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

[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 that did literally nothing 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 .
also, there's a difference between altering core mechanics and putting a cap on the stacking of metamagic cost reductions. or forbidding drown healing
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 .
also, there's a difference between altering core mechanics and putting a cap on the stacking of metamagic cost reductions. or forbidding drown healing
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.