they are professionals. Yes, they did many good things. (For all its faults, the base 3.5e system is surprisingly robust and numerically stable.) They are not unique or superhuman. Another person with experience in the system and some thought will be able to improve and absolutely fix many things. Hindsight is a big advantage in this regard.

[Asisreo1]

It's arrogant if they're convinced that their fix will work on the first try.
But because of the constrains of being an employee designer (deadlines, priority on new content over fixing the old one, potential pressures from higher-ups or the marketing dep, etc), it's pretty reasonable for an experienced amateur to eventually improve a published system.

[Modders "fix" issues of video games all the time. And while it's difficult to say whether or not a big mod was better than the original game, community patch usually lead to games that are objectively better than the original games.]
In general, that's not what happens, though. Experienced amateurs are few and far between. So while there are instances of a well-made houserule fix made by amateurs, they are way too many outliers to not feel like the majority is not fun.

If the professionals (who were all amateurs at one point) don't want me to fix their rules, they can simply not make rules that don't work. Not always as easy as it sounds and sometimes impossible to check without a level of play-testing that can only be called unreasonable.

And how is it the same as fixing someone's art on twitter? In the first instance, art is entirely subjective, a rule not working isn't always so. In the second, unless the professionals are playing in my game, I haven't exactly confronted them with my fixes. Even many of the professionals who work on specific systems use house-rules when they play those systems themselves. Is there a hierarchy regarding which professional is correct? Can you list it out for me?
Rules not working is, in the majority of cases, subjective. No matter how many numbers you try to pull, very few features can be considered "good" or "bad" in an objective sense since it relies on your personal experience with it in a campaign or your personal feel of the system.

And its not the professional to be annoyed by the arrogant spouse, its the other spouse having to live with their decision until they finally decide to get a professional.

I passionately dislike this attitude. Yes, they are professionals. Yes, they did many good things. (For all its faults, the base 3.5e system is surprisingly robust and numerically stable.) They are not unique or superhuman. Another person with experience in the system and some thought will be able to improve and absolutely fix many things. Hindsight is a big advantage in this regard.
Nobody thinks they're gods or superhuman. But they are professionals. Doctors give incorrect diagnoses sometimes, but an amateur might scoff and say "I know this symptom has to be this!" When they have no real understanding of the symptom, disease, or treatment and wind up agitating a problem they were trying to help.

But I don't hate these rule fixes, its just that when its the amateur that gets the air of superhuman understanding that throws out red flags for the campaigns they run.

[FrogInATopHat]

Experienced amateurs are few and far between.

This statement is not only untrue, it is nonsense. Experienced amateurs in this hobby are by default far more numerous than professionals. There are people who have been in the hobby for longer than some professionals have been alive.


Rules not working is, in the majority of cases, subjective. No matter how many numbers you try to pull, very few features can be considered "good" or "bad" in an objective sense since it relies on your personal experience with it in a campaign or your personal feel of the system.

Here is a rule (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/prone-shooter-combat) that did literally nothing (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p7ly?Prone-Shooter-Fixed-Today) for a year until a change was made by the professionals.

Was it arrogant of people to house-rule it in that year?

This is not the only such example.

If rules and features can't be considered good or bad, why is it both arrogant and undesirable to change them? You are contradicting yourself.


And its not the professional to be annoyed by the arrogant spouse, its the other spouse having to live with their decision until they finally decide to get a professional.

Plumbing is not game design. Unless your spouse is a player, their interpretation of your house-rules is irrelevant.


...its just that when its the amateur that gets the air of superhuman understanding that throws out red flags for the campaigns they run.

This is irrelevant. Nobody has claimed superhuman understanding except for you claiming it on behalf of designers that don't even claim it for themselves.

Can you address why designers use house-rules for systems that they themselves designed? You seem to have ignored that for some reason. Is that because it gives lie to your argument?

[Anonymouswizard]

Nobody thinks they're gods or superhuman. But they are professionals. Doctors give incorrect diagnoses sometimes, but an amateur might scoff and say "I know this symptom has to be this!" When they have no real understanding of the symptom, disease, or treatment and wind up agitating a problem they were trying to help.

But I don't hate these rule fixes, its just that when its the amateur that gets the air of superhuman understanding that throws out red flags for the campaigns they run.

I think doctors are a bad example, as a badly made rule is nowhere near as potentially harmful as a misdiagnosis, I'd go for something more like a car mechanic. But I digress.

Trying to write my own original systems instead of just housruling existing ones has given me a lot of respect for those buggy 300 page games I used to look down on. Coming up with enough rules to fill 300 pages is impressive in itself, and considering how many interactions I've discovered in a 30 page game (just changing the name of one stat is a nightmare) I'm shocked that professional game designers get them to run as well as they do. A lot of the 'broken' rules in games aren't so much broken as it wasn't worth the designer's effort to fine tune them because somebody's going to change it anway.

Does that mean I like D&D more? No, I consider two of the editions (3.X and 5e) the worst games I've ever played. But I'm willing to be a bit more lenient on 3.X, as as the edition went on it seemed like the designers did finally find a fun balance point in their system.

[King of Nowhere]

I think doctors are a bad example, as a badly made rule is nowhere near as potentially harmful as a misdiagnosis, I'd go for something more like a car mechanic. But I digress.



nah. not even that. a car can go wrong in many ways, and there are real risks at tampering with one.

A better example is cooking, because the worst thing that can happen by messing up a recipe is, it becomes unpalatable. no harm done. and there's no right way to do a recipe, everyone will like different flavoring anyway.
in fact, everyone i know who's a competent cook affirms that you should experiment with stuff and find your own preferences. which is something a doctor or mechanic cannot do, because there is a much greater risk involved.



Rules not working is, in the majority of cases, subjective. No matter how many numbers you try to pull, very few features can be considered "good" or "bad" in an objective sense since it relies on your personal experience with it in a campaign or your personal feel of the system.


so, if there are no objectively good or bad rules, how can the amateur possibly make them worse? If it depends on your personal experience, shouldn't that be an argument in favor of houseruling, to do what works for you?
Also, the fact that the designers included so many variant rules and "the dm decides" shows that they were expecting people to adapt the game to their own preferences. in short, to houserule.

You may say that those are houserules to reinforce themes, as opposed to fixing stuff. but i ask, is there really a clear difference?

We discuss power level in session 0. or, we would discuss it, except that my group has been together long enough that there's no real need to discuss it. anyway, we don't want a rocket tag game, so we agree on an idea: you can't one-shot an equal opponent without giving them some reasonable defence.
according to this idea, we decide there are no uberchargers, because an ubercharger can kill a character of the same level without much chance of failure. We also ban a bunch of the more broken spells and some wizard builds, and put some power caps on other stuff that we don't ban outright.
So, are those "balance fixes" houserules? they are certainly aimed at rebalancing some rules that could be exploited for ridiculous power.
Are those "balance to the table"? well, they certainly are. But balancing to the table entails sitting down and deciding what is ok and what is not and what can be nerfed or buffed. and how is that fundamentally different from houseruling?
And finally, are those houserules "to reinforce themes"? well, i'd definitely call "you can't one-shot an opponent of your level without a realistic chance of failure" a theme. It sets the tone of the game. If that's not enforced, the game devolves into rocket tag, and all the preparation comes before the battle; once you set up the battle to have the advantage, you go first and you kill the enemy in the surprise round, end of the job. with this enforced, you have to work a few more rounds, which reduces the value of preparation and increases the value of battle tactics (which, instead, would be useless in a rocket tag, as the battle would be over immediately and there would be no tactics involved). So, this houserule is definitely meant to set the pacing of combat to something we like.

