Quote from: LibraryLass;687479Is there an amount of house ruling for a game at which point it becomes intellectually dishonest when teaching new players? If so, where is that point reached?

The question of 'how many houserules does it take until it's not the same game anymore?' is valid, but, all your houserules are just taken from other versions of Dungeons & Dragons, it seems.

Just tell them you're playing Dungeons & Dragons. That's not dishonest, that's a damned retrospective. If they care enough, they'll find out the differences. What the players really care about when learning a new game is having a fun time, not edition wars.

//Panjumanju

That is a good point. I want the rules to reflect the campaign needs. Thus I expect restrictions upon what is allowed into the campaign, such as class or skill limits, relevant monsters in a random encounter table, etc.

However, for new players? I don't see how teaching players a variant somehow "breaks" them from learning any other RPG, including a version of the same game without such house rules. Besides, there's countless games structured as toolkits, which means variant game builds are the norm.

Unless organized play is some sort of play benchmark, and goal for the new player, there is no real ethical 'there' there. It only matters for mutually intellgible grasp of the play pool options. But that's only necessary for some sort of competitive parity, of which chargen metagame is the only reason why this could ever matter. RPGs are not about organized play's chargen metagame; that's a separate game entirely with its own context and lens with which to read the RPG text.

Yeah, I agree. Players are learning how to play you're campaign, not the system, and it doesn't stop them from learning other RPGs later. Houserules are there because they need to be to make the game more playable or fun generally, and this is never a concern that should lead to dropping them.

With new players? I think it'd be important to sit them down outside of the game, make sure they grasped the rules-as-written, and then explain how things were different for the game on hand - and more importantly why those changes were made.

With experienced players? Same thing, only less carefully. I'm personally 100% cool with house rules so long as they're completely explained and the GM has made certain that they're understood. I don't expect perfect felicity with a text, but there should be a serious effort made to ensure that everyone is on board.

Quote from: Doccit;687671Yeah, I agree. Players are learning how to play you're campaign, not the system, and it doesn't stop them from learning other RPGs later. Houserules are there because they need to be to make the game more playable or fun generally, and this is never a concern that should lead to dropping them.

D&D is kind of weird in that people often seem to expect to be able to slot into any D&D game anywhere, hence (doomed) projects like Living Greyhawk. But my experience in the rest of the RPG world suggests that houserules are the norm, not the exception.  Games like Fate, nWoD and GURPS all highlight these to the point where two of my own GURPS campaigns don't play alike, never mind the GURPS campaigns of two different GMs.

Rulesets are suggestions and guidelines that are interpreted differently by every GM who gets their hands on them.  Sometimes those interpretations are "wrong," sometimes they are purely for thematic reasons, but sometimes they are improvements, or just adaptions to the peculiarities of the GM ("I can't remember all those modifiers, so I have this simplified, streamlined system.")

You might not be "teaching them D&D," but I'd argue that's rather irrelevant, as even if you ran it "Rules as Written," their next D&D game with someone else won't be, and they need to have fun with your game.  It might be nice to make sure they have access to those houserules somewhere, if they want to "read along" and have a consistent rules-environment, as some players really value that and dislike feeling like they're playing by GM-fiat, but other than that, no, house rules are not "intellectually dishonest."

I actually find house rules kind of fun, now that I think of it. Like GM: "Hey, bud: This is what Celerity Three means as written. But we've tweaked it so that it means this when it comes up against Auspex Two. But don't worry; things won't get fucked up - check out how we've rewritten Potence Four." Me: "Oh, okay. Can I rewrite my character accordingly?" GM: "Yeah, sure, we're not in game yet." Me "Awesome. Pass the pretzels."

For a player new to the game it gets even simpler: "Hey, so, yeah, you've read how Celerity, Potence, and Auspex work, right?" Newb: "Of course." GM: "Well, just so you know they work in these specific ways in our game." Newb: "Oh, alright.  Can I restat my character before we begin?" GM: "Absolutely." Newb: "Cool, thanks." GM: "Would you like some pretzels?"

Quote from: LibraryLass;687654In the quantities that I, and allegedly P&P use them? It starts to get a bit silly.

Well, considering that we're all indulging in a baroque explosion of kiddie "make-pretend" games, at which 90% of the adults in the world would laugh at us, "silly" is a bit misplaced.

But jocularity aside, that's like saying it's "silly" to have seven players in your campaign, or "silly" to have a 80% RP/20% combat ratio of play, or "silly" to play TFT instead of D&D, or "silly" to use minis and a battle mat.  This is a game.  You play in the style you want, with the game system you want, in the milieu you want, in the venue you want, with the players you want, using the rules you want.  If the way you do those things suits you and suits your group, who cares?