The other day, I was on Musk’s sinking social media vessel when the following plaintive cry from a friend popped into my feed:
“Thinking about when a player wanted to shoot a guy on stage within an erupting chaotic crowd and I said he was 3 foot tall and was having trouble within the chaos to take the shot, and he passive-aggressively says, “ok well if I don’t have any agency”, and it really pissed me off.”
I felt the pain of a fellow GM who’s been branded the bad guy for following the rules / cashing a reality check, so I replied,
“Yep, I hear you! When they 1) ignore the limitations they chose on the character and 2) ignore reality because they want to be the hero. Galling. I wanna slap anyone who spouts rule of cool. Go play cowboys and injuns with finger guns.”
In my estimation, we play a game with rules so everyone is on an even footing, and within that understandable shared world, we can strive to do great things, even cool things. My friend replied,
“Yeah what annoyed me was this player professed to be quite an experience old school gamer Just kept making assumptions in this lame, condescending, passive aggressive way before I have a chance to explain the reasons why or how there would be a penalty or such, to do the thing.”
Been there, done that. I added my own tale:
“I had a guy hanging off a boat by his fingers, wanted to jump in the air, throw three daggers, then land on the deck backstabbing someone. Me, the older player, and the newbies stared in disbelief. The two modern D&D players were adamant it was doable.”
Some commenters replied that my story was ‘outrageous’. But this schism in expectations is real, and it is connected to The Rule of Cool.
ASK THE EXPERTS
The venerable Jeff Rients explored this mismatch in a post entitled "I want to do something cool Every Round!!!"
“I'm of two minds on this subject. On one hand I like it when game mechanics encourage freaking out, but on the other hand this sometimes feels like a crutch. With a cooperative GM you can buckle swashes without the mechanics holding your hand.”
I agree that mechanics often can’t cover all situations, especially ones that can lead to a cool, out of the box solution. Codifying cool is, in my opinion, asking for trouble.
In a following post, Rients continues,
“Your players are rock stars and they're here to rock your house. In this paradigm your job is to be the roady and the manager and all the other people who make the concert possible. This isn't one of those analogies that can be stretched forever, instead just mediate on the simple fact that your job is to help your players rock out without getting in their way. Everything below builds from this foundation.”
I’ll agree to disagree on that one. I think treating PCs like ‘rock stars’ leads to these outrageous assumptions that players are owed a good time. Also, a good GM does not get in the player’s way, but he or she does remind them of the constraints they are under when they’re trying to be heroic.
Rients rolls on,
“When in doubt, let a player roll some dice - If your Inner Magic 8-Ball isn't giving you anything to work with, sometimes you should pitch things back to the players in the form of requesting a die roll. If you can't make up your mind how to answer a question just break it down to a simple roll, clearly outline the stakes, and have a player roll it. This technique gets at least one player engaged in the game (making it a good thing to drop on an otherwise disengaged player), gets them rolling dice (which all decent right-thinking non-communist players love to do), and gives them ownership over a part of the game that isn't their character (thus empowering the player). And if the die roll yield a result unsatisfying to them, the blow is softened because they had a fair chance to get another result. It's not like you faked some roll behind a screen. Not that I'm against faking rolls behind a screen.”
Now THIS I can agree with Rients on:
1 Propose some risk & reward
2 Explain it clearly
3 Get the player’s assent
4 Roll them bones
However, I’d call this more a rule or procedure to handle creativity, not necessarily cool.
Let’s get a second opinion.
CBR.com, a popular stop for pop culture info, has this take on it:
“there's no one official wording on what the "Rule of Cool" is. However, it's most easily summed up this way: if something makes the game more exciting, let it happen. If a player wants to jump off the top of a wizard's tower to ambush an enemy who's hundreds of feet below them, allow it. If they want to throw a sword to cut the rope hanging their fellow party member from the gallows, allow it.”
As for example one, I totally disagree. Here is another flouting of the shared reality / rules that cheapens the experience for all to make one feel special. I’d tell the player they still take fall damage, but can try to kamikaze if they like.
The second example makes much more sense, and I think most GMs would welcome it, then propose a hefty skill penalty or some such all allow the player to roll the bones. CBR.com concurs:
“The decision to allow players to pursue exciting ideas is important, but it's only the first part of using the Rule of Cool. The rest of it pertains to how the rule is implemented. If a player wants to throw their sword, how should a DM resolve it? Thrown weapons in Fifth Edition usually have a specific range for what they can and can't hit, and there isn't one listed for swords (as they aren't thrown weapons). When using the Rule of Cool, it's best to drop fiddly rule considerations like the exact ranges of weapons. DMs need to instead focus on what makes sense for their game. For example, they could have the player make a regular ranged attack as if the target for their thrown sword was within range.”
