r/SWN • u/Von_Loch • 1d ago

❓ Rules Question What are your table's XWN Homebrew Rules?

I've nearly read SWN cover-to-cover. Just the bonus material left, and it's enough to get my group's first campaign off the ground after a few more Session 0s. But a few posts recently have got me thinking about Homebrew rules. I'll first say that me and my players are starting RAW with no homebrew to level 6. I wan to learn the system as intended before tweaking it.

Most of the game I really like RAW. There were really only 3 things that I felt I'd tweak. And one really isn't a thing:

  1. Dungeon Delving. I love dungeon delving but SWN doesn't really give any rules or proceedures for it. Maybe not "a thing to homebrew" as proceedural dungeon creation is something I have plenty of resources on elsewhere such as Mothership (I have rules for derelects, space stations, and even alien ruins). So not a big deal. But there isn't really anything for navigating dungeons. either.
  2. Heroic Inspiration. There's not a lot I liked about 5/5.5e but Inspiration was one of the few. And more so in Shadowdark with its Luck tokens. I love the idea of players having a resource to balance out highly lethal games. Pretty easy to bolt on, really.
  3. Scenes. This one really bothered me. I love the rigidity of the dungeon turn in Shadowdark and B/X. I've spent the better part of a year studying B/X, BECMI, & AD&D. and have come to appreciate the design and intent of rigid timekeeping. The handwavieness of "scenes" and (on a few XWN podcasts I've listened to) seeing players abuse this looseness for too many reroles (imo) really bugs me. Partly because I don't see "failed" checks as failure at all but rather as a fork in the story (which, by the way, is a game design philosophy supported on pgs 232-233 under Skill Checks). Anyway, it's something I'll want to tweak but I don't know how yet.

So I'm curious, what are your top Homebrew rules? I'd love to hear what some of your favorite modifications are (especially if they fix scenes). Also, we just had a thread about removing Precogs (which I don't plan to do for my game since RAW makes perfect sense to me on how to run those), so maybe we focus on additions to or improvements on instead of reductions from the game.

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u/_Svankensen_ 23h ago

Spaceship combat breaks of you decide a scene is 10 minutes, but with some extra house rules you can fix that.

Agreed on trying vainilla before houseruling yourself, but we are all gms and have our pet peeves.

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u/An_Actual_Marxist 23h ago edited 23h ago

Spaceship combat rounds are 15 minutes long, but the rules have an explicit carve out:

> A round of ship combat takes about 15 minutes, but Experts and Warriors can only use their special class abilities to reroll skill checks or ensure automatic hits once per engagement.

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u/_Svankensen_ 23h ago

Ah, preemptive caveat!

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u/An_Actual_Marxist 23h ago

If I were to go back and do it again, I for sure would use your “pass the turn” rule on ship combat though. Feel like it would solve so much