On a similar note, i decided that for my homebrew world there is a sort of thermodinamics of magic; you can't create stuff/improve stuff/create power without some sort of equal expenditure. So, you cast a spell, that spell is empowered by your own magic energy. but if you want to create a perment item, you've got to pay a cost. This limitation works to establish a lot of background elements, it also justifies why you have to pay expensive materials and/or xp for permanent effects, and it generally does a lot of good.
Oh, and incidentally, it also removes a lot of abuse potentials. no, you can't cast wall of iron and then sell it; you did not pay any cost to cast that spell, so it cannot be permanent under this rule. Want to make that iron real iron, you've got to spend xp or diamond dust or some similar stuff.
Again, this is a rule that sets a theme and fixes some broken mechanics simultaneously.

In fact, the two cannot be separated. If you follow the rules verbatim, you get a tippyverse. Or possibly some other kind of world where wizards are gods.
You don't want that, you've got two options:
1) assume all those wizards are morons and are not using their full potential.
2) nerf them. which is houseruling.
"I don't want wizards to be able to do everything" is both a statement of game balance, and a major worldbuilding element.

In fact, I can try and make a law out of it:
king of nowhere's postulate on themes against mechanics: "If you are houseruling to ensure your fluff is consistent with the crunch, then there is no meaningful distinction between an houserule to enhance fluff and a balance fix"
and King of nowhere's corollary: "houseruling is necessary if you want to create a consistent setting that's not a tippyverse"

[kyoryu]

nah. not even that. a car can go wrong in many ways, and there are real risks at tampering with one.

A better example is cooking, because the worst thing that can happen by messing up a recipe is, it becomes unpalatable. no harm done. and there's no right way to do a recipe, everyone will like different flavoring anyway.
in fact, everyone i know who's a competent cook affirms that you should experiment with stuff and find your own preferences. which is something a doctor or mechanic cannot do, because there is a much greater risk involved.

Actually, I think this is an excellent analogy. Partially because it's the exact analogy I use.

So, a story. My ex wife decided to make chicken Tikka Masala. She had never had or made chicken Tikka Masala. Which is fine, whatever. She had a recipe and I believe some premade sauce. Yay, let's go!

She decided she knew what she was doing and added paprika. And then more paprika. She saw how it was cooking and started tweaking it.

The result was inedible... because she decided to tweak the recipe before understanding the recipe.

So, yeah, tweaking is good, but do so after you understand the game and its rules (and no, experience in another game does not mean you understand a different game). Figure out why the game is the way it is before you start tweaking things. And while there may be some minor edge cases that are just broken, in most cases the core mechanics of the game will have more testing done on them than you have, so they probably work.

Once you understand them and can make an argument for them? Figure out what experience you're trying to get, understand the side effects of the change, and change away.

(Yes, there are cases like prone firing that are just broken, but they're the exception).

[King of Nowhere]

Actually, I think this is an excellent analogy. Partially because it's the exact analogy I use.

So, a story. My ex wife decided to make chicken Tikka Masala. She had never had or made chicken Tikka Masala. Which is fine, whatever. She had a recipe and I believe some premade sauce. Yay, let's go!

She decided she knew what she was doing and added paprika. And then more paprika. She saw how it was cooking and started tweaking it.

The result was inedible... because she decided to tweak the recipe before understanding the recipe.

So, yeah, tweaking is good, but do so after you understand the game and its rules (and no, experience in another game does not mean you understand a different game). Figure out why the game is the way it is before you start tweaking things. And while there may be some minor edge cases that are just broken, in most cases the core mechanics of the game will have more testing done on them than you have, so they probably work.

Once you understand them and can make an argument for them? Figure out what experience you're trying to get, understand the side effects of the change, and change away.

(Yes, there are cases like prone firing that are just broken, but they're the exception).

oh, full agreement on that.
with just the caveat that in this kind of matters, you often learn by doing. my first attempts at tweaking the game were not good, but i learned a lot from them. as your ex wife hopefully learned from her failed chicken :smallbiggrin:.
also, there's a difference between altering core mechanics and putting a cap on the stacking of metamagic cost reductions. or forbidding drown healing :smallbiggrin:
and there is also a difference between playing with a group of close friends, where you can expect to keep playing for a long time, and playing with total strangers, where 90% of the times the game won't last more than a few sessions. In the first case it's a good investment to try and tweak the game to the table, in the second it's a lot of hassle for the experienced players who have to learn new stuff, and it's unlikely it will ever be meaningful.
there are many factors to consider.

[Pex]

A DM can house rule too much in another way. A player comes to the game expecting to play 5E. That means he wants to use 5E rules. A DM house ruling too much means the player is not playing 5E. If the DM fundamentally changes how the game works there's no point to playing. If the DM can get his friends to go along, great. It becomes a different matter when looking for players among the Community. I can be all excited to try out a class or feat or whatever as the rules say, but the DM saying I can't means I don't play if I can't or don't want to get over it. It is subjective. I may want to play and just choose a different class or feat that isn't changing I'll still like. Even if it is house rules for theme the theme may be ok but the mechanics involved I won't find fun.

[kyoryu]

oh, full agreement on that.
with just the caveat that in this kind of matters, you often learn by doing. my first attempts at tweaking the game were not good, but i learned a lot from them. as your ex wife hopefully learned from her failed chicken :smallbiggrin:.
also, there's a difference between altering core mechanics and putting a cap on the stacking of metamagic cost reductions. or forbidding drown healing :smallbiggrin:
and there is also a difference between playing with a group of close friends, where you can expect to keep playing for a long time, and playing with total strangers, where 90% of the times the game won't last more than a few sessions. In the first case it's a good investment to try and tweak the game to the table, in the second it's a lot of hassle for the experienced players who have to learn new stuff, and it's unlikely it will ever be meaningful.
there are many factors to consider.

I'm not sure I'd put "putting the kibosh on obvious exploits" to be the same as "houseruling". And yeah, you learn by tweaking but I generally do think the process should be:

1. Understand the rules
2. Understand why the rules aren't giving you the result you want (outside of 'sploits, usually because the author had another target in mind)
3. Get specific about what you want
4. Make a tweak to get you there (usually the smallest possible is the best) - consider how it might impact other things when doing it.
5. Evaluate the houserule to see if it got what you wanted
6. Re-tweak as necessary.

[MoiMagnus]

I'm not sure I'd put "putting the kibosh on obvious exploits" to be the same as "houseruling". And yeah, you learn by tweaking but I generally do think the process should be:

1. Understand the rules
2. Understand why the rules aren't giving you the result you want (outside of 'sploits, usually because the author had another target in mind)
3. Get specific about what you want
4. Make a tweak to get you there (usually the smallest possible is the best) - consider how it might impact other things when doing it.
5. Evaluate the houserule to see if it got what you wanted
6. Re-tweak as necessary.