However, CBR.com then points out how giving players something for nothing can deflate the whole game:
“However, going with a creative idea from a player can have unintended consequences. If players are getting something "for free," it can feel like the rules of the game have become warped. If a sword suddenly becomes a thrown weapon, why is it even necessary for any games to have thrown ranges at all? The key to making the Rule of Cool feel balanced is making sure there are stakes for special rules. If a player is getting something special by throwing their sword, there should also be a potential downside. For example, if they miss when trying to cut their friend down from the noose, they could hit their friend with the sword instead. Making things worse can often be just as exciting as making things better.”
WHO DECIDES WHAT IS COOL?
One of the major issues I see is deciding who is the arbiter of cool. If it is only the GM, he may find his megadungeon, his scenario script book, and his carefully crafted NPCs are cool, but the players certainly won’t. To players, the game is about raiding megadungeons, going off script, and using or abusing NPCs.
If it is only the players, expect them to break every rule in the book and its shared reality because it prevents them from being rock stars. Also, expect them to grow more demanding with every session, and bored if their egos aren't constantly being stoked.
Neither of these options lead to anything cool happening.
To me, EVERYBODY at the table has to agree without prompting “That was cool!” And cool is largely surprising, organic, and something that goes by quickly but is remembered for its awesomeness.
THE RIDDLE OF COOL
If everything is made cool, then very quickly nothing is cool. Fonzie was cool, jumping a shark makes you say “Cool”, but Fonzie jumping a shark? It has become the definition of uncool, of when a TV show formerly agreed on as cool loses that appellation.
Conversely, Seinfeld was an uncool, flailing show until the episode ‘The Outing’, in which Jerry and George have to face rumours they were gay. This mirrored accusations Jerry Seinfeld faced in real life, and which had previously been met in Hollywood by the decidedly uncool reaction of people like Rock Hudson denying both homosexuality and decrying gayness as ‘disgusting.’
Seinfeld turned that on its head with the rallying cry of “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”, exposing both the cruelty of denying peoples' true nature and the hypocrisy of accepting it while distancing yourself from accusations. All characters in the episode say this phrase so often that it became a pop cultural portmanteau, and the episode itself both garnered the highest ratings to date, it won several awards, and marked Seinfeld’s ascension to cultural phenomenon.
Now THAT was cool, Jerry!
WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ (EXTRA) RULES
The irony is that the more you try to make cool a ‘rule’ or codify it, the more such efforts fall flat on their face. Players become prima donnas trying everything under the sun to ‘win’ unwinnable games, ultimately boring themselves and the GM at their ceaseless attempts to be cool.
It reminds me of the RPG Awesome!, which lampoons this situation. Here is its description:
Awesome! The Storytelling Game
Keywords: universal rules-lite
A storytelling game with a Director and set of player, that uses a single stat ("Awesome!") that starts at 20. A player takes a turn narrating, and the other players vote thumbs up or down. If the result is mixed, the player rolls 1d20 for their new Awesome score. If it is higher than their old score, their narration turn ends. There are additional rules for Signature Schticks, Tagging Out, and Weaknesses. 7 pages rules (PDF).
So what is cool then? Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, I ran a game of the venerable Call of Cthulhu, on the surface a game very far from cool actions. There are no feats, magic drives you mad, and combat is suicidal.
During one scene, two characters, a tommygun-toting gangster and a pistol-sporting professor, are staking out a cultist. Our protagonists are hiding in the tool shed of a cemetery where their target is currently doing some minor ceremony on a grave.
Ho hum.
Suddenly, out of the sky an abomination appears, descends upon the cultist, and rips him into shreds in a spray of gore.
Sanity checks. Not cool.
The creature whips its head about to stare at the tool shed, then bounds toward it.
Uncool. The professor hides in the back, while the gangster opens up with his SMG.
CLICK! A zero and a zero. The gun is hopelessly jammed.
This ain’t cool, man!
The gangster shouts at the professor, “THROW ME YOUR PIECE, PROFESSOR!”
The tension ratchets up. Everyone at the table imagines the scene in slowmotion, like the baby carriage shootout scene in The Untouchables.
The prof’s throw roll - check!
The gangster’s catch roll - check!
Next round, our deft gangster empties the clip of the Browning submachine pistol into the slavering beast sticking its head into the shed door.
Critical hit. The abomination slumps to the ground, dead.
“That was fuckin awesome!”
“Cool man!”
“Holy shit!”
When something cool happens, you’ll know it. Like the lightning in a bottle of D&D itself, the more you try to codify and contain it, the more you kill the magic.
And that ain’t cool, man.
NB: Geek related seem to have beaten me to the punch with some very good thoughts
https://geek-related.com/2009/01/06/why-the-rule-of-cool-is-not-cool/
Sources
CBR.com
John Rients’ blog
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-awesome-up-your-players.html
Free RPG List
https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/bykeyword/rules-lite.html
Well said! Do you have any plans to go into my other "favourite", the often mishandled and badly explained "failing forward"?
ReplyDeleteI do now! Thanks for the inspiration, and thanks for reading.
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