Ken's Master List of D&D 5e House Rules and Preferences

These are house rules! The rules are what have worked for me. Maybe some of these rules will please you as a player in one of my games. Maybe they'll do the opposite. Please understand that what I am listing here is for running the best D&D game I know how.

Rule #1: Everyone is responsible for everyone else's fun. You, as a player, are responsible for the fun of the player across the table, yourself, the DM, everyone.

Rule #2: Character Creation: I lump all these together because it's the most common questions asked. Some are house rules, some are clarifications, but they are all lumped together here for convenience.

• Attributes can be point buy or 4d6 drop lowest, and I do allow total redos on attributes if you start over from scratch.
• I use the feat system, like most DMs.
• You may create a human with the alternate rule as shown in the PHB.
• You can either take the free equipment or use the wealth system (rolling for starting money and buying equipment) but not both. As far as I know, this is by the book, but I've been asked if a character gets both so many times that I felt like I needed to spell it out.
• If I don't own a hardcopy of a book, you cannot use anything out of it. No, giving me a PDF doesn't count. I don't use stuff out of third party books or UA. Currently, these are the books I have available: PHB, DMG, MM, VGM, XGE, MTF, CoS, SCAG, GoS, E:RftLW. 

Rule #3: Keep track of ammo. My rule for ammo is: if it did damage, it is spent. If it didn't do damage or was not disposed of in some other way (went off a cliff) then there's a 50% chance of recovery of each arrow.

Rule #4: I don't keep track of spell components unless you lose your pouch and focus, or a spell component costs money.

Rule #5: If we are playing on a system that automatically calculates encumbrance, like the OGL sheet on Roll20, then sure, let's keep track. Otherwise, I forget about encumbrance rules...but make sure you take it into consideration before I am forced to. For example, if you jumped over a ravine to get to a hoard of treasure, then you have to realize beforehand that you can't jump back over fully loaded. Either roleplay having this difficulty, or you force me to add up everyone's encumbrance, and no one wants that sort of delay!

Rule #6: I use benchmarks for leveling, not XP.

Rule #7: Cinematic scenes in which the mechanic of hit points is suspended, is a tricky subject. I generally agree with the opinions stated in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDiiJGle1Y. (Credit to the Taking 20 YouTube channel, in fact, all their videos is incredibly educational and useful.) This means that hit points can be circumvented in the right situations where logic would call for it, though a bit more infrequently than the video calls for.

Rule #8: The subject of limits is important in these games. I have varying levels of restriction of tricky subjects:

• Any player can call a topical "time out" if the game approaches a triggering subject matter.
• Sexual scenes are usually a fade to black, and I don't like RPing horny or lovestruck NPCs. You can find love and/or sex in a game I run if you like, but it's going to be mostly background unless it involves two willing PCs. I completely avoid rape scenes, though the threat of sexual aggression may be implicit (but almost never explicit) in certain aspects of some slavery institutions in the world.
• I can be graphic in my description of violence and wounds, but it usually comes organically from combat. I avoid graphic descriptions of torture, and almost never implement torture on PCs.

Rule #9: Initiative ties are broken by who has the higher Dexterity. After that, higher Wisdom.

PREFERENCES:

These are just preferences. You won't even make me mad if you don't follow these. But you can delight and surprise your DM if you take these into consideration!

• I love roleplay. There's a reason we're not playing a board game.
• I love flavor added to game mechanics. Is your spellbook actually an invisible gremlin with eidetic memory who lives in a bottle and whispers spells to you as you memorize them? Is your Second Wind a traditional chant you must perform to psych yourself up? There are a million places to go after the mechanical fulfillment is met.
• Magical healing produces no scars, but healing from long rests do, depending on the type and severity of the damage healed.
• Attunement is a another tricky subject. My first instinct is to say it sucks, and one should have the ability to attune to more than two magic items as long as they're on different parts of the body. However, part of the Artificer class build (from Eberron: Rising from the Last War) is to be able to attune more than two magic items at a time. So it's going to end up like encumbrance rules: I usually turn a blind eye, but if you make me have to think about it, I'll start enforcing it! And if a player wants to play an Artificer, I definitely have to start enforcing it. 

RULE CLARIFICATIONS:

The following are rules that are correct in the book, but are either so very obscure, or often homebrewed, that it is notable that I run them as such. They are here mostly for the DM's benefit.

