When do D&D houserules and derivations comprise a new rpg?

[kent]

This is a thread for opinions and discussion with no expectation there is one correct answer.

At what point does a collection of houserules for OD&D or AD&D become a new rpg? Twin the perspective of that question with its opposite. If someone claims they have created a new rpg, when what they have produced is clearly heavily derived from OD&D or AD&D, how radical and wholesale do the changes have to be before it could generally be acknowledged that it was in fact a new rpg and not a collection of houserules.

The fantasy rpgs I like which are similar to D&D but are clearly classed as different rpgs: Warhammer 1st ed; Runequest 2nd ed, Rolemaster 2nd ed; Dragon Warriors 1st. Interestingly they are all deeply entrenched in rich and distinctive settings, if we associate with Middle-earth with Rolemaster. The mechanics too are original, stats, spells, skills and so on.

AS&SH for me has a rich setting but is not a new rpg to my mind being too derivative when compared with the four examples above. Carcosa was clearly a set of houserules for OD&D and yet I think with little effort it could easily become a new rpg. From a rather incoherent discussion with Gabor Lux it is unclear whether his hungarian rpg is houseruled D&D or a new rpg.

[Stormcrow]

When D&D started, players were primarily interested in what campaign they were playing in, not what the collected rules they were using were called. You didn't have to warn players that there were "house rules"--that was simply "the campaign."

As TSR attempted to catch the genie before it escaped the bottle, they made a big deal of "official D&D." Since the rules required you to design your own game from what appears in the booklets, they were really just trying to establish a differences between commercial efforts and homemade ones. The idea that D&D is a specific set of fundamental rules and no others is really just marketing.

At the beginning, some people used the term dungeons and dragons (lowercase) to mean "this new kind of wargame."

I therefore don't worry too much what it's called. When I refer to a particular set of rules, I'm specific; when I refer to someone's game, I'm less careful.

[Finarvyn]

I think it comes down to the question: "Is there some key element of the system that has changed?" If so, it's a new RPG.

RuneQuest replaces classes with skills. That seems to be pretty major to me. RQ also replaces d20 rolls with percentile rolls. Not as significant, but certainly a change. I think that RQ is a new game, compared to D&D, but basicaly the same game as BRP or Call of Cthulhu or Stormbringer or other games based on the same rules.

T&T is very D&D-like in many ways, but the whole combat system is different and the way monsters are figured is totally changed. Sort of a gray area, as T&T has so many D&D elements, but I guess it's a new game.

Amber Diceless is a new game. Its mechanics look nothing like D&D. No levels, no d20 dice mechanic, different attributes, and so on.

AD&D may be legally different from D&D, but to me it's just a variant of the same thing. Tweaks to AC, hit dice, and so on, don't really make the game "new" in my mind. I mentally group them all together under the "dungeons and dragons" topic. In this era of "clones" I expand my mental umbrella to include C&C, LL, S&W and so many other games. I think most of what is on the market now would technicaly count as a house rule or variant, since the core principles that make the games are all basically the same.

I really doubt if Svenny or any of Dave's other players ever said "we're not playing D&D, we're playing Blackmoor." It's only recently when RPG variants have to be distinguished for marketing and legal purposes that this has become so commonplace.

[kent]

Jul 23, 2013 10:23:01 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

When D&D started, players were primarily interested in what campaign they were playing in, not what the collected rules they were using were called. You didn't have to warn players that there were "house rules"--that was simply "the campaign."

As TSR attempted to catch the genie before it escaped the bottle, they made a big deal of "official D&D." Since the rules required you to design your own game from what appears in the booklets, they were really just trying to establish a differences between commercial efforts and homemade ones. The idea that D&D is a specific set of fundamental rules and no others is really just marketing.

At the beginning, some people used the term dungeons and dragons (lowercase) to mean "this new kind of wargame."

I therefore don't worry too much what it's called. When I refer to a particular set of rules, I'm specific; when I refer to someone's game, I'm less careful.

The notion that a campaign came implicitly with houserules was something I assumed until I went online a few years back. There is something about the high density of US gamers that lead to an expectation of uniformity, at least that's how I rationalised being assured you were not supposed to houserule AD&D to the extent of OD&D online.

