D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[Oofta]

There's a middle case though. How practical an action is can vary considerably even among games that consider it possible. If the rules make something generally a bad idea, people will learn that pretty quickly and in most cases, avoid doing it.

What RoC can do is say "Yeah, the general application of the rules here would make this look dumb compared to just spending the round closing with them, but its cool so we'll finesse the rule here."

(You can argue that what should be done is a more general massaging of the rules to make more cinematic actions more practical in one way or another, but the hobby is full of people who will just end run problem spots in the rules they hit rather than ever formally, or even consistently informally, house rule them. I find that a little incomprehensible, but different people's minds work differently).

It's absolutely a spectrum and a fair amount of the rules are left purposely vague so people can implement what makes sense. But, for example, the OP's DM allowed a standing jump that more than doubled how far the rules allowed assuming someone 7 foot tall with a 20 strength. With a high enough athletics check, I might allow someone to grab something a couple of feet higher (the jump itself on gets 4 feet) but that still gets you grabbing something less than 20 feet up and that's the optimal outcome.

What would be especially egregious to me is that another player had spent the resources and implemented a set of actions by leaping from pillar to pillar to get high enough to leap on top of the dragon. Then the next player goes "Hey, I'd like to be up there too!" and the DM gave them magic jumping abilities.

Giving someone magic jumping abilities because it's cool is fine if that's what you want out of a game. But I've been in games that did something similar and it was basically one person was the most convincing and didn't give a s**t about the rules got a massive power-up. Those of us that like the way the game works were just left with the choice of trying to be as convincing as that person and not playing the game showed up to play (it was a convention game). The restrictions my character has, and finding ways to be successful anyway, is a big part of the enjoyment I get out of the game. Happy fun hour based on cool descriptions and hoping the DM plays along, is not.

All this should be discussed ahead of time during a session 0 or even earlier.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's absolutely a spectrum and a fair amount of the rules are left purposely vague so people can implement what makes sense. But, for example, the OP's DM allowed a standing jump that more than doubled how far the rules allowed assuming someone 7 foot tall with a 20 strength. With a high enough athletics check, I might allow someone to grab something a couple of feet higher (the jump itself on gets 4 feet) but that still gets you grabbing something less than 20 feet up and that's the optimal outcome.

What would be especially egregious to me is that another player had spent the resources and implemented a set of actions by leaping from pillar to pillar to get high enough to leap on top of the dragon. Then the next player goes "Hey, I'd like to be up there too!" and the DM gave them magic jumping abilities.

Giving someone magic jumping abilities because it's cool is fine if that's what you want out of a game. But I've been in games that did something similar and it was basically one person was the most convincing and didn't give a s**t about the rules got a massive power-up. Those of us that like the way the game works were just left with the choice of trying to be as convincing as that person and not playing the game showed up to play (it was a convention game). The restrictions my character has, and finding ways to be successful anyway, is a big part of the enjoyment I get out of the game. Happy fun hour based on cool descriptions and hoping the DM plays along, is not.

All this should be discussed ahead of time during a session 0 or even earlier.

To be fair, hard to do a session 0 discussion for a convention game. You jump and take your chances I think.

 

[Oofta]

To be fair, hard to do a session 0 discussion for a convention game. You jump and take your chances I think.

Yeah, I wish DMs for conventions would put a little blurb in there about their DMing style. If this had been an AL game, the DMs are supposed to fairly closely adhere to the rules. Thing is, the guy we had wasn't a bad DM, he just wasn't the DM for the type of game I want to play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Giving someone magic jumping abilities because it's cool is fine if that's what you want out of a game. But I've been in games that did something similar and it was basically one person was the most convincing and didn't give a s**t about the rules got a massive power-up. Those of us that like the way the game works were just left with the choice of trying to be as convincing as that person and not playing the game showed up to play (it was a convention game). The restrictions my character has, and finding ways to be successful anyway, is a big part of the enjoyment I get out of the game. Happy fun hour based on cool descriptions and hoping the DM plays along, is not.

All this should be discussed ahead of time during a session 0 or even earlier.

Well, as I've indicated before, I'm no big fan of game play cycles that turn on appealing to the GM's sense of the appropriate.

But I think the problem here sometimes in the basic game mechanics not necessarily producing the result someone wants them to, especially when it hits close to certain cinematic tropes. This isn't helped by a lot of people wanting to have their cake and eat it too; routinely they want the mechanics to vaguely fit their sense of reality, but when Those Particular Scene arise, be able to work for them. These two pieces of rope often don't, per se, meet in the middle, which is why I suspect as others have said earlier in this thread that some expenditure of metacurrancy would probably be better, but some people (especially in the D&D-sphere) are allergic to metacurrency, so...

A note though: sometimes it isn't even about what is mechanically beneficial to a character, just things that look nifty but if mechanicked out literally, would be counterproductive. Let's use the swinging-from-chandelier example. There can be two cases where someone wants to swing from the chandelier:

1. Swinging will get you to a better position and/or faster than other options. You reference the problems that can come up with this above, as it turns on "I'm entertaining the GM so he gives me freebies."

