House rules for your D&D game

In My Humble Opinion
1

Should D&D threads go in Cafe Society? My apologies if this is the wrong forum, but since I was asking a poll-type question, it seemed to be the right place.

What house rules have you implemented for your D&D or other roleplaying games?

One of our rules regards absent players. If a player is absent one time, he/she can have someone else play the character. If they miss a second time, the character has to sit out, no matter where we left off in the game. In other words, you would have to show up at least every other game session in order to have your character always in the game. We have a couple of players who would allow someone else to play their characters all the time, only showing up when it’s convenient. Playing two characters isn’t as easy as playing one, and it’s quite rude to everyone else who makes time to go to the games. We only play every 4-6 weeks, so it’s not like someone has to clear every Saturday to play.

We modified the rules for bringing in new characters. We changed the percentage of XPs a bit so that at higher levels, the penalty isn’t too strong. We also changed the XPs for bringing dead characters back to life. The old way was very penalizing for higher level characters who died. It needed to be fixed so that people would actually consider bringing their characters back to life rather than rolling up new ones.

The old method of bringing in new characters gave a gold piece amount and a limit per item amount. For lower level characters, it was ridiculous. For example, 2nd-lvl characters get 900 gp to spend, but no more than 20% can be spent on any one item (and no more than 90gp can remain). This turned out to be nearly impossible. No masterwork items, so that after a while, you end up with a character with 20 potions of cure light. I had a character that bought 5 magnifying glasses! We made the chart progressive. A 2nd-level character can spend 50% of his/her gold on any one item, a 3rd-level character, 45%. By 8th-level, it’s back to 20%. You actually end up with characters that are on par with other characters of that level. That character is not allowed to trade any items with the other party members (other than mundane stuff like rope and torches) until that character has gained at least one level with the party.

We also implemented the instant kill variant from the DMG and the monthly upkeep variant. That one does mean the DM has to track the days of the campaign, though, but that’s easier than tracking food, sleeping arrangements, etc.

2

The only house rule we had was if you decide to be a munchkin and argue rules with the DM you were out of the game. We tried to limit everything to roleplaying rather than rollplaying.

If a player was missing the play dates we had we said that character was helping the locals or harming the locals depending on how the character acted and that said character would catch up with us later.

We also used a set number of points to assign attributes. There was no rolling. I don’t remember what it was but I think it was around 80 points. They could be split up however one desired though there had to be a very good roleplaying reason to have any of the attributes lower than 8. We were afterall playing the more elite heroes. :wink:

Other than that I can’t think of anything else that we did too differently.

3

One of my friends had a rule where if you argued too much with him or developed an annoying habit (munchkinism, rules lawyering, etc), he’d grab every die on the table, roll them all and dock you that many hit points. It didn’t have to be invoked all that often…

4

We have a lot of house rules. My husband (the DM) has prided himself on having never read the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I’ve never read it either, so we could be using many more house rules than I realize.

In our game, if you aren’t there, the other players don’t play your character. Instead, your character goes to “the gray space”. Sometimes, this is defined as “your character is tagging along but doesn’t do anything.” If the story line allows, we’ll say that the character is “gone” and make up some excuse as to where your character is and what they are doing. A recent storyline had the party preparing to follow a treasure map. The monk (whose player was gone) suddenly “remembered” that today was a very holy day and he had to spend the day meditating–therefore, he couldn’t come along. On the way out of town, we ran into another character (who was gone the previous session) coming back from the brothel we’d stuck him in last time, so we were able to invite him along on the trip. If the story line absolutely dictates that your character be there and be doing something, then the DM would play it as an NPC. No XP. That’s your punishment for not being there. I know that the DM used to have people play other people’s characters, but, as the OP said, it’s difficult to do and not fair to the people who do show up.

My husband’s general rule for new characters is that you can start out with a second-level character, or a first-level character with a magic item. Almost everyone picks the magic item. He also lets you “tweak” rolls as much as you need to. There is much more of an emphasis on creating the character you want rather than making do with the dice rolls you’re given, as long as you can play the character. However, at least one attribute needs to be 10 or lower. Everyone has some sort of flaw, after all. I don’t think he’s ever cared about the percentage of gold a player has initially spent.

