Welcome to the first post of my new website and blog! My old blog was getting long in the tooth and wasn’t doing everything I wanted it to. Working in games, both video and role playing, people often want to see samples of my work. I figured with over two decades of professional game work I should join the late 20th century and have a web page of my own to showcase my wares. Aside from self promotion, I hope to regularly update this blog with thoughts on game design, commentary on the games I’m playing, content from the campaigns I’m running, fragments from games I’m working on, etc. Initially that content is likely to favor D&D 5E as currently I am running two 5E campaigns and playing in a third, but that is likely to change in the future as I’m looking to change one of the games I am running to a different system (leading candidates being Against the Darkmaster and Shadow of the Demon Lord). 

For those who don’t know me, I’m Lee Hammock. I’m getting ready to teach my twin eight year olds their first real RPG. I’m a Senior Game Designer at Tripwire Interactive (I made the cool evolutions and the boats for Maneater). I’ve been writing tabletop RPG content freelance for almost twenty five years and been in the video industry full time for about fifteen years. I think about games a lot.  

To start off, I figured I would post the house rules for my 5E campaigns. Some of this is specific to 5E, but the first section applies to any game I run. If you’re looking for content outside of these boundaries, like lots of gore or sexual content, this is not the place for you. No judgement, just not what I enjoy.  

General Rules for Lee Games

All my tabletop role playing games/campaigns have a session 0, even if just online or through email, discussing expectations for the campaign for both the players and myself. I want to make sure everyone is on the page from the get go so we can all have a fun experience. Preferably I like doing some sort of cooperative world building exercise so the players can tell me what they want the campaign to be about.  

All my games are at most PG-13 games with the only regular exception being when I get excited I drop more F-Bombs than I should.  No gratuitous violence; sure there is violence, but no reveling in it. No sexual violence.  Of any kind. The end. And very little on screen sex; I’m more a fade to black sort of DM in the rare circumstance that it comes up (and only with informed consent from all players).   

Any race that reproduces as we understand it (i.e. two or more parents make a baby and then they or someone else raise that baby as it grows to be an adult) cannot be innately evil, so drow, trolls, etc are not evil by nature. Evil is a choice; you cannot blithely kill mortal creatures and be sure they are evil because of their genetic heritage. Chances are your flesh and blood enemies aren’t evil; they’ve just got different motivations that lead them into conflict with you (I try to make sure my villains see themselves as the heroes of their own stories).  Creatures that reproduce in such a way that they do not really have “children,” such as elementals or undead, can be innately evil. Most importantly killing a child is never a morally defensible action in my games; I don’t put up with any violence against children in my games.   

Evil characters are allowed, but they have to be team players. I’m not interested in PvP, stealing from other players, etc., but the character willing to do the evil but expedient thing for the good of the team is totally fine. 

My games tend to be high action, fast moving with a lot of story. Most fights you can find a way to avoid, but not all. If I can’t find a rule in 30 seconds I make something up. I expect my players to know their own abilities and trust them not to lie to me.  

I trust my players. I make it really easy to cheat in my games because of my level of trust, but I’ve never had a problem with it.   

My games tend to make players part of the community, such as giving them property or noble title that they need to manage or tying their backgrounds into the local settlement. Not a lot of wandering the countryside committing violence and expecting loot. I know I love a good spreadsheet more than most people so I try to rein this in somewhat,  

I do tend to use a lot of my own homebrewed content, some of which I’m playtesting for later publication. I’m open to allowing other unofficial content but I am SUPER picky.  Yes, it’s a double standard.  

House Rules for 5E

These rules are all specific to 5E but apply in all my campaigns currently.  

• New characters use the standard ability score array or point buy.
• All players advance at the same XP rate regardless of attendance. New characters start with the same XP as everyone else. 
• There is a homebrew class, the Unraveler, that is available. Unravelers are people who have had every scrap of magic ripped out of them and can use this void of magic to their advantage. It is in development and so may change over time.  
• Conjure spells: The DM picks the specific creatures summoned and can overrule commands if they are out of character for the creatures.  
• (Currently being playtested in one campaign) Critical hits do your max die roll on one set of die, and then you roll the second one. So if your damage is 1d8+2 and you crit something, you do 8+2+1d8. If your damage due to sneak attack is 1d8+3d6+4 you would roll 1d8+3d6+30 for your damage. So far this has been fun in the game I’ve been testing it in, but the party has two rogues and a paladin in a party of five so they like crits more than most. 
• UA content released in the last two years from the start of the game is allowed with the exception of any UA content with an updated version (i.e. you must use the latest version). Tunnel Fighter is right out. 
• Actions
  • It takes a bonus action to drink a potion yourself, but an action to have someone else drink it.
  • Give Ground: As a reaction when you take damage from a melee attack, you can move 5 feet away from the attacker onto non-difficult terrain, reducing the damage you take by 1d4 + your proficiency bonus. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks. If this reduces the attack’s damage to 0, treat the attack as a miss. The attacker can immediately move 5 feet to pursue you if their speed is at least 5 feet (not restrained, prone, etc.) and they can see you. This doesn’t cost the attacker’s reaction and doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks, but a creature can only move this way once per turn. This action was created by Brandes Stoddard and you can read his reasoning for it here: https://www.tribality.com/2019/05/09/the-give-ground-reaction/. 
  • Monsters must use an Action action to recharge a Recharge ability rather than rolling on each of their turns. This Recharge action is large and obvious to everyone who can see the monster, so players have some time to respond before it happens. Thus creatures can more predictably use their most powerful attacks rather than having them randomly become available on the monster’s turn when the players can do nothing about it.