Rules of the Game

[Tyndmyr]

Every campaign inevitibly involves unwritten rules that you must not break. What are yours?

1. The kender must die.
2. The warforged can only address his teammates as "Sam Witwicky".
3. If the warforged is a druid, he must make sound effects when shapeshifting.
4. The rogue is not permitted to buy six gallons of grease and a magnifying glass, since the incident.
5. If more than one character uses alter self at the same time, wonder twin references are explicitly banned.
6. The same is also true for PaO.
7. And every other wierd way to turn yourself into random objects.
8. Yes, a turnip is a random object. It counts.
9. When you find a suspicious hole, sticking something in is appropriate. Just not that.
10. Yes, a 10 foot pole would be appropriate. No. It's not 10 feet. Stop asking.
11. No, you cannot build a portable house consisting entirely of nested bags of holding.
12. You really should not shove ring gates through each other.
13. If you DO, it does not invert the universe.
14. The elf is not scotty, and teleportation does not involve beams.
15. No, you may not get him "likkered up" before teleportation.

[BeholderSlayer]

16. Jake is always trying to game the system, no matter what class he's playing.

[Aharon]

Completely OT:
Tyndmyr, you have one of the most irritating sigs ever. I read what you write, consider the information contained within, and then am told that it was a lie. It's aggravating

[dsmiles]

The 10 commandments of gaming at Dave's Table:

1. Thou shalt have fun, at all costs.

2. Munchkins will be politely asked to 'tone it down.' Failure to comply will result in ejection. Via ejector seat. Through the roof.

3. The book is always right, until the end of the session when we make a houserule to cover the bit in question.

4. He/She who laughs last, usually didn't get the joke, and shall be taunted mercilessly.

5. Making the DM squirt *insert drink here* out of his nose, with an IC action, is worth bonus XP.

6. He/She who brings the snacks may gain plot armor based on the delicousness of the profferd noms.

7. Marbles are more fun than caltrops.

8. Stay awake. I have big foamy dice, and I'm not afraid to use them.

9. I keep a copy of your character sheet at every level. Do not ask why.

10. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I am DM, the great and powerful.

[Ormur]

1. Casting cloudkill on a busy street will result in being eaten by the dragon.

2. No, the unicorn is not pink, even though it's his name.

3. Ignoring your detect evil at will ability is the polite thing to do.

4. Likewise the paladin/exalted character should refrain from putting ranks in sense motive.

5. In turn the obviously evil party member should refrain from harvesting his kidneys.

6. Don't point out that the NPC Bard is singing a Disney Villain Song until after the first verse.

[The Rose Dragon]

1. The Narrator, under any and all circumstances, is allowed to punch you in your stupid face.

2. The Narrator is not allowed to abuse this power.

3. Someone will suggest having sex with a male elf. It does not matter if elves exist in the setting, but someone will do it. Pray to gods it's not the Narrator.

4. The Narrator is not allowed to let rocks fall where there is no feasible way for the rocks to fall, such as in the middle of an open desert. Sandstorms are OK, though.

5. What happened in the Band Camp, stays in the Band Camp.

[Psyx]

No knitting at the table: This includes chain-mail.

No laptops. And stop fiddling with your 'phone.

No, James. Whatever it is: No.

GM does not make the tea.

When the combat is over... it's time for a smoke break.

Any package of confectionery, cookies or biscuits is to be shared out evenly. If there's a spare one, it goes to the person who bought them. A spare second one goes to the GM. A spare third one goes to whoever is fastest.

Dave will always play a psychotic killing machine.

'Other' James will always play a straight mage or healer/tank.

Causing anyone to spray drink from their nose is good for bonus XP.

The secret door is behind the throne.

Don't touch the evil alter.

Grenade damage is never enough... it's been house-ruled.

If a flute or other small wind instrument lands on your head... Consider it a warning shot. Whatever you were doing... stop it. A piano will be next.

If the game designers don't have a clue what they're on about, it's fair game for house-rules.

