I came up with the idea for this project a few weeks ago to try and convince some of my friends to play House Games with me. I just missed playing the game system and honestly the idea of playing DnD in order to play TTRPGs was not appealing. I think DnD is a great system and all but it is not my cup of tea so to say.
So here I was, walking some of my friends through character creation. And I quickly realized just how fucking poorly written and inaccessible the documentation was for House Games.
For one, the documents are not easily accessible. It should be acknowledged that this is a Homebrew system that has spread via word of mouth. But the main repository for information about House Games lives in discord servers and a rotting, incomplete wikidot page. These are not good long term file storage solutions.
This is not that big of an issue. It would be a simple matter of making a website with the documents available for download on a privately owned domain. Indeed, that was the original intent for this website. A simple, accessible and stable storage solution.
However something began itching at me. I had walked two of my neonates through the process of character creation. The main PDF resource for House Games 1.5 was just fucking awful. A PDF merely It was even text, just screenshots of a seemingly lost version wikidot site. So I figured as part of this site I would pay for a computer program that could transcribe it to text.
However, it was poorly laid out and worded. If one was unfamiliar with White Wolf systems it didn’t explain anything about the mechanics. It also really poorly explained various high concepts things, such as character ambitions.
This means that House games had a fundamentally hostile documentation to new players. It would be extremely difficult for someone unfamiliar with the system to go through character creation solo. It demands a veteran player be there to assist. I had to be assisted by my site through my first character. And I had to assist my Childers in creation too. In one instance it took me nearly 3 hours to go through character creation with a friend only familiar with DnD and the Star Wars RPG.
So I initially began with rewriting the Character creation portions, so that my brood could more easily create their characters. However, the more I looked, the more I realized this game was in desperate need of a revision. These concepts were easy to grasp if explained well.
So what began as a simple information aggregation project has quickly ballooned into an entire new House Games edition: House Games 8th Gen revision. Just as the 5th generation before me tried to (and in my opinion failed) to revise our Macabre tradition so shall I.
There is one main goal I have my revision: to make House Games as accessible as a possible. The revision is being written with new players in mind. I have over 2 years of work experience as a scientific educator, and so have some skill in explaining the abstract.
This website will assume the reader knows nothing of the storyteller system. Ive taken great care to give detailed explanations of various abstract concepts (such as ambitions) whilst keeping my prose simple and easily understood. To this end I have been following Orwell’s 6 rules for writing.
I plan on putting a mirror of the site on Neocities to expose it to a new audience. I have been implementing ADA accessibility such as having all images containing alt text in their meta data. The site automatically switches to black and white to make printing out copies easier. The website is being designed to work on mobile and desktop and have navigation features. I’ve even been toying around with the idea of advertising it locally or putting it up on RPG drive through and 1d6chan. But this will not be considered until the project reaches completion…
Additionally, I strive to make it useable for veteran players as well. If an explanation is long and mostly only useful for a neonate, then I shall put in a drop down box, it’s own page, or after an anchor link to skip it. I want this to be a definitive version of House Games for a few years to come.
One thing I should note is I am hesitant to make any sweeping mechanical changes. Most of my planned changes are editorial in nature. There are a few very obvious changes I making. For one implementing the community used combat patch as official combat rules.
However most of the changes that come to mind are merely codifying already practiced rules in my chantry. For example, the restriction of not being to take Charmed Existence and Luck merit on one character. There are some interesting debate to be found within the Gen 5 off that I might considered. But it should go without saying that any big mechanical revisions will be thoroughly discussed in the Balefire Chantry, whose members have graciously agreed to assist in this revision.
One more thing to note. I’m gonna make the website have a web one aesthetic. There’s no real reason for this. I just think it’s a cool aesthetic. If you have read through all my ramblings then I thank you. I am writing this very early into this project and I’m excited to see it through. It’s entirely possible this will fail and House Games will fall into obscurity. But I don’t care either way, I’m enjoying this project.
8th Generation Harbinger, Appreciance of the Balefire Chantry, Prince of Phoenix