Secret House Rules

[Lord Raziere]

{{scrubbed}}

[Zrak]

I'm not trying to make anyone sound any more or less reasonable than anyone else. I didn't put words in your mouth. I didn't twist your words. I assumed you meant the things you said. If you didn't mean them (or, as in at least one case, basically meant the exact opposite) that is not my fault. What I am saying, as a broadly neutral party, is that you are being as stubborn and unreasonable as you accuse jedipotter of being. Whether or not jedipotter is being stubborn or unreasonable is honestly beside the point, although I would note that she asked you to clarify what she had missed and you just yelled at her without making any attempt towards meaningful conversation.

I am not out to get you. I'm not trying to make you look unreasonable. I am pointing out that what you are saying and how you are saying it makes you come across as unreasonable, at least to me. You do not give the impression that you are approaching the discussion in good faith, or making even the most basic attempt towards a meaningful discourse. I'm not even saying you aren't approaching the discussion in good faith, just that you come across as though you are not. If you are honestly attempting to engage in a meaningful, productive discourse with jedipotter and feel you cannot do so, perhaps you should consider how your own posts would come across to another, instead of just blaming her. That's all I'm saying.

[LimSindull]

I have an insanely wild idea.

Jedipotter, Would you kindly write in detail what a player should look forward to in a campaign. (from a player's perspective) What is it that draws players to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to explore a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a DM perspective.

Lord Raziere, Would you kindly write in detail what a DM should look forward to in a campaign. (from a dm's perspective) What is it that draws a DM to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to create a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a Player perspective.

These arguments have started their own discussion thread and I have read almost everything that I can on them for this current discussion. I am asking you to argue from the perspective I have not seen either of you two argue points from before. I am not asking you to change your beliefs about the game at all. Reader's are certainly curious to see your ideas, perhaps this will make things easier to see.

Thank you for any cooperation.

[Lord Raziere]

Lord Raziere, Would you kindly write in detail what a DM should look forward to in a campaign. (from a dm's perspective) What is it that draws a DM to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to create a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a Player perspective.

A DM? From a DM perspective, I would look forward to making a plot, but expect the players to do something that will somehow change it whether I like it or not, and have to adapt the plot to it, and improvise for the better. I would craft it so that the end is a summation and result of all their choices. Its a team game. I only do half the storytelling, they do the other half. They ultimately determine how the game is going to turn out, sure I will make villains and other such characters whose motivations and actions will pull the results in their ways as well, but the point of the story is that they are the protagonists. They the ones who can change things, and in return I write out the consequences for doing so whether they be good or bad, and often both. the joy is in making an awesome story, of judging the players actions and how they can be used to enhance the story they're in. that is what I've found enjoyable as a DM.

[Graypairofsocks]

If you are going to have secret house rules, you should inform the players that you will have secret house rules before the game.

[Mr Beer]

If you are going to have secret house rules, you should inform the players that you will have secret house rules before the game.

What if the existence of the secret house rules is also a secret house rule? I guess you could tell the players that whether or not there are secret house rules is covered under a secret house rule, which is a secret, so you can't tell them. Then when they first encounter a secret house rule, they know the answer to the first secret house rule, which is that there are secret house rules but not what those secret house rules are.

Or maybe it would be simpler to tell them that there is a secret house rule that forbids disclosing whether or not there is a secret house rule which forbids disclosing the secret house rules, if any? Could make life easier all around to Inception the secret house rules like this.

[eggynack]

Whether or not jedipotter is being stubborn or unreasonable is honestly beside the point, although I would note that she asked you to clarify what she had missed and you just yelled at her without making any attempt towards meaningful conversation.

It's not even really about being stubborn or unreasonable as it is about continually ignoring stuff. I guess I can produce a quick list of completely contradictory or weird stuff that I've questioned so far. At some point though, I think that the onus can't be on us-folk to keep asking and re-asking these questions.

