Do you run wild and free with the rules, or do you feel obligated to pay homage to the rich history of the game?

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 29, 2023, 12:58:46 PM
Do you run wild and free with the rules, or do you feel obligated to pay homage to the rich history of the game?

If a rule is stupid, which I find a good bit in 5e and I think it needs to be changed, I will change it.

I do not like in 5e how magic just automatically always hits.  I hate how the player can roll a perception roll and know everything about the room, where as in my OSE game I am running, players have to think about what they are checking and do it narratively. 

Truthfully, the more I run 5e the more I hate it.  With OSE I am dipping my toe into the OSE and as soon as I can I am going to drop 5e and run something else.

In my games I change whatever doesn't work for me and my group. I will generally fill out a document with any changes to RAW for a given game and get it to players prior to session 0. That way everyone is on the same page during character creation and any questions or concerns can be talked out before session 1.

If we are talking D&D then it has gone through so many changes that it isn't even the same game from edition to edition. For a home game, any edition can be run with whatever changed or additional rules the participants desire.

I change the rules a lot, usually in relation to a specific issue I've had at the table.  The only limitation is that you should get player buy-in.

The rules are a tool to make it easy for the GM to run the game and the players to play it.  The players decide what the character is going to do.  The GM adjudicates.  When the rules help with that, they can.  The moment they don't, they are ignored.

These days, I allow myself up to four pages of house rules, 10-12 point font, with headers for different sections. I find that if I don't impose that sort of restriction on myself, I'll tinker forever, wasting time better spent on planning sessions or deforming the game until it is barely recognizable as what I pitched to players.

No rule or mechanic or collection of rules is sacred.  The value of any rule or rule set is to facilitate good play at the table.  Either the rule works for the table or it gets ganked. 

That said, I like a rule set being preserved for both historical purposes and for me to plumb for things that may work for my players.

We tried to stick fairly close to the rules back in the day, though like most folks I suspect, we were really playing a B/X & AD&D hybrid of sorts. 

In the past few years we've cycled through a bunch of the retroclones and mostly landed on Castles & Crusades because I realized I had the fewest house rules for it and tweaks to its Siege Engine are super easy to integrate without messing the game up.  And you can pull stuff from nearly every edition of D&D and adapt it to C&C with almost no thought.

I was briefly in some guy's online game a few years ago and he literally had around 90 pages of house rules.  At that point, just go the Gillespie route and make your own game...

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 29, 2023, 12:58:46 PM
Do you run wild and free with the rules, or do you feel obligated to pay homage to the rich history of the game?

I tend to play only in pre-built settings that I find interesting. Greyhawk, Realms, Dragonlance, etc. and I tended back in those days to run them as they were written. These days? I discard *anything* I think is superfluous and uninteresting, and replace it with something I think is more fitting.

I very much respect the rich history of a setting, if it's good enough for me to use it, it's always going to get my respect. That said, when you've been playing in those playgrounds long-enough, treading the same ground can get stale. For instance my last Realms campaign started on the Sword Coast, but the big conceit of the setting was me introducing the Gods of Chaos (from Moorcock/Warhammer) into the Realms as an excuse for me to completely go fucking crazy and scare the shit out of my players. Wars in the Underdark as the Skaven ritual gets enacted by a Clan of stupid Duergar, build slowly then boils over into the surface realms. Gods killing Gods... and the PC's are fighting wars against the great upheavals... and I'm totally holding strong to the conceits of the Realms and their gods, letting the PC's lead things, in direct opposition as they see fit.

So I like the twist it up, with respect.

Now, I'm working on a totally homebrewed setting.

Quote from: GhostNinja on August 29, 2023, 01:09:48 PM
I do not like in 5e how magic just automatically always hits.

Did you miss the part where there are spell attack rolls and saving throws?

Quote from: Corolinth on August 29, 2023, 03:33:26 PM
Did you miss the part where there are spell attack rolls and saving throws?

some have them but there are spells that are just automatic.  No save to avoid damage just straight up hits.  Very few spells have rolls or saves for them.

Only the BroSR idiots think the game should be ran RAW. Gygax himself didn't play by the rules HE CREATED 

RAW can be fun but eventually groups find the holes in the system and patch 'em with house-rules.

I feel fine changing whatever I want, but for the sake of expediency, try to limit myself to two pages for mechanical rules like combat, encumbrance, and xp. Maybe another two pages of character background tables and equipment lists if I'm using some unique setting. Those limits are just to make life easier for players.

I have all the liberty I need to house rule. But I should have a good reason for it.

And if I find myself needing to house rule a lot, my question becomes am I running the right game?

Quote from: GhostNinja on August 29, 2023, 01:09:48 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 29, 2023, 12:58:46 PM
Do you run wild and free with the rules, or do you feel obligated to pay homage to the rich history of the game?

If a rule is stupid, which I find a good bit in 5e and I think it needs to be changed, I will change it.

I do not like in 5e how magic just automatically always hits.  I hate how the player can roll a perception roll and know everything about the room, where as in my OSE game I am running, players have to think about what they are checking and do it narratively. 

Truthfully, the more I run 5e the more I hate it.  With OSE I am dipping my toe into the OSE and as soon as I can I am going to drop 5e and run something else.

The funny thing is, I experience the opposite.  I like 5e's minimal reliance on number crunching.  The mechanics can be a little oversimplified at times, but overall, it's easier to run than most other systems I've played.