Patch Rules and System Rewrites

[Sean]

Hi,

I know that Indie Game Design is not an appropriate place for discussing tweaks and modifications to other people's systems.

Would discussions of these make for suitable RPG theory topics though? To say something like: here's this system, here are the rules in place for it, here's how I changed/homebrewed them, and why? Plus playtests of the patch rules maybe in Actual Play, if there are any?

[Mike Holmes]

Sounds right, Sean. Speculation of quality on the Theory forum, and discussion of actual effect in Actual Play.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Actual Play. When someone comes up with rules-tweaks and doesn't play them, I call that boring-ass marginalia and don't think it rates a thread.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

Hi Ron -

I think in many cases your view is correct. However, two considerations:

- a lot of bad theory posts are 'boring-ass marginalia' anyway; surely if we count on posters to judge the quality of their other thoughts on RPG theory, we can count on them to judge the quality of their own rules innovations

- adding this kind of thread might lend some IMO much-welcome concreteness to our theory discussions ("what does this mechanic do here" as opposed to "what does this general type of mechanic do in some genereralized case," etc.)

But anyway now I'm turning this into a stupid meta-discussion. With regard to any contributions I might make of this kind, I'll try to apply the Jim Rome rule: have a take and don't suck.

S