Gaming Weekend: In House Edition
I love house rules. Obviously not all house rules are ideal, but the fact that games are analyzed closely enough and the nature of gamers trying to make their games suitable for their preferences is part of what makes gaming, especially tabletop gaming, so enjoyable.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories of house rules gone awry; I recently heard tales of a Blood Bowl league that implemented a complex series of sportsmanship house rules that went so far as to penalize players for not apologizing if they caused a casualty. Another Blood Bowl league I know of actually changed the rules for how a team’s Treasury is counted in such a way as to make a non-game-impacting feature game-impacting.
But generally speaking House rules can be great for adjusting broken rules that haven’t yet been officially updated and for customizing games. I’m always interested in hearing some house rules people come up with for their games. One that we use is in Pandemic, we always play with our hands face-up. For 40K 4th Edition we used to handle difficult terrain checks with an average dice (2-5 on a D6) instead of selecting the highest from 2D6.
My experience is that there are two basic kinds of house rules: There are those that are developed in response to awkward game situations (like the difficult terrain check which was instituted after several games where entire units were rendered useless because of several turns with 2″ or less movement) and there are those that are developed from consideration of how to improve the game. Most of the latter are, like the sportsmanship rules from the Blood Bowl league that I heard about, complex sets of rules designed to accomplish a specific function. I personally think the sportsmanship rules are ridiculous and actually counter to the enjoyment of a game but the beauty of house rules is that they are by definition voluntary. If you don’t like a house rule, find a different house to play in or make your case to ditch them.
I’ve developed my own sets of house rules in the past, some more successful than others. Currently I’ve been thinking a lot about Blood Bowl and, as with most consideration-based house rules, the concepts stem from issues I have with the existing rules. Indulge me as I think out loud about them.
- MVP – The current MVP rules has a random player chosen from each team at the end of the game earning 5 Star Player Points for being selected the MVP. The problem is that this player is frequently unworthy of earning those points because they spent the game KO’d or (if you play using the LRB strictly) even dead. But I understand that if you gave 5 SPP to the legitimate MVP, which would probably be the player who earned the most SPP via other means, you’d end up with certain players advancing very quickly. Catchers, for example, would be particularly prone to rapid advancement due to their propensity for scoring.
I have two proposals for this, both with their strengths and weaknesses.
House Rule #1: Lower the MVP bonus to 2, make it a “real” MVP. Basically you take the player who earned the most SPP in the match and give them the MVP which would award an additional 2 points rather than the current 5. In the case of a tie you would break tie by order of SPP-awarding activity: TD, Cas, Cmp, Int. The benefit here is that it makes more sense, the downside is that it functionally boosts TDs to a 5-SPP action, especially on lower-scoring teams like Undead and Orcs.
House Rule #2: Adjust eligibility restrictions. We already play with the house rule that the MVP can’t be dead or induced, but I’d say the restrictions could be better implemented. Eligibility rules would probably have to be extensively playtested but a good starting point (I think) would be to say a player is Eligible if they: Scored a TD, made a Cmp or Int or inflicted a Cas or they participated in every drive (ie they were not injured or left in reserves and did not miss a KO roll). The benefits of this are obviously that the chance that someone who was at least reasonably considered valuable are drastically increased without directly affecting the perceived or practical value of scoring actions while the downsides are that there could be instances where a team has no eligible players. I’d argue that a team that has no eligible players doesn’t deserve MVP, but I can also understand the counter-argument.
As a corollary I’d suggest in either case that an additional rule be implemented to better help teams guide their development over long leagues: At the end of the game a coach may remove 1D3 players of their choice from eligibility. In addition, any number of Assistant Coaches will add +1 to the roll for a maximum of four players that could be removed from eligibility.
- Touchback – There was a comment thread on NAF recently that discussed the way in which a ball bouncing due to lack of successful AG rolls to catch would result in a touchback. The scenario is that a ball scatters toward the midfield line on the initial scatter roll, where it ends up targeted at a player with a low AG on the line (for example). That player misses the catch roll and the ball scatters again, this time going over the midfield line and causing a touchback, where any player on the receiving team can have control of the ball without making a roll.
Obviously from an abstraction perspective this is kind of tough to swallow. It would make more sense if a ball was considered in the air up until the moment when a player was permitted to attempt to gain control of it, at which point it was considered in play. This could certainly result in situations where a ball could start on the opposing half of the pitch from the receiving team, but practically speaking since the receiving team acts first, this is a minor setback at best.
The biggest situation I can see this affecting is if a ball scatters out of bounds from a missed catch which, per the rules, would result in the ball being tossed back in by the crowd. But I think all this would do is prevent coaches from placing No Hands (or functionally equivalent) players in the wide zones because it is probably not reliable enough for the kicking team, even with the Kick skill, to plan on a throw-in on the kickoff; you’re still far more likely to end up with a touchback.
