House Rules for Faster, More Immersive Games

The intent of these house rules is to make games  faster and more immersive by eliminating habits that lead to interrupting the pace of the game. I hoped this would be a simpler version of a much more in-depth blog post here which uses the concept of flow state to describe why interruptions in TTRPGs are detrimental to the overall TTRPG experience. I've added some non-essential rules that suit my desired game, but I justify their inclusion because they set expectations which can avoid confusion.

Grounded Fiction

This rule establishes a common understanding of the setting. Fiction does not mean anything goes. The setting has relatable characters, plausible scenarios, and realistic environments. Your character is an ordinary person who becomes an adventurer. Don't do anything you wouldn't do in real life. Play your characters like you care what happens to them.

Ready Bonus

If you're ready at the start of your turn, you get a +2 bonus to your roll. This means that as soon as it's your turn, you state what you do and how you do it in one fluid sentence. No questions, no looking up rules, no thinking.

Initiative and Turn Order

Transitions into combat should be seamless, as much as possible. He who takes initiative goes first. If unclear, a GM ruling decides. Turns go clockwise around the table.

One Action Per Turn

Long turns mean more waiting which is boring. On your turn, you can move without acting, you can act without moving, and you can move up to your maximum movement as part of your action, but attacking ends your turn. One sentence can be spoken during your turn. No double actions or double moves, no bonus or free actions, no holding actions, no reactions.

Skipping Turns

Players are not entitled take as long as they want on their turn. The GM can give them a last call for declaring an action or rule that their character hesitates this round.

No Redo's, No Do-Overs

Once you declare your action, you can't change it.

Player Descriptions

Players must describe what they do and how using natural language, like writing a scene in a book. Avoid using game terminology. The intent of your action should be clear.

No phones, laptops, or electronics

Put them away. It's a paper and pencil game.

Character Creation

Player Characters (PCs) must suit the tone and setting of the game. PCs must have their own goal to pursue in play. Discuss with GM.

No Player vs Player (PvP)

The game is about collaboration and cooperation, not adversarial or competitive play. Don't sabotage each other. Don't be that guy. Evil PCs become GM property and NPC villains. Adventuring is dangerous, therefore PCs need a good reason for why they trust the other PCs with their lives.

Metagaming

Metagaming means thinking about the game like a game. Using knowledge that your characer doesn't have is also metagaming. Out-of-character discussions that your characters would not reasonably be able to achive in-character; e.g. long strategy during a short combat round. 

Player Skill, Not Character Skill

Dice rolls and game mechanics do not solve puzzles, resolve exploration, or social interaction; player ingenuity does. Describe what you search and how. Treat NPCs like real people, try to make them happy. Knowledge and insight are learned in play. Pay attention and ask questions. Plan ahead.

Character Stats

Your stats are just numbers for mechanical purposes. They do not necessarily describe your character or determine how you must portray them.

Emergent Story

Neither the GM or the dice tell the story. The GM prepares the setting and the NPCs, obstacles and opportunities within. The story is what emerges when the players engage with the setting and NPCs. In other words, players choose what to do and how, and the GM reacts.

Tools, Not Rules

The games rules and mechanics are just tools to help the GM to run the game. The GM may take and leave these tools to make their own tool kit as it suits them. Part of being a GM is knowing when to use them and knowing whey they don't suit a moment of the game.

No Rules Talk During The Game

During the game, no talking about the rules, no reading the rules, no asking for clarity about the rules. No rulebooks at the table. Save it for outside the game. The GM makes a ruling and moves the game along.

GM Rulings

One of the roles of the GM is to be a referee of the rules and to make rulings of what happens in the game. It's important to be fair and consistent, and without investment in the outcome. The rules can't account for everything, but people can! Consider in real life as your criteria. If something can reasonably succeed, it does. If something is genuinely impossible, no die roll will allow it.

