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Today’s topic is Favorite House Rule. Another difficult one for me to answer, since most of the stuff that I house-rule, I end up publishing as rules.

That said, I do have a house rule that I use, whenever I run a superhero game. No matter what the system, I always make it a feature of my campaigns:

I always put in “Easter Eggs” in my campaigns — little inside-joke references to comics history (either the fictional history, or the history of the industry). The players might be facing down a super-villain in Fawcett Park, for example. Players who spot the reference to Fawcett Comics (Golden Age publisher of Captain Marvel comics) get some kind of in-game benefit (depending on the rules system being used — for example, in ICONS, I might give a free point of Determination). Even better, if the players can improvise their own references, they get added to the game setting canon, AND they get an in-game benefit. Basically, it just adds another layer of comics nerdery to our roleplaying nerdery.

So, there’s my favorite house rule. Let’s check out Dave Chapman’s video entry for the day, with special guest Grant Howit:

Today’s RPGaDay Topic is another odd one: Perfect Game For You.

I’m going to keep this one pretty short, because, beyond a general set of conditions, I don’t know exactly how to answer this.

The perfect game for me is one that emphasizes speed of action over complexity, and character and story over number-crunching simulation. That’s pretty much ideal for me. If you can also throw in some random-generation systems (on the player AND gamemaster side) to spark ideas, then that starts moving it into “perfect” territory, for me.

Here’s Dave Chapman’s video entry for the day, with special guest, Norwegian RPG designer and journalist Ole Peder Giæver:

An odd topic today (they can’t all be winners, I guess): Perfect Gaming Environment. I’ve never really given much thought to this — I’ve played in living rooms, at dining tables, in meeting rooms at university, in curtained-off spaces under the bleachers of a basketball arena (looking at you, GenCon in the early 90s…). I’ve never really spent time thinking about which of these venues were “perfect.”

Generally speaking, I game-master more than I play. That’s always been the case. And, as far as my personal GMing style goes, I’ve never really been much of a using-miniatures kind of GM, so the big table has never been much of a necessity. I’ve always been a big fan of using background music during play (not so much sound effects, though — mostly just a “soundtrack” to what’s going on) — in fact, I often go out of my way to create specific playlists, tailored to both the genre and to events in the game (chase music, combat music, sneaking-around music, etc.). So some method of controlling that is a must.

Aside from that, though, whatever space we have where the players can all be comfortable is pretty much my only consideration. So, I guess I’m more of a “sitting around the living room” gamer than a “sitting at a big table” gamer.

Here’s Dave Chapman’s video entry for the day, with special guest Shanna Germain of Monte Cook Games: