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Context Switching Paralysis, or Why we Will Always Have the Thief Debate
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8750256" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>Based on the way several people have explicitly discussed it with me, no, there's <em>plenty</em> of people who are openly wishing to clamp down on that. "Awesome has to be earned" is a phrase I've heard many, many, <em>many</em> times. And "earned," in this context, almost always means "achieved through many long hours of tedious grinding and/or failure." (Sounds like several MMOs I've played... <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> )</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure. Doing stuff "out of the blue" is rarely interesting and poorly justified. Just 'cause I can be persuaded to do something due to its coolness factor doesn't mean that coolness factor is the only rule that ever matters forever and ever 'til Kingdom come.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't really appreciate being patronized.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sounds to me like your 15-year-old players were more interested in playing a humorous game rather than a serious one. Which is fine, if that's what you as DM are interested in providing. If you aren't, then the issue has nothing to do with "Rule of Cool" and everything to do with expectation mismatch.</p><p></p><p>Or, to turn around the phrase so many others have so infuriatingly used: Why run games for players you don't trust?</p><p></p><p></p><p>The Rule of Cool has been around forever. It might not have had a name before then, but it absolutely <em>existed</em> as a principle of adjudication since before Gygax published OD&D, and as a principle of storytelling since before friggin' <em>Beowulf</em>.</p><p></p><p>When I speak of "Rule of Cool," I mean...well, doing things because they're cool. If you can sell me on the coolness of a situation, I will go to the ends of the Earth with you to try to make it happen. That doesn't mean it always <em>will</em> happen. Some things are simply disruptive, inappropriate, or off-theme in ways that cannot be fixed no matter how much finagling you do. Such things are rare, but they occasionally show up.</p><p></p><p></p><p>My point is that the scene is cool, which is my reason for embracing it. I would not deviate from the more typical situations of the game (where "praying for aid" is nice flavor, but doesn't accomplish much) without that "cool" factor.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Why would you ever apply the Rule of Cool <em>without</em> having costs? What would be the point of that? I just...what???</p><p></p><p></p><p>Which is what my example did...</p><p></p><p></p><p>Why are the actions "game breaking"? Why are you <em>allowing</em> "game breaking" actions? And if the action <em>would</em> break the game, and as a result you are opposed to it, why use the crappy passive-aggressive tactic of setting impossibly high difficulties, rather than being honest and forthright with your players and telling them? It's not hard to say, "Sorry, I'm not comfortable with that as is. What are you looking for? Maybe we can find a different way to make it happen."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure there is. "I permit cool things to happen, if coincidence should conspire to make a given situation cool" is quite a bit different from, "I actively embrace cool situations, such that if you can sell me sufficiently on the coolness of the scene, you're very likely to get it." The former is passive, unconcerned, detached. The latter is active, <em>seeking</em> to be persuaded, directly involved. They're as different as night and day.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I find this overly restrictive. "Rule of Cool" means doing things primarily because of their coolness. Which is what I do.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Alright, fine. Here's the full paragraph, completely unedited:</p><p></p><p>All of the leading questions asked here are off-topic, massively biased, or painted in a terrible light. "Monty Haul" has nothing to do with Rule of Cool--that's about loading up the campaign with magic items and pumping characters full of XP so they zoom through progression quickly. There's no further context before or after "Why can't you just validate the player no matter what?" so I honestly do not know what you meant by it--it isn't connected to the "Monty Haul" question, nor does it have any clear relevance to the following question about "being a little inconsistent." Speaking of, that conflates unrelated things, namely <em>inconsistency</em> with rules enforcement vs PCs being <em>different</em> from NPCs. It is not inconsistent to enforce laws differently against the sitting President of the United States than against Joe the Pawnbroker, because some laws <em>actually are different</em> for a sitting POTUS compared to an ordinary citizen.</p><p></p><p>Further, you then conflate "letting the PCs do awesome things" with the complete and total excision of any form of difficulty. That is a <em>massive</em> and <em>totally unwarranted</em> logical leap. And then a digression on the appeal of Dark Souls etc., which is largely irrelevant because "Rule of Cool" is completely orthogonal.