If you don't understand a rule, you can also skip (1) and (2) and discover why the rule existed in the first place by testing what happens if you change it. Just make sure to do it with a table of peoples that are fine with playing on a broken system. [And by broken I mean significantly more broken than the published one]

[NichG]

so, if there are no objectively good or bad rules, how can the amateur possibly make them worse? If it depends on your personal experience, shouldn't that be an argument in favor of houseruling, to do what works for you?
Also, the fact that the designers included so many variant rules and "the dm decides" shows that they were expecting people to adapt the game to their own preferences. in short, to houserule.


Even more to the point, if the quality of a rule is a function of the tastes of a given table or group of players, then the efforts of amateurs necessarily have a higher ceiling in how good they can be than the efforts of a professional, no matter how skilled. Because the professional must write a rule for an entire community, but an amateur can write a rule which is tuned to a specific group of 5 people.

This is more or less why I basically won't play in games where the DM isn't actively creating their own rules content. I know people who can do this well, and I'm somewhat willing to invest time into people who can't do it well yet in order to get them there, but I'm not willing to invest time into something that will never have a chance to be as good as custom stuff can be.

[martixy]

OP took my point and twisted it to something I never intended.

Here's me trying again: What the professionals can do, even an unpaid person who takes the time to acquire the necessary expertise can also do.
Person X being a professional is not a statement about their expertise, it's a statement about their paycheck. (Usually. Language evolves and colloquial use over time has tacked on meanings different from the usual dictionary definition.)

Anyway, amusing personal anecdote aside, kyoryu is correct. There is a reason groundbreaking scientific theories never come "out of left field" (despite many, many attempts by many people). You have to understand a subject first, to see where its problems lie and where it can be advanced.
His list of steps (also known as an algorithm) is what I do when I decide to houserule.

[FrogInATopHat]

Here's me trying again: What the professionals can do, even an unpaid person who takes the time to acquire the necessary expertise can also do.
Person X being a professional is not a statement about their expertise, it's a statement about their paycheck.

Agreed 100%. And as I noted earlier, there are amateurs who have been in the hobby longer than some professionals have been alive.

There are others who have been in the hobby for less time but are just bloody good at it.

Both groups may have various reasons not to want to monetise their hobby and it's insulting to their talents or experience to call them arrogant on that basis.

[King of Nowhere]

there is also the "on the shoulders of giants" argument.
sure, i could not write a coherent 300-pages system from scratch. i don't have that kind of skill.
however, when someone has done that, i can take their job and improve it on little things. i can do it specifically because they already made it. i can pay attention to the little details that they could not treat well because they had time constraints.
they probably could have done it themselves, except that there was no money in it, and as professionals they need to earn a living.

indeed, this applies to any field. i've seen a lot of instances where somebody highly skilled made a bit great work, and somebody else who's much less skilled could take that work and improve some details on it

[PhoenixPhyre]

I just want to jump in here with a few comments--

1) Professional =/= right. And it especially doesn't equal being right for any particular table. Games and designers that believe that they know best, in my opinion, are hubristic. I'm much closer to the action than the designers are; beyond that, I only have to satisfy my players. They have to satisfy (or at least not grossly disappoint) the entire community. So our concerns are very different. It's not a matter of "better" or "worse" in the abstract, it's a matter of different needs and cost/benefit balances.

2) I often homebrew, but I rarely houserule. Although I do make rulings for situations that may or may not accord with the default way of reading the rules. This is more because I don't see the need to spend the effort than out of some philosophical opposition. I'll make spur-of-the-moment rulings about interactions, based on what the table (and I) find the most amusing and what fits the situation best. But afterward, things tend to revert to the status quo. They're non-precedential rulings. And they're dominantly about theme and narrative, not mechanical balance.

3) I strongly prefer systems that don't think they have all the answers. I don't want a system that looks at DMs as if they're simply referees, there to neutrally administer the game rules and that everything should bow to the printed rules. Systems are scaffolding, assistance to take some of the weight of the minutia off the DM and the players. A common language for uncertainty resolution. That's all. Systems that are opinionated (PbtA, I'm looking at you) may be good for some people, but I can't stand them. That's entirely personal taste, not anything objective.

4) As a follow-on to #3, I strongly prefer systems that are easy to bolt in new content. Especially new worlds. I dislike systems that strongly tie themselves to a single world and explain the mechanics in terms of the in-universe metaphysics. It's not that I don't like metaphysics--just the reverse. But I want to be the one doing that mapping. And when all the questions have built-in answers, there's much less for me to discover. It's one reason I don't use printed settings. I want to ride along with the players as they discover truths about the world that I never thought of.

5) On the other hand, I'm a firm believer that systems and tables have a range of acceptable power in which they're happy. IMO, the high-op D&D 3e culture is well outside the power band the system really likes. Some tables like it, however, so they make it work. But in doing so, they have to drop off a huge swath of the other options. On the other hand, playing 4e D&D "low magic" (ie no magic items) doesn't work--the system math just can't handle that without workarounds. Playing as demigods in an OSR dungeon crawl doesn't work; playing as ordinary joes (ie mortals with no powers) in an Exalted game...probably doesn't work (not being an expert, I can't tell you for sure. But I'd be shocked if it makes much sense). So balance is necessary both by boosting the things that fall outside the low end (or chopping them off) and by nerfing (or banning) the things that go above the high end. Game designers aren't perfect, and there's a high correlation between the number of splats written and the chances of things going out of whack in either direction.

And there's table variance in exactly where the "sweet spot" is. So different tables are going to come to different conclusions about what needs adjustment. And that's totally ok. A group that voluntarily says "you know what--we're not going to do T1 or T2 gameplay at this table. And any build that pushes those levels of power is going to get nerfed/banned as well" isn't playing wrong. Neither is a table that says "T1/high T2 or bust; let's add XYZ to ABC classes to bring them up to par". Both are houseruling to "fix" mechanics, but neither one is right or wrong (inherently). They're just reaching different solutions for different tables.

[kyoryu]

1) Professional =/= right. And it especially doesn't equal being right for any particular table. Games and designers that believe that they know best, in my opinion, are hubristic. I'm much closer to the action than the designers are; beyond that, I only have to satisfy my players. They have to satisfy (or at least not grossly disappoint) the entire community. So our concerns are very different. It's not a matter of "better" or "worse" in the abstract, it's a matter of different needs and cost/benefit balances.

Well, yeah. That's the entire point of my "when you can make an argument, you're in a good place to houserule" bit.

The rule is probably not "broken". It happens, but usually more around edge cases and exploits than actual core stuff, or even secondary stuff. But if you can understand what the author was trying to achieve, and why that's not what you're wanting, you're in a perfect place to start making mods.

[Talakeal]

The idea that an amateur can't improve on a professional's work and is arrogant to even try is laughable in any context, but it is especially egregious in something as soft as RPG design which doesn't even have any sort of formal degree or certification program and is so subjective.

IMO amateur's are often in a better spot to tweak rules, not because they are "better game designers" but because most RPGs simply don't have the time to perform proper playtesting and quality control. They have deadlines, and they simply don't have the time or the budget to catch everything. Heck, one can see this just by scanning the books for typos and literally nonfunctional or contradictory rules, or by seeing how many errata and FAQ documents the big companies put out for years after publishing. One can also talk to the "professional" game designers about things they wanted to put in the game but just didn't have time, or about the house rules that they use when they play their own games.

Also, published stuff tends to be made by committee, with multiple authors and editors, as well as mandates from investors and marketing. A lot of the time these people don't really communicate with one another, let alone agree.

