Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Fandexes, alternate rules, player created units. Does anyone use any fanmade material in their games?

None, other than expanding on the Badab War campaign rules.

Never encountered a situation where I had to make the decision, so I guess I've allowed none. Though depending on the context and opponent, I'd take it on a case by case basis.

Throughout late 5th ed., most of my games were played with a custom scenario generator, because the rulebook just didn't have enough in it.

I'll get a cool model kit or toy occasionally to serve as a special unit or objective. Found batmans new movie batwing in matchbox form last month and got two of em They will make cool stealth gunships for heavy gear or other 15mm sci fi. I much prefer games to have a real mission and not a random roll to determine setups.

Non for now. Will try to shoehorn in chess style I go you go in kill teams next Wednesday.

Following my bad experience of fan made rules in other games I will not use fan made rules again, especially with 40K.

I and a friend designed a 4 mission campaign for our Infinity campaign - 20 people participated.

We use fan made rules and missions almost all the time. Heck we made our own 40k style mordheim and so on and people play it all the time. Even the RPGs i run are like 90% made up rules wise.

We get a lot of enjoyment when the rules are tailored towards better game play.

None.

SkavenLord wrote:
Fandexes, alternate rules, player created units. Does anyone use any fanmade material in their games?

None, though there is an alternate Kill Team set of rules that looks promising.

Most of the fan creation stuff is either subjective, or just plain terrible. House ruling stuff is fine if everyone agrees (though we don't even do that), but amateur game design I treat like the kryptonite it is 99% of the time.

None.

None.

Not since 3rd ed, anyway - when we played with the VDR and didn't make completely borked units (then one tool came along and ruined it for everyone).

None, but I love me some house rules.

Most of our games are with "Generic" games where you create your own units to fit with your own selection of miniatures. So most of our games include "fan made" material, and a few of the games we play of have played (Wastelands, Panzer 8 Sci-fi, etc) are non-commercial, free rulesets or modifications of existing rulesets such as "Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions" which is sort of a compliation and tweaking of the classic "Full Thrust" space wargame. We also tend to game in our own settings and factions with scenarios we come up with or modify.

We houserule when necessary to make a game play better or fit better with our terrain, playstyle etc.

Finally -though it's not quite what you asked- much of our terrain is homebuilt from junk toys and other DIY materials.

Basically our club uses far more non-standard games, scenarios, rules, settings miniatures, and terrain than standard commercial products.

None... Fan made 'anything' tends to be horribly bias and lack thorough testing.

House-rules / Club-rules are a grey area for me. Some have good intentions and I find them useful (i.e. All painted models have Preferred Enemy (non-painted models) will encourage club members to paint their stuff.), but most House-rules / Club-rules are only to Nerf the local meta and I have a problem with that.

I've used my own special rules, and those of others, for a couple of Infinity events I ran. Helped run a couple of Necromunda campaigns as well with my own special rules. When we had finished, one of the players told me it was the most fun he had ever had in a wargame. Which was really heartening!

I'm assuming from some of the quite negative replies that people are associating this question specifically with 40k? If so, I can definitely see why someone might have a problem with this in some kind of pick-up game, ("these are my super knights of doom. they can teleport around the table because they are chaos powered, and their bolt guns are d-weapons because they stole them from jokaero and they fire the souls of dead Squats") but I think it definitely becomes more of a grey area when you move outside those very narrow confines. I'd go as far as to say fan-design/input is at the very core of this hobby, or at least it's origins, and is still very prevalent in historicals and the like.

In my 15 years of playing 40k, I have neither used any or played against any.

I personally see it as a waste of time.

Its not uncommon for me to play a home brewed scenario a mate did, but nothing much more than that.

Generally, I like to assume that professional game designers are more competant at game design than I, or my mates are.

On a completely unrelated note, I've pretty much entirely stopped playing GW games now.

I think alot of a persons feelings on this is going to revolve around whether they're playing more popular self-contained games like 40k or WM where there are established community standards, or more smaller or more indie games where there isn't such an established community and accepted guidelines.

Folks who play 40k, especially if they are playing at the FLGS and have connections with the wider 40k community have much less incentive to houserule, homebrew and experiment than someone playing a game where they and their friends are the only local players.

Pretty much constantly. I've never seen the point of gaming, in any format, if you're just going to be a passive consumer of content. Most of the fun for me is the creative aspect, whether that's writing fluff, converting, sculpting, or devising/finding new rules and scenarios to try out; the game essentially exists only as a vehicle for those things, in and of itself it's not actually that interesting an experience, since if I just want to play a strategy game I can do that on the PC at a fraction of the cost and with a fraction of the time investment(although I usually end up modding computer games as well).

I suppose if I was interested in tournament play, or if I'd got into GW stuff more recently after the company drove off most of the old-guard at HQ and replaced their sense of fun and artistry with an empty gaping maw that can only be temporarily sated by shoveling cash into it, I might feel differently, but when I started out they still sold the Specialist Games in GW stores and published the Journal, Town Crier, BFG Magazine etc etc, White Dwarf still featured Chapter Approved rules for new units and scenarios all the time, and the staff in the shops spent a good chunk of their time building unique custom terrain for the boards and writing up special missions to play on them.

I don't want to come across as all rose-bespectacled-grognardy, but sod it.

Pretty much as Yodhrin. I do it all the time.

It is part of the reason I only play with people that are part of my gaming circle. We are open to try things because none of it is serious business.

I've played where I entirely used an Eldar fandex written before the current one.

We often just place the terrain rather than rolling to save time, not sure if that counts. Also, some player made scenarios and cards for large games.

I sduppose that is a good point, I've never known anyone in my club actually try to use the terrain placement rules in the 40k rulebook, even the narrative ones more than once or twice.

At the moment, I'm playing Deadzone and the only house rule that I'm using is that the friend/foe listing is used on the deployment zone card as well to determine whether you are the red or blue team. This is mostly to keep me honest when I am setting up the board before the game.

We do houserules, but we've never been interested in anything made by anyone other than ourselves(and we pretty much stick to the rulesbooks for our games).

Do paint jobs count?

 sing your life wrote:
Do paint jobs count?

Certainly! Anything that's been made by a player counts.
What do you have in mind?

We've had a couple people try to 'present to our gaming club' some ideas for their home-brew rules, but they tended to be fanboi power models that people frowned at....so I think that has detracted from the rest attempting it. So we don't have any to look at.

We had to "amend" some of the rules for Necromunda during our league games, because it simply needed fixing.

For example, overwatch rules had to get worked over a bit. We also changed the campaign structure: Rather than randomly generating missions, every player had a "turn" (to prevent a small kabal of people from playing games exclusively against each other and leveling up their gangs). In that turn, you could choose the mission and the opponent based on the situation based on a modified table. For example, if you wanted to steal somebody's Archeotech Hoard, it was a basic Gang Fight scenario but the defender could choose not to take bottle tests as long as their Gang Leader was in play. If you wanted to do a hostage rescue, you could either play the mission or work out some kind of exchange. Real world items, typically bottles of alcohol, frequently changed hands over valued fighters.

Some house rules, although we try and keep those to a minimum, and occasional home made missions.