1. How do you actually justify the idea that logic has no place in anything?
2. Do you want the mechanics of a character to reflect their backstory, or do you want the exact opposite?
3. How do complicated and interesting characters fit in to the high lethality world that you espouse?
4. How do you contend with the fact that stopping knowledge from working fundamentally decreases the realism of a game?
5. Why, if you're specifically opposed to high ability scores for its supposed narrowing of possible effective challenges, are you perfectly fine with a player rolling up scores even better than what point buy could feasibly provide?

Those are the ones I remember offhand from a lot of the recent threads. Questions raised, and either completely ignored, or otherwise quoted and unanswered in an inexplicable manner. If other folk have more, that'd be nice, but I think the basic point has been made. That point being, meaningful conversation is pretty much impossible when fundamental holes in the logic of an argument go completely unanswered, so it's not really Lord Raziere that is responsible.

[DM Nate]

The first rule of Secret House Rules is...

[Kalmageddon]

D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

If you want to lessen the importance of game mechanics and twist things around, use a system where game mechanics are secondary in every relevant aspect of the game. As much as I personally despise them, Dungeon World and Fate come to mind. They are so simple, it's impossibile to **** them up. Go wild.
But stop trying to push your philosphy as viable in D&D. You end up with a sub-par experience. You might have fun with it, but it's not what the system is designed to do and you would probably have more fun with another system better suited to a "creative" GM. What you are doing is forced and unnecessary.

Either way, you are not doing something new. Bad DMs have been doing what you are doing for ages, obsessing over controlling their players, you are just clever or malicious enough to make a big deal out of it on a forum that, unfortunately, loves these kind of debates.

Are you able to understand this, JediPotter?
With that said, I'm done feeding you once and for all. *adds to ignore list*

[Necroticplague]

I feel secret house rules usefulness is largely based on what kind of a game you run. In mine, it would be an abomination. My groups DM-player relationship is similar between a sports team and their organization (like the NFL). I set up the encounters, and I referee them, but I am not the antagonist, though I do describe their actions (like a sports announcer). Because I'm supposed to be a relatively neutral party, I use a lot of transparency. I expect the players to carefully go over their capabilities, what the situation might be, and then try and figure out the effective way to act. Therefore, putting up a layer of secret rules that makes them less able to effectively gauge their own abilities or the situation would be unjust in my group. However, I can see a possible use for them in more antagonistic groups, where you expect decisions to matter less, so the lack of proper information isn't as relevant.

[Engine]

I already mentioned Ravenloft in this thread. I'll do it again: it seems I'm a control freak and antagonistic DM because some years ago I ran a Ravenloft campaign with a group who didn't know the setting and I purposefully kept secret how magic exactly works in that world because the characters couldn't possibly know that.
IMHO, it's possible to run a good D&D game with secret rules.
The players in the campaign I mentioned above learned how magic works in Ravenloft through trial & error and some research. There wasn't any antagonism at the table, because those rules aren't meant to screw with the players (and I didn't used as such): they're part of the mistery of the setting and their discovery was part of the campaign I ran.

Yes, sometimes secret rules are a way for the DM to control the players and screw with them. But saying that every DM that keeps something close to the chest is a control freak and an antagonistic DM is false.

[Brookshw]

It's not even really about being stubborn or unreasonable as it is about continually ignoring stuff. I guess I can produce a quick list of completely contradictory or weird stuff that I've questioned so far. At some point though, I think that the onus can't be on us-folk to keep asking and re-asking these questions.

1. How do you actually justify the idea that logic has no place in anything?
2. Do you want the mechanics of a character to reflect their backstory, or do you want the exact opposite?
3. How do complicated and interesting characters fit in to the high lethality world that you espouse?
4. How do you contend with the fact that stopping knowledge from working fundamentally decreases the realism of a game?
5. Why, if you're specifically opposed to high ability scores for its supposed narrowing of possible effective challenges, are you perfectly fine with a player rolling up scores even better than what point buy could feasibly provide?

