House Rules

Experience

At the beginning of each session, we’ll choose one character who hasn’t been spotlighted recently and answer the following questions for them as a group. Each answer is worth 500xp. We’ll also ask one bonus question, something more freeform, which is always rewarded 600xp regardless of the answer.

Each of these XP triggers may be based either on things that happened on-screen in the previous session or on newly imagined things that could have happened. In either case, they should help recap the events of the previous session and provide some insight into the character. For example, we might illustrate how a character’s behaviour in a scene was informed by (or affected!) their background. Or we might describe a new scene in which the character had a discussion with an NPC and achieved a goal or expressed their heritage – it just needs to be logically consistent with the existing fiction, not necessarily something that we all played out together at the table.

• Goals: Did you achieve one of the group’s or your own stated goals?
• Heritage: Did you express a unique aspect of your Class, Race, or Background?
• Motivation: Did you express your Alignment in a way that made things more difficult for you?
• Themes: Did you discover something long lost or overcome terrible danger? Did you uphold or overturn a Theory?

Procedural Tweaks

With the potential for large groups, I think it will be helpful to streamline certain aspects of play as much as possible. I have a couple of variants I’ve used before which I’ll list below, suggestions are welcome!

Skill Checks

We are likely to be doing quite a lot of skill checks, especially when in larger groups where full out tactical combat would drag. I find skill checks to be more fun to play when there is more clarity up front about what is at stake and what the result of a roll will mean.

• Try to declare up front what it is that your character is trying to achieve and how. For example, if you want to knock a guard out, it may still be important to your character not to harm them. In that case, a high roll should NOT do harm. In fact, it’d be more likely that a lower roll might cause harm as the complication (more on complications below).
• I do not adjust skill check Difficulty Classes. Rather, I’ll lean heavily on advantage/disadvantage, less frequently on canceling out proficiencies, and finally hopefully more rarely on raw modifiers. Skill check rolls will always be evaluated on the following results (based around the “classic average” DC15):
  • Natural 20: You know what it means! Ideally everyone at the table will cheer.
  • Modified 19+: Success – Things work out how your character intended, with no complications.
  • Modified 15-18: Mixed Success – Your character achieves their goal, but there’s a complication.
  • Modified 1-14: Failure – Your character doesn’t achieve their goal, or does so only at cost. Often I’ll offer a choice!
  • Natural 1: It is not good. Exception: if you end up with a modifier so high that a natural one is still 15+, it’s still a success just with a nasty complication.
• Background Proficiencies: It’s already an optional (ie, DM fiat) rule that skill checks can be attempted using a different attribute modifier if justified appropriately in the narrative. In addition to that, I support the use of Background (and to a lesser degree Race and Class) as a proficiency in cases where it’d make sense.
• Skill checks during combat: Skill checks usually will count as a main action during combat, but I definitely encourage their creative use. I allow all kinds of hijinks, as long as they are narratively justified and thematically appropriate. Environmental manipulation, trickery, etc… all make combat more interesting.

Inspiration

While great in spirit, the practice of rewarding great roleplay with inspiration is all too often forgotten. One way I like to improve that is providing rewards for roleplay in the XP triggers, and another is making inspiration easier to act on. At any time players may request to earn inspiration by recounting a tale or detail from their character’s past. Imagine that it’s a flashback to scene where the characters are sitting around the ship’s mess, a tavern, campfire,, etc and getting to know each other. In the ideal case, the story from the past might relate to the present, but that’s not a requirement. As long as the group agrees that the story is worth inspiration (usually yes unless you are trying to game the system!), inspiration is awarded – and can be used immediately! That means if you fail a roll that’s important to your character, you can immediately share more about your character with us for one more shot.

Combat

Combat is rarely a goal in its own right in my games – it should be a means to an end, an obstacle to a goal, etc. I encourage creative planning around combats to gain advantages or even avoid fights entirely through stealth, diplomacy, etc. Being defeated in combat does not always result in death either. That said, once the dice are rolled the mechanical results will always stand, so be careful! I don’t roll behind screens and I don’t do takebacks (except for mechanics that allow it like Lucky feat or inspiration of course).

• I will adjust enemy stat blocks (not on the fly, but between sessions). Sometimes to try to make a combat faster, other times to give an enemy a certain flavor – don’t assume a stat block from the book will be the same based on a creature’s appearance.
• I do tell AC’s and saving throw numbers so it’s not about secrecy – I like it to be clear up front what rolls will be success or failure.
• I don’t tell explicit hit point counts, but will describe visible state (and asking about it is fine too).
• I like to use the “Defense Roll” variant, where players roll with AC against a monster’s attack DC, but haven’t tried to use it with D&D Beyond generated character sheets before so I’m not sure about this one for now.

Spotlight and Pitch

Spotlighting just means trying to highlight the skills and/or themes of a certain character, and it’s something I try to do organically as much as possible. It’s a been a bit challenging sometimes though with a large group and I’d like to try out a new procedure to see if it helps.

At the beginning of each session, anyone who wants to can offer a pitch for a PC to highlight and how. It doesn’t have to be your own character, and you don’t necessarily need to offer one every week. I’ll always bring one pitch to the table just in case. Instead of voting on Rumors, we’ll vote on a pitch and then see if any rumors support the pitch, or come up with a new scenario if not.

Once a character has had an official spotlight, they can’t be the focus again until everyone else has had a spotlight session.

Example pitch: I want to spotlight Drop, I’m interested in the ring artifacts from her dream, maybe we can investigate that pub in Aynuk where she had a vision of her mentor?

Episodic Play

Taking influence from the West Marches style of campaign play, every individual session will begin and end in the same location (probably the party’s airship?). A running list of potential goals will be maintained between sessions, and one of those goals will be selected by the players before each session.

We may need to make certain adjustments based on group size. For example, combats may not be much fun if there are too many players present, so then we’d try to skew toward an exploration, stealth, intrigue, etc. We’ll feel this out as we go!

This does mean that if we run out of time on a game night without having reached the goal, it will be assumed to be a failure! The assumption will be that characters make it back to their base to try again next time, except for in special cases like if the entire party is defeated in combat.