• You can only move through an opponents' square if they are two sizes larger or smaller than you, but remain difficult terrain. You can move through a friendly character's square, but it also is difficult terrain.
• A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.
• Hit points are an abstract combination of health, willpower, and luck. This leaves much room for the DM and player to determine exactly how a person is wounded - is it blood loss? Does taking tons of psychic damage mean that the character just wants to lay down and die? There are endless possibilities.

RULES FOR THAT ONE PLAYER...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

• The Paladin spell Summon Steed does not drop your mount from on high, allowing it to crash through the roof and onto the enemy.
• You cannot use the Paladin's Ceremony ritual just for the AC bonus if you immediately claim you are in love with the dwarf right after learning of the existence of the marriage ritual.

Bits of your homebrew D&D world that players probably do not care about (rant)

- Your proprietary name of a thing that already has a name. Unless you have a dedicated group, fully bought in to your homebrew world, they won't care that the goblin language is called "Grok'nee" or that their name for the world is "Pan'par". There's a certain sense of racial disconnect that would be bigotry in the real world, but can be safely and even necessarily employed here. To humans, and even to elves and dwarves, goblins speak Goblin.

- The name of rulers that have no bearing to the story.  If you're on the border of a nation, delving deep into dungeons, who cares what the king's name is? More broadly, you as the DM have to be prepared for the event that your carefully prepared world, nation, or local history may never be revealed. The players may never come across the need, and they may not even care even if they are in need of knowing.

- Your DM PC. Your PC, tagging along just in case someone else takes over DMing duties, is an NPC. Period. No amount of Mary Sue-ing or comic relief will elevate them, in the PC's mind, to the level of importance in the narrative as a PC. It won't even register in their brains as important as a villain. The PCs (and the villains) are the main characters. Period.

- Descriptions of treasure that are not coins, gems, plot-related, or magical. That golden candelabra is going to be sold anyway. Unless you have PCs who adorn their abodes with loot instead of interior decorating properly, no one will ever care.

- Any gravitas an NPC might bring.  Any trope will be lampshaded. Any emotion will be brushed off. Any motive will be ignored. Those that the PC's kill are the enemy.

- Nuance. Way back in the West End Star Wars RPG, they impressed upon the GM and players that the game, like the movies, were black and white. Don't let moral quandaries get in the way of a good romp. I feel like that GMs of all games should take that to heart, unless the game makes a specific point to question the status quo. (V:tM, Paranoia, etc.) Me, personally, I love complex stories that make you think, but D&D may not be the best place for it.



Some of these things are traps the DM should avoid. Some of these things are the fault of lazy players who do not care about the work the DM put into his world. It takes communication and finding the right players to make the perfect fit. Good luck!

Background information for my D&D 5e game

The following is a starting exposition note for players in my new D&D 5e game. Read this before you make a character!

The Land

You start in the town of Lessop, on the island of Torsfit, which is about 50 miles wide, the size of the main Hawaiian Island. On the island are a number of towns, wilderness, and small mountains. Torsfit is the westernmost island in a chain of islands called the Wild Islands, ostensibly belonging to the Kingdom of Fanlong. Since Lessop is the port town on the eastern edge of Torsfit, you get lots of ship traffic from the rest of the kingdom that service the isle and the other towns on it. The town has a good economy of tradesmen and merchants. 

Other port towns on the island include the sleepy Refport on the southwestern side, and the demi-human Diamondsilt to the north. Inland from the shore, mountains rise up fairly steeply, though a few small villages reside inland, mostly existing for lumber and other resources.

Most of the Wild Islands are considered diverse; Torsfit is no exception, though Diamondsilt to the north seems to be heavily inhabited with elves, dwarves, and halflings. Any race that can speak the common language can be found here. Strangely, within the past 20 years, upright, bipedal animal people have been appearing in the area, coming in on traveling ships from far away. They speak, they wear clothes, and they work hard, so not much fuss was made about them in Lessop. Even now one of those horse people is working at the blacksmith shop.

The Maritime Decree

The kingdom of Fanlong once attempted to cement his rule and expand his reach by imposing a series of regulatory laws known as the “Kingsland Law” over the islands. The law stated that any resource acquired from outside civilized portions of the kingdom, but within its borders, was property of the king.