Yes, I can kill you with an orbital piano. I don't care how you've 'optimised' the rules.

Whatever snap judgement I've made for 'rule of cool' purposes... it doesn't set a rules precedent.

[Grommen]

1. Always observe the Flying elf rule. Specially if you are a flying elf.
2. Elves do not have wings. If a god had intended them to fly, they would have wings. Elves should not fly just because they can. They will be shot.....See rule #4.
3. Calling out the DM on a rule in the middle of a fight is a very good way to die. Both in character and out.
4. Samuel Colt made great efforts to make all men equal. The Panther Assault Cannon company perfected this. You have been warned.
5. If I have to find a silly, poorly worded, way around your silly, poorly worded ability. You will suffer.
6. I reserve the right to "smite" anything when running a campaign.
7. Don't be a %$#$. Nobody likes you when you do that.
8. No more Disney movie pets. This includes sentient beings, mercenary companies, large armies, masses of summoned monsters and especially kobalds armed with a wand of wonder (well ok perhaps that one can stay, it's funny).
9. Because the DM asks you to just go along with it, just for a second. Does not constitute you crying your being railroaded yet again.
10. Yes the DM likes your character. Why else would the DM do the horribly bad things they are doing to your character?

Think that is my current top ten.

[Cogidubnus]

1) Someone has to supply food.

2) Kieran can't carry x+1 gallons of highly flammable liquid in his bag of holding - especially not by writing "assorted liquids" under equipment.

3) Assorted liquids cannot include that. Or that.

4) Casting spells while drunk will ALWAYS end badly.

5) Fights while drunk will usually end well.

6) I have a piano cannon secreted on a mountain fortress with cover fire by other piano cannons and a Wish for a permanent anti-magic field around each of them. So don't be daft.

7) These are ethereal Ghost Touch pianos, so they will pass through walls until they hit you.

[Skorj]

1) Unstable explosives shall not be considered party treasure (this came up so often we had to formally agree on it as a rule).

2) If you bring snacks, you can claim them as yours alone, but if you leave them behind until next session, all bets are off.

[Sleepingbear]

1. The DM makes all calls in game.

2. The Players reserve the right to hang the DM from the balcony by his ankles until he changes a call made in the game.

3. The DM should also keep in mind that three of four of his players have over a decade of military experience each.

4. The DM should also keep in mind that the players are better armed then their characters.

5. If Ollie is giggling, tell him no. Now.

6. If Chris is giggling, hand him the box of D6's.

7. If Matt is giggling, cut off the donut supply.

8. If Dave is giggling, stop the session. Now. Even if it hasn't started.

9. If Dave says, "I tried to stop them but they wouldn't listen." End the Campaign.

10. If Dave is in the bathroom, Ollie is not permitted to suggest or implement plans.

11. If you don't like making lots of characters, don't make lots of Halflings.

12. Or Drow.

13. If Rob is playing a character, it's name shall be named Brian and it shall be a brick/tank.

14. Even if it's a she.

15. If Sarah is playing a psychic, the other players shall sing the 'No strings' song.

16. If Rick thinks it's awesome and powerful, it isn't.

17. Rick shall not give his wizard character Toughness.

18. Or Improved Toughness.

19. Everyone contributes to the cost of pizza or they starve.

20. Players who play in character and steal from or PVP other party members will join the DM on the balcony until their characters motiviations change.

[JonestheSpy]

Let the villain have his damn monologue!

[Keld Denar]

I'll just leave this here...

Rules number 1 - 2500.

I hope you have a LOT of free time.

[Break]

I'll just leave this here...

Rules number 1 - 2500.

I hope you have a LOT of free time.

I'll do you one better.

How about the up-to-date version of the Mr. Welch list (1825 at the time of this writing), the RPG.net version thereof (which shares the first few hundred entries of the former), and the Eberron rules you linked over, all in one text file?

