House Rules and Clarifications

Heros, not Villains

out of character: There's a lot of room for anti-heroic heroes, but on the whole, if this is your story, you're the protagonists, not the villains. (not fitting in well is perfectly fine. Arrogance is fine as a byronic flaw. Thinking like a craven or villainous blackguard is fine as long as circumstances have a dismaying habit of putting their self-interest in alignment with acting like a protagonist.)

in character: the Siblinghood has union rules, and they don't like scabs.

Let it Ride

Phrasing from Burning Wheel:

Let It Ride rule: A player shall test once against an obstacle and shall not roll again until conditions legitimately and drastically change. Neither GM nor player can call for a retest unless those conditions change. Successes from the initial roll count for all applicable situations in play.

A GM cannot call for multiple rolls of the same ability to accomplish a player's stated intent. Nor can a player retest a failed roll simply because he failed. Tests must be distilled down to as few rolls as possible. The successes of those rolls ride across the entire situation, scene or session. If a player failed a test or generated no successes, the result stands. If he was hot and got seven successes, those stand for the duration.

1. If a STR-18 can't budge it, tagging a STR-3 in to try does not count as a valid different approach.
2. If narratively it makes sense to "keep trying", the GM can use the margin of failure/success on the roll as a guide to how much more time it takes before the problem is solved...
   • if we even need a roll in the first place:
   • Angry's Rule #2: Only Roll When There is Chance of Success, A Chance of Failure, and A Risk or Cost of Failure

Heroism

1. You can spend heroism to pass a save or fail an attack roll. Or to grant advantage/disadvantage before any roll.
2. You get 1 heroism from providing heroic succor to a named NPC or group. That point refreshes every session so long as that NPC can still count on you.
3. You can earn 1 heroism a session by progressing a story (personal side story or group story) through intra-party roleplay. (So create some goals!)
4. Bonus heroism given for dashing rescues in the face of peril.
5. These points disappear after the session.

Impending hackmaster imports

1. hackmaster's "all abilities have percentiles and grow per level" though I haven't reviewed the growth dice rules in years. (doesn't matter til leveling up anyway.)
2. hackmaster initiative or something like it is going to happen; baseline's just... meh.
3. a deeper review of skills is necessary before planning.
4. likely the economy stuff, with a shift to a silver standard.
5. maybe armor hit points. maybe the extra complexity is a bad idea. but I kinda like what I read and want to see the infamous system run some day. (Probably never)
6. any species a player wants -- those should be fast to iron out
7. maybe classes -- a lot of kettles of worms there.
8. maybe chargen buildpoints. certainly don't want the complexity now.
9. To be continued. It's hard to say what else needs to be backported to here -- overall they're really similar already, down to the jokes in the fluff text.

not stealing hackmaster's rules

Listing these here so that you know I noticed them -- please point out any interesting hackmasterisms that aren't in these three lists.

1. honor. it's alright, but I'm trying the heroism rule above so honor would be too much.
2. detailed alignment management. This swords/sorcery setting has it's own "most mortals don't have a measurable alignment" and "detect evil is in the eye of the insane deity" thing going.