This post is aimed at my players for our campaign when it starts.

In this post I want to propose that these are our house rules for the game. By that I mean rules that are not in the Players Guide, Dungeon Masters Guide, Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, and The Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

The first item I proposed I came across whilst flicking through the pages of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. I’m not sure we will ever use this, but if we do I think it could add some dramatic tension.

(Extract above taken without permission from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything)

Ok the next proposed rule or thing I plan to do is for me the DM to roll stealth checks! WTF?! I bet my players are saying as they read that. With coffee or some other beverage being spat across the room and hitting the sleeping cat or a kid. We know dogs are stupid like kids and cats to sleep in the firing range of spat out drinks.

Anyway instead of me trying to justify/defend this, why don’t I hand things over to the amazing and inspiring Matt Colville (well I’ve not mentioned him in a few posts, so,it’s long over due) to explain things.

The DM Screen episode (and the inspiration for the video above) also covers it.

Ok this next one is also a biggy.

We hadn’t talked about advancement in our session zero. But I think at the time, before I had read this in the appendix of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGE) I was leaning towards the story advancement method of gaining XP over XP tracking. Now I’m very much in favour of this. For the record this is from Xanathar’s but they got it from the Adventurers League, which is like D&D organised play for want of a simple way to explain it.

I’d already nicked the Adventurers League rule for our session zero for creating characters Players Guide plus one other source book. Which I said was the Swordcoast Adventurers Guide. The reason for this is that it’s to keep costs down for the DM and the players. They don’t want people having to spend lots of money just to play the game. It puts people of playing. And that’s why for our first campaign I did the same.

The rules side is another thing. Whether I use the trap rules for generating them from the DMG or XGE is neither here or there. It’s invisible to the players. For the record I like the method in XGE. Just as the rules used for ships etc coming from GoS. The players don’t need to know the specifics.

We will be using skill challenges in the campaign. Which technically are not in the 5e rules. But as I pointed out kinda in a post yesterday (WHICH MY PLAYERS SHOULD NOT READ – IT HAS SPOILERS) by way of a link, it’s possible to run skill challenges in 5e.

So players either leave comments below or discuss in our messenger group. Everyone else I hope you are finding posts like this of interest.