“Rules Lawyers” are not tolerated. The DM is the final authority on rules, not the rulebook. The DM is quite cautious about adding new players because of a few rules lawyers (and other incompatible types) that he’s had to throw out in the past. New players are added on an explicitly “trial” basis.

Here’s a house rule I’d love to implement, but seem to be having no success in doing so: Call in advance if you are not able to show up! Like the OP, we play very sporadically, so we would like to actually play when we do plan to do so. It is very frustrating to plan a session, have no one or only one person besides me show up, have to call the others to find out what’s going on and then get a bunch of excuses! My husband and I have a little girl, so it’s very difficult to switch plans at the last minute, and we get stuck with a Friday night sitting at home and staring at each other and saying, “What do you want to do?” “I dunno, what do you want to do?” I think it’s incredibly rude, and yet it seems to be the norm these days among this bunch. Yes, I’ve tried talking to people about it. Everyone seems to think that I’m talking about the others, not them.

5

We have a private message board and an online event calendar where we can schedule our sessions (or any other event we want friends to join in on). We come to a general consensus on a date, then post it to the calendar. Everyone who can make it posts their name on the calendar also. That way we know in advance who is showing and who isn’t and can plan accordingly. We can also discuss the food situation (we play for 10-12 hours at a time) and what adventure we want to tackle next if the players have a choice. The last is important because the DM needs to have time to prepare.

6

Our rules were quite similar to Tamex’s.
However, if you royally pissed of the DM with inanities and blatant stupidity, you could expect to be blown up, mauled, have acid poured on you, etc.
Poor Clay :slight_smile: Man went through more characters than anyone I know.

MissTake leaves, singing "Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end…

7

Doesn’t everyone have meteors/anvils/cows raining from the sky to smite characters who argue with the GM? :wink:

Remember the details. Even though your skin may withstand that grenade blast, your clothes won’t, and until you say otherwise you’ll be running around naked for the rest of the adventure.

Food and restroom breaks tend to be plot devices. Plunk down a couple hundred credits in a general store once in a while and say “I’m buying food for a few weeks.”

8

Hmmm, maybe we’ll have to try the online message board thing. However, here’s what happens now. DM sends an e-mail with a proposed date. People e-mail back and forth. The date is settled upon, with most of the players saying, “Yeah, I’ll be there.” The day comes, though, and then the excuses start trickling in. “Oh, my friend is coming in from Wisconsin.” “Is Mark coming? I’m not coming (or bringing my boyfriend, also a player) if Mark isn’t coming, because there won’t be enough players!” (in her mind.) Mark, of course, has a fencing tournament he’s known about for two weeks, and he just forgot to tell us, or his girlfriend’s got something planned, or whatever. Suddenly, it’s just me and the DM. This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens often enough to be annoying.

I have tried to impress upon them the fact that the DM and I can’t switch our plans at the last minute for childcare reasons. That seems to be helping a little bit. We’re on hiatus for Renaissance Festival/Mark’s wedding right now, though. We’ll see if they remember when we play again.

There’s also the person who would like to play with us but can’t because his other DM, who happens to be his apartment manager, won’t “let” him play in two campaigns! WTF? That’s a house rule I wouldn’t like at all!

My husband’s been known to toy with PC’s whose players annoyed him. The other players also occasionally participate. He decided to give one munchkin/rules lawyer type exactly what he wanted. He created an ultra-powerful magic item. When the PC ultimately obtained it (he couldn’t resist), he became a god. “Give me your character sheet,” my husband said. “Why?” said the munchkin. “Well, your character is now a god, and gods are NPCs in my campaign. I run him now.” He rolled up another character just like his old one. That character was killed by Mark’s character. When his third character was also exactly the same, the DM had to ask him to leave. He wouldn’t learn.

There was also the character who got stuck with the Girdle of Gender-Bending (I don’t think that’s its real name, but whatever.) The female player was playing a male character with a feminine-sounding name, and was annoyed when people would accidentaly refer to her character with feminine pronouns. Voila! Her character was now female!