This law had long put a damper on profiteering and free enterprise. If a nearby monster infestation didn’t actively harm the townsfolk, there was no reason to go clear it out, seeing as how any treasure – even something as basic as monster hides – belonged to the king. This was fine back when the kingdom was small and sparsely populated; the king was a benevolent dictator whose mission was the well being of his people. As the kingdom’s borders expanded and the population grew, the law took on a tyrannical bent.

This obviously created years of economic stagnation while the royal court flourished. This very month, near revolt, King Bern passed the Maritime Decree which abolished Kingsland Law. Tariffs were decreased to nearly zero within the kingdom. Trade regulations were loosened. 

Adventurers in Lessop turn their eyes to Lessop Lookout, the tall, sheer mountain standing between Lessop and the rest of the island, cutting the city off except for two roads that travel near either shore. Once, before the Wild Islands came under Fanlong rule, the columned tholos at the top of the mountain was a lookout for ships, and the tunnels inside the mountain were for siege defense. Now, the citizens of Lessop do not go near the place, for fear of haunting or worse. Even the wooded path between the mountain and Lessop is considered haunted. Now that the Maritime Decree has been passed, perhaps it is time to go see if the place is truly haunted.

The Pantheon and History

The gods that rule over this world and the history of the world are inextricable. One influences the other. Wars are fought above and below. No god is apart from the fate of the world.

The origin myth shared by the dominant intelligent races of the world was that the universe was made by four supreme gods, working together. They took upon themselves the different tasks needed to create life – creation, destruction, thought, purpose – for one goal: to create “children” capable of intelligent thought and eventual ascendance. Original worshipers of these deities thought that this was because of love for the world, a sentiment still shared by the majority of faithful today. 

Aira: elder goddess of creation, earth, life, love, sex, and nature. The world is named Airath in reference to her. She is depicted as a blonde woman, vines growing around her arms and legs, and is considered the most powerful of the gods, but also the most tied to the fate of the world. Sometimes she is depicted in a white robe or naked, and sometimes pregnant. She is the patron of parents, children, farmers, druids, and rangers. (NG)

Pheargo: elder god of destruction, fire, death, prophecy, and renewal. He is depicted as a pale, thin, bald man with a reddish black robe, hood over his head, a long knife in his hands. Not many people worship only him; he is usually revered as part of the larger whole of elder gods. He is considered deceased. His place in the heavens was taken by Kentaulo (see below). (LN)

Tria: elder goddess of thought, air, war, and light. She is depicted as a dark haired woman in full plate armor. She is often prayed to at the start of battle. She is a patron of warriors, wizards, and sages. (LG)

Dafisio: elder god of purpose, water, hope, and inspiration. Dafisio is depicted as a musician and witty storyteller, thin with a broad, thin mustache. He is considered “The First Bard”. Sometimes trickery is assigned to him, but he is not necessarily a god of lies. He is a patron of bards and leaders. (CG)

The combination of the goddesses of sex and violence was a neat package that many bawdy men were drawn to. "The Two Sisters" is considered a religion by the barest of margins, more an excuse for pirates to rape and pillage than anything else. However, there is some truth to the perverted nature of the two goddesses, alone with no others to temper them. They bore a son between them, Grapp. He was green and ugly. But he was no less a god. 

Grapp: lesser god of fear, anger, and tyranny. He is worshiped by "greenskins": orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, etc. He is depicted as ugly to the fairer races, though a Grapp worshipper sees nothing wrong with him. Each greenskin race depicts him as one of their own, though always with green skin. (NE)

There is also a popular, unorganized, generic faith of worshiping all four elder gods at once. It does not have any clerical power to speak of, only symbols split into four quadrants, with the colors reminiscent of each deity's dominion in each quadrant.

In the first age, a human named Kaijent became powerful and challenged the gods to his place among them. The gods did not kill the man for his arrogance, but did not agree that this challenge was what the purpose of his life was. Kaijent forced his way to the heavens regardless, and took his mantle as the fifth god in the world.