I hope you have roughly three times as much free time. =P

[Ignition]

My one rule is more of an ethos:

The DM is not lying to you. Your fellow players are lying to you. That said, you and your fellow players are still up against the DM, and you have to work together to meet the challenges of the DM, regardless of how much you want to kill your fellow players for lying to you. You will fail, and that's okay because your failures will reward you in the long run. You will succeed, but never enjoy your successes, because your successes will punish you in the long run. Role-playing will make you hate yourself, and your friends, and various invisible forces such as Fate and Luck. Role-playing is worth it in ways that no other hobby can be. You, and nothing else, make role-playing worth it.

[Traveler]

1. Jokes may be made about anybody for anything. Any resulting anger issues may be resolved ingame.
2. No fireballing commoners, ever.
3. You may light the bar/tavern/inn on fire.
4. You may not gloat when ruining the DMs encounters.
5. The DM may not gloat when killing multiply PCs at the same time.
6. Rule five does not apply to the wizard.
7. Rule of cool does not always rule when levitate is involved.
8. Guards can appear out of thin air on demand.
9. Movie quotes may be rewarded with xp.
10. Any of these rules may be changed as needed.

[DukeofDellot]

1) While "Sex Appeal (HT/A)" may be the "Single Greatest Skill of all Time", it does not work on Monsters.
2) Combat only represents a small part of the game, and encounters will be adjusted to the level of competence displayed in battle, so building a character who "Knows nothing but Battle" will lead to nothing more than you having to sit through a lot of everyone else having fun, don't do it.
3) Yes, I came up with it on the spot, spontaneity is precious, and isn't due to the lack of planning, you just screwed up my plot!
4) Attacks of Opportunity are stupid. I will provide other options to return the power to melee combat that make more sense, but you WILL wait for your turn to attack.
5) You're character concept cannot be, "I was told by my God to kill the other PCs."
6) Seriously, you need to give a reason you won't just kill the other Party Members when you first meet.
7) Yes, that's a Girl at the table. No, Sex Appeal does not work on Party Members.
8) Murdering an innocent ALWAYS has repercussions... even if you think it's "Cool" to make a Zombie strapped with Explosives.
9) Half of my Dice Rolls are just for show. I know what's going to happen, and even though ten percent of the time the numbers do not land exactly where I think they will, I will adjust for them... now you have to roll for Fast Talk, possibly at a penalty, every time you try to convince one of my NPCs that you're their "Lord and Master that they must obey or death will befall them"...
10) You may ask my help on building a character, and I will answer your question a dozen times over, but if you don't have a reason that you'd be anything more than just a random encounter that the other players would have to fight, I'm not building it for you.

...

11) You may NOT take "Compulsive Murderous Behavior" as a Disadvantage... that's free points.

[Morph Bark]

Our Ten Commandments are as follows:


1. If your name is Roy, your characters shall always be some form of paladin, even if they don't have levels in the Paladin class.

2. Always get healing in the party, even if the DM offers a wand of Cure Light Wounds.

3. There shall always be an NPC named Bob. Bob will also inevitably die. Soon.

4. If Bob never showed up, he was already dead.

5. There will always be a character named Henk, who will always be one of the world's Strongest.

6. Whatever you do, Dorona could do it.

7. If Dorona couldn't do it, his friends could make him do it anyway.

8. The orphans will be adopted.

8. The orphans WILL be adopted.

9. If the adoptees aren't orphans, they will soon be.

10. Whatever your alignment, you can get along if you're trying to get booze.

11. When the DM smiles, most of the time, it really is just a smile. Most of the other times it is a trap that won't go off 'til next session.