Those are the ones I remember offhand from a lot of the recent threads. Questions raised, and either completely ignored, or otherwise quoted and unanswered in an inexplicable manner. If other folk have more, that'd be nice, but I think the basic point has been made. That point being, meaningful conversation is pretty much impossible when fundamental holes in the logic of an argument go completely unanswered, so it's not really Lord Raziere that is responsible.

And here's where the issue breaks down further. Many of the elements of Jedi's game are those comparable to other "old timey" games, a style that many people enjoy, one I've seen new players who had never rolled a d20 prior to 3.0 come to appreciate. Just as the optimization community took offense at Jedi's original posts, the counter has extended to the point that it's not even Jedi in particular who is being targeted but the entire style of play that's is being espoused. Taken in a certain light and with a grain of salt much of Jedi's position isn't nearly as drachonian as people make it out to necessarily be. We've sort of now reached a level of hypocrisy where the attacks on his position are a direct reflection of his earlier attacks on optimization. If it makes it easier, consider the game Jedi talks about to the equivalent of pun pun for the Old Timey style of play.

Now I won't say I agree with everything that's said by J, but much of it doesn't warrant the up in arms attitude, at least since as far as I can tell the "cheater optimization" rhetoric has cooled, that remains. Let me throw around the word Orcus a few dozen times like I'm making a coherent point relevant to the discussion.

D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

I cringe every time I hear things to this effect, D&D is an extremely diverse system that can be used to emulate almost any type of game. Even in the course of a normal game you're expected to come across things the game doesn't cover and the DM is expected to make a call. The game acknowledges this is going to happen so already it's baked into the system to some degree.

[NichG]

D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

If you want to lessen the importance of game mechanics and twist things around, use a system where game mechanics are secondary in every relevant aspect of the game. As much as I personally despise them, Dungeon World and Fate come to mind. They are so simple, it's impossibile to **** them up. Go wild.
But stop trying to push your philosphy as viable in D&D. You end up with a sub-par experience. You might have fun with it, but it's not what the system is designed to do and you would probably have more fun with another system better suited to a "creative" GM. What you are doing is forced and unnecessary.

Jedipotter aside, D&D is an excellent system for secret rules specifically because the game mechanics and knowledge thereof matter. If you want the secret rules to matter, you need a system in which the fact that they're secret modifies play - that's kind of the point, at least if you're doing it with a particular design goal in mind. Secret need not mean 'screw you for your choices', after all - the focus on that is just because of this on-going back and forth with Jedipotter, but 'random stuff summons Orcus' is not the only kind of secret rule you can have.

For example, maybe around Lv6 you intend to allow players to choose whether to spend their XP to gain levels normally or to gain Gestalt levels at a discount (e.g. to gestalt Lv1 costs 1000xp and so on) - via some in-game plot-based source, of course. Then at Lv9 you say 'ah, using the ichor of this dead god you can buy feats for 3000xp each!'. And then at Lv12 you say 'hey, this shard of the myth of the everyman lets those who interact with it get abilities from Pathfinder if they want'. Part of the point of gimmicks like that is that it unsettles pre-planned builds - now, instead of the character-building part of the game being done months ago, players have the chance to revisit their plans and see if they can make what they want happen more efficiently using the new stuff that has opened up. If you let the players know ahead of time, sure, they could optimize their builds to take advantage of the future opportunity, but then when that opportunity came along they wouldn't have to revisit things - all that work would have already been done months before.

[Falka]

I have some "secret" houserules myself. For instance, many of my monsters work differently than those usually depicted in DnD. In my campaign setting, most monsters are vulnerable to fire and silver (anything that isn't strictly a beast or a humanoid is tagged as "monster") and divine magic triggers Good / Evil detection.

As long as it's something that isn't strictly mechanical and the players should know (like, how a feat works), I think you can have those.

[Kalmageddon]

I cringe every time I hear things to this effect, D&D is an extremely diverse system that can be used to emulate almost any type of game. Even in the course of a normal game you're expected to come across things the game doesn't cover and the DM is expected to make a call. The game acknowledges this is going to happen so already it's baked into the system to some degree.

