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

[mamba]

Oh sure. I just point out a LOT of people* who want Cool, action movie martials and dramatic spellcasting would be very upset

we do not have to get rid of those to not allow all kinds of things. I am fine with the rule of cool having Die Hard as the baseline, but Crouching Tiger or Kill Bill loose me

 

[Umbran]

The vast majority of modern referee advice boils down to “say yes or roll.” It’s even in the DMG.

I don't think, "say yes or roll," is Rule of Cool, though. I think it's more, "Don't burden the game with process of play over things that are unlikely to matter."

Where I come from, the Rule of Cool isn't about auto-success. It is about making sure the GM's mind stays open to attempts to succeed they didn't think of themselves. The Rule of Cool means the game isn't about guessing the the GM's solutions to challenges.

 

[Composer99]

I've been seeing alot of instances of "The rule of cool" in games, and while it seems neat at first, I've started to think its actually bad for the players and the game. It lets any one player do practically anything they want, cheating the other players who may have actual abilities and tools to solve the problem.

A recent example in a game I was in was one player spent several rounds being up high on pillars and stuff and jumped onto the back of a dragon the bbeg was riding. Another player who had the mcguffin to kill the bbeg wanted up, but didn't wanna spend time moving around. So they used a 5ft stick to somehow polevault up 30 feet (with zero lateral movement) into the bbeg's face.
That sure was neat for the player who suddenly developed divine levels of pole vaulting skills, but sure wasn't that great for the player who spent time up above, and all the rest of the party who might've also had ways to solve the problem.

With "the rule of cool", you never have to run away or play the right class or do the right thing. Just make up a epic sounding thing and the dm will go along with it. While they make an encounter fun for that player, these actions strip everyone else of both agency and utility. Why spend time on special class abilities or items when someone else can suddenly be 10x better than you because the idea "sounds cool". Effectievely the bar for winning gets so low that victory starts to lose meaning with "the rule of cool". You never have to run away or regroup because you can suddenly to epic anime crap to overcome any problem. How is winning fun if you cannot actually lose?

The example you give doesn't really strike me as having much to do with the concept of "rule of cool", and more of a problem of "spotlight hogging", or at least a related player misdemeanour.

I mean, "being up high on pillars [...] and jump[ing] onto the back of a dragon" seems pretty darn cool, whereas, to be honest, pole vaulting just doesn't seem all that "cool" in the context of heroic fantasy gameplay.

Assuming you aren't presenting an uncharitable read of the situation, the DM seems to be allowing the pole-vaulting player to achieve the same effects as the climbing-and-jumping player with no consideration for how the uncool pole-vaulting negates the effort of the cool jumping-on-to-a-dragon's back.

Of course, it's possible you're not accurately representing the situation used in your example. Is the pole-vaulting character amazingly strong with proficiency or even expertise in Athletics, for instance? That makes their trick far more plausible in a game aiming to emulate heroic fantasy.

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All that is to say that it's not clear to me that your framing for "rule of cool" presents an actual at-the-table problem with the concept itself.

Your subsequent lines of discussion again don't seem to have much to do with the "rule of cool" at all, except insofar as it is representative of a style of gameplay that:

• You just don't seem to care for;
• Is now predominate, or seemingly predominate, in D&D;
• Might even be said to be the default style of the game.

That's fine, as far as it goes, but it doesn't follow that there is an actual problem with the game or with the culture of play at many a table that needs solving: that you don't care for heroic or casual gameplay norms is fine, but it doesn't mean there's something wrong with those norms.

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In another thread, I mentioned some key differences between classic dungeon-crawling play and heroic adventure play. Here's a topical quote (at least IMO):

Contrast [classic dungeon-crawling] with heroic adventure play. In this kind of play, the risk versus reward balancing act that players have to consider is something completely different, and may well not have much to do with earning loot at all. It's probably more closely related to things like player character goals - what do you want, and what are you willing to give up to get it? - or heroic dilemmas - if you can't save everyone, who do you save? - or heroic quests - can you make it to the Temple of Doom in time to stop the conjuring of the Demon of Doom, and how will the actions you take increase or decrease your chances of success?