OK, back to house rules. The DM has also outlawed all psionics because he doesn’t like psionics. A character with ESP, he says, just makes it more difficult for the DM because the DM has to plan all the more in advance. Since the DM never knows what direction his players are going to take the campaign anyway, psychic abilities are right out.

9

Tamex, you must be playing 2nd edition. Psionics are extremely well done in 3rd edition; they’re a lot like wizards and sorcerers in many ways. They were actually tweaked in a way that all of our DM-ing players go for it. I rolled up my first psion in a 3rd edition game.

10

we had a SOP all set up when entering caverns and passeways, like: wizard casts light, thief searches for traps, fighters mark the ground with pebbles, etc. It just made things go faster to get to the really interesting stuff and the DM was cool about it. Also, when we became high level, we set up “administrative day” once about every four or five sessions, in which we would take care of all the stuff regarding keeps, castles, peasants, hirelings, trading, spell research, level upgrades, training, etc. for the month. That way we maintained the castles and towers up and running without interfering with adventuring.

11

Wow. He wouldn’t let the person play in another campaign at all, even with a different character? What a fascist loser.

We play Champions, not, D&D but the problems of character arguing and absentism are the same. As Gm I’ve got the following rules:

The GM is always right when it comes to a rules debate. Even if it means overriding the rules book.

The GM has the right to veto any character concept or power upgrade. Any chracter upgrades via spending experience had to be cleared with the GM.

The game meets at the same time every week. If you aren’t going to make it, call or email. If you don’t show up without giving notice, the GM reserves the right to invent a reason why your character couldn’t make it, possibly involving kidnapping or a hospital stay. If you repeatedly don’t show up without notice, you will be asked to leave the game.

I’ve really never had to punish anyone for powergaming or arguing - I game with a pretty decent bunch. I did have to ask one player to leave the game after he was consisitently 2 hours late showing up for the game every week, and I have rejected a few character concepts.

12

If we have a player that can’t be there, his character isn’t there and he gets no experience. If possible, we explain his absence, if not, we don’t.

If you want to be a barbarian, you have to either take it at 1st level, or spend 2 - 3 years of game time with a barbarian tribe.

We don’t have any problem with rules lawyers or munchkins. We have known each other and been playing together since 1980. Well, the new guy has only been joining us for the last 6 or 7 years, but we have hopes he will fit in. :smiley:

BraheSilver,
Way back when, in 2nd edition, some of our characters were entering a pyramid when they were suddenly confronted by a minor death. Each character got his own minor death to fight. There was 3 of us, we killed 7 of them before they took us down. (If we killed one, another would appear.) We were sitting there, with dead characters and stunned looks on our faces, wondering how we were supposed to get by them.

At that point, the DM says,“Now that that is over with, which one of you put this in my eraser?” And he held up a small piece of plastic he had found in his Neat eraser. Turned out the player that had put it there wasn’t even at that session. :smack:

Tamex,
The last I looked, your landlord doesn’t really have any say in your social life. If your friend really wants to play in your game, the only thing stopping him is himself. His character shouldn’t crossover without permission, but the player certainly can.

13

I agree. I’ve never even met the guy, but it seems like he has “issues”.

Here’s what happened. We’ve had a girl, “Chris”, who has played in our campaign for several years. She also got involved in another game involving some of the people in her apartment building on a different night of the week. Chris knew that my husband wanted more players, so she invited two of her neighbors (one of whom is now her boyfriend) to roll up new characters and play in our campaign. This apartment manager got completely pissed–he’s got quite a temper, apparently–at all three of them (even though he was seemingly fine with Chris playing in our campaign originally.) Chris and her boyfriend decided to stick out playing in both campaigns, even though it has meant quite a bit of cooling in their friendships with the apt. manager. The other guy decided it wasn’t worth facing the apt. manager’s wrath to play in our campaign, so he quit after one session. Too bad, too, because he seemed like a good player.

So, yes, the guy could play in our campaign if he really wanted to. And perhaps the apt. manager was afraid that we were “stealing” a bunch of his players–but, they were still going to continue to play in his campaign, too, so I wouldn’t consider that stealing.