LOL. No.
If you were talking about d20 Modern and expansions you might have a point, albeit weak, but D&D? Absolutely not.

[Airk]

Is it okay for me to come in here and say "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a crappy game and no one should play it?" :P

I have some "secret" houserules myself. For instance, many of my monsters work differently than those usually depicted in DnD. In my campaign setting, most monsters are vulnerable to fire and silver (anything that isn't strictly a beast or a humanoid is tagged as "monster")

This is less a "house rule" and more "hey, monsters have different stats". Now if you changed how fire vulnerability WORKED, that would be a house rule.

All that said, there's still very little case, in my book, for hiding information from the players.

[Jacob.Tyr]

I have some "secret" houserules myself. For instance, many of my monsters work differently than those usually depicted in DnD. In my campaign setting, most monsters are vulnerable to fire and silver (anything that isn't strictly a beast or a humanoid is tagged as "monster") and divine magic triggers Good / Evil detection.

As long as it's something that isn't strictly mechanical and the players should know (like, how a feat works), I think you can have those.

So every time a cleric casts a spell, people know their alignment? But the characters (especially if one is a cleric) were never around divine casters to have noticed this? And, further, do they not get to know this is happening even though the NPC's all can take advantage of it?
Seriously curious as to how this is a "secret", not trying to be antagonistic. There is a point where this could be just a mechanic, and a point where it becomes a "secret" that makes no sense for the characters not to know, and further it could turn into something that screws them over.

If your players automatically switch to the most optimal weapon (e.g. silvered) for every specific monster, without any in character reason for knowing that (knowledge ranks and checks or prior experience), then you are having a problem with them not understanding roleplaying anyway. I'll attack a ghost at least a few times before my character figures out incorporeal, because why the heck would he know stat blocks and monster rules anyway(unless I built him to know these things)? I don't view a homebrewed monster as a secret house rule, though. Once the housecat is out of the bag, disemboweling commoners, it isn't a secret anymore.

[Airk]

If your players automatically switch to the most optimal weapon (e.g. silvered) for every specific monster, without any in character reason for knowing that (knowledge ranks and checks or prior experience),

I dunno; If like, EVERY FREAKIN' MONSTER in the world is vulnerable to silver, it'd be part of common knowledge by that point.

I'll attack a ghost at least a few times before my character figures out incorporeal, because why the heck would he know stat blocks and monster rules anyway(unless I built him to know these things)?

Oh c'mon. It's SEE THROUGH and when you swing at it once your weapon goes through it. Why do you need to attack it "at least a few times" unless you're paniced or like, wisdom 6? It's not metagaming to assume that your arrows might not work super well on the animated statue either. :P

[Brookshw]

LOL. No.
If you were talking about d20 Modern and expansions you might have a point, albeit weak, but D&D? Absolutely not.

If you'd like to suggest things that couldn't be emulated please go ahead, but saying no and calling something weak is a bit......lacking in evidence.

[Segev]

In fairness to the "pro secret rules" people (Jedipotter included), I think a lot of the criticism here is coming from conflating "house rules" - which represent changes to the mechanics of the system based on the DM's preferences for how those class features/skills/whatever work - and "setting-specific rules" - which are based on something funky in the setting that causes things to work "differently" than the base rule set in order to better represent something going on.

House rules tend to be DM preferences and show up regardless of the setting, based on something the DM wants to see (or not see) happen in his game or on something he does to ease the flow of the game or increase his personal sense of verisimilitude. Jedipotter's preference of "scary unknowns" (which I disagree with philosophically, to the point that I don't think it creates fear the way Jedipotter thinks it does) leads to a house rule that, as far as I can tell, outlaws Knowledge skills. (My point of big disagreement here is that it seems Jedipotter lets people take those skills, and only tells them they don't work after the sp are expended. If that's not correct, please let me know.)