Kaijent: ascended god of will and magic. He is depicted as a monk; head shaved, loose, billowy clothing, wielding a staff. He is a patron of individuals, anarchists, and sorcerers. (TN)

In the second age, a portal opened in the heavens and a blackness came forth, a chaotic alien essence that threatened the five gods and the universe they reigned over. Both gods and mortals fought this blackness and drove it back, damaging the world in the process; a whole continent was eaten away, while another was sundered in half by the very forces trying to save the planet. This was known as the Black War. Pheargo died, but before he did, he passed his gifts on to his steward, Kentaulo. The second mortal ascended into the heavens, though he is considered to only be a steward of the heavens, and that he is only a humble intermediary to the forces of nature that he commands. Still, he gives the gift of power to his clerics and paladins like any other. Strangely enough, whether a Cleric or Paladin worships Pheargo, Kentaulo, or both, the powers granted are the same. Even the denouncement of either of the gods (in the case of, for example, Pheargo purists) does not affect their powers.

Kentaulo: ascended god, steward of Pheargo. He holds dominion over the same areas that Pheargo once did. He is depicted how he is remembered in life: a black robed youth, once a cleric of Pheargo, bearing two glowing sickles that represent the twins Burden and Gift, that the god bestowed upon him. (LG)

One individual intelligence from the black universe remained, named Mahkeon, though the gods do not say why, when it should have been eradicated from existence. Mahkeon survives as a being on par with the gods, and has worshipers itself. It is considered to be a god of chaos, darkness, lies, and oblivion, whose followers are slowly, gladly consumed with madness.

Mahkeon: invading god of chaos and madness. He is not depicted the same way twice. It is said he is unable to take a form that makes sense to mortal eyes. (CE)

In the third age, Dafisio slowly grew insane, making the whole of his church insane as well. His madness threw the world into turmoil. Nearly 800 years after the black war, Mahkeon had gathered power and allies, attempting to destroy Dafisio and replace him. A former paladin, once cursed by an insane Dafisio but still loyal to what he represented, took upon the mantle of purpose. She is considered a steward of the elder god's power, much like Kentaulo.

M'Hairi: ascended god, steward of Dafisio. She is depicted as a tall, stout, armored woman with the head of a horse, wielding a war hammer. (LG)

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Like many RPG fans, I've created a world for running my D&D games in. The first campaign ran in 2e in the 90's. Then I re-ran the storyline in 3.5e around 2010 or so. This time around, I am using the 5e rules, but also fast-forwarding the timeline hundreds of years. I told my players in the last campaign that the stuff they did will be mythologized in the next campaign. Time to make good on the claim! The most obvious shout-out is to Kent, the Pheargo cleric who eventually ascended to the pantheon to be the steward of death. (Thanks, DJ!) Less obvious is the barbarian dully named Thor...one of those shrug and move on moments, I guess. After the campaign, his happily-ever-after was the reestablishment and repopulation of this barbarian people. The island name of Torsfit is a neologism literally meaning "Thor's Foot". Few non-elf NPC's will have remembered the source of the island's name. 

D&D 5e Player's Handbook

I picked up the Player's Handbook first thing last Friday. I've been reading it, helping friends make characters for fun, and thinking about running a game some time in the future. Here's my thoughts on it so far:

- They kept the layout designers from 4e. So much art, so much a work of art. It's beautiful.

- They're taking the "flavor" route and writing things out in paragraphs. Sure, there are the normal charts: ability score bonuses, items and their cost and weight...you know, the usual. But there's a lot of plain English. This can be good and bad. The way older editions (1e, 2e, BECMI) read like textbooks or instruction manuals. Bad for creativity, good for reference. Once I get past the beauty of the book, I'm going to tabulate this thing with the little 3M page stickies. I'll be labeling Races, Classes, Combat, Spells, Armor, and so on. Perhaps the DM screen - which I know they're going to sell eventually - will be more efficient.

- Warlocks are an advanced class. I can't even get a character name out of my players, but to set up a backstory detailing how you interact with your infernal patron? That's a lot of pure imagination right off the bat. I'm going to enjoy the ramifications of such a class, though. Someone choose Warlock!

- The index isn't bad. That's way more important than anyone realizes.

- The first chapter is an okay character creation summary section. It doesn't summarize the races when it says pick a race, for example. Unless you know it by heart, you have to read the entire chapter on races to know which race to play. In comparison to, say, Werewolf: the Forsaken (the last game I ran), the creation summary section is less informational. Just as a talking point, though, I have to ask myself: is summarizing the "Bone Shadow" tribe as this kind of werewolf who behaves like this and takes these powers, all on one page, a credit to the game world? It's a credit to speeding up character creation, for sure. It may lend itself to flat, two-dimensional characters. But does the impatient character creator, grumpily ignoring most of the chapter on races, make a ONE dimensional character as soon as he chooses a race? Would he even know what it means to be a dragonborn? At least, the new Werewolf player knows his Bone Shadow stereotype. The new D&D 5e player less so. I don't know whether that's a bad thing. I don't know how much pandering to bad, impatient players I and the book need to do.

