I never tinker with rules, nor do I use house rules. I think its because most of my gaming is solo. I have however taken bits and pieces from rulesets and then written rule sets for various periods only to never use them again.....

I often find that house rules are brought in where someone has won a particular argument - and before you know it the list grows and the rules become unplayable.

I have been watching the Bolt Action 2 development and when the new amendments were announced ther has been 32 pages of rants on the forum and the rules aren't even out yet.....

With that in mind....

1. Do you tinker?

2. Do you develop house rules

3. How much of 1 & 2 before you break your ruleset?

Not sure what the distinction between tinkering and house rules is.

I always play the rules as written many times over before coming up with house rules but regularly wind up with one or two amendments that are used when playing with friends.

If playing against those I don't know well I find it better to play the rules as written.

Can't say I think we've ever broken a set of rules as a result.

I don't like to mess about with rules. I do tend to get a bit hot under the collar when someone else insists on messing about with a perfectly good straightforward set of rules. In my experience they have stepped straight out of the 1970s and are miffed that the latest set of divisional level rules makes no allowance for if one of the mountain gun mules goes lame in the back left leg.

As a rule I don't tinker with any rules apart from the ones I have written myself...then I suppose it's tinkering from the very beginning.

MickS

I have been known to add the odd house rule - mainly to address some area that seems to be missing in a game, that seems to be important in some particular battle we are playing.

One of our group is always wanting to tinker with rules. Generally not to the better in the long term. The rest of us have become quite resistant to this, and would generally rather play rules as is. His favourite is to take any set of rules and make a fantasy version.

This went spectacularly wrong with Irregular Wars, which produces a great historical small battle game. It produces a rubbish big battle fantasy game. Much time was expended to to discover this, though it did help clear up a lot of thinking on our home brew rules.


One area I'm most open to tinkering is with points - if a unit is being over used it ought to cost more. As the players clearly value it more highly than the points assigned to it.

I do. SJ and I modify rules but only after playing the game a few times

Amendments include
Black Powder
Moves on command roll
Broken brigades
Turn sequence

They couldn't hit an elephant
Cleaned up firing results

IABSM
Cluster rule for small teams
Hidden blinds
Running away for teams on low dice

The only tinkering I generally do is to use a system for a different theatre / area / period, such as doing an ECW expansion for Sword and Spear, or using that same basic mechanic for a SCW game too.

We generally don't use house rules, but will add scenario specific rules.

Quote from: Ithoriel on 06 September 2016, 05:07:04 PM
Not sure what the distinction between tinkering and house rules is.

I always play the rules as written many times over before coming up with house rules but regularly wind up with one or two amendments that are used when playing with friends.

If playing against those I don't know well I find it better to play the rules as written.

Can't say I think we've ever broken a set of rules as a result.

Me, too. I like to keep house rules to the absolute minimum. If you have to tinker too much, the rules are probably broken to begin with.

1. Do you tinker?
Yes. I take tinker to mean fix upon  a specific interpretation of a rule where there is ambiguity and information is not available from the designer. Tinker may also mean (for me anyway) making fine adjustments in certain tables to give slightly different effects.

2. Do you develop house rules?
Yes. I take house rules to mean a substantial re-write of some sections of the rules.

3. How much of 1 & 2 before you break your ruleset?
Break stuff all the time then move back toward the published rules until they seem to work again. e.g. I broke Baroque trying to do things it wasn't designed to do (what Leman just said). Several folks here and at the Impetus forum helped me understand this point.

I seem to have the opposite experience of Nosher. I play solo and muck around a lot. My experience of group play was trying to understand the rules as written (to prevent changes that would benefit certain players' units or armies.)

I tried for years to get DBR to be a more historical reflexion of reality and to compensate for some plain dam' stupidity. Improved it considerably, but gave up. I think getting together with like-minded and experienced friends who know a bit about the history involved and have no rival agendas, and then writing one's own, is the way to go.

Quote from: petercooman on 06 September 2016, 08:52:06 PM
We generally don't use house rules, but will add scenario specific rules.

Seconded

I write some of my own rules because I make a lot of use of hexes. Once a set is largely formed, every time I make a change, I read the entire text to see whether the change impacts on anything else. Although I play a bit loose and and fast with changes, I think if they are your own rules, then the changes come from the same mind and there is at least a continuity of thought and design philosophy and the end results are likely (hopefully) to remain a unified whole.

For those same reasons I tend not to modify commercial rules, but agree that scenario based special rules probably take care of that anyway.

I (and friends) have tweaked BKCII in terms of hits staying on, mortars causing auto suppression etc. To us this feels right and gives us a better game. Other games may get the odd tweak to fit in with our style of play. By and large they are minor and do not affect core mechanics etc.

In terms of Bolt Action 2, I was reading the review in the latest issue of WS&S and was gobsmacked (to say the least) that in the 1st edition many players didn't take a Bren gun for the British . To my mind something is seriously wrong when that happens .

1. Do you tinker?
I use my own ruleset. It is an mix of rule sets I have read, things I like to happen and quirks of history as I percieve them. For example a Chauchat has to roll 2+ before it can fire - just to see if it's broken down. Tiger tanks cannot engage anything moving that is more than 90^o from the waty they are facing, because the turret traverse on a Tiger was very slow. Encourages those Cromwells to try and get to the flanks.

2. Do you develop house rules?
Hell yes. My favourite is the "Hollywood Hero" rule. In skirmish games it allows for a smaller force to have a nominated figure who can perform heroic deeds as per cinematic legend. A GI can charge a German MG post. Using  the Hollywood Hero rule, they can attempt to ignore wounds or evebn death. If they don't make the roll then ... we play the sad music.

3. How much of 1 & 2 before you break your ruleset?
Not broken it in 30 or so years. However, it probably doesn't look much like it did 30 years ago.