Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9385725" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That's...not the rule of cool. That's "let people ride roughshod." The rule of cool--when it is used correctly--is allowing things that are reasonable, but the formal rules have left a hole that needs filling. It's going with what makes sense and would be more enjoyable, rather than things that would be genuinely not that fun to do.If someone else in the group already has a tool or ability to address the situation, that they would enjoy using, it isn't rule of cool to prevent that from happening. In fact, that would be quite uncool.There's a rather more obvious problem with this fight: the MacGuffin that instantly kills the boss. That will almost always lead to an anticlimactic and dull finish, because "push the proverbial red button to kill boss" isn't fun.No. That's riding roughshod. With "rule of cool," you have a backup option when the actual rules let you down.I'm an avid user of the rule of cool. But you have to actually SELL me on it. You can't just say, "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could do X?" Of course that would be awesome. HOW are you going to do X? How are you going to make that make sense? If you can actually, legitimately justify it to me, then I'll move heaven and earth to make it happen.But just saying, "I want to do X because it's awesome"? Try again, friend. Especially when someone else has already done the work.Note how the big issue with the pole-vaulting thing above, for example, was that it clearly didn't even make any sense. A five-foot stick? Hell no. We all accept some degree of suspension of disbelief, but that's not even wuxia, that's straight-up reality-bending.Now imagine if the character had, say, a magical size-changing pillar (hello Sun Wukong), and was willing to allow that pillar to fall away--his signature weapon, something he worked very hard to get--in order to get into position to slay the bad guy. That's not just "wouldn't that be sweet?!" That's a personal sacrifice, a logical extension of an existing power, and a cool scene resulting from that. The chain linking cause to effect is established. I don't care if there are no rules in the game for pole-vaulting, it's going to work because the idea is cool and sound.Rule of cool doesn't excuse unsound ideas. It's not enough to be JUST cool. It as to be cool and reasonable, for some definition of "reasonable.' And yes, by definition, that means it's going to vary from person to person and table to table. There is no universal standard. There is no objective rule. Reasonableness is necessarily a contextual thing.</blockquote>

Verification