[big teej]

3. If the warforged is a druid, he must make sound effects when shapeshifting.

http://crackberry.com/transformers-sound-effect

a while back I saw warforged druids referenced as Beast wars transformers

this, combined with the apparatus of the crab, led me to make this a quick-access sound effect for our games.



also, my contributions, from my gaming group left at home.
- I"m the DM, I CAN AND WILL smite thee if I have too
- don't play elves.
- don't play elves while -my name- is DMing
- "guys, just because I'm DMing, picking on the elf doesn't earn you brownie points.... it gets you smited"
- first session of a new campaign/group, DM provides all munchies, after that, everyone takes responsibility for something, or eat before you come
- 'paper rolls' don't count, whether they be 1, 20, or anything else
- die must land on the table
- we do not make homo-erotic jokes about the barbarian who could kill the party
- especially if/when his player is DMing
- if you power game, I will smite you
- if you goof off, I will throw the kleenex at you
- "I don't care if we're doing it 'wrong' it's working, so STFU! we'll figure it out later"
- alignment is not a straightjacket
- just because you're a paladin, does not mean you need to smite everything that pings as evil.....
- especially not that one really shiney copper piece we found in the treasure hoard
- you can play evil, but if you break the party, I will break you....
- unless the party's in on it
- playing a female 18 charisma sorcerer with "epic cleavage" will cause the player, the character, and eventually the party, to be smited.
- vehemently
- always remember to have at least half the pizza be cheese
- hungry DM's = smite happy DM's
- if you hit on the female players, I will smite you.
- the DM is allowed to invest in a LARP warhammer for smiting purposes...


on an unrelated not.....
looking back at these list of rules........
we did alot of smiting......
my feelings about this observation were the following, in order.

Spoiler

Show

now. for my contributions from my group on campus (watch this one for edits, sunday is session 3 for us)
....
.......
- DM provides all munchies for session 1
- as the DM runs out of leftovers, players are responsible for snacks
- telling the DM that you're going to power game 4 days before the session just gives him 4 days to come up with anti-powergaming and smiting tactics.
- good luck powergaming with only the dndwiki and the DMG.

and thats it for now.

things people beat me to saying, but would totally be on my list

6. I reserve the right to "smite" anything when running a campaign.

4) Casting spells while drunk will ALWAYS end badly.

.

I'm loving this thread

with permission of the OP when I get around to making the out-of-character counterpart to http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=170073
I'm going to use a great number of the things listed here.

[Tyndmyr]

- the DM is allowed to invest in a LARP warhammer for smiting purposes...

Awesome. I use a bastard sword. Unless they run. Then I use the longbow.

with permission of the OP when I get around to making the out-of-character counterpart to http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=170073
I'm going to use a great number of the things listed here.

Knock yourself out. Anything I post is pretty much free to be used or quoted by anyone.

[dsmiles]

My one rule is more of an ethos:

The DM is not lying to you. Your fellow players are lying to you. That said, you and your fellow players are still up against the DM, and you have to work together to meet the challenges of the DM, regardless of how much you want to kill your fellow players for lying to you.

You play Paranoia, don't you?

[Tyndmyr]

You play Paranoia, don't you?

You're not cleared to know that, citizen. Please resume your usual happiness.

[MeatShield#236]

Some random rules my group has:

1. If someone says a double entendre, everyone must take a drink.
2. Never, EVER, mention longswords.
3. All warforged explode when they die.
4. Your actions have consequences; if you're stupid enough to try and overcharge the barbarian drunk on 75% milk with hand puppets, you're going to get your arms chopped off.
5. The players decide where to go and what to do. The DM decide what happens.

We have a strange group...

[big teej]

Awesome. I use a bastard sword. Unless they run. Then I use the longbow.



Knock yourself out. Anything I post is pretty much free to be used or quoted by anyone.

misfortunately.... I have not yet invested in said warhammer........
short of funds


also
I meant I was going to use the entire thread
so I (think I) need the each person's permission

idk, I was never that good at citing sorces

[Tyndmyr]

Ah, sounds good.

At the risk of slight derailment, I reccomend the following for beating your players into the proper pose of submission and fear: http://www.wynar.com/for-a-beatin-good-time.html. I know the gent that uses the warhammer fourth down on the left col, and it is indeed awesome.


Meatshield, about #3....that only applies to warforged?

[MeatShield#236]

Yeah. The crazy part is that the blast radius gets bigger as they go up in level. Our high-level warforged spellsword was a walking mini-nuke...