Don't Break Character

This houserule is a guideline. Always being strictly in character is not needed, but breaking character leads to loss of immersion, momentum, and tension. Instead of asking what's in a room, ask what you see, hear, smell, etc. Don't ask what's in the box, describe how you inspect it. Don't declare that you sneak, describe what you're doing to be sneaky. Treat each in-game conversation as though it's actually happening and avoid out-of-character comments or sidebar. Turn out-of-character discussion into in-character conversation. If you're going to award anything to players for good roleplaying, factor whether or not they stay in character for their whole turn!

Optional Rules to incentivize desired player behavior:

• Go an entire scene without breaking character and earn a hero die (a d6). You can hold up to five of these. Any number of hero dice can be spent on any roll.
• Go an entire game session without breaking character and earn 150% experience points.

Customize Stat Growth in RPG Maker

Have you ever played Breath of Fire III? In this game, you can assign one master to each character in your party. When your character levels up, their stat growth is modified by the master.

In Super Mario RPG, Legend of the Seven Stars, when your characters level up you have the choice of a stat bonus, and you modify your characters stats based on this bonus.

In Final Fantasy VI, you can equip an Esper to each character. When you level up, your stats are modified by the bonus from that Esper.

All of these ideas sound like fun, right? Can you do it in RPG Maker? I think you can! This post isn't a step-by-step guide. It's an explanation of how the idea might work and what it would take to do it.

First, create a common event. If you're unfamiliar, the common even is a global event. Unlike a regular event on a map, a common event is programmed in the database and can be triggered from any screen in the game. So, what is the triggering condition? It's when the game detects that a character's level has increased. How do we get it to do that?

Second, you'll need lots of variables. If you don't know how variables work, you should really play with them until you figure them out! Make a variable and call it Hero A's old Level. You need one of these variables four each hero. Hero B's old Level, Hero C's old Level, etc. You'll actually need two of each! One will be Hero A's new level and one will be hero A's old level. I don't want to get too far ahead of this process, but what we'll later do is ask the game engine to remember the hero's old level as compare it to the hero's new level, and if there's a difference, then that will mean the hero has leveled up and we'll have trigger a specific event where we can process the stat changes.

Preparation note: by default, all variables in a new game in RPG Maker are going to start at 0. So, you manually have to use a regular event somewhere in your game to set these Hero X's old Level variables to 1 or to equal each hero's levels within the first map or room of your game.

Question for you about your method: do you want your game to trigger the common event or do you want the common event to be a parallel process? A parallel process is always running, and so I think making too many parallel processes will slow down the game, so you'll want some other way to have the game regularly compare the variables for Hero X's new Level and Hero X's old Level.

One way I think this can work is using the events inside of the monster groups. Every time the hero goes into a battle, you'll want to go into the monster groups page and toggle on a switch party was in a battle. That's it. Now, you'll need a common event that is triggered by this switch being ON. The common event is going to compare all the levels of all the characters. If there is a change, then we'll go into a new process. If there is no change, we'll turn OFF this party was in a battle switch.

So that is the set up!

This next part gets more complex. The question is how complex do you want it?

First, let's talk about how RPG Maker tracks character or actor stats. I speculate that if you open the database, whatever the stats show in the actors / character page, no matter what you do, those will be the stats of your character when they level up. Essentially, every time the character levels up, their stats will change to match whatever shows in the database. Therefore, the stats will effectively be reset or refreshed upon the characters' level up. Therefore, we will need to track the hero's cumulating stat changes using more variables, and then manually apply them using a common event whenever the character levels up. Sounds like a blast, right!

You'll need variables: Hero A's HP, Hero A's MP, Hero A's Attack, Hero A's Defense, Hero A's Intellect, Hero A's Speed, etc. Right? This is one set! Each character will need their own separate set of variables. Ugh!