</p><p></p><p>This is why I singled out just those few bits, by the way. I considered most of the paragraph <em>completely irrelevant</em> and thus ignored it. I singled out those bits because, on the one hand, I didn't see <em>any connection whatsoever</em> to the rest of the paragraph and further struggled to believe that I was actually reading what I was reading (wrt: player validation),</p><p></p><p></p><p>I mean, I literally gave the above example--allowing a non-Cleric/non-Paladin character to pray for divine aid and actually have a <em>real</em> chance of getting it, not a bull feces pseudo-chance--something that has gotten explicit and intense pushback in the other thread. I gave that example very specifically <em>because</em> I have been, and am currently being, told that doing that thing is a horrific violation of the rules that should never be allowed.</p><p></p><p>Other possible examples (most of which are Dungeon World, I'll mark 4e or 5e ones explicitly):</p><p>[SPOILER="Spoilered for length"]</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Allowing a 5e character to attempt to Action Surge (with some sort of steep cost) despite not having any Fighter levels</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Allowing a 5e character to attempt to re-weave a spell or enchantment that has already been placed, using an Arcana roll</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Completely skipping any negotiation process in a 4e Skill Challenge because a character's argument is persuasive and his reputation is beyond reproach</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Imbuing a player character with a spirit of law, rather than doing anything strictly "harmful," after they botched a roll to avoid a modron's final suicide attack</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Allowing a 4e character to treat a shield as a no-frills, simple heavy thrown weapon (e.g. the baseline +2 proficiency modifier)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bringing a character back to life despite the party having no means of resurrecting them, but with some sort of cost, detriment, debt, etc. in order to keep the story going rather than grind things to a halt (and, more importantly, to prevent a player from having to sit out multiple sessions before they can rejoin)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having useful coincidences, such as the party Ranger with a massive extended family/clan (established by his backstory) continually find distant cousins in useful places, such as working with the "internal police/secret service" branch of the region's primary religion</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Letting a player blend together traditions of magic that have, for thousands of years, been kept as separate but related things</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Letting one character "apprentice" to another character, with the goal of learning the basics of certain magics (here, Druid shapeshift); I said it could definitely be learned, rolls would just determine how well/poorly lessons went, though I did say the "apprentice" couldn't do combat forms even once they'd learned to transform.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Inventing, on the spot, a ritual to allow a character to purge a group of devilish taint, as the character felt kinship to these tieflings (who had been "blessed" with the blood of the character's own devilish ancestor), completely outside the ordinary rules of the game</li> </ul><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p>There have probably been other examples in games I've run and games I've played. These are just ones that come to mind that actually happened (well, other than the first 5e one, that is just one I invented as an example.)</p><p></p><p>As for the ways the Rule of Cool, <em>at least as I practice it</em>, would be starkly different from (so-called) Gygaxian DMs, well for the first point I'd actually embrace people playing something other than human if that's what excites them. Gygax very explicitly called out anyone who wants to play anything other than bog-standard human as doing so EXCLUSIVELY because they want to powergame. Not because they just find it exciting, not because it resonates with them or sounds like it could have interesting potential, but (and this is an exact quote), "principally because the player sees the desired monster character as superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or her in the campaign." (You can <a href="https://readingthedmg.wordpress.com/the-monster-as-a-player-character/" target="_blank">read the full text here</a>. It's got a <em>lot</em> of problematic advice in it.) So-called "Gygaxian" DMs <em>love</em> to ban stuff. They ban classes, they ban races, they ban feats (usually <em>all</em> feats), spells, items. Ban this, ban that. It's Oprah Winfrey, "<em>You</em> get a ban, and <em>you</em> get a ban, and EVERYONE gets a ban!"</p><p></p><p>Unless, of course, you follow the <em>rest</em> of Gygax's advice here, which is to be a passive-aggressive <em>jerk</em> about it rather than have an adult conversation with the player. Instead of being honest and just straight-up saying, "I don't permit that in my games," the strictly (so-called) "Gygaxian" DM lets the player <em>think</em> it can be done, only to sabotage them at every turn until finally they give up: "The less intelligent players who demand to play monster characters regardless of obvious consequences will soon remove themselves from play in any event, for their own ineptness will serve to have players or monsters or traps finish them off." And that passive-aggressive "don't tell players they <em>can't</em>, just never actually let them <em>succeed</em>" attitude is quite prevalent among self-avowed "old school" DMs today, including legitimately awful behaviors like <em>literally actually ignoring</em> a player who plays a dragonborn whenever they're trying to interact with shopkeepers or the like. (Yes, that was something I was actually told was a person's DMing policy, by an actual user on this forum. With the <em>explicit</em> intent that this frustrate or bother the player in question until they depart from the game or wise up.)