Is "rule of cool" one of the worst concepts to happen to tabletop...

Is "rule of cool" one of the worst concepts to happen to tabletop? A lot of people tend to interpret it as "if I come up with something totally out of bounds for my character or otherwise implausible, I can still do it because the table thinks it's 'epic.'"

A good idea doesn't stop being a good idea because it isn't idiotproof.

It depends?

If your party isn't running a very serious game and it's all action based then rule of cool makes sense.

If you're running a horror/gritty shootan game though then yea might wanna nix that idea.

Ideally the rule of cool should work in conjunction with the characters skills, just in unorthadox or weird ways. If a character good at shooting wants to target a support beam to collapse the cavern, I think it would be perfectly fine.

I once had a player in the ffg black crusade game. Who created a pair of deamon weapon blot pistols out of a pair of blue horrors. And traded away one trait for the ability to slam them together to create a deamon boltgun. I was ok with this. As it wasnt a strickly overpower idea, but i agreed it should be let in. Partly for creative thinking. Partly by rule of cool based on the concept that blue and pink horrors do devide.

>Expecting someone to excercise basic discretion as a guidline instead of being autistically dependent on the rules as written to govern every single aspect of their game

Where the fuck do you think you are?

>OP's fw

The more someone knows about a subject the more painful disregarding it gets.

Yet it doesn't get any more important, it just seems like it, so take a step back and relax.

This really. The best moments in tabletop come from creative thinking mixed with absurd amounts of luck. The usual consensus at my table basically amounts to "You want to do this complex thing? It'll take several rolls in such and such a sequence. If you fail then that's that."

I fucking hate that rule. I am a down to earth person so I ask some basic stuff that I want to do or request and my DM says no, meanwhile everyone else is doing over the top anime bull shit and the DM lets them do it.
>Hey DM can I start off with basic X thing for flavor reasons?
>No
>Hey DM can I do a realistic maneuver and do X?
>only if you roll above a 20
>uhh DM I want to smuggle this large gem, I shove it up my ass to smuggle it
>Now that I will allow!

As with all tools, the problem isn't with the rule. The problem is with how the rule is applied.

A poor workman always blames his tools. If you think the "rule of cool" is broken, that opinion has more to do with how you use it and less to do with the rules itself.

If you were paying attention to your GM's fetishes you would have realized you could have started the game with the basic x thing hidden in your ass.

Look, if it dunt automatically make you go "YEEEHN YOO FUUCKIN!"

Then it's bad story telling.

I don't know. Have you ever sat down and said to myself "I want to play a game where I can never fight anyone ever because if I do I will almost certainly get an infected wound and die"?

Does that sound fun to you? Does that sound like an interesting story to you? The story of Captain Buttface and the One Battle He Fought Before Succumbing To Dipthyria?

Rule of Cool is only as bad/good as the table that follows it. The only really terrible concept that's come about recently is that a nat 20 anything means you always succeed, regardless of whether it was just an attack roll or not.

Moderation in all things, user. The "rule of cool" is just like almost anything else, along with its cousins the "rule of fun" and the "rule of funny."

There needs to be limits, and it's hard to define limits because this is a very subjective thing. Yes, obviously it becomes a problem when a game ostensibly bound by rules and with defined characters ignores those whenever conven4ient - but there are cases where the rules are either insufficient or, at least, don't lead to the most entertaining outcome.

Unfortunately, this requires common sense and a sort of instinct, which is difficult for autists.

No, it just means a serious game will have lower limits for this sort of thing. Lower doesn't mean none. There's always some room for the concept of "This thing makes the most sense, but the rules don't exactly support it happening, so we're just going to ignore that part." Essentially, it's just rule zero.

As always, rule zero is something that needs to have limits, even if they're vague limits. If it's used too much the game stops having meaning and collapses. If it's not used enough the game is inflexible and can forbid some excess that can be entertaining or just more smoothly flowing.

Sounds like you resent a perceived double standard or special treatment more than you resent the rule itself, fampai.

Fun can be had at the expense of others.

Honestly, I'm fine with a nat 20 being an automatic success. Rolls shouldn't be allowed on anything that is strictly impossible, in my opinion, and so there should always be at least one successful outcome with a roll.

What I hate is nat 20 being some kind of epic over the top zany success. That should only happen in funny fun nonserious games, and even then it's a gag that gets old. That, I think, is just a meme that got repeated and exaggerated over time due to successive "generations" of players seeing the humorous exaggeration of the concept, taking it sincerely, and then humorously exaggerating that, rinse and repeat.

Yeah, but if like OP they're not at your table, who cares?

But in a collaborative activity like most RPGs, that kind of model is inherently unsustainable.

>What I hate is nat 20 being some kind of epic over the top zany success.
That's what I was referring to. A partial success on a nat 20 for some insanely difficult (but not impossible) thing is reasonable to me.

People can play games however they want. Everyone should be having fun. Assuming your fun is more important than my fun is what is unsustainable. Not liking or permitting nat20 and rule of cool doesn't make you a grinch because some people have fun playing grounded games that don't bend rules.

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/thread

By that logic comunisim's a good idea.

It's just that - a good IDEA.

Is it? Or is it predicated on a bunch of criticism that aren't fixed by Communism either in theory or in practice?

yes

The rule's not bad in itself. The real problem, as I see it, is one common to any narrative driven mechanic: What one player considers 'cool' may be derivative, goofy, or just dull by the other members of the group.

My own rule of thumb, is to keep descriptions of actions to a bare minimum the players own imaginations will fill in any blanks better than any GM could hope to

It’s a good idea on the surface, but impractical and flawed because of man’s inherent drive for self preservation.

Good in theory, bad in practice.

>not making him roll for anal circumference
shit GM, desu

no, in the same way that quantum ogres is a legitimate tool.
Just because you come up with ridiculous ways to use it wrongly doesn't make it a bad tool. If people thought like that we wouldn't build cars.

>Good in theory
No, it's not even good in theory. I hate this meme, that communism not working is our failure rather than its'. Like communism is too pure for this world or some fucking nonsense. The theory, itself, has a century's worth of logical and practical critique and is widely "debunked," as well as such a thing can be.

it didn't sound like an interesting story until i read the title. now i'm hooked.

Is "other people having fun" one of the worst concepts to happen to tabletop?

if everyone else in your group likes Rule of Cool and you don't like it, you are the That Guy. go find a different group where you can all memorize the rulebook and not try anything without an explicit description and mechanic.

You seem to be thinking of this as though it were actually treated like a rule. It's not. Not even remotely.

This kind of thing, letting people get away with interesting actions that the rules don't necessarily account for, is entirely different from group to group or even between different games/adventures.

In several games that I've taken part in where the "rule of cool" was in effect, this only really refers to things the GM was willing to let us try doing that were very possible and maybe even practical kinds of actions which the rules don't account for or aren't kind to.

This, it's a rule-of-thumb kind of rule, not a hard absolute.

There's a time to adhere to the rules and a time to be flexible, a good game has to have a mix of both. What mix that is, exactly, varies from group to group.