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

[TiQuinn]

I don't know why you refuse to accept that to some people the rule of cool justifies ignoring the rules of the game if they think it will lead to a better game. I'm done.

You keep shifting your perspective (now it’s all for a better game, apparently) and it feels like it’s an attempt to “win” an argument. You just can’t accept that I don’t agree with you.

 

[Pedantic]

It's a harsh truth, but I genuinely do believe it is the truth. "A rule for everything and everything has its rule" is genuinely harmful to a D&D game, but that's the only way to achieve what "rules as physics" wants to have. You need laundry lists for everything: weather conditions, attitudes, times of day, surface textures, material strength, value of goods, etc., etc., etc.

You've listed 5 things D&D has historically had tables and rules and laundry lists for. We can quibble about the exact abstraction, but it's clearly not impossible to actually write specific rules for those things.

If an action has no predefined approach, it is necessarily not possible unless the DM decides to be gracious and invent one for you on the spot. Yet doing so is incredibly laborious because it's very difficult to insert such a thing into such a complicated structure without breaking something, whether that be the system or the action (by which I mean making players slowly avoid creative play because it's rarely worth doing, as the DM fails to make it appropriately challenging and/or appropriately rewarding for that challenge level).

You seem to have defined the design task as the problem here, and then proceeded to point out that a completely different gameplay loop would be hard to do and pretty bad. Which is true, but not helpful. "Creative play" is a function of applying the rules, not in requesting new rules be designed on the spot that are favorable to your proposal. That, and once you have a solid base of rules to use, TTRPGs are notably extensible. You can write more later. In a better world, edition changes would involve collating and reviewing supplemental rules over a the game's lifespan, then publishing updates that prune what hasn't worked and centralize what has.

With the kind of game D&D is, and the kinds of pre-established commitments D&D has, rules-as-physics is an ideal that enforces serious problems. E.g. caster supremacy, the swinginess of dice, the "auteur" DM, etc. If you could eliminate those pre-existing commitments, it would be fine. But you can't, not without making too many players reject the result as "not D&D." 4e has far, far fewer changes to D&D's pre-existing commitments, and look at how that worked out.

I don't think there's any particular reason we need to append "being recognizable to D&D players" as an extra design criteria here; might as well give the approach as much rope to hang itself as you noted 4e had. Even if we do, however, I think you can get most of the way there by simply adding a more powerful skill system to 3.5, and that was solidly D&D for a reasonable period of time.

 

[Oofta]

You keep shifting your perspective (now it’s all for a better game, apparently) and it feels like it’s an attempt to “win” an argument. You just can’t accept that I don’t agree with you.

Disagree on what? You keep insisting that the DM I had and the DM the OP had "just made a mistake". I see no reason to believe either one made a mistake. Mine certainly did not. Since he wasn't inexperienced and it wasn't a mistake it follows that he was just running a game the best he knew how. It happened to be a style I didn't enjoy.

 

[TiQuinn]

Disagree on what? You keep insisting that the DM I had and the DM the OP had "just made a mistake". I see no reason to believe either one made a mistake. Mine certainly did not. Since he wasn't inexperienced and it wasn't a mistake it follows that he was just running a game the best he knew how. It happened to be a style I didn't enjoy.

Yes, I know that. I don’t know what you want from this convo and I really don’t care anymore.

 

[Lanefan]

Rule of cool applies to whether it’s possible. Just as there is no roll necessary if something can automatically be done, there’s no roll necessary if something is impossible. Rule of cool is just about making an argument that the impossible could be possible because it passes a cool test. The DM doesn’t have to allow it.

If you don’t like it or the term, don’t use it.

The bolded is where the concept leaves me at the station, because the impossible should be - by definition - impossible.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes. It is.

Because the goal of "rules as physics" is not possible. It isn't even remotely practicable as a loose approximation. The desire is for an unachievable ideal, and chasing after it has extreme, deleterious effects on any game that tries.

If the rules aren't there to represent the in-setting physics then they serve no purpose.

And to what "extreme, deleterious effects" do you refer here?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If the rules aren't there to represent the in-setting physics then they serve no purpose.

And to what "extreme, deleterious effects" do you refer here?

Just off the top of my head:

"Anything not permitted is forbidden." When the rules of the world are the physics, they determine what is possible to do. Hence, if the rules don't cover it, it doesn't exist, because the rules are what the world is, hence, what the rules are not, the world cannot be. This is the natural direction toward which such design tends, at least in D&D. That which cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence.

As noted above, the endless reams of narrowly context-specific modifiers and alterations. Every situation needs its modifier, otherwise it's gibberish--again, rooted in the idea that for every thing its specific rule, and a specific rule for every thing, which is the conceptual heart of "rules as physics."

The problems of PrCs, ACFs, substitution levels, etc. If there's a cultural difference between Paladins from continent A and continent B, it needs to be represented within the rules, or it doesn't exist. The proliferation of these ultra-hyper-specific build options--"bloat," as many call it--directly arises from the need to have everything represented by a rule, to make every nuance of physical difference explicitly encoded into the game.

Ridiculous optimization gaps. A ruthlessly-optimized character will beat the pants off of a casual, built-for-fun character in this context, because ruthless optimization means capitalizing on every possible situational and contextual bonus to eke out the greatest benefit. Players are actively encouraged to do this, leading to an obsessive pre-building culture-of-play, rather than a culture-of-play that engenders spontaneity and creativity.

For lack of a better term, "backstory exploitation." Backstory is no longer an optional flair or a fun seed for future adventures. It's now a critical part of the character, looped into the ruthless optimization as much as any other part. Of course, 3e in particular was rather sloppy in its design on this front, which is a distinct harm, but the margin of error was razor-thin to begin with because of how much benefit can be wrung out of the "right" backstory--strangling interesting or unusual options (e.g. "bad" race choices, quirky backgrounds like a Spy Paladin or an Urchin Wizard or a halfling barbarian or what-have-you).

I'm sure I could come up with more. All of these things are, in one way or another, rooted in the need for every physical thing to be represented by a discrete, specific rule, and the need to have discrete, specific rules for all things that are possible/valid/real.

 

[TiQuinn]

The bolded is where the concept leaves me at the station, because the impossible should be - by definition - impossible.

Cool.

 

[KYRON45]

In a world full of crazy wizards that can store their essence in a used peanut butter jar for later use, hippo men fly spaceships and sentient slimes live in underground complexes...I think its safe to say that the word "impossible" is heavy handed.

 

[Remathilis]

Still with people getting hung up on the moniker “rule of cool”.

Rule of cool applies to whether it’s possible. Just as there is no roll necessary if something can automatically be done, there’s no roll necessary if something is impossible. Rule of cool is just about making an argument that the impossible could be possible because it passes a cool test. The DM doesn’t have to allow it.

If you don’t like it or the term, don’t use it.

I prefer my RoC as "being automatically able to do something cool without the need to use elaborate mechanics, especially if the mechanical advantage is negligible." Basically, a damn the reel rules, that happens because it makes a good scene/image/story. It should be used only in the service of adding drama to a scene.