Note: None of which follows is an attack on Chatty DM, he has merely written something I disagree with.

Defining the Context

Here is the definition used by Chatty DM in his original post.

The limit of the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its degree of coolness. Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality so long as the result is wicked sweet and/or awesome. This applies to the audience in general, as there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual in the group.

Chatty DM goes on to say

Which basically makes me think that my efforts as a DM should not so much be on far-reaching World Building and tight nitpicking-proof plot lines and such.

I should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness. Think combat on ice Bridges, negotiating the release of prisoners in a flooding underground prison, hopping from floating island to pieces of flying ruins in order to catch the thieves of the Star jewel of Radnia…

From the wikipedia entry on Cool

Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist”

What is Cool?

A commenter on my post pointed out that I “automatically equate the Rule of Cool with explosions and CGI”. One of the two reasons I did is because Chatty DM did - Ice Bridges, flooding prisions, floating islands falling to pieces - all of these would be CGI-fests in a film.

The second reason for linking CGI & explosion with cool is because coolness is an expression of sensory pleasure and predominately linked to visual stimulus. Exactly the sort of stimulus you see in action movies with explosions and slow motion gun fights.

What is not Cool?

No one would describe an Agatha Christie book or film as cool. They are slow moving with a lot dialogue between irritating Belgian’s and crusty upper-class murderers. Yet this style of whodunit is an important aspect of fiction whether it is books, films or role-playing games.

In a similar vein, no one could describe Frodo & Sam’s grueling slog across Mordor at the end of The Return of the King as cool. It is the slow, emotional progress of two souls coming to terms with their fate. It is a vital part of the story, without which the character’s rescue by the giant eagles would mean nothing.

How Much Cool?

My starting point was Chatty’s own comment that he “should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness” (highlights are mine). What Chatty is proposing is that games (or at least his games) should be full of CGI-fest type scenes and this is what I consider idiocy.

Notice that I’m not saying that these scenes should never occur or even that they should be rare. My point is that unrestrained use of coolness is patently self-defeating. Players will get desensitised and they lose their impact. As I stated in my original post, ‘The Matrix’ was cool is because the cool bits were preceded by long periods of character and plot development. Compare this to ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ where no cared about the characters, especially the Littlest Cancer Patient, because no time was invested in letting the audience get to know them.

Cool and Fun and Good GMing are Different Things

Some of the commenter seem to equate doing cool things with fun and good GMing. More than one commenter expressed the idea that “As long as everyone is having fun, it’s OK”. Role-playing (at least how I see it) is not about having fun, it is about entertainment.

How a GM entertains his players depends on how long the game is likely to run. If it is a single session then there is no reason not to go mad with big scenes and other ‘fun’ things. But if you are running a campaign lasting months or years, every week cannot be ‘fun’. Some weeks the party have to miss a clue or a secret door and spend the session going round in circles. Other weeks a character may die. Neither of these are fun but they have pay-offs that increases everyone’s enjoyment. When the party finally spots the clue and catches the bad guy, they will saviour it all the more than if the GM had handed it to them on a plate. The death of a character makes all players more worried and nervous about combat which increases the excitement and makes victory even sweeter.

When to use or not use coolness and fun is the secret to good GMing. Players need to be rewarded with cool for being inventive, even if it sometimes breaks the consistency of the game. Players having a bad session, for whatever reason, need to be pulled into the game with fun events. Balancing these and all the different aspects of a game is nothing to do with the rule of cool, it is simply good GMing.

So Who Are The Idiots?

Well not Chatty DM I’m sure. Judging from his writing he clearly understands about plotting, character development and all the other aspects of good GMing. Even when writing about swamping his players with coolness I’m sure his adventures are closer to ‘The Matrix’ than ‘Matrix Revolutions’. However the Rule of Cool is still bad advice.

Movie producers and GMs who think that it doesn’t matter what they do as long it is cool are destined to fail. Where as those who understand how coolness works and use cool appropriately will create blockbusters.

WTF!

The ‘Rule of Cool’ is best explained by Chatty DM here (and the follow-up here) but in short it is the same motivations that produce films like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and other CGi driven tripe - Make it Big, Make it Flashy.

The reason for bringing this to the gaming table is because players don’t notice the time the GM spends slaving over “watertight and internally consistent adventures”. Therefore it is more important that adventures be ‘cool’ and by that they mean showy with big explosions and stupendous stunts.

Missing the Point

Because we all play different games and adventures, it is hard to give examples from the gaming table but as the ‘Rule of Cool’ originated from TV Tropes I will use examples from the movies.

‘The Matrix’ is a film most people would describe as cool. It has great CGI that produces truly amazing scenes with big explosions. Everyone watching that film wanted to be Neo (or Orpheus or Trinity or even Agent Smith). Everyone remembers the big gun fight scene in the lobby or Nero dodging Agent Smith’s bullets during the rooftop showdown. Every GM would love to run a game that was as cool as ‘The Matrix’.

