Introduction & Philosophy

This page contains only a limited number of actual rules right now. That’s not because we won’t have any house rules — we will — but because they’ve somewhat taken a back seat to putting the grid together, setting up the code pieces, determining what content will and will not be part of the game, and so on.

Before talking about rules per se, we’d like to briefly discuss our attitude toward HRs (and “clarifications”, which, let’s face it, are pretty much the same thing):

• We have HRs to make the game more fun for everyone. Some things are so complex that they bring the game to a halt, and that’s not fun for anyone. Or they require a lot of frequent and intensive Storyteller attention, and that’s not fun for people who are waiting patiently for their fair share. Or they’re a lot of fun for the player who has them and not a lot of fun for everyone else. All these things are candidates for HRing (or just being excluded from the game), but please understand that this is not a personal judgment on the people who have or want them. In a game run by super-geniuses with unlimited time and multitasking ability and played only by people who are all on the same wavelength when it comes to character creation, all of these things would be fine! This is just not that game.
• Part of “making the game fun for everyone” is providing a consistent and realistic setting that’s centered around the people who live in London and in their individual stories. Some things make it difficult or impossible for that to happen, and those are also candidates for HRing. Again: that’s not a judgment! In a different World of Darkness game they might make perfect sense as they are.
• And then there are those things where any two people who read them will come up with two different interpretations, or where the rules don’t really cover something at all. These things are fine as long as players are all on the same page, but they aren’t much fun when players aren’t on the same page.

We can’t promise that we won’t HR something your character has — if we do, it may or may not have anything to do with what your character’s doing with it. What we can promise is that:

• HRs will be kept as close to the books as practical. This game is advertised as a World of Darkness 20th Anniversary game and we want to respect that.
• HRs will not be our first resort. If something doesn’t come up very often, we’ll try just asking players “please don’t do that so we can avoid having to HR it.”
• HRs will be narrowly tailored to address what they need to and no more.
• HRs will always be acceptable grounds for players to request a refund if they’ve purchased the thing (or things) being HR’d. We may ask you to work with us to explain this IC.
• As much as practical, HRs that change the way the IC universe works will be handled as an IC shift, in order to respect existing story.
• If and when we HR something in a way that has the potential to change significant existing story, we’ll work with the players affected to come up with an explanation that makes sense and that offers some compensation for the change.

House rules make the game harder to play. They’re things you have to remember or remember to look up and they’re things that (if they happen after the start of the game) have the potential to affect the investment our players have made in the game as it is. We want to respect that, and not promulgate HRs when it is not necessary.

General House Rules

Difficulties

The minimum possible difficulty for a roll, with all modifiers included, is 3.

Specialties

You may not use a specialty when rolling to invoke a Discipline, Gift, etc., even if that specialty would normally apply. Specialties may still be used for Attribute and Ability checks that relate to supernatural abilities — rolling to see if a bunk succeeds or fails, or making use of the “Abilities Enhancing Magick” rules for Mage. In the latter case, you are still limited to at most a -3 modifier, no matter how many successes you roll.

Optional Rules

Unless otherwise specified, any rule from a rulebook that is in use for this game (see Books In Use) that is marked as optional is not considered to be in use. This includes phrasings like “the Storyteller may rule that …” or “if the Storyteller prefers …” even if they are not explicitly labeled as “Optional Rules”.

Backgrounds

Except where otherwise specified in the Background itself, Backgrounds may be raised with XP after character generation. They follow the rules under XP and Advancement.

Weapon Difficulties

The difficulty to attack with a great sword is 7, not 5.

Weapon difficulties follow a predictable pattern of increase: knives are 4, short swords are 5, swords and hatchets are 6, great axes, polearms, and huge spiked clubs are 7. The only significant outlier here is great swords, which are inexplicably rated at 5. We know, we know — they’ve printed this in every WoD core book since 1993! We just cannot see any good reason why a great sword should be that much better than a great axe, which has exactly the same damage code, concealment rating, and Strength requirement.

Awareness

Awareness and comparable Abilities from other spheres have specific rules governing their use. See the page on Awareness for details.