Oh, and another rule:

6. Don't complain when the monsters actually use tactics. Not ever fight is straightforward.

[big teej]

Ah, sounds good.

At the risk of slight derailment, I reccomend the following for beating your players into the proper pose of submission and fear: http://www.wynar.com/for-a-beatin-good-time.html. I know the gent that uses the warhammer fourth down on the left col, and it is indeed awesome.


Meatshield, about #3....that only applies to warforged?

I don't suppose there's a "larp spiked chain" is there?

I REEEEAAAALLLY wanna use that whole "chain of command" thing

[Curmudgeon]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction kills the game (because it's in every player's interest to look up the saving throw for every single one of their dozens of magic items to see if it's better than their character's, and this can literally take hours at the high levels where that spell is possible), so nobody uses it.

[Gensh]

Meh. I had some rough guidelines with my old group. Most of these came from my first campaign because most of the others didn't last more than a few sessions.

1. Don't touch the blue soda. That's mine, and most people don't like it anyway.
2. Yes, you can permanently set up your base in the brothel. Make a Fortitude save vs. syphilis.
3. Yes, it's a bad idea attacking the son of the god of war in the middle of his own city.
4. A demigod dying for plot reasons doesn't mean you can kill one.
5. Unless you roll a 20.
6. Ignore debates about the tier system. The monk is carrying the entire party, and you all know it.
7. Never again will there be taint. Yes, vile damage is a sign that you're being chaotic stupid. Go hang out with the NPC paladin for a while to get rid of it.
8. Jack may be in every campaign, but each version is unique. Stop asking him questions about a certain half-giant bard.
9. You will never find the skank.
10. Don't try to grope the paladin's twin sister. Who else will pay you to mindlessly kill things?
11. The cat is a fifteenth-level bard. Do not question it; just accept the morale bonus.
12. The cat can read infernal.
13. You can't speak cat.
14. Stabbing yourself in the stomach without telling me it's to prove a point is considered a coup de grace. What? You wanted to roll a new character anyway!
15. Alejandro the barbarian isn't just illiterate but also mute. You need to stop killing people when the first five minutes of interrogation don't work out well.
16. Mikey can no longer play a necromancer. Ever. Regardless of game system.
17. Peter may not play a desert wind/shadow hand swordsage. Just because it exists doesn't mean it's fine in my game, even if I allowed warblade. Especially after tainted scholar.
18. The ditsy male stripper is always the backup NPC healer. Don't ask why.
19. The DM is no longer allowed to introduce clones, twins, or otherwise identical characters.
20. The phrase "soul vomit" is not to be used.
21. Power corrupts. Owning "Sin City" leads to the creation of a Utopian society. Go figure.
22. Under no circumstances can Tyler's character be interrupted from trophy collecting. Interfering bards will have their eyes plucked instead.
23. If a one-time summoned monster has more kills than you even have assists, retire the character.
24. The man in the cloak is not a dwarf. He's 6'5" for Jack's sake!
25. Yes, it's a bad idea to work for the CE god of atheism in the hopes of scoring with his wife.
26. Gender is subjective. You just groped this game's Jack, by the way. Again.
27. Don't attack the man riding the flying elephant at level 1.
28. STOP FIREBALLING RANDOM CROWDS OF COMMONERS. I DON'T CARE THAT YOU OWN THE CITY.
29. If the previous session was a TPK, and you're the only one out of the current group who was there, and I restart the campaign from the beginning, don't make the rest of the party chase after your old character.
30. If the previous session was a TPK, and it's the third time I'm starting the campaign, you get bonus XP for initiating the circumstances that caused the first party's quest, which started the second party's quest, then proceeding to use IC means to discover both your own corpses and shamelessly looting them.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't suppose there's a "larp spiked chain" is there?

I REEEEAAAALLLY wanna use that whole "chain of command" thing

I haven't seen one personally. I have been known to make weapons, though...and the idea is darned appealing.

I'm not sure that any responsible larp organization would allow an actual whip to be used on humans, but then again....DMs treating players as humans? There's gotta be a rule against that.