Do Something About It
Quit sitting on good ideas
One of the greatest things about the tabletop gaming hobby is how easy it is for anybody to make something to use in it. It started as a set of house rules to wargames, the resulting games being subsequently houseruled upon, and so on and so forth until a snowball of house rules culminates into completely new games in and of themselves. I am still partial to my relatively vanilla experience with AD&D 1E and Basic Fantasy RPG, but, even if you’re a plain Jane like me, there is plenty of room for additions.
I can only speak for myself, but I find entertainment seeing what other people make. My favorite place to look through is the Basic Fantasy Workshop Forums, where people discuss and share all kinds of cool content specially designed for Basic Fantasy. They make it easy by providing a style guide and templates, so it is even easier for people to create new supplements that are visually aligned to the design of Basic Fantasy. I’ve made a few things using their templates, and it has really made a difference not just in appearance but in performance of my house rules as well. I haven’t taken the opportunity to observe how other DMs do it, but when I make rulings, I usually end up either scribbling (or typing) it down in brief, or I pretend that I will simply remember and recall it when it comes up in the future (I don’t). For some rulings, keeping a basic list is just fine; I don’t need an entire supplement saying that Magic-Users can use slings in Basic Fantasy. For others, they do benefit from being rolled into a full supplement of their own.
One example from myself is a supplement in the Workshop called Frivolous Chases, which just presents a slightly different way of running encounters of pursuit. It’s not very complicated, being only just over one page, but it has enough heft to it that putting it on a list would make it more difficult to apply effectively, not less. I have a few supplements that I have not posted to the forums, such as my personal method for allowing players to purchase and create spell scrolls. I still enjoy the benefit of the supplement templates for it, because it is a very accessible means of sharing it with my players while maintaining a sort of verisimilitude in the context of the rules themselves. They can go back and forth from the “official” material and mine without it being a jarring experience.
My point in bringing up the templates and how they have benefited my games is to, hopefully, convince those of you who have extensive, undisclosed house rules into putting them into a shareable medium. If you have procedures that are basically system-agnostic, then take advantage of the templates already made for you. Change them to work for you, if necessary, and use them to codify your rules - not to make them inflexible but to make them easy to share and reference. If you’re proud of what you have, then share it. Maybe you read my letter about the OSR being a pearl, and you think nobody else is worthy of your immaculate scripture; you may find yet that the imposition of your work to an organized vehicle proves beneficial. Whether you intend to share or not, you can turn your notes into true supplements befitting the style of your choice. Basic Fantasy’s templates are a pillar in their DIY scene, with them being pinned at the top of the Workshop, but it is also possible to find or make templates for the systems you play.
I can’t very well search for every system out there, nor do I have the interest, but I was able to find a couple resources for TSR’s games. For starters, Sine Nomine has a free product on DriveThru RPG titled “A Brief Study of TSR Book Design” which is a fine start for making homemade content for those games. Along with layout and organization, one of the most important parts of making a document feel native is its font. An online search returned a curious little site which lists many of the fonts used in the TSR works. Of course, a good few of those fonts require paying for them.
I chose Basic Fantasy as my reference, because it’s what I play regularly, the fonts it uses are available without cost, and the templates were already made up (see my previous letter). Ultimately, the choice to maintain a consistent look across the source material and my own concoctions is purely one of aesthetics. Much greater value is found in having a consistent means of organization within your own collection of homemade supplements. For that, I again think a great way to start is with the Basic Fantasy templates, at least for a side-by-side comparison, since changing all of the templates’ styles may be less worth your time than creating them from scratch. Never discount either the power of pencil, or pen, and paper. No artistry needed, simply grab a lined sheet and start writing. I prefer making mine digital-first, because I can share editable versions and I like giving player-facing supplements to my players.
I’m sure many people probably don’t take such a formal approach to this topic. Besides what I’ve already mentioned, I do it this way because, as Chris Gonnerman says, Basic Fantasy is designed to be used à la carte. My “carte”, or menu as it were, is a binder which has every supplement I’m using as well as some other resources. I can physically add and remove things from it, which makes it very easy to keep track of what ingredients I’m adding to my game. My players, should they ever choose, can also take these supplements with them to use in their own games in a way that explains the supplements’ intentions. I like the very modular approach that Basic Fantasy takes, and I find it more refreshing to lean into this philosophy than to resist it. Of course, all old school games are modular, so I definitely don’t think Basic Fantasy stands alone with the ability to accept house rules, but Basic Fantasy is more easily modified via its templates and its publication of source format files.
Regardless which game or version of the game you choose to enjoy tabletop gaming with, consider graduating your table’s custom rules from a list, a memory, or random scribbles to a more permanent and declarative format. Share them if you wish - I know I’m always looking for neat new ideas - or guard them like a family recipe. Maybe I’ve missed the mark entirely and scribbles are in. Either way, let me know what you think on whatever platform you find this on or right here. Thank you, and have a wonderful rest of your day.
P.S. Have a rare, never-before released version (r3) of my Adventuring Procedures supplement below. It mimics a certain other basic game, deviating from Basic Fantasy’s procedures. r5, or a newer release, can be found H ere.
Just an FYI…
The list linked in the “every single font in the TSR era” is missing most of the fonts from OD&D and Holmes except for the 3LBB title font. It is really more of a TSR during the 80s and 90s list.