Setting-specific rules tend to be things like "spells cost hp as well as slots to cast." These should NOT be secrets to the players unless their characters could not know this until it comes up, and it is not likely to have come up in the past. If your 1st-level wizard does not know that casting spells costs hp, then it's likely that this mechanical change is a local phenomenon (and the wizard's never been in the locale before), or that the wizard never cast a spell he can remember. (Though even amnesia's not enough to really explain that; if he remembers he has limited spell slots, he probably should remember that the spell slot is only part of the resources he expends.)

DMs' house rules should be told from the get-go to players, particularly if players are building a character that will utilize those house rules in some fashion. Failure to do so is no different than if you told players that Fighters in your game got a free Martial Maneuver every level they don't get a bonus feat, and then told them that, no, you're not using Maneuvers in your game after all now that somebody built a Fighter and planned on those 5 levels he invested in it having 2 martial maneuvers for his trouble. And then refusing to let him change his build.

Setting rules are something that players should know if their characters would know it. If you don't want to allow Knowledge skills, then at the least they should be aware of how their class features and feats worked up until now. So if something has changed as of game-start, it's fine to spring it on them. It's a mystery to solve. If it's something that makes one question whether they'd ever used their class features before in their lives, however, it's a bad move.

In truth, I tend to find it frustrating and unfair to knowingly spring a world-altering change on players if it's meant to be a setting rule throughout the game and it will adversely impact their ability to play what they thought they were signing up to play. "So, as of this morning, magic doesn't work in the setting anymore," is a nasty thing to pull on the players of clerics and wizards and the like, who built what they thought were effective adventurers and now discover they're really just warriors and commoners.

The RP experience may be interesting, but it's something players should be allowed to know going in, that they're playing a character who's lost his primary power source, not a fully-featured member of a class.

[Jacob.Tyr]

I dunno; If like, EVERY FREAKIN' MONSTER in the world is vulnerable to silver, it'd be part of common knowledge by that point.

Well, yes, if every monster was vulnerable to silver I don't know why any hunter in that world would carry non-silver weapons. Would they even make weapons that weren't silvered at this point?
If, however, the int 8 farm boy-turned-hero carries a golf bag of different metals, and always pulls out the proper one, then there is probably an issue with metagaming.

Oh c'mon. It's SEE THROUGH and when you swing at it once your weapon goes through it. Why do you need to attack it "at least a few times" unless you're paniced or like, wisdom 6? It's not metagaming to assume that your arrows might not work super well on the animated statue either. :P

It may be real-life me bleeding through, but if something fails one time I'm not willing to call it a rule that it always fails. Never believe something based on n=1 :P

But seriously, if I have never seen a ghost before, and one smacks me in the face? I'm going to throw whatever I can at it, probably while quickly running away once I realize the chair I tossed went through it (okay, the running will start prior to that revelation anyway, but most likely the urinating will come after). Most of my characters, though, will probably just spend a round attacking before realizing they need to switch it up.

[Earthwalker]

I already mentioned Ravenloft in this thread. I'll do it again: it seems I'm a control freak and antagonistic DM because some years ago I ran a Ravenloft campaign with a group who didn't know the setting and I purposefully kept secret how magic exactly works in that world because the characters couldn't possibly know that.
IMHO, it's possible to run a good D&D game with secret rules.
[snip]

Of course in your example the characters were not from Ravenloft so the characters didn't know how that world worked. It seems the issue we are talking about is characters not knowing how the world they grew up in works becuase of secret house rules. I think these are different issues.

What i don't understand is... If the GM is the only one that knows the details of the rule and i some cases the only one that knows the rule even exists, why bother having the rule at all.
Your basically just doing what you want anyway, why bother creating a house rule for it?

I too would really love an answer to this question.

D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.
[snip]

With the addition of secret rules to give an old school feel. The removal of things like knowledge skills to make this more like AD&D. I can’t help but feel the OP would be better off playing an Old School RPG one of the many clones as opposed to changing 3.5 to make it more old school.
There may be people happy playing the game but from other posts it seems that there have been a few people turning up to the Ops 3.5 games and expecting to play 3.5. These people seem to leave upset. It might avoid this by running a different system not hacking 3.5.
I do have a question for the OP as well. Do you and your players practise meal worm learning. Where they create one character who dies, but the next character knows everything about the game world the first did. So that all world knowledge is basically stored with the players not the characters ?