And some professional products are just objectively bad. For example, I was reading Castles and Crusades Codex Classicum last week, and while the content was fine, the book was absolutely full of typos and the sentence structure and grammar drifted between painful to read and just flat out incomprehensible.


A DM can house rule too much in another way. A player comes to the game expecting to play 5E. That means he wants to use 5E rules. A DM house ruling too much means the player is not playing 5E. If the DM fundamentally changes how the game works there's no point to playing. If the DM can get his friends to go along, great. It becomes a different matter when looking for players among the Community. I can be all excited to try out a class or feat or whatever as the rules say, but the DM saying I can't means I don't play if I can't or don't want to get over it. It is subjective. I may want to play and just choose a different class or feat that isn't changing I'll still like. Even if it is house rules for theme the theme may be ok but the mechanics involved I won't find fun.

Very much this. I have long lamented not being able to find a table that just ran the game as written.

[Kane0]

In context to why I think its a problem, its frankly a bit...arrogant of the DM to "fix" things while they're much more amateur than the actual professionals. Its like if someone took someone else's art and "fixed" it on twitter. Or maybe like if your spouse tears down the plumbing system for a different system that may work but uglier.

Define ‘ameteur’.

If you mean inexperienced and/or unlearned then sure, theres a good chance their work wont be of the same quality as that of a dev.
If you mean not getting compensated for their effort then that is no indication of quality.

It should also be noted that ‘is a dev’ is not an indication of quality any more than ‘is an enthusiast’ is. There are no formal qualifications to making games.

[Willie the Duck]

Can we just consolidate all this with 'There's no one running the show, much less handing out any form of certifications based on peer-agreed testing mechanisms. The barrier to entry to doing this work professionally (as in as a paid career or side-career) is decidedly low. At the same time, because this is a lot of peoples' main hobby passion, many people have created exhaustive-effort level products with no attempt to monetize them. There's little to no real agreement on what makes things good anyways (although some semi-agreement on things that make them bad). Thus the professional/non--professional divide isn't really a great demarcation of quality.'?

[FrogInATopHat]

Can we just consolidate all this with 'There's no one running the show, much less handing out any form of certifications based on peer-agreed testing mechanisms. The barrier to entry to doing this work professionally (as in as a paid career or side-career) is decidedly low. At the same time, because this is a lot of peoples' main hobby passion, many people have created exhaustive-effort level products with no attempt to monetize them. There's little to no real agreement on what makes things good anyways (although some semi-agreement on things that make them bad). Thus the professional/non--professional divide isn't really a great demarcation of quality.'?

I think the vast majority of the posters in the thread agree with this.

I think the issue is with OP describing the non-professionals as 'arrogant' for thinking they can fix a rule.

That is a... distinctly unhelpful attitude.

[Willie the Duck]

I think the vast majority of the posters in the thread agree with this.

I think the issue is with OP describing the non-professionals as 'arrogant' for thinking they can fix a rule.

That is a... distinctly unhelpful attitude.

Yes, OP shot themselves in the foot with that. Honestly I don't think I've once found it beneficial, reasonable, or apt when anyone here or on a board like this decides that someone else is 'arrogant.'

[Cluedrew]

On Arrogance: I know some of the "arrogant" people that Asisreo1 mentioned. The most famous example would probably be the money on Free Parking rule in Monopoly which makes the game take far longer. But for me the worst example was someone who made a house-rule which I'm pretty sure almost strictly a downgrade (it could speed the game up but it also would make it far swingier) on the basis of "it's stupid" and had never played the game without it. A good friend of mine, not a good game designer though. So that didn't come from no-where.

[PhoenixPhyre]

On Arrogance: I know some of the "arrogant" people that Asisreo1 mentioned. The most famous example would probably be the money on Free Parking rule in Monopoly which makes the game take far longer. But for me the worst example was someone who made a house-rule which I'm pretty sure almost strictly a downgrade (it could speed the game up but it also would make it far swingier) on the basis of "it's stupid" and had never played the game without it. A good friend of mine, not a good game designer though. So that didn't come from no-where.

That's not arrogant, that's just wrong. Amateurs can be wrong about the value of a house rule. Then again, designers can (and often are) wrong about the actual rules. IMX it happens about the same frequency. So it's kinda a wash.

[Cluedrew]

To PhoenixPhyre: Please elaborate. Especially what you mean by arrogance because that seems to be unquestionably arrogant as I use/understand the word. I even double checked a dictionary to make sure I wasn't completely off base.

[PhoenixPhyre]

To PhoenixPhyre: Please elaborate. Especially what you mean by arrogance because that seems to be unquestionably arrogant as I use/understand the word. I even double checked a dictionary to make sure I wasn't completely off base.

I've never played FATAL. But am I arrogant for saying that the rules are dumb and refusing to play by them? No. I may be mistaken or not, but that's not arrogance.

And have you considered that, for that friend, speeding things up while being more swingy is a feature, not a bug? It mayhap that you're the one being presumptuous here, or that you simply have values and priorities that don't match. That's where a lot of houserules come from in my experience--players and DMs valuing different things than the designers. That's not even to say that either of them is wrong, merely that they're different. And I'd say, if a designer (or anyone else) claimed to know what I want better than I do, that they were the arrogant one in the situation. Professional or not.

[NichG]

To me, arrogance implies that you're using an assumed property of yourself to make a decision about a thing rather than making a decision based on the properties of the thing. E.g. 'I'm an experienced developer, of course my rules will be better than some house rule' is arrogant. So is 'I've been playing for 30 years, I know better than some newcomer what the game should be'

'This rule is dumb' is under-explained, but not necessarily arrogant. 'This rule is dumb because I say so' is arrogant.

[Cluedrew]

And have you considered that, for that friend, speeding things up while being more swingy is a feature, not a bug?I see where you are coming from but those effects of the ruling was actually my work analysing after the fact (also, I'm not particularly good at the game so I might be wrong). If they were aware of any of that they did not deem to share it with me.

To NichG: I guess if there was something they forgot to say/couldn't put into words that would be true. I couldn't get an explanation at the time - and I'm pretty sure I asked - so that's all I have to go off of.

[Duff]

I agree with the underlying message of the post:

Houserules to reinforce themes are great, and one could even argue peoples don't talk about them often enough, the only exception being "gritty realism" and other variants for resting which are a recurring subject. And campaigns at my tables are filled with such houserules (last campaign has a stress mechanics to represent that we were not heroes, in the current one we have an astral with a 300 peoples crew to handle, resurrection is almost absent of most of our campaign because of the setting, etc)

But I feel it's unavoidable that those rules are less talked about, as GM who use houserules that reinforce themes are also the kind to heavily modify their settings, when it's not a fully homebrew setting. And as always "my table play like that because that works in the unique circumstances of that table" will always lead to less discussions than "my table do that and I believe most peoples should do the same as it makes 5e strictly better".

But I will disagree on the "better". It's not comparable.
The goal of a "fix" houserule is to help the game to be even better at what it aims to do.
The goal of a "thematic" houserule is to help a game to be better at what it didn't initially aimed to do.

Pretty much agree entirely. "Better than" probably shows limited experience with D&D pre 3rd or other less professional publishers.

Some basically good games have mechanics which are genuinely broken. Not just ""Unbalanced" or "Exploitable", but not actually usable. Some produce jarringly unrealistic effects. Some are so vague that whatever interpretation you're going to use are effectively a house rule (Or at least, if I'm GMing I'm going to write it down to help make sure we all remember which interpretation we agreed on last time). Some don't cover common scenarios or give undesirable results.