In heroic play, "how much can you carry on an ongoing basis?" is usually just not an interesting question with enjoyable gameplay coming out of it, [...].

Likewise, casual power-fantasy-enabling play doesn't even care about balancing risk versus reward. In that kind of play, you're just trying to kick the door down and beat up the monsters of the week. This kind of play is especially suited for "rule of cool" since it's often closest to trying to emulate genre tropes from pulpy heroic fantasy or action-adventure stories, where the heroes win and look good doing it. Were I a DM of a game espousing these norms, I would say "no" when a player's proposal is going to make gameplay less enjoyably escapist for the table writ large first, and then secondarily look to matters of in-fiction plausibility.

Of course, a lot of casual power-fantasy-enabling play does incorporate some of the dilemmas, hard choices, and the like of heroic adventure play, because setbacks and defeats can be part of the fun. (For instance, it's enjoyable watching the rebels forced on the back foot in The Empire Strikes Back! Luke's defeat isn't just an unpleasant-but-necessary part of his development that audiences have to sit through and endure: it's a positively enjoyable moment we can relish.)

A good summary of all of that is:

Modern D&D, inlcuding 5e, is, at its core, a neotrad game about displaying your character's prowess through combat, social, and exploration encounters. It is not, at its core, about an actual challenge.

and

*Its not about player survival sim skill challenge.

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The bottom line is that different norms of play are going to value different things in gameplay. It seems abundantly clear that you espouse a certain set of gameplay norms. Fair enough! What is generating pushback is that you are, or at least are coming across as, trying to suggest those norms are "objective standards" of good D&D gameplay, which is manifestly not the case.

 

[Remathilis]

we do not have to get rid of those to not allow all kinds of things. I am fine with the rule of cool having Die Hard as the baseline, but Crouching Tiger or Kill Bill loose me

The OP of this thread did not state certain types of cool is fine, they argued it's a bad idea in general. So I have to assume they meant Die Hard is as bad as Kill Bill or the Avengers.

 

[TwoSix]

*Its not about player survival sim skill challenge.

Fair. There can be aspects of the game that are challenging, and mastering the components of the ruleset isn't trivial (it's not hard, but it isn't nothing). But the game has nothing approaching a fail state outside of a TPK, and even that state falls mostly upon the DM.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Oh sure. I just point out a LOT of people* who want Cool, action movie martials and dramatic spellcasting would be very upset if we went back to [...] fireballs who expanded to fill the volume and incinerate the rest of the party.

wait, no, that sounds awesome, bring that back!

 

[James Gasik]

Let's not forget that the DM can employ rule of cool as well. I had a session recently where a player used a spell to make a flying wyvern prone in mid-air. As the wyvern lacked the ability to hover, it fell. I then noted that the player was underneath the wyvern.

There's no rules that allows a falling wyvern to scream "Death From Above!" in Draconic and perform a Shooting Star Press on a player, dealing damage to them and rendering them Restrained until said wyvern stands up from Prone or they wriggle out from under it, but I did it because it sounded cool, and even the player who got squashed by the wyvern was laughing about it.

 

[Remathilis]

wait, no, that sounds awesome, bring that back!

It was good if you were great at calculating cubic volume or you and your friends were immune to fire, but most of the time it was that fireball, the iconic wizard spell, was bad in most situations.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What's nice about the Rule of Cool to me is that it doesn't matter a gosh-darned thing what any of you or anyone else thinks of it. Not even WotC. I can do things however the heck I want... can rule my games however I think would make the game most fun... and if a bunch of you would throw up down your shirts by what I was allowing... too bad! This is one of those things where it's not even worth arguing about because there is literally nothing anyone can do to see things change at other tables.

 

[TwoSix]

What's nice about the Rule of Cool to me is that it doesn't matter a gosh-darned thing what any of you or anyone else thinks of it. Not even WotC. I can do things however the heck I want... can rule my games however I think would make the game most fun... and if a bunch of you would throw up down your shirts by what I was allowing... too bad! This is one of those things where it's not even worth arguing about because there is literally nothing anyone can do to see things change at other tables.

Well, except...