[Airk]

It may be real-life me bleeding through, but if something fails one time I'm not willing to call it a rule that it always fails. Never believe something based on n=1 :P

I think it depends heavily on what "the thing" is. If it's a "thing" that kinda intuitively seems like it wouldn't work, I'd be in a lot bigger hurry to try something else.

But seriously, if I have never seen a ghost before, and one smacks me in the face? I'm going to throw whatever I can at it, probably while quickly running away once I realize the chair I tossed went through it (okay, the running will start prior to that revelation anyway, but most likely the urinating will come after). Most of my characters, though, will probably just spend a round attacking before realizing they need to switch it up.

So which is it? N=1 or not? :P

[Jacob.Tyr]

So which is it? N=1 or not? :P

What, your characters only attack once in a full round? You haven't been paying enough attention to the min/max boards :P

[Kalmageddon]

If you'd like to suggest things that couldn't be emulated please go ahead, but saying no and calling something weak is a bit......lacking in evidence.

Things that can't be emulated without heavy use of house rules, thus defeating the point of using the system in the first place instead of choosing something more appropriate, include:

-Anything realistic and gritty.
-Anything with a heavy focus on narrative.
-Anything set in modern times.
-Anything set in the future.
-Anything where historical accuracy is important.
-Anything where the players aren't supposed to be the heroes.

Now I'm not saying that it's impossibile to have any of these things in a D&D game, I'm saying that it requires heavy house rules and A LOT of work from the GM, for which the system doesn't really provide a lot of tools, which twist and break the premise of the game and that will disrupt the already weak game balance so much that by that point you really should be playing something else, unless you have a morbid attachment to D&D.

D&D, without having to stretch the rules or implement a ton of house rules, is made for epic high fantasy adventures with 0 historical accuracy. The PCs are heroes, above the norm and posessing powers that no one else, outside of main villains and such, have access to. Gold coins are routine and 2 10ft. poles cost more than a ladder.
If you think D&D is easy to adapt to any setting or is something even remotely close to a true universal system I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken.

[Engine]

Of course in your example the characters were not from Ravenloft so the characters didn't know how that world worked. It seems the issue we are talking about is characters not knowing how the world they grew up in works becuase of secret house rules. I think these are different issues.

Sure, they're different issues. But it seems, at least to me, that some users in this thread think that having any kind of secret rule in play in any kind of game it's bad DMing - or worse.

[Jacob.Tyr]

Things that can't be emulated without heavy use of house rules, thus defeating the point of using the system in the first place instead of choosing something more appropriate, include:
...

Kingdom building
Large-scale Combat
Economics-based games
Super Heroes
Space Adventures

Sure, they're different issues. But it seems, at least to me, that some users in this thread think that having any kind of secret rule in play in any kind of game it's bad DMing - or worse.

I think a lot of that is in response to specifics in prior posts by JP that resulted in some... heated threads previously. Just that heat carrying over, and I myself am guilty of it at some points in this thread. There are in fact situations where things may change, or your character may be out of their element, or just lack knowledge of a topic. In these situations, not telling the players mechanics or details is, in most circumstances, the best thing to do. If your players are really heavy into roleplaying it may not be necessary to leave them in the dark, as you should expect them to act appropriately without metagaming. But, there is definitely something to be said about keeping IC and OOC knowledge the same when possible. So long as you accept it as a two way street, and let players know things that, by all accounts, their character should know.

A character, and by extension their player, should know how their abilities function in most games. Further, they should have some knowledge of their world, especially relating to topics they would have interacted with. Unless it is a specific plot point that they lack or have lost this knowledge, there isn't much place for secrets regarding the mechanics that dictate how a character interacts with the world around them. One should probably assume that, through trial and error or training, a character is most often aware of who they are, where they live, and what they can do.