2. It doesn't really do anything that mechanically benefits the character meaningfully, they just want to do it because it looks cool--but it actually is more likely to fail and/or puts them at a disadvantage as compared to a more mundane tactic. In those situations I'm hard pressed to see any real harm to be had here, unless other people take it as a justification for arguing for the first part later--at which point they should be told to sit down and calm down.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, I wish DMs for conventions would put a little blurb in there about their DMing style. If this had been an AL game, the DMs are supposed to fairly closely adhere to the rules. Thing is, the guy we had wasn't a bad DM, he just wasn't the DM for the type of game I want to play.

How much of a blurb would you have to include, though, to communicate DMing style? My guess it would be longer than the rest of the event description.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How much of a blurb would you have to include, though, to communicate DMing style? My guess it would be longer than the rest of the event description.

That's the rub, isn't it?

 

[Lanefan]

There's a middle case though. How practical an action is can vary considerably even among games that consider it possible. If the rules make something generally a bad idea, people will learn that pretty quickly and in most cases, avoid doing it.

What RoC can do is say "Yeah, the general application of the rules here would make this look dumb compared to just spending the round closing with them, but its cool so we'll finesse the rule here."

Which is fine, once.

Except it's never just once; as having finessed the rule to work that way once you're now bound by precedent to have it work that way every time, should the same situation arise again (and in a long campaign, it's almost inevitable that it will).

Even worse is if-when you finesse a rule to account for player B's cool idea when player A did exactly the same action last session and didn't get the benefit of that same rule finesse. If I'm player A in that set-up, I'm feeling a bit ripped off.

(You can argue that what should be done is a more general massaging of the rules to make more cinematic actions more practical in one way or another, but the hobby is full of people who will just end run problem spots in the rules they hit rather than ever formally, or even consistently informally, house rule them. I find that a little incomprehensible, but different people's minds work differently).

Or, if one wants a more grounded and-or less cinematic game, one can houserule the other way. But you're right in saying that hard-coding these finesses and tweaks as houserules is the way to go.

 

[Oofta]

Well, as I've indicated before, I'm no big fan of game play cycles that turn on appealing to the GM's sense of the appropriate.

But I think the problem here sometimes in the basic game mechanics not necessarily producing the result someone wants them to, especially when it hits close to certain cinematic tropes. This isn't helped by a lot of people wanting to have their cake and eat it too; routinely they want the mechanics to vaguely fit their sense of reality, but when Those Particular Scene arise, be able to work for them. These two pieces of rope often don't, per se, meet in the middle, which is why I suspect as others have said earlier in this thread that some expenditure of metacurrancy would probably be better, but some people (especially in the D&D-sphere) are allergic to metacurrency, so...

A note though: sometimes it isn't even about what is mechanically beneficial to a character, just things that look nifty but if mechanicked out literally, would be counterproductive. Let's use the swinging-from-chandelier example. There can be two cases where someone wants to swing from the chandelier:

1. Swinging will get you to a better position and/or faster than other options. You reference the problems that can come up with this above, as it turns on "I'm entertaining the GM so he gives me freebies."

Sure there are things that can let you get into a better position. Maybe it's swinging from a vine while doing a Tarzan yell, maybe it's throwing down a shield and riding it down a slow ala Legoland Legolas. But if that chandelier is 30 feet off the ground and you're trying to jump up from the floor and grab it from a standing start, you are clearly violating the letter and the spirit of the rules.

2. It doesn't really do anything that mechanically benefits the character meaningfully, they just want to do it because it looks cool--but it actually is more likely to fail and/or puts them at a disadvantage as compared to a more mundane tactic. In those situations I'm hard pressed to see any real harm to be had here,

I'm all for flair. It just can't completely bypass the rules of the game to gain a significant benefit. If someone wants to do a fancy tumble I may have them do an acrobatics check. If it doesn't exceed movement or gain them some other advantage, they'll still get to where they want to go it just may look awesome or they may look like they accidentally trip. Maybe if they roll a 1 they fall prone at the end of their turn but if they roll a 20 they get advantage.

unless other people take it as a justification for arguing for the first part later--at which point they should be told to sit down and calm down.

That's a separate issue.

 

[Oofta]

How much of a blurb would you have to include, though, to communicate DMing style? My guess it would be longer than the rest of the event description.

The guy started our game with a "I'm very much into rule of cool and not so much tactical combat." That would have been plenty to make me think about other options. For me? It would be something along the lines of "I follow the rules fairly closely and like to challenge the players but we're also here to have fun so we'll have a quick discussion."

So, what, 30 words or less?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The guy started our game with a "I'm very much into rule of cool and not so much tactical combat." That would have been plenty to make me think about other options. For me? It would be something along the lines of "I follow the rules fairly closely and like to challenge the players but we're also here to have fun so we'll have a quick discussion."

So, what, 30 words or less?

Sounds reasonable. Your elevator pitch is very similar to mine in any case.