Introduction

House rules are a terrible idea, and they have very few meritous points. I have never met a good house rule. House rules have many negative effects, which I'll outline below, but first things first. What is a house rule? A house rule is a rule put in place by a player or group of players independently of the ASL community and independently of the official rules source (currently Multi-Man Publishing). House rules are not official, and are not widely-known about and never universally applied. What is not a house rule? Rules that are "official optional" rules are not house rules, such as the IIFT or Battlefield Integrity. These, while remaining optional, have come from the official rules source for the game, and are universally available. Importantly, published scenarios that use official optional rules have been playtested with those rules.

Why are house rules always a bad thing? There are several reasons. First, they promote splintering of the hobby. Second, they often are based on undefendable reality arguments (for more on the fallacy of realism in ASL, see my page on the subject). Third, they are implemented without much or any thought on how they fit into the existing ASL package. Finally, they often present serious balance implications.

All of this adds up to one thing: if you play with house rules, you are no longer playing ASL. Simple as that. You are playing some hybrid that hasn't been accepted by very many others, that may not be well-integrated into the rest of the rules, and that hasn't been used during playtesting.

Splintering of the Hobby

Our ASL community is small enough as it is. If we splinter further into subgroups that are not playing the same game this can only hurt us. The beauty of VASL is that you can pop on at any time and strike up a game with someone. If you bring the baggage of house rules into the VASL main room (or to a tourney, or to a new FTF opponent, etc.), you will have to do one of two things: give them up in order to play, or sit and watch others play since you won't be able to find an opponent. It is extremely unlikely that you will be able to convince someone new to use your house rules.

To illustrate my point, some argue that even the official optional rule of the IIFT has splintered our hobby. This very well may be the case, as some players who otherwise would have a game don't end up playing since they can't agree on what fire table to use. People who use house rules will argue that they can easily give them up in order to play a game with someone. I question whether this is as easy as they say it is. Chances are, your style of play has been altered. Chances are you'll forget that something is or isn't in effect. Chances are you'll have difficulty keeping straight which games are using house rules and which aren't, if you have several PBEMs going at once (for example, I have 4-8 PBEMs going at any one time, and it's a bear to keep straight which are using the IIFT and which are using the IFT). For the sake of compatibility, house rules are a bad thing.

Realism and House Rules For more on Realism and ASL, see this page.

Reality arguments are probably the source of most house rules. House rules by themselves are bad enough, and the ground they stand on is flawed too. Realism has very little to do with ASL, and basing new rules on incorrect or skewed "realism" is a serious problem. You're left with house rules that may make sense in your head, but will be seen as laughably contrived by others. One house rule I've seen based on "reality" is that vision from AFVs in World War II was poor enough to deserve a +2 Case I To Hit modifier rather than just +1. The reality argument behind this house rule implies several things, all of which are completely ridiculous. First, it assumes that the proposer has been inside many World War II era AFVs and knows what could be seen from them with the hatches shut. Second, it assumes that the proposer knows exactly that the vision impairments warrant a +2; just what is a +2 worth, compared to a +1; why not +3? This in turn implies that the proposer has calculated out the To Hit DRM scale probabilities and has figured out that the +2 reduces the percent-chance of hitting appropriately, according to the vision effects he felt while sitting in all those World War II tanks. In other words, yeah, right. What the proposer of this rule has really done is say "gee, it FEELS LIKE tanks that are buttoned up are hitting their targets too many times...I'll fix that!". This cavalier approach to the game is arrogant to say the least...it implies that the house rule proposer knows more about game design than those who wrote the Rule Book.

Fitting In

House rules nearly always have a ripple effect on the game. These effects are indirect enough that unless the house rule proposer really thinks about them when drawing up a house rule, they'll be missed. This does not mean that these ripple effects are insignificant. Quite the contrary, they can effect the game in fundamental ways. To get what I mean, consider several house rules that I've seen proposed on the ASL Mailing List:

Task Checks for AFV to enter locations containing enemy infantry: overruns become more difficult generally, but American armor (for example) suffers substantially more due to the 7ML crews. Was this intended? Probably not, but it's a ripple effect from a house rule that wasn't given much thought.