And in that case, I'm going to say the patches are more important than theme related house rules because you need them to make the game work, And they'll be of interest because other tables will run into the same issue. I think the OP has only seen tinkering with rules that work well enough to try and make them better. And at that point, it is a matter of taste


Cavalry use the horse's athletics score.
So by RAW, the best unit to scale the walls of the castle are you cavalry on their horses. That seems silly, right? House rule that horses can't climb walls and suffer penalties for climbing hills.
But, there's 20 men in a cavalry unit. When they dismount they serve as infantry (100 man units). So do the 20 men each fight as 5 men? Do the 20 guys fighting on horses have 80 hangers on who join in on foot but stay out of the way? Maybe the horses are actually 4 men in a panto outfit? - I went with "There's actually 100 men, but they swirl around and only fight from the one square, even if the unit doesn't move the individual soldiers aren't standing and fighting." then increased the transport cost on boats. That seemed the minimum change to get rid of panto horses.
The way heroes work in warfare is OKish for melee heroes. But when a lone archer (creatable as a starting character) can defeat a thousand men in a single turn , you have to ask yourself "Is this how we want wars to be won?
Or the social system, which fails to take into account that a social combat might have more than 2 "sides" and is a bit sketchy on more than one person taking part.
So that's the "patches"
Also, one of the players wanted to have look-out buildings around and through his lands. So I created a system for them, with costs and benefits. Not really a theme rule, but not a flaw with the system either.
Or, given the theme I wanted of "life is hard, any improvement must be won" I took away the default "
+1 per season" form the house rules. And since they were in Dorne I changed the season effects. And that was pure theme.

[Cluedrew]

One way I will agree that theme work is better than fixes is I would much rather spend my time on the former. I'd like a "perfectly" stable base to work off of.

[Quertus]

Actually, I think this is an excellent analogy. Partially because it's the exact analogy I use.

So, a story. My ex wife decided to make chicken Tikka Masala. She had never had or made chicken Tikka Masala. Which is fine, whatever. She had a recipe and I believe some premade sauce. Yay, let's go!

She decided she knew what she was doing and added paprika. And then more paprika. She saw how it was cooking and started tweaking it.

The result was inedible... because she decided to tweak the recipe before understanding the recipe.

So, yeah, tweaking is good, but do so after you understand the game and its rules (and no, experience in another game does not mean you understand a different game). Figure out why the game is the way it is before you start tweaking things. And while there may be some minor edge cases that are just broken, in most cases the core mechanics of the game will have more testing done on them than you have, so they probably work.

Once you understand them and can make an argument for them? Figure out what experience you're trying to get, understand the side effects of the change, and change away.

(Yes, there are cases like prone firing that are just broken, but they're the exception).

I moved this to the top, because I strongly agree. (And also, it's a memorable story)

It's just good science. Establish a baseline, make changes, measure results.

And, because there are interactions, be prepared for, "the operation was a success, but the patient is dead".

By which I mean, even if your experiment demonstrates that adding in an exploding dice crit fumble table makes combat faster, you won't know that it *also* makes people willing to do just about anything to avoid combat unless you had a baseline to compare it to, to recognize the difference.


nah. not even that. a car can go wrong in many ways, and there are real risks at tampering with one.

A better example is cooking, because the worst thing that can happen by messing up a recipe is, it becomes unpalatable. no harm done. and there's no right way to do a recipe, everyone will like different flavoring anyway.
in fact, everyone i know who's a competent cook affirms that you should experiment with stuff and find your own preferences. which is something a doctor or mechanic cannot do, because there is a much greater risk involved.

so, if there are no objectively good or bad rules

No, there are objectively bad rules.

Everything has a measurable complexity; rules which are more complex that necessitated by the problem that they are attempting to solve are objectively bad rules.

Developers can add in expectations, requirements, even themes for their games. When the rules (like 4e skill challenges) fail to meet these requirements, they have objectively failed.

And that's even ignoring dysfunctional rules, that reference nonexistent values and other such insanity.

I agree that cooking is a much better metaphor.



Are those "balance to the table"? well, they certainly are. But balancing to the table entails sitting down and deciding what is ok and what is not and what can be nerfed or buffed. and how is that fundamentally different from houseruling?

That's… not how "balance to the table" works.



king of nowhere's postulate on themes against mechanics: "If you are houseruling to ensure your fluff is consistent with the crunch, then there is no meaningful distinction between an houserule to enhance fluff and a balance fix"
and King of nowhere's corollary: "houseruling is necessary if you want to create a consistent setting that's not a tippyverse"

The postulate is only even potentially true if the fluff contains strict balance; even then, one could create a fluff-defying balance fix.


If you don't understand a rule, you can also skip (1) and (2) and discover why the rule existed in the first place by testing what happens if you change it. Just make sure to do it with a table of peoples that are fine with playing on a broken system. [And by broken I mean significantly more broken than the published one]

Eh… I don't know how to say this, but… whether in game design or in programming, I've seen *lots* of people who were simply too… incompetent?… to successfully notice and comprehend even *obvious* effects of changes. It's not a given that a random member (or even most members) of the population can successfully make changes to learn a rule (citation: 80% of adults fail the "2-4-6" test).

So, while it *might* work for me (as something similar is in fact an important part my debugging toolkit)… most people IME just can't get anywhere positive with that technique.


Even more to the point, if the quality of a rule is a function of the tastes of a given table or group of players, then the efforts of amateurs necessarily have a higher ceiling in how good they can be than the efforts of a professional, no matter how skilled. Because the professional must write a rule for an entire community, but an amateur can write a rule which is tuned to a specific group of 5 people.

This is more or less why I basically won't play in games where the DM isn't actively creating their own rules content. I know people who can do this well, and I'm somewhat willing to invest time into people who can't do it well yet in order to get them there, but I'm not willing to invest time into something that will never have a chance to be as good as custom stuff can be.


I mean, I'll agree with you that rules for themes is a lot more interesting, but I don't think DMs owe anything to the original creators of rulesets after purchase. And you don't become good at something without trying...

Huh. So… how do you train the clueless beginners how to *not* get in the habit of making dumb rules?

Because *unlearning* is much harder than learning, which is why, in many things, it's understood that it's important to teach people to do things *right* from the beginning, so that they don't have to unlearn bad behaviors later.

[NichG]

Huh. So… how do you train the clueless beginners how to *not* get in the habit of making dumb rules?

Because *unlearning* is much harder than learning, which is why, in many things, it's understood that it's important to teach people to do things *right* from the beginning, so that they don't have to unlearn bad behaviors later.

I think theme over balance is helpful, encourage the GM to 'make things their own' rather then correcting them by reference to external sources, be willing to try things but also call out what worked or didn't, and have a table culture of changing what isn't working once it's clear that it isn't working rather than holding the GM to past rulings. Don't let the table become accusatory or get the GM defensive as that will encourage doubling down on mistakes. Discuss the rules frequently after sessions and the logic of why you made build and action choices in terms of the rules and be transparent about broken things you notice rather than silently avoiding or exploiting them.

'I didn't take the custom feat you made because it's conditional on things I can't control, and this other feat is similarly good without the condition'

'I don't reserve my action points because if I can drop an enemy I can prevent them from acting, which is more efficient than spending AP on defense actions to tread water'

'You do realize that this rule will allow me to create a swarm where each individual insect will give me a stacking +1 on all rolls, right?'

