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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9389622" data-attributes="member: 93670">I've been following this for a while now & there is something noteworthy that doesn't seem to have been raised.  Back when rule of cool/rule zero was written about it was written for a much crunchier system.  At the time it provided justification for the GM to bypass those rules when it made sense without it getting dubbed with the often negative term "fiat".  Both sides of the GM screen got something cool going on at the table & neither had to take any heat  so the term itself carried a lot of positive good will to the point that even using it in negative ways got completely unrelated terms like favoritism & such.That crunch is no longer the case though because the current edition has rules in many areas that would charitably be dubbed "unfinished" years ago when rule zero/rule of cool were being printed & talked about. Without that crunch there is often nothing for the rule of cool to bypass.  Lacking any rules to bypass  rule of cool/rule zero is now often used to invoke decades of good will in order to do things like throw the dice out the window in order to shift from role playing to play acting.[spoiler="difference between role playing & play acting"]Weird that "shorts" can't embed, it's about a minute maybe less[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UDczHib_ehA[/URL][/spoiler]Fate does a nice job of accounting for the impact of a more flexible system by splitting it into golden & silver rules[spoiler="fate's golden rule"]Before we go into specifics, here’s our general Golden Rule of Fate:• Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it.This might seem like common sense, but we call it out because the order is important. In other words, don’t look at the rules as a straitjacket or a hard limit on an action. Instead, use them as a variety of potential tools to model whatever you’re trying to do. Your intent, whatever it is, always takes precedence over the mechanics.Most of the time, the very definition of an action makes this easy—any time your intent is to harm someone, you know that’s an attack. Any time you’re trying to avoid harm, you know that’s a defense.But sometimes, you’re going to get into situations where it’s not imme-diately clear what type of action is the most appropriate. As a GM, don’t respond to these situations by forbidding the action. Instead, try to nail down a specific intent, in order to point more clearly to one (or more) of the basic game actions.[/spoiler][spoiler="fate's silver rule"]the corollary to the golden Rule is as follows: Never let the rules getin the way of what makes narrative sense. if you or the players narratesomething in the game and it makes sense to apply a certain rule outsideof the normal circumstances where you would do so, go ahead and do it.the most common example of this has to do with consequences(p. 162). the rules say that by default, a consequence is something aplayer chooses to take after getting hit by an attack in a conflict.But say you’re in a scene where a player decides that, as part of tryingto intimidate his way past someone, his pc is going to punch through aglass-top table with a bare fist. everyone likes the idea and thinks it’s cool, so no one’s interested inwhat happens if the pc fails the roll. however, everyone agrees that italso makes sense that the pc would injure his hand in the process (whichis part of what makes it intimidating). it’s totally fine to assign a mild consequence of Glass in My Hand inthat case, because it fits with the narration, even though there’s no con-flict and nothing technically attacked the pc.as with the golden Rule, make sure everyone’s on the same pagebefore you do stuff like this.[/spoiler]Even there consulting the rules first is considered important enough that the page with both of them has that as the only bolded bit of text on the page.</blockquote>

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