Im not so much trying to establish a definition for the boundary as wondering is there a point where someone looks at their houserules, realises they have travelled a long way from the published core and asks themself if they should start with a blank sheet and deliberately alter basic gaming concepts, stats & magic etc., which they had not touched to that point so that they could end up with a new roleplaying game.

What I find interesting is to what extent the authors of the 4 rpgs I mentioned above made changes based on inspiration rather than legality. Nowadays one need not worry about the latter and so settings with houserules (I wish there was a more dignified term) can be published as readily as new rpgs.

[kent]

Jul 23, 2013 10:47:39 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

AD&D may be legally different from D&D, but to me it's just a variant of the same thing. Tweaks to AC, hit dice, and so on, don't really make the game "new" in my mind. I mentally group them all together under the "dungeons and dragons" topic. In this era of "clones" I expand my mental umbrella to include C&C, LL, S&W and so many other games. I think most of what is on the market now would technicaly count as a house rule or variant, since the core principles that make the games are all basically the same.

I completely agree and in fact I don't see any difference between OD&D and AD&D with respect to houseruling and the farflung sort of campaigns that can result from them. AD&D is more explicit in its ideas but it is *Gygax* being explicit, he has more space write his essays. Who plays OD&D who hasn't read the DMG? The books just make a little library of ideas to be creative from.

[Deleted]

Your right that in the older days Im sure that folks all called the game D&D even if they were using Ardin rules or whatever.

Jul 23, 2013 10:47:39 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

I really doubt if Svenny or any of Dave's other players ever said "we're not playing D&D, we're playing Blackmoor."

Love this comment!

[Azafuse]

If you change the rules, you're playing a different game (because the change itself goes against rules "as written").

Otherwise you could play football with brass knuckles to hit the other players and still say "Hey man.. I am still wearing helmet, pads and jockstrap.. I am following the rules".

[Falconer]

I’m running RQ2, and, outside specialized RPG forums, I simply refer to it among my real life friends as our “Friday Night D&D”.

[geoffrey]

The bare minimum one needs for D&D is the rules to generate a human fighter and the rules for him to move, engage in combat, and attempt saving throws.

A robust skill system can take the game out of D&D land.

[oldkat]

Many board games require the players to move tokens around the perimiter of the playing surface; monopoly is the prime example of this. But alot of games use the same mechanic, and are not monopoly.

IMHO, it is the context/setting of the game that is the decider. For example, Boot Hill is a roleplaying game that shares many mechanics with D&D. But it is NOT D&D...it is Boot Hill.

Now, how one defines what D&D is, now that is the question!

[Stormcrow]

Jul 24, 2013 12:38:55 GMT -6 oldkat said:

Boot Hill is a roleplaying game that shares many mechanics with D&D. But it is NOT D&D...it is Boot Hill. 

Please prove to us that Boot Hill is not D&D.

[oldkat]

Jul 24, 2013 13:16:10 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

Jul 24, 2013 12:38:55 GMT -6 oldkat said:

Boot Hill is a roleplaying game that shares many mechanics with D&D. But it is NOT D&D...it is Boot Hill. 

Please prove to us that Boot Hill is not D&D.

I'll go one better, and say that Traveller is NOT D&D. And that Star Frontiers is NOT D&D. And that EOTPT is NOT D&D. Etc.

But, that's only according to my definition of what D&D actually is.

That's the point. If the defining characteristics of what D&D is are not known, then anything can/cannot be D&D.

[crusssdaddy]

Perhaps an exercise can determine whether you have a new game or whether a marked up copy of D&D will suffice. Imaging that you intend to publish your campaign as a distinct set of rules aimed at an audience at least unfamiliar with your game and potentially ignorant of RPGs in general, write a small but crucial portion: character generation, combat, magic & spells, etc. Not an equipment or monster list.

How substantially does this sample differ from D&D? If not much, then don't bother writing out the rest; if "a lot" then maybe calling what you have a new game is not just a case of immodest enthusiasm. Definitions of "substantially" will vary.