The psionics rule was started when we were playing 2nd ed., but we do play 3rd ed. now. No one’s asked him to reconsider his rule, I guess. If it would still involve the greater amount of advance planning for him, I still doubt he’d go for it.

I’d love to have a set schedule of “every other Friday” or something like that, but some of our current players can’t seem to schedule their other obligations around D&D–they want to schedule D&D around their other obligations. Perhaps once Mark’s married things will be different–wedding planning, etc. has screwed things up a bit for a while. That’s why we’re on hiatus now.

14

Not D&D, but I’ve been involved with a semi-constant RP group for about 15 years - I’m one of only two of the originals left. We use a really weird custom ruleset that’s based on the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced game rules - not that crap with the cards, but the earlier one. Oddly, none of our recent campaigns (last 10 years, approximately) has had anything to do with Marvel Comics.

Other than the obvious “GM must approve all characters/powers” rule, basic ettiquette (i.e., you May Not touch any other person’s map figure or character sheet) and the obvious point that our actual RP system resembles nothing else on the planet, we’ve got a few rules that have developed out of long experience to make things playable, and to preempt specific stuff that’s been trouble in the past.

Rule Number Zero is that certain powers are flat out prohibited, even if you can find a rulebook citation for them. Most notably, no time travel is ever allowed, no matter what, owing to a famous fight between three players, all of whom were playing time-travelling characters, that ended, several days before it started, with each character simultaneously assassinating his earlier, unwitting opponent. This happened only after about three hours of watching them all hit each other, then going back in time to block for their earlier selves, and then going back in time to hit each other when they couldn’t begin to suspect it. In continuity terms, it was the worst mess I’d ever seen.

Most of our other house rules, though, are intended to keep things running smooothly, without letting any one person interrupt things.

  1. We don’t ever give more than one incidental warning that it’s time to roll initiative, for whatever reason. If you don’t roll (you’re off doing something else, or you’re just not paying attention), your character is assumed to spend the entire subsequent period standing around saying “duuuuuuuuuh”, without the chance to take even automatic actions. This usually leads to a quick death, which is strictly enforced.

  2. You must (must, must, must) follow the accepted protocol for attempting actions: declare what you’re going to do, wait for the GM to approve it, then roll to see if it happened. If you don’t wait for GM approval, you are assumed to give up not only the chance of automatic success (sucks if your roll failed), but the chance to avoid bad consequences from an action the GM would have said that you couldn’t attempt. If you roll without declaring an action, your character spends the round saying “duuuuuuuuuh”, as above. If you don’t make your action precisely clear (one player, in particular, used to just make hand gestures and sound effects, and then try to explain things after he rolled), you say “duuuuuuuuh”. If you roll, and then declare what action you were rolling for, you have automatically earned a critical failure on that action.

Trust me, since we’ve adopted this policy, things run much, much smoother.

15

It’s been years, and the thread makes me miss it.

My best campaign was mostly non-rules. The only real rule was to be interesting, and try to play the person your character is not the powers he has.

Ddammit the epileptic pixie was great. He was a living disaster to have along on an adventure, but he was a scream. The dwarves hated him. He picked on them for it. It introduced a racial prejudice to the campaign that lasted long after Ddammit got fed to the wyverns. Yeah, we let people play monsters. It was a wild and wooley campaign.

In the “Library Kids” campaign I DM’d an ever changing parade of young players in a basic campaign. There, it was all rules. I see the dice hit every time, or there was no roll. You roll ten characters on character generation night, I see every die hit the table, and get a copy of the numbers. You can declare that one of them becomes a pig farmer and never adventures. You play the rest of them, and get no other characters until the ninth one dies. Four particular cheats were allowed. Four dice, choose you favorite three for each basic characteristic. Roll your first two levels of hit dice, and the higher one is level one. You could rearrange one guy’s numbers, and one guy could have two points added to any one number.