[Jay R]

Is it okay for me to come in here and say "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a crappy game and no one should play it?" :P

Sure, it's OK to make that statement. It's all right for us to disagree with it, too. By that measure, many computer games are poor games, since a lot of the point of playing them is to learn how they work. This has been true all the way back to Adventure and Zork in the 1970s.

Your statement is also a gross exaggeration. Nobody suggested the players not knowing the rules, merely not knowing all of them. This is true of any player who hasn't read (and memorized) every sourcebook the DM is using.

Changing the rules is done to solve the problem of the Click-Clicks.

“You obtain surprise over three Clickclicks.”
“Clickclicks? Oh, yeah, they’re in Supplement Three. Hand it to me. And where’s Greyhawk? It had a note about them.” A pause. “We shout out ‘November’.”
"That’s right, the Clickclicks fall over dead.”

I routinely change some rules, so the PCs don't know everything about the world they're in. And yes, the PCs were told that, before the game started. My dragons, for instance, are not color-coded for the benefit of the adventurers.

Also, swords get stuck in dead meat, so after each hit on a zombie, the next round is spent pulling the sword out. It made for a very memorable encounter. One high-STR player cleverly raised his sword, zombie and all, and used it like a flail against the others. They now try to use ranged weapons whenever possible. Nobody's figured out that bludgeoning weapons don't have that problem.

The PCs are experienced with zombies now, and know how to handle them.

[Sartharina]

D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

I find that this is not actually true. If anything, the more familiar people are with 3.5, the less fun they tend to have, and more likely they are to moan about how broken and unbalanced the game is.

My biggest complaint against Jedipotter is that he doesn't have a good grasp on probabilities, and considers a +8 vs. DC 14 a 'sure thing'.

[Brookshw]

Things that can't be emulated without heavy use of house rules, thus defeating the point of using the system in the first place instead of choosing something more appropriate, include:

-Anything realistic and gritty. E3, done!
-Anything with a heavy focus on narrative. This is how people choose to play the game, not a restriction of the system
-Anything set in modern times. Helped someone build such a campaign, the devils ran corporations, demon stock markets, inevitables as law enforcement. Cyberspace if you wanted to go that route is a bit trickier but you can manage with the shadow plane. Eberron already laid the groundwork for a lot of tech
-Anything set in the future. Spelljammer much?
-Anything where historical accuracy is important. No casters, done! Might need to modify equipment availability
-Anything where the players aren't supposed to be the heroes.I've had such a game pitched to me by a respected member of the playground community actually. It's amazingly easy to do, you just have a different role in the story.

Now I'm not saying that it's impossibile to have any of these things in a D&D game, I'm saying that it requires heavy house rules and A LOT of work from the GM, for which the system doesn't really provide a lot of tools, which twist and break the premise of the game and that will disrupt the already weak game balance so much that by that point you really should be playing something else, unless you have a morbid attachment to D&D.

Not really, there are a lot of tools already available to do just about anything, it's mostly just deciding what options you want to have in the game. Generally all you really need is a conversation with players to go over what type of campaign it's going to be.

D&D, without having to stretch the rules or implement a ton of house rules, is made for epic high fantasy adventures with 0 historical accuracy. The PCs are heroes, above the norm and posessing powers that no one else, outside of main villains and such, have access to. Gold coins are routine and 2 10ft. poles cost more than a ladder.
If you think D&D is easy to adapt to any setting or is something even remotely close to a true universal system I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken.

So you have no NPCs in your games? Sounds like you're pitching "special snowflake". The standard demographics are removed? Heck, just about any setting is littered with hi powered creatures, they're not a rarity by any means. All you're telling me is that you have a set of expectations that aren't inherently a function of the game or universal. Rather than being mistaken I seem to simply have a broader belief in what you can use this system for.

Want biological enhancements? Grafts.
Want Star Trek? Spelljammer with teleportation circles and resetting fabrication or wish traps.
Want the great human robot war? Inevitables and warforged.

Very, very few things really require extensive house ruling other than imposing limitation on the options available, but imposing limitations is par for the course in any game that's not kitchen sink and explicit in the game itself.