[Stormcrow]

Jul 24, 2013 14:30:19 GMT -6 oldkat said:

Yes, I know. My question was rhetorical, not an argument. But you're never going to get everyone to agree on that definition...

[Deleted]

I think it's better to say that games like OD&D, AD&D, B/X, etc. are all the same family of games. Similarly, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, etc. are the same family of games. They are all similar, but not the same. I think of them like I think of people. My dad, myself, and my son all look a lot alike (so much that my sisters saw an old photo of my dad in his teens and thought it was me their brother!), but I wouldn't say that we are the same person, we are a family of closely related people.

[zeraser]

To my mind, one of the features that most distinguishes earlier D&Ds from AD&D is that AD&D seems to have been written in order to standardize play among different tables (which might be useful at a convention, say). Earlier D&Ds, it seems, were part of a less formalized practice in which it didn't really matter whether a bunch of people in Tomah and another bunch of people in Albert Lea were playing the game the same way. So I guess this question might have different answers if OD&D is under the microscope than if AD&D is.

On a broader level, there's the weird multiple nature of D&D to reckon with: It's a product owned by Hasbro that you can buy a copy of. It's an activity people get together to do. It's a historically conditioned set of rules and assumptions about imaginary worlds. I guess even a single houserule is enough to make something not the product D&D; if you make people walk around in the woods and hit each other with foam sticks, that's probably no longer the activity D&D; if you sit around and pretend to be members of the Florentine Camerata inventing opera in the late 1500s, you might not be observing the thought-apparatus of D&D anymore.

There's nothing inherently valuable about "playing D&D" as opposed to "playing this other game we came up with." You can call it bananas foster, and I'm still going to enjoy it. (I'll also probably still refer it as "D&D," though, just so people know what I'm talking about.)

[premmy]

A promising discussion, but it's 2:21 AM right now, so I'll read it tomorrow. A quick detail, however:

Jul 23, 2013 9:00:43 GMT -6 kent said:

From a rather incoherent discussion with Gabor Lux it is unclear whether his hungarian rpg is houseruled D&D or a new rpg.

Would you consider Castles & Crusades to be a new rpg (as opposed to houseruled D&D)? If yes, then so is Gabor's Sword & Magic.

[talysman]

Are we talking published games, or informal house-rules?

To my way of thinking, the mechanics, the paraphernalia, and the setting/color content are not the game. You can change those all to heck and back and it's still just a house-ruled version of D&D (or whatever game you started with.) The rules that define the structure, though, are much more central to D&D: class and level play, advancement through earned experience, escalating hit dice and power levels, the concept of exploring a fictitious reality that "exists" independent of whims of players or GM. You can get away with a change or two here, maybe, but the more house rules you have that alter the structure, the more likely it is that players won't think of it as the same game at all.

The same applies when you publish your variant of D&D, but if you change a lot of the trivial stuff (mechanics and whatnot) while your structure remains mostly the same, you can choose to label it a different game for legal reasons, or out of pride. Other people may or may not acknowledge that it's a different game. It really doesn't matter, though.

[Finarvyn]

Jul 23, 2013 23:16:24 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I’m running RQ2, and, outside specialized RPG forums, I simply refer to it among my real life friends as our “Friday Night D&D”.

I'm the same way; no matter what we play I tend to call it my "D&D group."

I think that's because "D&D" has become more than a simple brand name. It's like saying "I'll have a coke to drink" when what you want is coke or pepsi or RC or whatever other sugery drink comes out of the soda fountain. "Band-aid" is an actual brand name, and technically one should ask about an adhesive bandage for a bleading wound. There are many cases of products which have become the flagship for the industry, where their name represents the entirety of the product of all manufacturers, and I think that D&D is like that.

[Finarvyn]

Jul 24, 2013 18:21:42 GMT -6 premmy said:

Jul 23, 2013 9:00:43 GMT -6 kent said:

From a rather incoherent discussion with Gabor Lux it is unclear whether his hungarian rpg is houseruled D&D or a new rpg.

Would you consider Castles & Crusades to be a new rpg (as opposed to houseruled D&D)? If yes, then so is Gabor's Sword & Magic.

