House Rule Inspiration

House Rules from Jeff

Skills System for Skill-less Editions

http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2009/03/skill-less-skill-system.html

Dungeoncrawling in Tekumel

From Grognardi

In OD&D, one-quarter of all "magic items" consist of treasure maps. This percentage is reduced to one-tenth in AD&D, but that's still sizable. If you've ever wondered about the origin and purpose of the read languages spell, look no further than treasure maps: "the means by which directions and the like are read, particularly on treasure maps."

Compare to 4E.

"A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around he head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors, the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings."

Caraousing Rules and Mishaps

Jeff Rient has some fun carousing rules. The full post includes more details, including a carousing mishaps table, but here's the basic mechanics.

From Jeff's gamblog: http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/12/party-like-its-999.html

"At the beginning of a session if a PC is hanging around Ye Olde Village Inne with nothing better to do, they can roll 1d6 and spend 100gp times the roll on liquor and/or lechery. The character gains experience equal to the gold spent. The d6 x 100 standard applies to villages only. A PC could travel to a town or city and debauch much more efficiently. Towns are worth d8 x 150 gp/xp and cities d10 x 200. The city of Hautville is worth d12 x 250 owing to its extreme wickedness."

"The party ended up consisting of two fighters (Grognard Whiplash and Fergus Landry), two magic-users (Wheelz and Reginald Featherweight), a cleric (Deric Holyborn) and a dwarf (Fonkin Wurp). I thought that was a very reasonable mix of character types. It was just big enough that the two wizardly types could concentrate on mapping and holding the lantern, with only the occasional intervention to cast sleep or slay a fake dragon with a thrown dart."

From The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope post regarding terrible monsters.

http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-monsters-i-loathe.html

Eye of the Deep: “Hey Dave! What if a beholder got drunk and fucked a lobster?” “Sure. They didn’t seem to mind the armadillo with a propeller.” Not even an ecology by Ed Greenwood could save this mess. Let’s face it: Most of the aquatic D&D monsters just plain suck. Morkoth, I’m looking at you…

From Hong on rpg.net

"However, my impression is that old-skool gamers tend to see combat as something you engage in only in extremis, because it's dangerous -- someone could get killed waving those sharp sticks around, you know...(There's also an unstated assumption here, that M-Us should eventually have more raw power than fighters -- but again, raw power isn't so important in the old-skool way of things, because if you're doing it right then you can win without ever needing all that power.)

Contrast this to modern-day gaming, where you tend to get more focus on individual encounters as rewarding in their own right. Along with this, you get another unstated assumption that the default way of overcoming a challenge is to blast through it. This is a significant paradigm shift, from a dungeon being a series of obstacles that you avoid or surmount, to being a series of encounters that you defeat through force of arms -- IOW, violence has gone from being peripheral to the dungeoneering experience, to being central to it. Now things like encounter pacing and class balance become more important considerations, and people start taking seriously questions like "are we done for today"."

APPENDIX 0: ENCUMBRANCE OF STANDARD ITEMS

Item Encumbrance in gold pieces

Backpack 20
Belt 3
Belt pouch, large 10
small 5
Book, large metal‑bound 200
Boots, hard 60
soft 30
Bottles, flagons 60
Bow, composite long 80
composite short 50
long 100
short 50
Caltrop 50
Candle 5
Chest, large solid iron 1000-5000
small solid iron 200-500
small wooden 100-250
large wooden 500-1500
Clothes (1 set) 30
Cord, 10' 2
Crossbow, heavy 80
light 50
Crystal ball, base and wrapping 150
Flask, empty 7
full 20
Gem 1-5
Grapnel 100
Hand tool 10
Helm 45
Helm, great 100
Holy water, potion bottles 25
Horn 50
Jewelry, large 50
small 1-5
Lantern 60
Mirror 5
Musical instrument* 350
Pole, 10' 100
Purse 1
Quiver 30
Rations, iron 75
standard 200
Robe or cloak, folded 50
worn 25
Rod 60
Rope, 50' 75
Sack, large 20
small 5
Saddle, light horse 250
heavy horse 500
Saddlebag 150
Saddle blanket (pad) 20
Scroll case, bone or ivory 50
leather 25
Spike 10
Staff 100
Tapestry (very small to huge) 50-1000+
Tinderbox 2
Torch 25
Wand, bone or ivory case 60
box 80
leather case 30
Waterskin or wineskin, empty 5
full 50