Who loves house rules? Who hates them?
One of the best parts of playing Dungeons and Dragons, or one of the other hundreds of role-playing games out there, is the evolution of house rules. Every group does it. It’s a natural reaction when chaos unbalances the simulation. Some groups even have house rules for above-table stuff, like extra chatter. One group I play with has a brass squirrel we hand to players when they stray from heroic deeds and rolling dice.
Another group that plays Dungeons and Dragons 5e (2014) brings all decisions up for a majority vote as if expanding the rules as written (RAW). This group will likely start pulling rules from the Dungeons and Dragons 2024 update and incorporating them where appropriate.
In all my years of role-playing games, the one consistent factor through edition, system, and genre is that you’re gonna mess with the rules a little bit. It’s okay – it’s a good thing, really.
Your game can easily be all contained within the rules frame provided by designers – the extreme edge of the rule container for the simulation. In a good game, however, players should push their characters to exceed the boundaries (prescribed rules and limits) of their class. Thus, some as simple as a Bonus Feat (Dungeons and Dragons 5e) to represent extra training in a character’s background might count as a house rule.
It’s been my experience that most house rules, for Dungeons and Dragons at least, fall into either the combat or background categories. Called-shot and critical hit locations, disarming, eye-gouging, all of that needs special considering and new game parameters (house rules).
This particular writer and role-playing game designer expects that rule modifications to fit the group’s style and mood will be automatic.
Some of my favorite house rules included extra weapon specialization in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. We decided that fighters could only put all their proficiency slots into a single weapon, like a long sword. In AD&D 2e, two slots upgraded your attack and damage bonus to +1/+2, and your number of attacks became 3/2 (three every two rounds or one and then two the next round): more slots, more pluses, more attacks.
Other house rules we included in our Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games were a modified social class roll from the original Unearthed Arcana and a psionic wild talent roll stolen from Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition. Of course, with the addition of FEATS in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition, adding or modifying rules regarding powers and abilities became much easier. It was as if feats were almost designed to add that modular, “plug-and-play” rules style, no fuss.
House Rules for other role-playing game systems are less common. This is maybe in part because our group spent the bulk of its gaming time playing Dungeons and Dragons. We played plenty of other games, but certainly not in the quantity that required us to modify rules.
As we design games at Runeworks Games, we use tried-and-true rules systems, like the d20 OGL for our first release or the MORK BORG rules for our second. However, our philosophy generally is, “Well, the GM can make whatever changes they like.”
Which is, of course, the spirit of the game.
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