And the real problem is that the definition of a "game" is no longer a clear distinction. The OGL of 2000 began our journey on a path that leads us into a gray area that we will never be able to emerge from.

By today's definition, C&C is its own game. C&C borrows heavily from the SRD, which technically makes it "D&D" again, but also diverges in many other ways. It has product identity, has its own authors, web pages, module support, and so on. Someone who is not WotC owns the rights to the brand name and can sell the product. It's its "own game" by modern standards.

This is true with all of the clones. While they could be called "derivative games" or something like that, they have their own identity and in some respect are their own thing even if they came from another thing. Heck, now you get games based on games based on the SRD. "Ruins & Ronins" is a game based on "Swords & Wizardry" which is based on the SRD, so it's not just a matter of derivative but derivative-from-derivative.

Makes my head swim, and I suspect we'll neve arrive at a single answer unless we say that everything is a derivative of the first RPG. (Braunstein, or whatever.)

[scottenkainen]

At the risk of sounding too subjective to truly answer this question, D&D is any game you can convince a group of players is D&D without grumblings and objections.

~Scott "-enkainen" Casper

[Random]

It seems that D&D is about as difficult to define as hardcore porn.

The way I see it, at minimum, D&D requires: ability scores, hit dice, character classes, character levels, saving throws, Vance-styled magic, small-group focus (as opposed to mainly large battles), and a referee as final authority for all matters other than player character intentions.

If one of those isn't present in some form, I'd want to call it something else. I'll admit that I consider Vance-styled magic a sacred cow though, at least for the more powerful spells available, as well as saving throws (as those are just exciting and classic).

[inkmeister]

I agree with Fin.

It's a very complicated question. It depends on how strong a microscope you put the games under. Each edition of D&D has different encounter tables; would that difference alone make a different game? S&W does hit dice as d6-1, d6, d6+1 - is that a different game than Moldvay which does d4, d6, d8, or OD&D which does not have a particular pattern, but sticks to d6's? Is Basic Fantasy a different game because it uses ascending armor class and a d20 for cleric turning? Is Geoffrey's game not D&D because he excludes all the published monsters, magic items, and most of the classes? What about people who play 90% by the book, but choose not to use ability scores at all?

I think that generally, with all of the above types of games, you'll see far more variation between different DM's running the same game than you will with the same DM running the different games.

When the game started out, it wasn't about the specific rules, it was about taking or inventing whatever aspect it would take to get the result you wanted. I think people still largely play this way, but now there are a lot more polished baseline games to start with.

I think a different approach here would be more fruitful. Among even those who frequent this site, there is considerable variation in HOW the game is played, as opposed to what ruleset is used.

For instance, some people run very hardcore challenge oriented games, and others run games that de-emphasize lethality and challenge in favor of roleplaying, character development, and story. You can tell them apart. On K&K message boards, there are a lot more of the DM's that seem excited to design a very dangerous dungeon that will certainly yield some good PC fatalities. Here and elsewhere, there are a lot more people who add rules to make the game easier and less deadly. There are people here who don't track XP or give XP for gold, but do a more freeform leveling process. One poster here declared his strong dislike for dungeons of all sorts. Luke Crane (posting on G+ and STory Games) has said many times that D&D is not a game anymore once you take it out of the dungeon, declaring it a "happy fun-time basement game" as soon as you try to make D&D anything other than a dungeon game. Some people embrace the implicit OD&D setting (with some fascinating analyses), others ignore all that stuff as silly junk that was needlessly included in volume 3, prefering to do it their own way. Some people use the treasure tables, others ignore them.

IT is more useful to discuss one's mindset and goals in playing the RPG than it is to discuss what specific set of rules they are using.