Feedback, as always, appreciated.
The List
It’s short this week because I think I suffered a bit from some post-con game fatigue and also I spent a lot of my potential gaming time doing more hobby-type things than actually playing. There are a couple of things coming up that may influence the List in coming weeks, although I can’t predict whether it will be an expanding or a contracting influence: First is the release of Viva Piñata 2 which Nik is interested in and the second is a schedule I’m working on to better track my daily activities. Currently I feel like I have more time for gaming than I actually spend gaming because I’m not sufficiently planning ahead, but it may be that when I work out the schedule I find I can’t spend as much time on it as I even do at this point.
- Blood Bowl – I entered my Elf team into the league, primarily due to a low league-night turnout and a lack of desire to play my Undead team against a familiar opponent when there are so many other teams in the league I’d still like to play against. I lost badly to Thom’s Orcs, though it could have been closer and a more satisfying loss if I’d understood a little better how to play Elves. It’s remarkable how different it is to play a high AG team opposed to a ST-based team; conditioned response-style plays like plugging up TZs with random linemen becomes a foolish move but it’s so second nature with tougher teams that I didn’t realize until close to the end of the first half how many of my players were ending up on their butts because they weren’t playing to their strengths. I anticipate that my second match with the Wildcats will be a bit better but I also speculate that it will be quite a few more games before I work out some of the base strategies to employ and become a legitimate threat.
- Pikomino – Nik and I played a round of this and I was again struck by how different this game is as a two-player affair compared to playing with three or more. The lack of steal opportunities I think makes the biggest difference; one thing I like about the game with more players is how insecure any lead is. It’s possible with two players to get enough of a lead to essentially secure the victory, something that just isn’t possible as you add more players.
Hobby Corner
I spent a large portion of Saturday engaged in the preliminary steps of getting a set of models finished: Priming, basecoats, sanding. I settled on a basecoat technique for my Van Saar Necromunda gang, basically a greyish blue color with a thin blue wash. It’s still not exactly what I envisioned in my head, but it’s pretty close and with these models I think the devil is going to be in the details, not the big sections of color.
I also sanded, assembled and primed my Elf reserves (two Catchers and two Linewomen) plus I glued some counter-weights into the existing Catchers’ bases since they were prone to tipping. I hope to get those basecoated this week sometime and ideally I’ll have them completed and based in two weeks. Why two weeks? Because I’m hoping that will be the amount of time I need to save up for my next purchase/project: I’m planning to buy a set of female humans from Shadowforge which I’ll use to round out my plastic humans from the boxed set into a complete co-ed Human team. I’m also eying the Heresy Ogre model from Impact! Miniatures as the Big Guy on that team and I think when all is said and done they’ll be pretty cool as a group.
My last partial project was a blister pack of Shadowrun Lone Star figs I had picked up a couple of years ago at GenCon in a flea market. I found them and thought I’d go ahead and get them sanded, assembled and primed while I had the primer out. Unfortunately I hadn’t looked close enough previously to note that the Ral Partha Shadowrun figs were probably more like 25mm scale than the GW-standard 28mm so they can’t be mixed. It’s not a problem per se, it just means I’d need some additional RP Shadowrun models to ever make real use of them and to the best of my knowledge, they aren’t being produced anymore. I guess I know what I’ll be looking for in my flea market scourings from now on.
Parting Shot
Having a bit of a chance to sit back and reflect on Pacificon, I think one thing I could have done better would have been to specifically plan the events and schedule around a realistic eating regimen. If I had one regret about the whole event it was that I wasted more time than I would have liked with between-schedule lag times that weren’t filled with pickup games and hasty meals that took more time than they should have considering they weren’t planned.
I’m already looking ahead to DunDraCon, so I’m thinking one thing that I’m interested in is making sure my GM’d games are set into better slots as well as (and part of this is based on my current schedule-everything mindset) ensuring there are set times for eating and bracketing those with either time to play random games or specific events I want to attend.
Another thing I’m thinking is that I lost a lot of time due to exhaustion based on some difficulty I had sleeping. Both nights at ConQuest I retired from the common areas fairly early but then lagged around the hotel room unable to sleep and then didn’t get enough rest so I didn’t get rolling the next day until about mid-morning. Some of the blame I can’t really pinpoint; I just had a hard time sleeping in that hotel room. But I think also my biggest motivator Saturday morning was a scheduled Pandemic game so I think scheduling games a bit earlier would be a good way to ensure I get the gaming in instead of assuming there will be time to play all the games I want.