WoD: House Rules
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R&R discussion dipped into the fun topic of house rules for WoD games. I’m curious about your thoughts.
How much deviation would you tolerate before deciding that the game is no longer a “WoD” game? And how would you gauge this metric?
How would you approach a game that actually billed itself as “inspired by” WoD but not actually WoD, but perhaps gutted an entire system like the pledge system? In which almost everything else about the theme is identical to WoD theme. Would it matter to you? Do you prefer knowing before hand that a game may have altered large chunks of the rules?
These rules could be fundamental. Removing a werewolf form or the glamour harvesting system or something. Adjusting how social doors work. Is it still WoD? And if it doesn’t call itself WoD, would this accurately inform you of anything useful?
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No single answer, but:
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I’ll tolerate more if the differences are clearly laid out before I invest time into the game. I’ll tolerate less if the game keeps changing the rules midstream, or hides changes until you run into them in play, or especially if it does both.
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I’ll tolerate more if the changes seem to be grounded in a desire to do things I’m in sympathy with (say, to make an otherwise awkward system work more smoothly). I’ll tolerate less if they seem to stem from a desire to do things I don’t care for.
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I’ll tolerate more if the game is otherwise well-run and engaging. If I can get involved and have fun with it, I am less concerned that, say, the Ventrue don’t exist, or that Werewolf characters don’t have rank, or whatever.
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For me I think it depends on the reason for the house rules more than the rules themselves.