[Ynas Midgard]

Okay, I am going to throw in some hypothetical games and you, gentle people, may decide if they are D&D or not:

[*]No. 1. Exactly like B/X but with a spell point system (but the point costs can be reverse-engineered into the original spell levels); thus, rules for spell point recovery, spell point-based magic item creation.
[*]No. 2. Exactly like No. 1. but with spell schools and specialised wizards, for whom the spell point costs are also varied by schools and not only the original spell levels.
[*]No. 3. Exactly like No. 1. but the spell point costs are not related to the original spell levels anymore.
[*]No. 4. Exactly like B/X but no Hit Dice; instead, a flat number of HP is gained upon each level, and monsters' have a fixed number of HP, too.
[*]No. 5. Exactly like B/X but no character classes; characters are built from powers (which resemble cast abilities: attack bonus, saving throw bonuses, turning, casting, thief skill, etc.).
[*]No. 6. Exactly like B/X but uses d100 instead of d20. The probabilities are the same, though, only the die size is changed.
[*]No. 7. Exactly like B/X but uses 3d6 instead of d20. The probabilities are sometimes drastically changed because the bonuses and penalties are not adjusted at all, only the die rolling mechanics.
[*]No. 8. Exactly like B/X but uses a single die roll to determine the outcome of battle. Other sub-systems (spell casting, non-combat spells, thif skills, movement, advancement, etc.) are untouched.
[*]No. 9. Exactly like B/X but character advancement is based on (a) "role-playing" (acting like your character, doing a voice, etc.), (b) clever solutions, and (c) witty remarks in-character that bring laughter to the table.
[*]No. 10. Exactly like BX but adjusted to a 1on1 setup with no henchmen or followers. A single hero versus the world.

[Stormcrow]

Jul 25, 2013 7:58:48 GMT -6 Random said:

It seems that D&D is about as difficult to define as hardcore porn.

You know it when you see it.



Is it still D&D?

[zeraser]

Jul 25, 2013 6:14:20 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

And the real problem is that the definition of a "game" is no longer a clear distinction. The OGL of 2000 began our journey on a path that leads us into a gray area that we will never be able to emerge from.

I think this is the heart of the matter. In one sense, D&D is whatever Hasbro says it is (or, better, whatever Hasbro allows it to be) because Hasbro owns it.

[Ynas Midgard]

Jul 25, 2013 9:14:53 GMT -6 zeraser said:

Jul 25, 2013 6:14:20 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

And the real problem is that the definition of a "game" is no longer a clear distinction. The OGL of 2000 began our journey on a path that leads us into a gray area that we will never be able to emerge from.

I think this is the heart of the matter. In one sense, D&D is whatever Hasbro says it is (or, better, whatever Hasbro allows it to be) because Hasbro owns it.

Well, we could easily take this route by allowing the authors and owners to decide if their game is a derivation or an entirely new one (similarly to linguistics which does not distinguish languages and dialects - it is up to politicians to decide).

[geoffrey]

Jul 25, 2013 7:58:48 GMT -6 Random said:

It seems that D&D is about as difficult to define as hardcore porn.

The way I see it, at minimum, D&D requires: ability scores, hit dice, character classes, character levels, saving throws, Vance-styled magic, small-group focus (as opposed to mainly large battles), and a referee as final authority for all matters other than player character intentions.

If one of those isn't present in some form, I'd want to call it something else. I'll admit that I consider Vance-styled magic a sacred cow though, at least for the more powerful spells available, as well as saving throws (as those are just exciting and classic).

Carcosa doesn't have Vance-styled magic, but no one can convince me we haven't been playing D&D in Carcosa for all these years!

[talysman]

Jul 25, 2013 8:52:07 GMT -6 Ynas Midgard said:

Okay, I am going to throw in some hypothetical games and you, gentle people, may decide if they are D&D or not:

Commercially published, or private house rules? If someone says "Hey, I'm going to be running D&D, but with these changes", all of those are D&D, although you might get some push-back from players on #5. If someone takes the SRD, modifies it in one of those ways, and publishes under the OGL, it's a different game if that's what the author says, although most people will recognize all but #5 as being D&D derivatives, and #6 through #10 would probably get a lot of scoffing critics saying "It's just D&D with a minor change, how can someone call it a unique game?"

[Random]

Jul 25, 2013 9:39:41 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Carcosa doesn't have Vance-styled magic, but no one can convince me we haven't been playing D&D in Carcosa for all these years!

I wouldn't even try!

But, if someone invited me over for D&D and I found out that magic worked fundamentally differently in their game, it would seem a significant variation. I wouldn't think much of it other than that I wouldn't have expected it.

It's a matter of expectations.