Your favourite house rule(s)

[Grunker]

I'm bored, so tell me what your favourite house rule or house rules, maybe also homebrew?, is.

Any system, any game!

 

[DraQ]

Anyone not replying with "chunky salsa rule" should be summarily watchwitzed.

 

[Sranchammer]

1.) Everybody fights
2.) Nobody Quits

You don't do your job, I'll shoot you

 

[Havoc]

When I run short games (or one shots) where there is a lot of random tables, I sometimes create my own additional "fun tables". I'm running a Warhammer 40k Black Crusade game, where the players are playing cultists and chaos space marines, so I created a "hat of stuff" - about 50 cards that are drawn depending on what players did (like killing a major boss or doing exceptional roleplaying) or if they succeeded in completing a goal I assigned each one privately. Two examples from last game:
- Slaaneshi player's ship got hit and was crashing down, so he jumped onto his motorbike and jumped out. Rolled a 1, so for me it's a critical success, so he did it fabulously! Unfortunately he draw a card that refreshed his Infamy Points (points used to reroll dice for example), but he already had full.
- Later in the game, the group killed a "boss" character, so I let them draw again. One of them got a mutation and the other drew a card with "greater daemon comes to help".
I always do these things to live up the game and make it more random and fun. I don't do this for longer games, because I think it would damage the game too much.

 

[Grunker]

Have you checked out Savage World's adventure card system? It's basically a way to give players a resource that enables them an almost GM-like control over the game in certain spots. Can be pretty cool in other games as well.

 

[Havoc]

Have you checked out Savage World's adventure card system? It's basically a way to give players a resource that enables them an almost GM-like control over the game in certain spots. Can be pretty cool in other games as well.

Thanks for the idea. Might check it next time I will GM DnD or something. Right now (beside BC) my main campaign is Vampire in Ancient Rome, so I doubt those cards would help.

 

[Grunker]

Just for the purposes of example:

Spoiler

They exist for quite a number of different settings/themes.

 

[Havoc]

Thanks. I also saw a site that you can create your own. Maybe I will create some for the Vampire game? I don't know. Would need ideas for cards to not disturb the balance (since it's more of a cutthroat game).

 

[Janise]

1 race only

 

[nikolokolus]

It's not my rule, (It comes from Chaosium's Big Gold Book), but whenever I'm running a skill-based game I always port over the 'difficult=Half-skill, easy=double-skill' rule and dispense with most of the other piddly +/- 5 or 10% spot rule adjustments.

 

[udm]

I house-rule montages from 13th Age into other games. Basically, let players describe shit that goes on during downtime scenes, and award them hero points/bennies/fortune points/plot points for good descriptions. If I feel like it, I'll get them to roll skill checks to see what happens next.

Failing forward is also a good houserule I apply to most games. If players fail a skill check or at times a combat roll, I'll allow for partial success with negative consequences, or failure but with minor, beneficial consequences.

 

[flabbyjack]

STDs in a low-magic setting. 'The pustuous boils on your genitals are weepy and sore again today'

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I went for a house rule on the older Metzger BECMI version of Dungeons and Dragons. In this version of D&D, you didn't really get much XP from defeating monsters, but instead you gained money from looting gold. So each gold piece worth of treasure looted or stolen resulted in an experience point. This encouraged characters to try to steal from a dragon instead of taking it head-on. Anyway, my house rule was that you could earn the XP from treasure, only after you spent the money. This encouraged characters to either settle down and build fortresses or guilds, or to behave like Conan and spend the money wenching and partying it up until the loot was all gone and they had to adventure again to keep up their lifestyle. Now with XP coming from encounters, the house rule no longer holds up in the current version of the game.

 

[Alex]

I went for a house rule on the older Metzger BECMI version of Dungeons and Dragons. In this version of D&D, you didn't really get much XP from defeating monsters, but instead you gained money from looting gold. So each gold piece worth of treasure looted or stolen resulted in an experience point. This encouraged characters to try to steal from a dragon instead of taking it head-on. Anyway, my house rule was that you could earn the XP from treasure, only after you spent the money. This encouraged characters to either settle down and build fortresses or guilds, or to behave like Conan and spend the money wenching and partying it up until the loot was all gone and they had to adventure again to keep up their lifestyle. Now with XP coming from encounters, the house rule no longer holds up in the current version of the game.

I saw that rule posted in a blog once, and I was thinking of using it for a game I am planning just today!

One house rule I liked but never got to test was adding a spell preparation to DCC RPG. Basically, mages can learn any number of spells, but they have a limit of how many of them can be prepared at a time. Furthermore, each spell would have a table with a few different ways it could be prepared (you would roll the table once you found the spell, and it would remain constant). Low level spells might have very simple preparations, a magic missile might be prepared by wetting with your own blood the head of an arrow that was used to win an archery contest, or by drawing complex arcane diagrams on a glass sheet with silver, or by preparing a potion using the nails of a demon. On the other hand, a more complex spell like fireball might require the caster to inscribe his own rune on the site of the worst fire that a large settlement has seen. I thought this was interesting for two reasons. First, you could mess with a wizard's spells by messing with his preparations. Break the glass sheet the wizard used to inscribe his magic missile, and he won't be able to cast it until he gets the chance to prepare it again. Second, if a spell was lost, that meant something occurred to the preparation. Now, if we are talking about higher level spells, this could have really bad consequences, such as the fire mentioned on the fireball preparation starting all over again (which was yet another reason for people to be wary of wizards).

 

[Havoc]

Thanks. I also saw a site that you can create your own. Maybe I will create some for the Vampire game? I don't know. Would need ideas for cards to not disturb the balance (since it's more of a cutthroat game).

Somebody citation needed me, so here you go - http://www.geeksville.us/swcard.php

 

[Destroid]

Two alien powers in Cosmic Encounter, really makes the game.

 

[Galdred]

When playing board games, we tried to incentivize players to try to get the best possible ranking, to limit kingmaking and other issues related to one player not caring about victory anymore.
It can either be tallying scores over multiple sessions (10 for 1st place, 4 for 2nd, 1 for third, 0 for 4th for instance), or even use a poker like tournament system where the last ranked have to contribute more to the pizzas.
Of course, the first works much better, but it is not enough in games where you can make everyone lose (like Republic of Rome), where you also need to add a strong point penalty if it happens (and need to run as a tournament with more than the players at any one sitting for it to work).

But it encouraged metagaming alliances (2 players helping each other score 1st and 2nd, and alternating over games), so now, we try to stick to team games, or turn non team games into team games (which works rather well with many games actually).

 

[Maelflux]

I am running a long-term Space Marine campaign (Based on Deathwatch mostly), and in the 6 years we have played it the players went from being Scouts, to now being Veterans. As such they get to help plan larger stratetic battles - so for that I made some fairly simply rules, that still has a lot of different options, so they get to send an entire Company of Marines on 10-15 missions at a time. They then roll to see how it goes, and who survives, and use ressources for orbital strikes, and all kinds of things. (In addition they still run normal rpg missions with their own veterans ofc).