The most memorable library kid of all played a ranger. He lost his sword in a pool inside the dreaded Tomb of Xarchos, and dove back in to get it. He came up with a sword, that “felt surprisingly light in the hand.” It wasn’t his sword. He went back into the pool looking for his sword. (not magical, just bought it with his original equipment.) That was playing a character, not a die roll. The library campaign never really went anywhere. The Tomb of Xarchos was a modular level one through three dungeon that could provide exactly enough xp to promote nine level one players to level two if you got everything exactly right. No one ever did. Three guys did end up doing it with just three characters, and had plenty of experience points. One also had lost a leg, and the other two were bleeding to death as they escaped. The “Two walking dead guys, and a one legged man” were famous for several years, among my Gamer friends.

Tris

16

Rule #1 - If you go home from the game and murder your family, you can’t play with us anymore. :slight_smile:

Rule #2 - Study the sacred works of Python. It could save your life.

Rule #3 - The DM is god and should you fail to realize that, he will smite you with hordes of killer bunnies. They’re not hard to kill but they just keep coming, and coming. We came around a corner in one little adventure and there in the hallway was an adorable little bunny… before charging the hapless little creature our dwarf (Dorf) actually actually said those famous last words, “it’s just a rabbit”… the rest of us turned around and ran like hell with the screams of our dwarven compatriot echoing in our ears. Thankfully, Dorf lived. It took a long time to patch him up but he always took bunnies seriously after that.

Rule #4 - If by some circumstance you are turned into a sheep the other players may not use this opportunity to relieve their sexual tensions. Strangely enough, this rule was applied because of Dorf.

Man, I miss playing. D&D is from whence my user-name arose.

17

I forgot a couple more. You have to roll on your turn. No pre-rolling and then just calling out the number. We had a problem in the past with cheaters who would pre-roll and then when it landed on a good roll, keep that number. We just recently had a player start getting into that habit and who was also cheating, and our DM had to get onto him (though he didn’t accuse him of cheating; just asked him to wait until his turn to roll). The rule was announced at the very beginning of the campaign. I HATE CHEATERS with a passion, and as I was sitting next to him, I was about to explode watching him.

The other rule is that dice that land on the floor must be rerolled, no exceptions.

18

Weird.

I’m part of a group that plays a seriously modified “The Fantasy Trip” campaign (TFT is the Precursor to GURPS and still has a bit of the old wargame flavor of the first generation of RPGs. Lots and lots of rules about minatures/rules of engagement, etc).

We do the opposite of what all the “storytelling” types do. The rules are the rules. Right there, black and white. On the vote of a 2/3ds majority rules can be changed in the future: so a rules flaw stands as “the luck of the draw” when noticed, it’s only in the future that the rule will be changed, and when it is, it’s written down.

If you want a rule changed, you have a minimum of 5 minutes to make your case, but the maximum is based on how long the debate is interesting. Someone found a huge, insane loophole in the invisiblity rules and the debate lasted for two sessions and a great time was had by all. Once people start getting bored after the 5 minutes is up the issue is put to a vote. One the vote is done, the discussion is over. Continue to argue and “your character’s head explodes.” Really.

The nice thing is that the GM is bound by *exactly * the same set of rules. We actually had a campaign where the DM was arguing about a rule, we voted, he kept quibbling and the rest of the group agreed that the GM’s head exploded as a punishement from the Gawds. With the GM dead, there was nothing to power the adventure so we skipped to the end and collected the loot. Once he’d cooled down the GM though the situation was pretty fun and went along.

I understand the need for role-playing, but it’s a game too and without firm rules, IMO it’s just playing “make-believe”, not a game

Fenris

19

Pre-rolls? What’s that?

A friend of mine had modified first edition AD&D thoroughly and that’s really the only AD&D rules playable for long stretches of time. He did a lot of things but the most important thing is about levels and abilities. He made level gains a whole lot more finely grained. He has also abolished the entire alignment silliness and replaced it with group/race/etc. tendencies.

20

Pre-rolling is rolling on someone else’s turn so that when your turn comes up, you just announce the number. It’s much too easy to cheat because if the roll was good, you leave it. If the roll was bad just as your turn started, you just grab the dice and roll again and take your chances. Our primary campaign’s DM abolished alignment many, many years ago, because of its silliness. Instead, your actions reflect how people deal with you. In 3E D&D, alignment has to play a small part in the game, however, in that clerics have to decide if they channel positive or negative energy. But all those “protection from law/chaos/good/evil” spells are just thrown out.