Also, help the GM make rules for what they want to achieve more than arguing they should make rules for what you want to achieve. Don't conflate how much you like a rule with how effective it is.

[Quertus]

I think theme over balance is helpful, encourage the GM to 'make things their own' rather then correcting them by reference to external sources, be willing to try things but also call out what worked or didn't, and have a table culture of changing what isn't working once it's clear that it isn't working rather than holding the GM to past rulings. Don't let the table become accusatory or get the GM defensive as that will encourage doubling down on mistakes. Discuss the rules frequently after sessions and the logic of why you made build and action choices in terms of the rules and be transparent about broken things you notice rather than silently avoiding or exploiting them.

'I didn't take the custom feat you made because it's conditional on things I can't control, and this other feat is similarly good without the condition'

'I don't reserve my action points because if I can drop an enemy I can prevent them from acting, which is more efficient than spending AP on defense actions to tread water'

'You do realize that this rule will allow me to create a swarm where each individual insect will give me a stacking +1 on all rolls, right?'

Also, help the GM make rules for what they want to achieve more than arguing they should make rules for what you want to achieve. Don't conflate how much you like a rule with how effective it is.

So you… *want* the GM to make the dumb rule that creates a thematic swarm where each insect gives a cumulative +1 to all rolls… but train the *table* to discuss this a particular way?

That's… hmmm… I've seen a lot of people who are good at producing a lot of bad content, and who are only as good as their feedback. Who wouldn't be useful in a group not trained to give such feedback. Is there any reason I shouldn't expect this technique to produce them, rather than to produce GMs that will actually make better content to begin with?

I mean, I can see this working well for a GM with a single steady long-term group, where they learn together to do this - in fact, it might even be the *optimal* way for them to produce content *for them*.

But it reminds me of the programmers who write code that never works right, and can only *sometimes* be fixed. When you've worked with them long enough, you know what to assign them, and how to debug their code. But when you first meet them, it's a pain

Do you think that my intuition regarding what behaviors and productivity styles that this advice will produce is faulty? Is there any additional advice that is missing from this that would change the outcome?

Because, as it stands, I'm not a fan for developers, or for *professional* game designers, but could see the argument for a home group finding this an excellent strategy.

And… any advice for convincing / teaching the *group* to give productive feedback? Because I feel that, regardless of any other factors, that would be valuable for almost any group. (Being allergic to feedback and conversations seems rather common these days, IME)

[NichG]

So you… *want* the GM to make the dumb rule that creates a thematic swarm where each insect gives a cumulative +1 to all rolls… but train the *table* to discuss this a particular way?

I mean, I'm assuming from the context of your question that I'm in the role of 'the table' here, describing how, as the table, I'd help a GM get to where I want them to be. As a player, I want the GM to feel free to experiment, and the best way to do that is to avoid them feeling defensive and to avoid them feeling out of control. A GM who doesn't feel confident about the space they're operating in is more likely to make rules only as knee-jerk ways to respond to things they see going wrong, rather than proactively making new rules or modifications to improve the experience. So the main thing is to get past that and say 'look, we know there's going to be ridiculous stuff, we're okay with that, when it happens we'll let you fix it and not insist that we be allowed to keep it'.



I mean, I can see this working well for a GM with a single steady long-term group, where they learn together to do this - in fact, it might even be the *optimal* way for them to produce content *for them*.


That's an ideal circumstance as far as I'm concerned. In terms of my gaming values, I heavily weight achieving a higher peak positive experience over avoiding negative experiences or raising the average quality at the cost of lowering the extreme upper end. If there's no chance for a game to show me or let me experience something that would change how I see the world even if just in some small way, I'm not really that interested in playing just for the sake of having an okay game to play. I'd rather the GM try something ambitious and fail than not try. Then again I'm also the type to wade through fanfiction to find the rare 0.1% of gems that end up being better than the original material the fiction is based on.



Do you think that my intuition regarding what behaviors and productivity styles that this advice will produce is faulty? Is there any additional advice that is missing from this that would change the outcome?


I mean, maybe treat it as a search process rather than expecting a guaranteed result? I do think basically any GM can become competent at rulecraft, but finding a GM who ends up being both competent and creative with rulecraft (and is creative in a way you appreciate, and has the energy to dedicate to actually make that pay off) is a bit harder. I guess other things you can do is if you have GMs who can do this and want more, expose the new GMs to the games of the ones who are already around. Having reference points of how it's possible to do, how it could look, etc are useful for people who aren't making that leap. For example, some GMs may not believe that you can stat an encounter from thin air including new creature types with their own special abilities given 5-10 minutes until they meet another GM who demonstrates it at the table in front of them, and they can start to see it as a real thing that could be learned rather than exaggeration or bragging or whatever.



Because, as it stands, I'm not a fan for developers, or for *professional* game designers, but could see the argument for a home group finding this an excellent strategy.

And… any advice for convincing / teaching the *group* to give productive feedback? Because I feel that, regardless of any other factors, that would be valuable for almost any group. (Being allergic to feedback and conversations seems rather common these days, IME)

I guess the simplest thing is if everyone tries to GM something at least once or twice to be in that seat.

[Quertus]

I mean, I'm assuming from the context of your question that I'm in the role of 'the table' here, describing how, as the table, I'd help a GM get to where I want them to be.

Actually, the "you" in this context puts you in the role of the teacher, who may or may not be part of the table.

So, as a silly example: pretend you are an RPG columnist. You know that, as soon as you submit your column on this topic, everyone who has ever played an RPG will be sucked into another reality. The fate of us and/or the rest of the world somehow hinges on the results of the RPG-ignorant masses following your advice when handed random RPGs.

Or, to flip that, Pixels style, this advice will be all that an alien culture will know about training GMs to house rule, and the results they get will determine whether they approach us as friends or foe.

Under such (silly) scenarios, what advice would you write? (And then "why?" / "What results would you expect to get?") Does that help understand what I was saying / asking?

[NichG]

Actually, the "you" in this context puts you in the role of the teacher, who may or may not be part of the table.

So, as a silly example: pretend you are an RPG columnist. You know that, as soon as you submit your column on this topic, everyone who has ever played an RPG will be sucked into another reality. The fate of us and/or the rest of the world somehow hinges on the results of the RPG-ignorant masses following your advice when handed random RPGs.

Or, to flip that, Pixels style, this advice will be all that an alien culture will know about training GMs to house rule, and the results they get will determine whether they approach us as friends or foe.

Under such (silly) scenarios, what advice would you write? (And then "why?" / "What results would you expect to get?") Does that help understand what I was saying / asking?

I guess in that case I'd probably write to GMs directly, not write to players. It's sort of like a game of telephone. The more hops, the more distortion.