A +1 Ambush drm for advancing into CC from an Open Ground hex into ambush terrain: makes many buildings and woods hexes nearly impregnable since nobody is going to incur that penalty unless absolutely necessary.

+2 Case I To Hit DRM instead of +1: makes it so that you've got to go CE pretty much the whole time just to be able to hit anything, ironically especially when trying to hit enemy infantry (a situation when you'd probably want to be BU if there's a lot of IFT firepower around). This hurts the US more than others, due to the susceptibility to stun with 7ML. Also, this makes 1MT AFVs even worse-off since they can not be CE and shoot their MA. It also makes the Sniper much more powerful.

The ROF die (a third die rolled to determine nothing but ROF): this makes the To Hit or IFT DR independent of ROF. Ironically, this is the point of the house rule, but is expressly AGAINST the designers' intent regarding ROF. Read the rulebook people! The designers wanted ROF and a good DR tied together since ROF is supposed to represent the gunners doing a good job on the first shot, leaving time for subsequent shots. For example, a critical hit typically comes with ROF (unless you're unlucky enough to be shooting ordnance that doesn't have ROF capability, but there aren't too many of those). With the ROF die, there's a very good chance of not getting ROF with a critical hit.

No cowering on snake-eyes: This is a terrible house rule…one that people don't even pretend to base on reality. It's just a rule for whiners who are upset when their lucky roll turns out to be not as good as they hoped. This has many ripple effects: ROF maintained far more frequently is one, but a key one is that placing broken enemy troops under DM is easier: to do so, you need firepower able to inflict at least a NMC. Without cowering, that 2FP+3 attack is good enough since snake-eyes would do it. It also diminishes the advantage that British and Fanatic troops have, and it reduces the penalty that Inexperienced troops have (cowering two columns). If you can find something to complain about even when the dice come up 1,1 then you need to find another game. Whining about boxcars and red battery access draws is acceptable!

OBA Access Card adjustments: This comes in a few forms, but the key to all is that battery access is never permanently lost. When a red card is drawn, instead of keeping it out of the pile, it is returned along with another red card (another version is return the red card and remove a black instead). Done in the name of keeping OBA in action longer, this has a tremendous amount of ripple effects. First, it increases the chances of never getting another black card. The module may still be there, but you may never get another mission. Consider this example: Your Access Pile is currently 4 Black, 2 Red. You draw a red card. Normally, this would put your pile at 4 Black, 1 Red and gives you a 1 in 5 chance of losing the battery permanently. But it also gives you an 80% chance of drawing a Black card next. Instead, with this house rule, your pile becomes 4 Black and 3 Red. This is dramatically different. One thing it does is it makes an extra card draw (say for having only concealed enemy in/adjacent to the SR hex) incredibly difficult (only a 57% chance of drawing a Black card next). It also screws up the advantage of having an extra black card for a Pre-Registered hex and really messes with nationality-specific Card piles. All I can say is that with these types of house rules, you're so far from the OBA rules in Chapter C that I don't know what you're playing anymore.

To Hit DR of 2 is always a critical hit: Another house rule for whiners. We have a well-working set of rules for unlikely hits. They work just fine. This house rule radically improves the lethality of crappy shots, particularly since snake eyes aren't as rare as people assume (1/36 chance is not that bad, considering all the rolls made during a scenario). You shouldn't be shooting when you need less than a 2 to hit anyway…ever hear of sniper bait or the rule of thumb that says don't shoot if it's more likely that you'll malfunction your gun than anything else?

Balance

House rules will almost always screw up the balance in a scenario. This is because they tend to make some kind of activity more or less dangerous. Since the scenarios are not playtested with your house rules, there's no way to ensure that they won't make one side's task hopeless (or a cakewalk). The best way to handle this is if you have a pet peeve about something (say, AFV crews abandoning in order to claim control of VC buildings), put in a SSR in a scenario you design, submit it for playtesting and see what happens. Retro-fitting existing scenarios with your modifications to the game is going to change things, perhaps dramatically.

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