- WTF is up with those triangular silver coins? They'd poke you in the pocket, get the edges snapped off, and generally would be strange to carry around. Bleh.

- There needs to be a sentence saying how many skill proficiencies a character has at start, and where they come from. (Class, Background, etc.) My friends would choose their class proficiencies, thinking that was all they were going to get, and then they get more. Well then!

All in all, I'm liking it more than 3e, 3.5e, and 4e. It's on a par with 2e rules-wise, but on par with 4e beauty-wise. I had high expectations, and the book is meeting them fairly well.

The sweet spot of worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is a hobby done by writers and RPG game masters where they create an entire world from scratch. They create continents, oceans, weather patterns, civilizations, cities, languages, races, even natural laws. Most of the time, this is for someone to run a homebrew roleplaying game in. You could say that the JRR Tolkien was the greatest worldbuilder of all time, and the greatest inspiration to those of us today. He spent his whole life forming the universe that contained Middle Earth, and is the reason his stories are so full of perceived historical depth and age.

Most worldbuilders today are in direct descendance from Tolkien. Dungeons and Dragons - created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson - spawned from the Lord of the Rings' popularity, the modern roleplaying genre spawned from D&D's success, and most worldbuilders, whether roleplayers, writers, movie makers, or artists, are very much influenced by RPGs. Even further, I'd say that RPG's are so normalized in today's society that almost no one is untouched by their indirect influence.

I drew this link to Tolkien to illustrate how D&D uses shorthand to describe the fantasy medieval world. Before Tolkien, would we have known that an "elf" was comparable to human height, shooting arrows and being condescending? Or would we have thought of small creatures who use magic and delight in helping others, like Santa Claus' elves, which are more in line with European mythologies?

Likewise, many medieval worldbuilders have the standard magic use, dragons, and feudal kings found in everything since Tolkien, each trope reinforcing the genre.

The tropes are so omnipresent that deviations from them form the description of the world. A friend of mine once created a steampunk society for a novel he was writing. Some of his first words were, "Instead of magic, there is..." I know of other people who, though enamoured with roleplaying and worldbuilding, rail against the Tolkienization of it, mostly due to high fantasy burnout. They created completely new worlds with new natural laws, but in doing so created something so strange as to be unplayable as a game, unreadable as a novel. They had unpronounceable names, unintuitive customs, unfathomable moralities, all in the name of originality.

So that brings me to the title of my post - there is a sweet spot of worldbuilding, at least when it comes to fantasy. Something that will, admittedly, unavoidably, be influenced by Tolkien, yet at the same time be original enough to not only be a breath of fresh air, but also something that can inspire. Tolkien created a genre, could I not do the same? I often think, and I feel as if others think the same thing. But like I said, it is a sweet spot - creating differences for the sake of differences is like Mad Libs for worldbuilding. (There once was a ______, who was a type of ______, who thought that all humans were ______.)

Studying Tolkien (and his influences) improves upon the act of worldbuilding...and writing itself. Knowing that he was white, and male, and a Christian, and eschewed allegory, and created the world for the purpose of a linguistic what-if, all goes towards why what he created became huge, and how it could be done again.

I know enough, in the creation of my world, that it is very derivative, but I think I have learned from it. Seeing as how I shall be running a simple D&D 5th edition dungeon crawl, I don't need it to be more expansive than it already is. I've taken the usual influences; set in a D&D world, elves will be tall and haughty once again, orcs are bad guys, and there will be kings instead of presidents. But true to the conceit of this entry, I have knowingly taken lesser known Tolkien influences; place names can be based upon history, sometimes changing or mutating, and I have tried to create original areas that are not too out of this world. I've taken the history of the world (the 3.5e game that I used to run, based in the same world), fast-forwarded 800 years, and worked out what happened in that time. If I was doing a deep, involved game and not a dungeon crawl, or I was writing a novel, I would have taken more liberties with the common influences. However, I think this is a case of working smarter, not harder.