4 House Rules for Every RPG

These great ideas come from amishbreakfast on reddit, with my comments added:

1. If you roll a die and it goes off the table, it’s a natural zero.
   This encourages players to roll on the table because dropping dice breaks up the flow of the game and wastes time.  The first time this happens, the players will take much more care.
2. Players get xp on an hourly basis.
   “Why? Because if you reward players with xp for killing, all they will do is kill.”  I don’t know if one needs to give XP hourly…  I would try simply giving out xp at the end of the session and itemizing the non-combat, plot goal, or role-playing XP rewards the GM decided.
3. Players can use knowledge skills to introduce new facts into play.
   amishbreakfast explains this comes from FATE. Let the player propose a fact, and if it doesn’t conflict with something the GM has already determined (or otherwise disagrees with) the fact is true if the player makes an appropriate skill check.  If the player fails, the character thinks the fact is true which can cause all sorts of fun.
4. Awesomeness trumps reality.
   If a player wants a character to try something awesome, give it a chance!  (Even if you make the skill check difficulty very high, let the roll be open ended and they can have that .25% (or whatever) chance.)

Here’s the link to the original post.