More variables! OK, so what is the mechanism for your players getting to choose how their stats change? Maybe you have an NPC in the world who gives the character a blessing of the warrior, or mage, or thief. Skyrim stones reference anyone? Create a single variable for Hero X's Blessing. Make one for each hero! Now, you might have ten blessings in your game. Or twenty.  Whatever. So, you'll need a list to track each blessing! I like to use the Notes or Comments feature in the events. If you've overlooked this feature, you can write yourself a note inside an event! It's great for this sort of thing because you don't have to track it in a separate document file (but also do that!). You'll need to use the comment feature to itemize each blessing and assign it a number. So for example, the Fighter Blessing is a 1, the Mage Blessing is a 2, and the Thief Blessing is a 3. Etc. What, did you think the RPG Maker Engine would do this for you? Nope! You need to track this because it's entirely custom!

Method: Back to our common event! If the common event identifies that a hero's level has changed, it will trigger a separate common event or a separate portion of the current common event. First, we'll have the game check which blessing the hero has. If the Hero X's Blessing = 1, then we know from our comment that this means he has the Fighter Blessing. Now, we use a Conditional Branch. I don't know what this feature is called in your version of RPG Maker, but this feature will allow us to create an if then statement (if one thing is this, then do that) for our event. If the variable for Hero X's Blessing equals 1, then we will modify other variables. Hero A's HP, Hero A's Strength, Hero A's Defense, whatever, all will be modified by +1 (or whatever other numbers you like). You're going to manually do this for each blessing that the character can have, and because we're using the if then feature, the game will only do the applicable ones and skip the non-applicable ones. 

Method Continued: And then you're going to manually do this for each character! It's going to be a long, long, massive event, so take your time and be thorough. Get it right with one character and you can copy and paste it, then change everything to the second character, the third, the fourth, etc. It's going to be a really bulky boy of a common event!

Method continued: We've checked to see that our hero has leveled up and we've applied our level up changes. Done! Next, what? We have to tell the event to change the hero's stats by adding the number stored in each variable! Increase Hero A's HP by the number stored in the variable Hero A's HP. Do this for every stat! Like I said, big boy event! Finish up by updating the variable Hero X's Old Level to match his current level. Then switch OFF the party was in a battle switch to end the event.

Phew.

A Blog Post About the Disney Star Wars Trilogy

If I invited you over to my house for dinner, and I promised to serve you spaghetti and meatballs, but served chicken alfredo instead, how would you feel? Pasta is pasta, right? Eat up! Yum, yum! Or, would you look at me with a furrowed brow and tell me you feel like you were tricked and lied to? I believe that if you're going to promise something, you should do your best to deliver it.

So, Star Wars is a film franchise with the themes of family, faith, and mythology. If someone tells you they're making a Star Wars movie, and the themes are not these, would you feel like you were promised spaghetti and delivered alfredo? In other words, have your expectations been unmet leading to disappointment? For some people, the answer is yes.

Now, what happens if I offer you spaghetti and meatballs, but I actually serve you chicken alfredo, except underneath the chicken alfredo is shepherds pie with pickled beats? Ok, that's a little weird, right? And certainly not what you were expecting. Now, you're disappointed and also confused.

To break it down, Star Wars 7 is spaghetti with meatballs. Star Wars 8 is the chicken alfredo. Star Wars 9 is shepherds pie with pickled beats. I regret that the problem with my food analogy is that I've picked foods that I like to eat. In reality, Star Wars 7 is spaghetti with cucumber spirals instead of noodles and tofu for meatballs. Star Wars 8 is rotten fish. Star Wars 9 is trail mix on top of pizza that's still frozen in the middle. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong. This trilogy does not have a feeling of consistency or cohesion. It's like the Mona Lisa with pasta and glitter glue. As a result, it's less than what it could have been.

Thank you for patience. Let's talk about the themes in Star Wars 7, 8, and 9.

What is / are the theme(s) of Star Wars episode 7? The movie begins with Poe doing spy-guy things, then Kylo-Ren does villainous things, and then we introduce Finn who does traitor things. Then Poe and Finn crash on a desert planet. Thematically, what do we set up? A sort of a found-family in the making? Cool. I like that.

Then we introduce Rey. She's alone on a desert planet and counting the days. She's unhappy with the world as she finds it. I see where we're going with this, and I'm getting excited! The first real weakness with the theming is that Poe goes missing until one of the final scenes of the film. This right here is the promise of spaghetti and meatballs and the delivering of the cucumber spirals instead of noodles. Darn.

