Throw Out Your Rulebooks

“What kind of ingredient would you use to make an insomnia poison?”

“I don’t know, what kind of creature can put a player to sleep?”

“Let me search it… Ooh! The eyestalk of a Beholder!”

“Yeah, those things are creepy looking. That should work. You named the rage inducing poison ‘Honey Badger’?

“It’s made with the fur of a dire badger...”

While spitballing ideas for the upcoming sessions, my co-DM and I decided that we wanted to add in some classes and game features. D&D Next, the system we run for our one-shots, is a pretty barebones system at the moment. It leaves a lot of room for improvisation and gives you very few limiting guidelines. This may seem like a bad thing. Why use this unfinished system when you could buy (or find on the internet. Let’s be real…) all of those D&D 3.5 books? Then, all of the rules would be right in front of you. But using just the base rules is kind to both the DM and the players, especially in a new group.

First of all, who in the hell wants to read all of those books and memorize the rules? As DM, you will be expected to answer any rule questions and in the heat of the game the players do not want you to be paging through manuals to locate the single relevant rule (or worse, figure out which rule to use if there are conflicting rules for the situation) in that gigantic stack of books. Starting with the basic rules means that fewer rules need to be memorized and the rest can be left up to DM discretion.

No rules for shark wrestling? Have the player roll a d20 and then ask yourself if you want them to succeed or fail. Make it so or let the dice tell the story. D20 systems are made to keep things like this simple. Is the shark-wrestling player a halfling or a half-orc? Logic can help you determine the outcome in this case. Tadah! You’ve just made up some rules without having to open up a book.

The other downside of drawing from a vast array of reference material is that players either have to read it all or feel like they are playing a game whose rules they don’t know (because, you know, they don’t know them…). It’s setting a bar for entry into the game. Either read this stuff or play at a disadvantage. A basic packet of rules is easy to look through and lets players make informed decisions on an even playing field.

A new DM may find this improvisational play style to be intimidating. What if something is unbalanced? What if the class you create is too powerful or too weak? The lesson here, like in many of our other articles, is to learn by playing and possibly failing. If the created class is too weak, give it some more powers or an extra feat. There is a simple solution for most every problem you will encounter.

Still too scared to throw out your rule books? Use them for ideas while simplifying the actual processes. D&D Next takes out a lot of numbers and replaces them with advantage or disadvantage, the process of rolling two d20’s and taking the higher or lower number respectively.

Advantage is a great tool for making up rules on the fly. It was discussed a bit in the earlier post ‘Rules for the Table’ as being an exceptional method for giving slight bonuses or penalties without breaking the game. It doesn’t guarantee success or failure, and that’s what makes it so good. An idea for a cool coat that would make someone more persuasive can be easily put into the game by making it give advantage on charisma rolls. Too strong? It only gives that advantage once a day.

No matter what game you are playing, don’t be limited by what there are and are not rules for. Pull ideas from books, TV, and other games. Simplify your rule set and don’t lug your 10 D&D 3.5 books around. If you need to make something up, feel confident that you won’t be scarring your players or ruining your game.

Break away from that rule book!

Baby DM out.