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I'm considering putting together a compilation of home-brewed "house rules", solicited from my fellow Dakka-dakkaites. In theory, if there's enough of a positive response, I would set up a way for people to send me their house rules, then sort them into nice manageable categories and present them in the "proposed rules" forum for discussion, then create a compilation (probably a blog/web site of some sort plus pdf download). One of the goals would be to attempt to cover some of the grey areas that haven't been FAQ'd or errata-ed. What do you guys think?

Afterthought: any suggestions for the best way to "collect" the rules would be welcome as well. My initial thoughts are to set up an email account just for that purpose to keep everything in one place.

[11.02.09] I'm going t open the poll back up and let it run, just for giggles.

So, do you want the house rules posted in this thread, or PM'd?

If I get a good response, I'll probably set up a gmail account specifically for people to send them to. Keep things all in one place, so to speak. I'm most likely going to run with the idea anywy, unless there's just a huge negative response.

You might want to use a term other than 'house rule'. There's a sizeable faction in the YMDC posters that see FAQ's as 'house rules', which means that someone has gotten this done already.

If the rules being asked for/offered are in the nature of 'Imperial Guard infantry units that do not invoke the Emperor's name before shooting suffer a wound, as Gunnery Private Holier-Than-Thou pistol whips someone for heresy.', then I like it.

If it falls more in line with general FAQ'ing, then I'll just rely on the ol' standbys. (GW, INAT, and Gwar!'s Unofficial Space Wolf FAQ)

Armandloft wrote:You might want to use a term other than 'house rule'...

Good point. I changed the wording to include "home-brewed". That should help avoid confusion. Thanks.

In my opinion, the rules gathered herein should be those which go a step further than just FAQ's, they should be alterations of substitutions of rules that we really don't like or just don't work. At least that's been my definition as long as I've been involved in the pushing around of toy soldiers.

Ultimately, I'd like to do just that, collect "alternate" rules for use in the game, then distill them into "plugins" (little self-contained rulings) using feedback from Dakka, that players can use or discard as they see fit. If it is received well, I may expand it to include cleaning up the language and "updating" the structure of the older codices to fit 5e better. Part of the 40k problem is how scattered all the rules are over different books/editions, and I'd like to create a more "centralized" version of the rules people can refer to if they choose. I'm actually working on the project already for friendly games, but thought it might be a good idea to see if the community in general is interested in it, in which case, I will clean up the presentation to avoid IP/© issues.

The poll still has few days left to go, but it seems like the general opinion of those who voted is "go for it". On the other hand, of 96 views, only 10 votes were made so that sounds like a whole lot of "Mehs".

I'll probably push forward anyway, but it seems like it will be more of a small collaborative effort than the community at large participating. Which might be just as well, since committees rarely get anything done (does anyone else find it amusing that the name for a group of people who rarely accomplish anything besides arguing is based on the latin word for "to commit" )

One direction I've been thinking about going with this is to make something of a redux, restoring some of the older (all the way back to RT era) ideas/rules that got chopped off (usually because they were broken) and possibly rewrite them to work as part of a balanced 5e game.

Home brew articles would be nice. What would make it really sing would be testing
so that you can point out how certain things work in your home-brew games, pictures
of situations in battle from home brew games, etc.

I definitely want to get as much feedback and playtesting on each section/rule I get into. And the idea for pictures is a good one. Since midgame photos are such a pain, I'll take a cue from GW's battle reports and stage them if I do so.

16 votes out of 134 views with 69% "for". It's a minimal voice, but mostly positive. You'd think a group of people who complain about 40k's rules/codexes/wording as much as we do, more people would at least have some interest . I bet the first rule I put up for evaluation get's a lot more replies. Mostly of the "But that will nerf __________-type armies!!!"

Anyway, I think I'm going to go ahead with this anyway. I'll set up a contact and hosting method and start working on the necessary legal bits (which I will post here, hopefully by tonight).

One thing I'd like to do is spice it up with some pics and fluff, so if anyone thinks they'd like to contribute something, let me know. Keep it mind it will be "open source"-type, so no compensation (other than a glowing mention in the credits) but you can keep your copyrights (I'll check the legal details of that here in the U.S. but it should be straightforward)).

Sorry about the lack of updates, the real world has invaded my recreational space. Various emergencies including the death of a family friend and a truck repair have left me having to backburner this for a bit. I'll get back on it asap.