[King of Nowhere]

That's… not how "balance to the table" works.


isn't it, though?
when you decide to not play some powerful build but to go for something weaker, aren't you spontaneously nerfing yourself?
When you help the new player make a stronger character, you are implicitly asserting that a certain power level is bad, and a different power level is desirable, and you are adjusting the game according to it.
heck, when your table decides nobody will use shivering touch, that's effectively a ban. And in that case it's even expected, i never heard of anyone using that spell. that's just the more egregious example, but any decision to not play something because it is too broken is basically a ban, and any decision to not play something and use something similar but stronger instead is basically a buff.
we can argue semantics, we can argue details. but the core of the question is that every game at every table has a desired power level which must be respected, and that of all the possible build interactions - from sword-and-board fighter to god wizard - only a few of those, the ones that fall into the desireable power level, will actually be used. this is enforced in many ways, from the hard bans "no, you can't play that" to the soft bans "please, don't play that", from the cooperative "do you think it will break the game if i were to play that?" to the very people playing at those table being so conditioned to accept the system that they wouldn't even dream of playing that. And some of those ways to enforce the power level are healtier and some are more toxic.
Nonetheless, I can't help but notice that the end result is the same: for every table, there are things that are not ok to play at that table. things that are, for all practical purposes, banned or nerfed or buffed.



The postulate is only even potentially true if the fluff contains strict balance; even then, one could create a fluff-defying balance fix.

So, let's consider this fluff
Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker is a merchant of silk. he buys silk in the markets of the far east, where they carefuly guard the secrets of its production, and he brings them to the west, after a hard and perilous trip lasting upwards to one year, where they fetch a huge profit.

Why doesn't he pay a wizard to teleport him there directly? you can pack a bunch of silk in a bag of storage. and the price is much cheaper than one year of dangerous traveling.
Why only in the far east are they aware of silkworms? Can't someone cast a few divination spells to find it out?
Why trade silk across the ocean at such a huge price? Can't you make a magic item that creates it?
And so on.
If we play in a RAW world without houserules, this fluff is decidedly stupid.
When I wanted to give a low level party a mission to escort a caravan, I gave some thought on what would the caravan carry. It could not be silk or gold or other high valuable, because then it would make no sense to not teleport it. It could not be grain or cloth or other low value stuff, because then it would not be worth carrying it over long distances. I settled on copper; valuable enough to export it through dangerous terrain, too bulky to be shipped by teleportation (unless one has teleportation cicles, which my world specifically doesn't have). Most players may not notice such details, but I do, and for me they are important. Just establishing that a certain spell exhist or not may invalidate a lot of worldbuilding.
Deciding what magic can and cannot accomplish and who has access to which magic is important to have your fluff consistent.

Let's consider this other fluff
"an army of demons opened a portal and is invading the material plane"
well, there are a bunch of optimized high level builds that could solve this problem single-handedly. Establishing that there is no option to kill the whole army with a fell drain cold snap (i'm probably getting the name wrong, but you know the combo I'm talking about, the one giving negative levels to everyone in a radius of several miles) is important, otherwise it just begs the question, why don't someone do it?
In general, establishing that no lone wizard, no matter how powerful, can single-handedly take on the army, is important. Establishing a power level for the campaign is important, if you don't want your world to be populated with commoners and walking gods among them.
Thinking about it, it is also important if you do want gods walking among the common men, in that case because you establish that yes, those power levels are possible.
Also, what happens if you murder someone on the street? What can you get away with? can you steal from the merchant of magic items? How can there even be a merchant of magic items if every single one of his customer has the capacity to easily cheat him?
those, and many others, are all questions that depend on the power level of the world. and the power level of the world depends on what kind of builds you can find in it.

Am I the only one who cares about having answers to those questions? Who tries to keep the answers to those questions consistent with both the crunch and the fluff?

[Quertus]

I guess in that case I'd probably write to GMs directly, not write to players. It's sort of like a game of telephone. The more hops, the more distortion.

Another unexpected answer. Huh. I have two hypothesis that seem to match this response:

A) Your initial response assumed that you were part of the group, around to guide and error-correct the growth of the group, and you believe your method would not be as effective without such intervention;

B) your initial response was aimed at more veteran members of the community, and you believe your method would not be as effective if given to noobs.

Are either of these representative of your *actual* reasons for changing your advice for my scenarios designed to highlight my expected role of "you"?


isn't it, though?
when you decide to not play some powerful build but to go for something weaker, aren't you spontaneously nerfing yourself?
When you help the new player make a stronger character, you are implicitly asserting that a certain power level is bad, and a different power level is desirable, and you are adjusting the game according to it.
heck, when your table decides nobody will use shivering touch, that's effectively a ban. And in that case it's even expected, i never heard of anyone using that spell. that's just the more egregious example, but any decision to not play something because it is too broken is basically a ban, and any decision to not play something and use something similar but stronger instead is basically a buff.
we can argue semantics, we can argue details. but the core of the question is that every game at every table has a desired power level which must be respected, and that of all the possible build interactions - from sword-and-board fighter to god wizard - only a few of those, the ones that fall into the desireable power level, will actually be used. this is enforced in many ways, from the hard bans "no, you can't play that" to the soft bans "please, don't play that", from the cooperative "do you think it will break the game if i were to play that?" to the very people playing at those table being so conditioned to accept the system that they wouldn't even dream of playing that. And some of those ways to enforce the power level are healtier and some are more toxic.



Nonetheless, I can't help but notice that the end result is the same: for every table, there are things that are not ok to play at that table. things that are, for all practical purposes, banned or nerfed or buffed.

In "balance to the table", it is possible for a given component to be OK for one character, but not OK for another. So, say, "True Immortality" or "Words of Creation" are OK and balanced on "sword-and-board fighter", but not on "god wizard".

One need not necessarily buff "sword-and-board fighter", nor nerf "Words of Creation", merely evaluate the efficacy of the final product, to follow the path of "balance to the table".


So, let's consider this fluff
Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker is a merchant of silk. he buys silk in the markets of the far east, where they carefuly guard the secrets of its production, and he brings them to the west, after a hard and perilous trip lasting upwards to one year, where they fetch a huge profit.

Why doesn't he pay a wizard to teleport him there directly? you can pack a bunch of silk in a bag of storage. and the price is much cheaper than one year of dangerous traveling.
Why only in the far east are they aware of silkworms? Can't someone cast a few divination spells to find it out?
Why trade silk across the ocean at such a huge price? Can't you make a magic item that creates it?
And so on.
If we play in a RAW world without houserules, this fluff is decidedly stupid.
When I wanted to give a low level party a mission to escort a caravan, I gave some thought on what would the caravan carry. It could not be silk or gold or other high valuable, because then it would make no sense to not teleport it. It could not be grain or cloth or other low value stuff, because then it would not be worth carrying it over long distances. I settled on copper; valuable enough to export it through dangerous terrain, too bulky to be shipped by teleportation (unless one has teleportation cicles, which my world specifically doesn't have). Most players may not notice such details, but I do, and for me they are important. Just establishing that a certain spell exhist or not may invalidate a lot of worldbuilding.
Deciding what magic can and cannot accomplish and who has access to which magic is important to have your fluff consistent.

Let's consider this other fluff
"an army of demons opened a portal and is invading the material plane"
well, there are a bunch of optimized high level builds that could solve this problem single-handedly. Establishing that there is no option to kill the whole army with a fell drain cold snap (i'm probably getting the name wrong, but you know the combo I'm talking about, the one giving negative levels to everyone in a radius of several miles) is important, otherwise it just begs the question, why don't someone do it?
In general, establishing that no lone wizard, no matter how powerful, can single-handedly take on the army, is important. Establishing a power level for the campaign is important, if you don't want your world to be populated with commoners and walking gods among them.
Thinking about it, it is also important if you do want gods walking among the common men, in that case because you establish that yes, those power levels are possible.
Also, what happens if you murder someone on the street? What can you get away with? can you steal from the merchant of magic items? How can there even be a merchant of magic items if every single one of his customer has the capacity to easily cheat him?
those, and many others, are all questions that depend on the power level of the world. and the power level of the world depends on what kind of builds you can find in it.

