HOU: Personal Highlights from ~98 Templates

I put out my homebrew ruleset back on 8/18, and as part of that I had a second document drawn up of Features (which are sort of analogous to Delta Templates, except instead of having set-conditions to unlock them characters are expected to find & learn them in the world as a form of loot).

A lot of these Features I straight adapted from my last ruleset- which I started in 2020, put out publicly in 2022, and have basically been constantly making small adjustments to in years since until this last radical redesign. 

Point of all this being: I have always debated how to talk about this in blog-form. 98 is a lot to talk about, the current 98 entries are already listed in full elsewhere, many general concepts like Word-Based Spellcasting I've had around for a while in some form, and many others are general ideas familiar to the blogosphere.

So: I'm just gonna do a long-ass post highlighting some favorite design thoughts. If you'd rather just read the full 98 directly, please check out the Features pdf here.

While HOU is classless, design-wise I figured it would be pretty intuitive to group up Features into 3 branches for reference: Thief, Fighter, and Wizard instead become Schemes, Techniques, and Spellcasting generally; though there is some wiggle room.

Schemes

A lot of the Schemes I tried to have specifically lean less on practical applied Thief-yness (which is probably covered more by a character's Skills) and more on specifically emulating those "awww shit" turnabout sort of moments that happen in stories. As such, Schemes are a lot more about plan-enabling, bending rules slightly, lucky breaks, etc.

Playing with Initiative is also a theme that comes up a lot, as a means to really get the most out of using a FILO system. Like I mentioned in that post, I think it really pushes that "counter-spelling a big threat" vibe now that combat is more lethal too.

This one is perhaps my favourite Feature of them all. With FILO, it's entire purpose is to let players fuck with the GM. The purest distilled "YOOO" unexpected moments.

I'm including this one here just because I'm proud of reusing Parrying mechanics for squanching down emotional distress. Feels right.

I don't like Charisma-as-mind-control, and while this is different I always go back and forth about how I feel about it. I think it's a little more okay since it's more used to create an opening to be exploited rather than full on mind control? Definitely janky though, but so are a good few schemes.

Another little favourite! On the surface, it seems good for just changing a disguise quickly. But imagine donning a piece of Armour at the last minute to block a lethal blow, or since Initiative is partially Inventory based just Luping the III'ing to get the jump on somebody.

I generally try to avoid abilities that are too meta or bend the logic of the setting while not being obviously magic, unless they are that cool or they offer some really nice options for the players. Quick-swapping whose in the party to deal with specific situations is probably very very strong depending on what sort of character stables the party keeps, but it allows players to play more characters so I think its worth it for that ensembling?

Take the whole "your character produces an item from nowhere" archetype and reverse it. I haven't actually had this one come up at the table yet but I'm waiting for that reverse-pickpocketed grenade moment.

I think this is perhaps the ability that has survived the longest with the least editing, since like ~2019. Purely just for the love of the asspull.

Techniques

With Techniques, I tried to avoid the boring sort of "swordsman who just gets more & better attacks" sort of thing? To mixed success I think. A lot of the Features still slot into the combat, defensive, or "physically strong" sort of camps, but as much as possible I always try to make each sort of ability multi-use or to have some sort of non-combat or non-homicide application as well.

I've also tried to make each combat ability weapon-agnostic at this point. It can seem a bit janky on the surface, but usually it's pretty easy for common-sense rulings (I hope).

Probably one of the biggest examples of this sort of thing is Parrying. The archer probably(?) isn't directly able to parry a zweihander with their bow under normal conditions. But could they parry it by shooting an arrow to disrupt the swing? Its the sort of thing I feel a table usually can reach a pretty good consensus on hopefully.

Grappling serves as a sort of way for the tricky guy to take out a big armoured target when they are surprised / immobilised and shanking them in their soft spots, but there's also some Features here to leverage that mechanic into making a (probably overpowered) proper wrestler.

This Feature might be a little underwhelming, but I feel like the ability to plainly deny being interrupted in FILO might actually bust the game wide open. Haven't had it run at the table yet, but definitely hoping to stew on it + some of the other Initiative based Features and write up a blogpost later.

If it wasn't clear before, we punishing badly timed dodge rolls babyyy

Throwing this one in just because I thought it was elegant in it's stupidity. Thanks to the way engagement & Initiative are written, essentially this is being defensive by just constantly backpedalling and potentially kiting a target in melee. 

Part of my more recent design mindset has been to try and simplify as much as possible, and reusing the current spell mechanics to let players invent super killer kung fu techniques seemed appropriate.

Speaking of kung fu this is 100% meant purely for creating Jackie Chan fight scene moments. Don't grab table legs or rocks, beat me up with a pair of pants or something.

Old kung fu movies in general inspired a lot of my combat designs I think? Techniques with rules work naturally in a rules-based game, but also a lot of scenes have more of a push and pull going which works well with Balance I think. Swashbuckling Princess Bride sort of stuff also has that same sort of energy I think.

Spellcasting 

I already talked a bit about these here.

Of Features I updated, these were probably the most radical since before they operated on an almost class-based system as a means of game balance. You couldn't just dip once into Spellcasting, you had to invest more and more of your character into it to really benefit.

There's still remnants of that here, like in the above. It's one thing longer term I heavily debate trying to cut out or sort. Getting closer to self-contained one offs is a goal, but sometimes that obvious progression or cross-referencing just seems necessary. 

A lot of a spellcaster's funk is derived from HOW they learn and cast spells after all, as the spells themselves are still largely freeform aside from using Laws over Dice.

Puissance is a great overall example. When I was first drafting everything back in July after reading this post, this was one of the first ones that clicked purely for emulating that vampiric stank as the original test case. Imagine for each supernatural vampire power a character getting, also gaining more and more of the classic dumb vampire weaknesses and restrictions. I hope one day a player character is sat and forced to count rice grains thrown on the ground, because that's peak weird situation generation.

Differing the underlying rules adds flavour and forces unique methods of play. Take for example Observances, which is about three drafts changed from the version I had in OUH that was inspired by Ten Foot Polemic's Cleric back in 2019.

My hope also is that players can aim their character toward Features as goals diegetically (e.g. Thrumbo wants to be the strongest swordsman in the land) but also undiegetically, specifically based on the level of depth that they are more interested in.

For example: compare Observances with the Edict Feature on page 98. Edicts lets players track Words they've encountered, and use them to write free form poetry as prophecies or curses with all sorts of legal conditions or criteria. Or the Ritual Feature, in which players are sacrificing items to get associated Words to do some Infinite Craft Word Trees.

I think both of those are neat because the bend the rules in different ways and operate completely differently with the same resolution mechanic, but I also know 100% that Edicts & Rituals are a bit bloated.

But for some players a bit bloated is their jam! So knowing what you're interested in generally, and pursuing that in game play tends to work for initial buy in.