[OD&D] Halenar Frosthelm: House Rules 46 years and counting

[The Perilous Dreamer]

House Rules at various points in time.

In this thread I will be posting all of the house rules that I have thought about and/or tried and/or used. Not everything in this thread will be things that I have tried, some I have only thought about, some were only used once and some are used all the time.



I will also be posting ideas with a question, such as the following example:



How do you define each of these by size in your campaign? Also do you have better names for some of these?



I sort of do it as follows:



Farmstead = 1 or 2 extended families

Hamlets = 3 or more Farmsteads up to 150 people.

Small Villages (walled) = 151-400 people

Villages (walled) = 401-1000 people and may have a few shops & other amenities

Small Towns (walled) = 1001-2000 people

Towns (walled) = 2001-5000 people

Large Towns (walled) = 5001-10,000 people

Small Cities (walled) = 10,001-20,000 people

Cities (walled) = 20,001 - 100,000 people

Large Cities (walled) = 100,001-1,000,000 or more people



And much, much more: especially the questions!

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Of all the house rules I have had over the years the oldest one concerns natural 20's. In OD&D bitd a natural 20 always hits and double natural 20's, i.e. two natural 20's rolled back to back was always and auto kill. My friend who brought the game to us in college in the fall of '75 told me that when they first started playing in the spring of '74 that it was the first house rule they put in the game for OD&D.

Over the years there were many variations, such as a natural 20 followed by a 17 or 18 was double damage or followed by a 19 was triple damage and followed by a second 20 was an auto kill. One variation was that you had to be 4 levels higher than your opponent for any of these options to kick in.

Currently, I run it that a natural 20 followed by a 19 is double damage and a natural 20 followed by a second 20 is an auto kill.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

What are the death rules in your campaign? Are you happy with way you run it? And are your players happy with the way you run it? Are you more lenient that you would otherwise be to make everyone happy?

Bitd we played it that at 0 HPs you were dead as dead could be, end of the story until you got a cleric to a high enough level to change the playing field. Now, as I mentioned elsewhere, we currently play it as follows: when a PC gets to 0 HPs (actually 0 to -10HP) we rule that you are unconscious and bleeding, the Ref rolls a d12 and whatever the result is the other PCs have that many melee rounds to start administering at least first aid or the PC is dead. However, if the roll on the d12 is a 1, then the PC is dead because there is not enough time (6 sec melee rounds) to start first aid.

My preference would be to run it the same as we did bitd, but I don’t have strong feelings about it, since one: it makes all the players happy and two: they gain no advantage since they take more risks and as a result die just as much and as often as if we did it the old way.

How do you run it in your campaign?

Tim Kask wrote:

In the true sense of the original game, 0 HP meant you had failed to avoid a mortal blow. You were dead. How long you had before the stiff got ripe was up to each DM and the ambient temperature of the adventure.

This is how we played it bitd and not one player ever questioned or complained about it back then. Currently I implemented my house rule as detailed above simply because it does not really help them at all, but it gives them the illusion that they have been helped and it completely eliminates questions or complaints, but I would prefer the original way. At least it does not really make them die less often, because players always use every bit of rope that you give them. I implemented this house rule because not everyone comes from an old school background and even those that do have largely been corrupted (no offense intended) on this issue over the years.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I like the concept of a "hide" of land and the fact that it was not a specific measure of the area of a plot of ground, but that it varied in size.

Here are some other terms that I would like to work into one version of my rules, of course I would have more incentive to do it if I had players who were interested in the original end game.

List of medieval land terms
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The feudal system, in which the land was owned by a monarch, who in exchange for homage and military service granted its use to tenants-in-chief, who in their turn granted its use to sub-tenants in return for further services, gave rise to several terms, particular to Britain, for subdivisions of land which are no longer in wide use. These medieval land terms include the following:

a burgage, a plot of land rented from a lord or king
a hide: the hide originally referred to the land-holding that supported a family in the early medieval period, sharing its roots with words used to describe related issues, such as the family deriving directly from the sexual relationship between a man and a woman. The hide was later used to define areas of land, which could vary from 60 to 120 old acres (approximately 30 modern acres (120,000 m2)) depending somewhat on the quality of the land. The hide was not ubiquitous in Anglo-Saxon England, with, for example, land in Kent being assessed in sulungs (approximately twice the size of the average hide).
a Knight's fee: is the amount of land for which the services of a knight (for 40 days) were due to the Crown. It was determined by land value, and the number of hides in a Knight's Fee varied.
a hundred: a division of an English shire consisting of 100 hides. The hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham in Buckinghamshire are known as the Chiltern Hundreds.
a franconian Lan used in Poland since the 13th century, consisted of 43.2 morgs = 23 to 28 hectares. The term Lan was also used to indicate a full-sized farm, as opposed to one split up into a number of smaller sections.
a wapentake: a subdivision of a county used in Yorkshire and other areas of strong Danish influence. It is similar to hundred or a ward. It was used in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland.
a shire was originally a type of a subdivision of a county; some shires evolved into administrative areas equivalent to a county; a shire was headed by a Shire Reeve (becoming Sheriff, in Saskatchewan the Mayor of a Rural Municipality is a Reeve); shires were most commonly subdivided into hundreds, but other types of subdivisions were also made
a rape: Sussex was divided into six rapes, which were intermediate divisions between the county and the hundred. A rape was to have its own river, forest and castle.
a lathe: Kent was divided into five lathes, from the Old English laeth, meaning district.
a riding: was a division of land in Yorkshire equivalent to a third of the shire. The name is derived from the Old Norse thriding, meaning "one-third".
a ward: a ward is a subdivision of a shire, equivalent to a wapentake or a hundred. It was used in Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Durham.

From sizes.com

In England, 5th or 6th – 16th century, an Anglo-Saxon unit of land area, conceptually the amount of land needed to support a peasant family, “acres sufficient for one plow for a year1.” Much of the 19th-century controversy concerning the size of the early hide arose from thinking of it as an areal unit, when in fact it was one by which taxes were assessed. In this role it was ultimately replaced by the knights fee. In later times the hide = 120 acres, often naively assumed to be = 100 acres, but in the original sources describing the hide as a hundred acres, it is the long, or great, hundred, 120, that is meant.

www.sizes.com/units/hide.htm
www.sizes.com/indexes.htm

[Death Even XIII]

I like the community sizes that you lay out in your first post. That is the most comprehensive thing I have seen posted anywhere. I am surprised that is not in the early versions of D&D, it kind of seems like it ought to be a no brainer.

[hengest]

Feb 10, 2021 14:29:55 GMT -5 Death Even XIII said:

I like the community sizes that you lay out in your first post. That is the most comprehensive thing I have seen posted anywhere. I am surprised that is not in the early versions of D&D, it kind of seems like it ought to be a no brainer.

Am in full agreement.

Re: the rest of the thread, would love to see a set of these, including the anecdote about PD's friend's first house rules, in the 'zine.

The Perilous Dreamer, have an exalt for this immersive yet technical thread.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I have added it to the list of suggested topics in my fanzine thread.

[Death Even XIII]

I nominate this information for the fanzine. The Perilous Dreamer, Admin Pete, mao, hengest, The Semi-Retired Gamer

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Jun 1, 2021 12:32:37 GMT -5 Death Even XIII said:

I nominate this information for the fanzine. The Perilous Dreamer , Admin Pete , mao , hengest , The Semi-Retired Gamer

Thanks, noted!