Am I the only one who cares about having answers to those questions? Who tries to keep the answers to those questions consistent with both the crunch and the fluff?

Huh. Well, Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker prevents nether the übercharger, nor the Monk. This fluff does not create balance. Even the *interpretation* and *implementation* of this fluff does not inherently create balance.

Now, I *partially* agree that this fluff *does* necessitate certain requirements - at the system level and/or from role-playing. Because, in a pre-internet society (like older editions of D&D saw IRL, btw), "nobody's ever though of that before" is a perfectly valid answer. So, if the players are familiar with or at least can grok what older tables actually liked like, with not even 1% of Playground Determinator skill ever actually being seen in the wild (because nobody was standing on the backs of giants, or even stacks of midgets, like real scientists), and can roleplay that correctly, you needn't actually change much in the mechanics.

Alas, role-playing in RPGs is something of a lost art.

Similarly bad role-playing would be assuming that all of the NPCs are themselves Determinator agents, already doing everything in the optimal way.

So there is very little in your fluff that I cannot in good faith implement in some version of D&D, and call it reasonable. Curiously, I lack the vocabulary to describe exactly *how* 3e makes this difficult… I'll have to think about it.

But yes, there are mechanics which make certain world-building elements easier or harder, and certain elements whose inclusion makes little sense given certain mechanics. Which you choose to build first and inform the other, well, that says a bit about gaming style.

[NichG]

Another unexpected answer. Huh. I have two hypothesis that seem to match this response:

A) Your initial response assumed that you were part of the group, around to guide and error-correct the growth of the group, and you believe your method would not be as effective without such intervention;

B) your initial response was aimed at more veteran members of the community, and you believe your method would not be as effective if given to noobs.

Are either of these representative of your *actual* reasons for changing your advice for my scenarios designed to highlight my expected role of "you"?


I don't think I'd disagree with either of those being true, but I'm not sure that's the same as those things being my reasons. My initial response was a description of how I, personally, interact with GMs who are not confident about house-ruling but are willing to give it a try. So in that response I do assume that I'm part of the group because I'm describing my own historical behavior rather than positing a hypothetical. And unlike the case of a hypothetical player and table, I know what happened in those historical attempts, so I can speak more confidently about 'what did happen' than 'what might happen'. I also think that generally good gaming requires a certain degree of maturity (not necessarily the same as experience), so I'm aiming only at the possibility of creating an ideal gaming environment and not trying to idiot-proof things.

But I'd say the 'actual reasons' for changing my advice come down more to, lets say I engage with the hypothetical of having to provide some kind of written record that brings about a result to a wide audience, there's a lot more that can go wrong than if I'm interacting with, say, you directly and advising you what you might try (based both on what I know about you from previous posts, and on potential future iterations where you ask questions or raise counter-points and I elaborate or justify).

If you're familiar with open-loop versus closed-loop control, its like the difference between those two things. If I can talk directly with someone, I can adjust my explanation based on how they seem to be misunderstanding me or based on what I learn about them during the conversation (closed-loop). That means I can engage with complexity and nuance. So I might give different advice to someone who says 'I want my GM to house-rule more' than to someone who says 'house-rules make me uncomfortable because isn't it just the GM trying to railroad the players?' than to someone who says 'There's this other guy in the group who keeps abusing the GM's trust, and as a result the GM has put more and more effort on house-rules to shut that guy down; what do I do?' for example.

If I have to pre-define a control policy where I don't actually get to look at the system (open-loop control) then there's more that can go wrong the more indirect I'm trying to be. I have to simplify the number of moving parts. And that means it'd be more effective to write a screed aimed at GMs: 'don't be afraid to house-rule, your game can be better for it, here's stuff about finding players and making sure they're willing to go along with your experiments, etc' - e.g. just try to directly advise the GMs who are already aligned enough with what I write to find it interesting - rather than writing a screed aimed at telling players how to teach their GMs.

[King of Nowhere]

In "balance to the table", it is possible for a given component to be OK for one character, but not OK for another. So, say, "True Immortality" or "Words of Creation" are OK and balanced on "sword-and-board fighter", but not on "god wizard".

One need not necessarily buff "sword-and-board fighter", nor nerf "Words of Creation", merely evaluate the efficacy of the final product, to follow the path of "balance to the table".

yes. it depends on whether one chooses to consider "you can take words of creation in this build but you cannot stack it with this other resource in that other build" as a kind of houserule.




Huh. Well, Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker prevents nether the übercharger, nor the Monk. This fluff does not create balance. Even the *interpretation* and *implementation* of this fluff does not inherently create balance.

Now, I *partially* agree that this fluff *does* necessitate certain requirements - at the system level and/or from role-playing. Because, in a pre-internet society (like older editions of D&D saw IRL, btw), "nobody's ever though of that before" is a perfectly valid answer. So, if the players are familiar with or at least can grok what older tables actually liked like, with not even 1% of Playground Determinator skill ever actually being seen in the wild (because nobody was standing on the backs of giants, or even stacks of midgets, like real scientists), and can roleplay that correctly, you needn't actually change much in the mechanics.

Alas, role-playing in RPGs is something of a lost art.

Similarly bad role-playing would be assuming that all of the NPCs are themselves Determinator agents, already doing everything in the optimal way.

So there is very little in your fluff that I cannot in good faith implement in some version of D&D, and call it reasonable. Curiously, I lack the vocabulary to describe exactly *how* 3e makes this difficult… I'll have to think about it.

But yes, there are mechanics which make certain world-building elements easier or harder, and certain elements whose inclusion makes little sense given certain mechanics. Which you choose to build first and inform the other, well, that says a bit about gaming style.

I agree with the broad strokes. and yes, i overstated my case a bit, there are some high power builds that invalidate setting choices, but not so commonly.

But for the "nobody's ever thought of it"... well, it is absolutely reasonable in some circumstances. except for some obvious stuff, because if you're an elf wizard several centuries old and magic is your job, you can't be too incompetent. Similarly, the merchant depends on his trade, and he has competitors, and if teleporting wizards can be found in major cities, it's unconceivable that nobody will think of trying to do business with one.
the main problem with this approach, though, is that the players know to optimize and will optimize. so, if you forbid the npcs from optimizing, your players are quickly going to become godlike. At level 10 they will already trash the most powerful enemies around. And it will look like the whole campaign world is populated by dumbasses. and there's no sense of accomplishment.
I don't like that, neither as dm nor as player. being too powerful is boring. the whole world being made of helpless children is bad for immersion. In my experience, the players are more likely to get invested into the world and care about it if they are a part of it, not if they are above it. In my previous campaign (our dm had poor mechanical skill and was unable to challenge us), two of us intentionally nerfed ourselves not because we were overshadowing the other players, but because we were overshadowing the rest of the world. the feeling of invincibility is good for a session of two, then it gets boring.

I'm sure your table has its own ways to deal with this problem of power gap between pcs and npcs. perhaps it's just not a problem for you guys. But for us, fun requires that powerful npcs are passably competent. If the whole world is powerless against the demon army, but the party smashes through them in an afternoon... no, it does not work for us.