The Pink Dice Chronicles

Sly Flourish posted " Four Principles for House Rules " and it is clearly a good view to start with for house rules.  These four guidelines pave the road to good solid house rules.  I just wanted to throw in a couple of key points that might fall under the "Keep it Compatible" portion.  These warnings hopefully can help to avoid the road to hell paved with good intentions in adding house rules. POINT 1  Understand The Side Effects on the Core Mechanics Side effects are a big problem when adding new rules to the game.  Side effects the unexpected consequences of a rule that can result in potentially game-breaking scenarios.  Here is a good example of a good house rule with a nasty side effect. I ran into this house rule recently that required all character actions to be stated at the beginning of the round.  To change that action when your turn came up, you had to make an INT or DEX check.  The intent was clear -- to speed up combat.  How...

Some mods we have adopted to date: Karma points are awarded for "good play" especially good problem-solving and good in-character roleplay.  Karma points are good for 1 reroll at any time.  And often I throw snacks to players that earn Karma points -- "Oooh, a karma point and a twinkie." Background points provide a structure for controlling the character backgrounds so they are "realistic".  After all, every player can't be a prince or a king or rich or famous: Background points can buy advantages. Disadvantages can be taken to get more background points. Some advantages or disadvantages have qualifiers: Example: Can be one-eyed but charisma has to be less than 14. I emphasize the fact that disadvantages will be used against players during gameplay. Specialized unique weapons give the players something cool to find along the way: Each weapon has a cool ability. Dagger that transports you to a location, makes you invisible until you ...