Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
See, that's weird to me because I think it means you're always having to coming up with new houserules and subsystems, or digging through books looking for rules to apply.
depends on how you define "often". depends also on what you count as "work".
but running through manuals to look for stuff is something we do in every major fight. a major fight will involve dozens of buff spells being used on all sides, and there will always be questions on which bonuses stack with which. then just keeping track of them all when the debuffs start flying entails lot of paperwork. even just keeping track of your to-hit total is not trivial at high level. and there's bound to be some detail we forget. but looking it up takes a minute of online searching, so not a big deal. still, high level combat takes easily one hour to resolve one round.
don't get me wrong; at my table we like to dive into strategy and think things through. we like to try and pile up effects just right. but figuring out what happens takes time.
for non-combat sessions, adjudicating a dc also requires work. two sessions ago a player declared "I want to foster rivalry and infighting into our enemies. I want to use my wealth to create them problems, and I want to promote a noble house rivaling the one in power.". Another player suggested "I want to get X Y and Z nations to make a joint war with us against them". yes, my campaign has a lot of political stuff in it. I don't know how you count it in your system, but it's certainly the kind of stuff that has me react with "wait, give me a minute and let me think of something".

Houseruling doesn't come up every session, but there's a decision process involved in what is allowed and what isn't. homebrewing also doesn't happen every session, but i made a whole bunch of rules for gunpowder and a lot of custom monsters - especially golem, because they fit the magitek theme of my setting. and in years of playing, those activities produced several dozens of pages.
building up foes is perhaps the activity that takes more time. hours, for bosses. playing at high optimization, I have to optimize the npcs too. random generators won't do. the good thing is, with resurrection being relatively commonplace, I can reuse those bosses for multiple fights

anyway, I have a big folder full of files, and I have to check and reference stuff often enough. it's pleasant work, it's work that makes for a better session, but it's work nonetheless.