</p><p></p><p>I have a standing, explicit policy: I will do whatever I can to support anything my players are enthusiastic about which isn't coercive, exploitative, or disruptive. I try to have a lenient attitude about what counts as "exploitative." Disruptive and coercive are more complex because those have more to do with how a player's behavior affects others.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8750256, member: 6790260"] Based on the way several people have explicitly discussed it with me, no, there's [I]plenty[/I] of people who are openly wishing to clamp down on that. "Awesome has to be earned" is a phrase I've heard many, many, [I]many[/I] times. And "earned," in this context, almost always means "achieved through many long hours of tedious grinding and/or failure." (Sounds like several MMOs I've played... ;) ) Sure. Doing stuff "out of the blue" is rarely interesting and poorly justified. Just 'cause I can be persuaded to do something due to its coolness factor doesn't mean that coolness factor is the only rule that ever matters forever and ever 'til Kingdom come. I don't really appreciate being patronized. Sounds to me like your 15-year-old players were more interested in playing a humorous game rather than a serious one. Which is fine, if that's what you as DM are interested in providing. If you aren't, then the issue has nothing to do with "Rule of Cool" and everything to do with expectation mismatch. Or, to turn around the phrase so many others have so infuriatingly used: Why run games for players you don't trust? The Rule of Cool has been around forever. It might not have had a name before then, but it absolutely [I]existed[/I] as a principle of adjudication since before Gygax published OD&D, and as a principle of storytelling since before friggin' [I]Beowulf[/I]. When I speak of "Rule of Cool," I mean...well, doing things because they're cool. If you can sell me on the coolness of a situation, I will go to the ends of the Earth with you to try to make it happen. That doesn't mean it always [I]will[/I] happen. Some things are simply disruptive, inappropriate, or off-theme in ways that cannot be fixed no matter how much finagling you do. Such things are rare, but they occasionally show up. My point is that the scene is cool, which is my reason for embracing it. I would not deviate from the more typical situations of the game (where "praying for aid" is nice flavor, but doesn't accomplish much) without that "cool" factor. Why would you ever apply the Rule of Cool [I]without[/I] having costs? What would be the point of that? I just...what??? Which is what my example did... Why are the actions "game breaking"? Why are you [I]allowing[/I] "game breaking" actions? And if the action [I]would[/I] break the game, and as a result you are opposed to it, why use the crappy passive-aggressive tactic of setting impossibly high difficulties, rather than being honest and forthright with your players and telling them? It's not hard to say, "Sorry, I'm not comfortable with that as is. What are you looking for? Maybe we can find a different way to make it happen." Sure there is. "I permit cool things to happen, if coincidence should conspire to make a given situation cool" is quite a bit different from, "I actively embrace cool situations, such that if you can sell me sufficiently on the coolness of the scene, you're very likely to get it." The former is passive, unconcerned, detached. The latter is active, [I]seeking[/I] to be persuaded, directly involved. They're as different as night and day. I find this overly restrictive. "Rule of Cool" means doing things primarily because of their coolness. Which is what I do. Alright, fine. Here's the full paragraph, completely unedited: All of the leading questions asked here are off-topic, massively biased, or painted in a terrible light. "Monty Haul" has nothing to do with Rule of Cool--that's about loading up the campaign with magic items and pumping characters full of XP so they zoom through progression quickly. There's no further context before or after "Why can't you just validate the player no matter what?" so I honestly do not know what you meant by it--it isn't connected to the "Monty Haul" question, nor does it have any clear relevance to the following question about "being a little inconsistent." Speaking of, that conflates unrelated things, namely [I]inconsistency[/I] with rules enforcement vs PCs being [I]different[/I] from NPCs. It is not inconsistent to enforce laws differently against the sitting President of the United States than against Joe the Pawnbroker, because some laws [I]actually are different[/I] for a sitting POTUS compared to an ordinary citizen. Further, you then conflate "letting the PCs do awesome things" with the complete and total excision of any form of difficulty. That is a [I]massive[/I] and [I]totally unwarranted[/I] logical leap. And then a digression on the appeal of Dark Souls etc., which is largely irrelevant because "Rule of Cool" is completely orthogonal. This is why I singled out just those few bits, by the way. I considered most of the paragraph [I]completely irrelevant[/I] and thus ignored it. I singled out those bits because, on the one hand, I didn't see [I]any connection whatsoever[/I] to the rest of the paragraph and further struggled to believe that I was actually reading what I was reading (wrt: player validation), I mean, I literally gave the above example--allowing a non-Cleric/non-Paladin character to pray for divine aid and actually have a [I]real[/I] chance of getting it, not a bull feces pseudo-chance--something that has gotten explicit and intense pushback in the other thread. I gave that example very specifically [I]because[/I] I have been, and am currently being, told that doing that thing is a horrific violation of the rules that should never be allowed. Other possible examples (most of which are Dungeon World, I'll mark 4e or 5e ones explicitly): [SPOILER="Spoilered for length"] [LIST] [*]Allowing a 5e character to attempt to Action Surge (with some sort of steep cost) despite not having any Fighter levels [*]Allowing a 5e character to attempt to re-weave a spell or enchantment that has already been placed, using an Arcana roll [*]Completely skipping any negotiation process in a 4e Skill Challenge because a character's argument is persuasive and his reputation is beyond reproach [*]Imbuing a player character with a spirit of law, rather than doing anything strictly "harmful," after they botched a roll to avoid a modron's final suicide attack [*]Allowing a 4e character to treat a shield as a no-frills, simple heavy thrown weapon (e.g. the baseline +2 proficiency modifier) [*]Bringing a character back to life despite the party having no means of resurrecting them, but with some sort of cost, detriment, debt, etc. in order to keep the story going rather than grind things to a halt (and, more importantly, to prevent a player from having to sit out multiple sessions before they can rejoin) [*]Having useful coincidences, such as the party Ranger with a massive extended family/clan (established by his backstory) continually find distant cousins in useful places, such as working with the "internal police/secret service" branch of the region's primary religion [*]Letting a player blend together traditions of magic that have, for thousands of years, been kept as separate but related things [*]Letting one character "apprentice" to another character, with the goal of learning the basics of certain magics (here, Druid shapeshift); I said it could definitely be learned, rolls would just determine how well/poorly lessons went, though I did say the "apprentice" couldn't do combat forms even once they'd learned to transform. [*]Inventing, on the spot, a ritual to allow a character to purge a group of devilish taint, as the character felt kinship to these tieflings (who had been "blessed" with the blood of the character's own devilish ancestor), completely outside the ordinary rules of the game [/LIST] [/SPOILER] There have probably been other examples in games I've run and games I've played. These are just ones that come to mind that actually happened (well, other than the first 5e one, that is just one I invented as an example.) As for the ways the Rule of Cool, [I]at least as I practice it[/I], would be starkly different from (so-called) Gygaxian DMs, well for the first point I'd actually embrace people playing something other than human if that's what excites them. Gygax very explicitly called out anyone who wants to play anything other than bog-standard human as doing so EXCLUSIVELY because they want to powergame. Not because they just find it exciting, not because it resonates with them or sounds like it could have interesting potential, but (and this is an exact quote), "principally because the player sees the desired monster character as superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or her in the campaign." (You can [URL='https://readingthedmg.wordpress.com/the-monster-as-a-player-character/']read the full text here[/URL]. It's got a [I]lot[/I] of problematic advice in it.) So-called "Gygaxian" DMs [I]love[/I] to ban stuff. They ban classes, they ban races, they ban feats (usually [I]all[/I] feats), spells, items. Ban this, ban that. It's Oprah Winfrey, "[I]You[/I] get a ban, and [I]you[/I] get a ban, and EVERYONE gets a ban!" Unless, of course, you follow the [I]rest[/I] of Gygax's advice here, which is to be a passive-aggressive [I]jerk[/I] about it rather than have an adult conversation with the player. Instead of being honest and just straight-up saying, "I don't permit that in my games," the strictly (so-called) "Gygaxian" DM lets the player [I]think[/I] it can be done, only to sabotage them at every turn until finally they give up: "The less intelligent players who demand to play monster characters regardless of obvious consequences will soon remove themselves from play in any event, for their own ineptness will serve to have players or monsters or traps finish them off." And that passive-aggressive "don't tell players they [I]can't[/I], just never actually let them [I]succeed[/I]" attitude is quite prevalent among self-avowed "old school" DMs today, including legitimately awful behaviors like [I]literally actually ignoring[/I] a player who plays a dragonborn whenever they're trying to interact with shopkeepers or the like. (Yes, that was something I was actually told was a person's DMing policy, by an actual user on this forum. With the [I]explicit[/I] intent that this frustrate or bother the player in question until they depart from the game or wise up.) I have a standing, explicit policy: I will do whatever I can to support anything my players are enthusiastic about which isn't coercive, exploitative, or disruptive. I try to have a lenient attitude about what counts as "exploitative." Disruptive and coercive are more complex because those have more to do with how a player's behavior affects others. [/QUOTE]
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