So, let's speed this up. Rey does not have any family. You might say she's desperate for a family. Then she meets Han Solo. She might as well ask, "will you be my daddy?" And Han Solo being a guy with a rough exterior, but a heart of gold takes her under his wing. OK, I love it! What could possibly go wrong?

Skip ahead, and Kylo-Ren kills Han Solo. D'oh! So close!

OK, so the theme of family is still on the table (pun intended, see my food analogy above)! Very, very much so! How do we tie this knot? Well, let's discuss the family. The family in question is the Skywalker family; Or rather, the Skywalker-Solo family! Yes, these families are tied together via the marriage of Han and Leia. Kylo-Ren's real name is Ben Solo. Cool! That means Han, Leia, Luke, and Kylo-Ren are all family. Yippie!

But what about Rey?

Rey was 100% intended to be a Skywalker! I'm not privileged to the behind-the-scenes information, but how could you not piece this together based on episodes 1 through 7? Let's review. Luke Skywalker went missing. Why? Unclear; but if Luke went missing, does it not stand to reason that maybe he also wanted to hide his baby? Gasp! Rey is Luke's daughter? Can it be true? Well, why the @#$%! else would Leia Organa-Solo snub Chewbacca and hug Rey at the end of episode 7, you twit! And why the @#$%! else would Rey be so gifted with the force if she wasn't a descendent of Anakin Skywalker whose midi-chlorian count (bleh, I threw up!) was the highest ever recorded! Duh!

So why was Rey later revealed to be the daughter of a no one in Star Wars 8 and then re-revealed to be a Palpatine in Star Wars 9? That's the rotten fish dish and the half-frozen pizza topped with trail mix that I previously told you about. There really isn't a pay-off to wild changes like this, and it means we need a new reason for why Leia would hug smelly Rey Palpatine.

If Rey is the daughter of Luke, then she would be Kylo-Ren's cousin, and thus, the family theme could be salvaged! Rey's goal would be to save / redeem her cousin like Luke's goal was to save / redeem his father. Insert the clip of the interview with George Lucas talking about the prequels when he says, "it's like poetry, it rhymes." Ta-da! Instead, the way movies 7-9 work out, Rey turns out to be a Palpatine who survives when all Skywalkers and all Solos die, and Rey Palpatine, daughter of the villain of 7 movies, inherits the name and legacy of the heroes. She ends up alone in a desert without Finn and Poe. So, the found family concept is dropped, and Rey ends up as alone as she was at the start of the movies except for force ghosts. She has no kids or family of her own.

Now, let's talk about theme conceptually. What is a theme in a literary context? Well, stories are as much about entertainment as they are about teaching a lesson. The lesson is therefore the substance of your story. The lesson is the theme; the theme is the lesson. In stories, the lesson is communicated to the audience through the hero who must learn the lesson. The value of the lesson is communicated through the hero using that lesson to overcome the conflict (and presumably win or survive or achieve their goal). If the hero fails, it's usually because they didn't learn the lesson. So, if there is no lesson, there is no literary theme, and your story is entertainment with no substance. It's hollow and unfulfilling. It's unsatisfying, like  the 2021 Mortal Combat movie. It's just an excuse to watch people fight and blow stuff up for 90 minutes, and it's lacking the human element.

What lesson did Rey have to learn on-screen in order to achieve her goal? @#$%! if I know.

So, I invite you over for spaghetti and meatballs, but I serve you something else. Is my analogy working? OK, let's change it; what if I promise you spaghetti and meatballs, but it's all tofu and it's chemically altered to taste like spaghetti and meatballs, but it's not very accurate, and it leaves you feeling like something is missing. You're unfulfilled. You just sort of scrunch up your nose and try not to think about what you could have eaten instead. You regret your meal. It was a waste of time. But worse than that, you don't know if you can ever appreciate pasta again. That is the Disney Star War trilogy.