House Rules, do you use them?

We use house rules on some of the games we play. Mostly for fun and theme purposes, only once ever for balance.

I'm more of a 'spirit of the law', rather than a 'letter of the law' kind of guy, and the spirit of AT is kickass theme and fun (at least to me). So that's how we roll.

For Descent, we've house-ruled the armor potion, the power potion, restricted movement to make it tighter inside the dungeon, and made the bosses way way stronger. All in the name of making it feel more like a climactic game. We've thrown the "it's a competitive game" pretty much out the window.

Arkham Horror is another one that has been house-ruled to death. But I think a lot of people do this. The game is very very modular and allows for a lot of this.

I don't think it's a matter of complexity when we house-rule a game. It's a bit more of how we'd like to bring the game closer to our concept of how it should've been executed. Descent bosses should be massively powerful, invulnerability potions should not feel like an activatable force field, investigators should be able to gang up on monsters in Arkham, and all that jazz.

Do you guys house-rule for balance? or for fun?

Sometimes but not in huge ways.

Probably the last one was a modification to Sister Mary from Arkham Horror. We have lousy luck in the blessing department, so in an effort to make her more desirable we tinkered the rule for her.

"If Sister Mary does not have a Blessing, she may end her movement at the South Church and, instead of having an encounter there, may take a Blessing for herself."

She can't pass the blessings around, but by going and praying at the church she can regain her own. Seems to have worked; she's not overpowering but there's less bitching that the $10 Strange Eons rated ability isn't almost immediately flushed down the tubes.

kookoobah wrote:

For Descent, we've house-ruled the armor potion, the power potion, restricted movement to make it tighter inside the dungeon, and made the bosses way way stronger. All in the name of making it feel more like a climactic game. We've thrown the "it's a competitive game" pretty much out the window.

No wonder it takes you guys so long to play Descent.

In general I don't usually house rule much, just make calls on unclear rules. I think most games are fine the way they are (unless they're just crappy games and if so, what's the point of a house rule?).

With the exception of Monopoly. That game gets house-ruled a lot. I used to play with a guy who had a ton of house rules and it was really fun. I can't remember them all though, but the best was the "Go to Hell" card where you lost everything you had and had to start all over. But another rule was all money normally paid to the bank went into the community pot in the middle of the board. So you could instantly win it all or lose it all or vice versa.

We RARELY use house rules. I don't really like to use them at all, because I do think games are an "authored" medium and you really ought to play it as written, so to speak. I've never seen a house rule that completely changes a game enough to where a bad game is made good or a good game made great. In terms of rules where there's a weird discrepancy or vagary, we do the "spirit of the rules" thing. I don't think that's a house rule though. Usually the answer is obvious with a little analysis, and we go with that.

Sometimes, in a game like WARRIOR KNIGHTS where they really kind of screwed up on something like the low number of armies at the beginning or the short VP endgame conditions, we'll adjust that...but that's really just making the game closer to the original edition.

However, we do have two house rules that are absolutely essential. When playing THE GOTHIC GAME, anybody that doesn't roll using the dice cup is eliminated. It leads to all kinds of skullduggery, trying to get somebody to forget the cup. Like you hand the next player the dice and not the cup and see if he'll throw without it. It happens sometimes. There's also a pewter Grim Reaper figure that Robert Martin added to his copy. We put it in the middle of the board and if you touch it, you die. So there's all this crazy shit where people will roll the die to knock it over so that it's touching your pawn. We had a game once where someone actually shifted the board while a player was reaching for their piece and made them touch the Reaper.

We do have house rules for REALLY NASTY HORSERACING too, I guess, to accomodate more players. Basically, if you come in last you're out of running the next race. You can still bet, but you don't have a shot at winning a purse.

never. the games designer ought to know his shit better than i do. if the game sucks, it sucks because he is a shitty designer, and i won't play his games any more, not try and guess how to make it better. i mean, you could house rule something like el grande into a fun game, but it'd require a rewrite of the entire rule book, so why bother? just play something else.

House rules work for private groups where you obviously all know each other well and get on, but they're just more hassle than it's worth playing in public meets or at clubs - you will hardly ever get a consensus so you just follow the standard rules.

Incidentally, I have just done this last weekend though - my 10yr old lad is off on holiday with his grandparents and a couple of cousins and the grandparents were introduced to Carcassonne by friends last year but haven't played since. So I was asked to come around and play through a refresher game with them and to explain the rules properly, so I introduced them to the house rule of having a hand of three tiles rather than just having to play the one you draw. It should give the three boys (10 - 13) an option to think about where they play their tiles rather than them getting bored quickly just drawing and placing where-ever it fits.
I do feel a bit sorry for them having Carcassonne in the evening for two weeks so I'm going to get some simple rules for Zombies sorted and pack my copy of that in the yungsta's bag.

moss_icon wrote:

never. the games designer ought to know his shit better than i do. if the game sucks, it sucks because he is a shitty designer, and i won't play his games any more, not try and guess how to make it better. i mean, you could house rule something like el grande into a fun game, but it'd require a rewrite of the entire rule book, so why bother? just play something else.

You can't argue with this !

Like others, we really don't use house rules unless the situation is ambiguous and then we go with the "spirit of the game" and what would make sense in the context of the world we are playing in.

The one exception is some modified rules to Runebound so it is easy to play in a solo fashion; otherwise, we play as it is written because I assume that -- for the most part -- the rules are like they are for a specific reason.

Wow, this certainly comes as a surprise to me. I thought more of you guys would house-rule stuff too.

I suppose the reason we house-rule Descent and Arkham so heavily is because they were (unknown to us at the time) our stepping stones to RPGs. It just felt right to house-rule them, and the fact that our games of Descent had so many house-rules eventually led us to WFRP, and then it was only after we started WFRP that we began to house-rule Arkham that much also.

None of our other games are house-ruled (maybe I'll house rule the Hunting Witchking in the WotR expansion, since so many of the playtesters said he was better in the old versions).

No house rules I can think of, but we do variants sometimes. Like with Runebound we draw two market cards when in town instead of one. Not because we think the game is broken or anything. Its just to make going to town more tempting and get more of the market deck in play each game. Often when we play RoboRally we make up some variant beforehand. Last time we had a random square catch fire at the end of each turn to simulate the factory burning down around us.

The only house rules I can think of are when the wife and I muck with euros that have "when x # of tiles/cards/cubes are drawn, the game ends" mechanisms that artificially shorten games due to pure bad luck of pulling several in a row. We have a standing "never back to back" rule, no matter what the rules say for all games of that ilk.

Otherwise, most of the house rules I contend with are more along the lines of "errata waiting to happen" like contradictory or absent rules or some scenario that has, say, 24 squads listed when sane scenario design would dictate a half-dozen at most.

Sooner or later, you'll see a post on CSW saying "errr...uhm...we meant "4" there" or "Ok, well, that 'broken unit retreat through an unoccupied-yet-enemy-controlled space' thing never came up in playtest, but since 200 of you have now asked about it, here's what we suggest..."]

I find house rules to be annoying, if the game doesn't work without them don't play it, otherwise it just leads to a fractured community.

House rules are the fan fiction of board gaming.

Yeah, I really think that if you're modifying published games to suit your tastes, you're really kind of wasting time. Play a different game, or design your own.

Somebody I know, a Very Famous Game Designer, house rules EVERYTHING. He'll buy a game, and instead of saying "this is what worked and what didn't", he'll compose a whole set of house rules, going so far as to rewrite the whole rulebook and effectively make it a different game. That's his business, but I can't help but think that it's just a waste of effort. Just play something else for pete's sake.

Kook, it's funny that you say that you're coming from RPGs...I always thought it was funny that RPG books used to have that thing in the front (right after the "where is the board?!" section) where they basically say "this is your game, you can do whatever the hell you want with it." My thinking was always, "well, why the hell did I buy a book to tell me how to play it then?"

I just don't get the idea of "fixing" games. Play as published!