However, the sequels to ‘The Matrix’ sucked. They had the same characters with a bigger CGI budget and even longer fight sequences so why did they fail? According to the ‘Rule of Cool’ the Matrix 2 & 3 should of been better films than the original but they weren’t. Critically and financially they were flops compared to the original. GMs who pursue the rule of cool on their tabletops are going to make ‘Matrix Revolutions’ and not ‘The Matrix’

What People Remember and What is Important are Different

The reason why people remember those great scenes in ‘The Matrix’ is because they happened after two hours of carefully plotted, internally consistent build-up. Those big fight scenes would be meaningless if we didn’t know and care about those characters but it is the fight scene and not the build-up that people remember.

Hollywood and consumerism play on basic human nature, the desire to get as much pleasure as possible as quickly as possible. Whether it is high-fat sugary foods, instant credit for that plasma screen TV or big budget CGI fests the principle is the same, the principle the Rule of Cool promotes, and yet it fails time and time again. Obesity, credit crunch or polished turds like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ are always the result.

Great Things take Great Effort

Players may not notice the GM’s efforts to build a consistent, thought-out world but it makes a difference. Good films and good games don’t do something because it is cool, instead they do it because it is right for the situation. ‘The Matrix’ was cool because the creators had a deep understanding of the characters, their world and above all how to develop those ideas through the movie.

If you live by the ‘Rule of Cool’ you are doomed to create shallow copies of other people work. But if you want to be remembered, whether it is for gritty realism or high fantasy, the GM and the players need an understanding of the world they are in and that takes time and effort.

• Uncle Bear takes on Ego Driven Roleplaying
• DnD Corner has sensible advice on Building a Dungeons and Dragons Village
• Jeff’s Gameblog looks at carousing in Party Like It’s 999
• Always good for game industry news, Purple Pawn asks What’s In the Future for West End Games? and information on the Flatland RPG.
• The endless debate on 4e continues with Critical Hits doing A Comparison of Content with earlier editions.
• A good question produces interesting debate on Chgowiz’s Old Guy RPG Blog: How do you DM the identification of magic?
• A great round up of free resources for gaming on The Free RPG Blog: No need to take up a life of crime, free stuff to feed your fantasy RPG habit
• Greywulf’s Lair has Greywulf’s Games of the Year 2008
• Running an Evil Campaign is the hot topic on The Recursion King

And the winner of the “best Christmas film” was ….

A dead heat between my two favourite Christmas films, with both taking 24% of the vote, the winners were The Muppet’s Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life. Two truly great films.

Otherwise, the poll results were predictable. Most of you thinks board or tabletop games make the best presents but gadgets came a close second. The idea of clothing as a present got zero votes. As a whole, people want to spend Christmas at home with their partner and friends though going to ones parents was also a popular option. Finally, the best thing about Christmas is that we are all material bastards, as 48% of you opted for Presents over gaming time, food or drink.

Merry Christmas from Rob & Chris.

1. GM Missed the Roll

In a busy combat, the player rolls their to-hit die, getting a bad result but the GM was distracted by another player and hasn’t noticed. The player simply picks the die up again and waits for the GM to ask them to roll. This form of cheating is most common in large groups where it is easy to get away with but other players may notice what the GM doesn’t.

2. The Sin of Omission

In a tight situation? Need every bonus you can find? Then simply forget about the negatives. It is easy for a player to “accidently” forget that they are encumbered, still dazed from the last spell or that the target is at long range. Of course, the GM or another player might annoyingly remind you but if you have a reputation for honesty at the game table, no one will thinking you are cheating. Just that you forget things in the heat-of-the-moment.

3. Baffle them with Bullsh*t

In a game like D&D with lots of expansion books, this way of cheating is easy but requires preparation. Use as many obscure options from every add-on you can find in your character. Then when the GM challenges your 1st level character having +27 to hit, reel off all the bonus, explaining where you got them from. In a busy game, the GM is not going to be able to check-up on everything you’ve said. So they will never notice that the small print in rules specifically stops that combination of bonuses and if they do, you can claim you didn’t notice it.

4. Unreadable Dice

Picking your lucky D&D dice might also mean picking your most unreadable dice. The ones where all the paint has come out of the numbers and each roll involves several seconds of squinting to workout the result. For players sitting at the other end of the table to the GM or if the GM has poor eye-sight, this is a license to cheat.

Chris Redford sends us word of his new dice rolling app for the iPhone Quick Roll. Rather than just display a pretty picture of dice moving with realistic physics, Quick Roll appears to mange all your dice rolls quickly and easily. Here, watch the video:

Personally, I don’t see any application replacing good old D&D dice but then again, I might be grumpy old man who doesn’t like change.

According to Pink Tentacle :

…bioluminescent deep-sea siphonophore — an eerily fantastic creature that appears to be a single, large organism, but which is actually a colony of numerous individual jellyfish-like animals that behave and function together as a single entity. The individual units, called zooids, all share the same genetic material and each perform a specialized role within the colony.

1. Its a cliche, so what?

John Rouke is an surgeon, an ex-CIA operative, firearms expert, pilot, survivalist and as American as apple pie and failed foreign wars. He has a chiseled jaw, a strong moral code, loves his family and is not afraid of solving problms with a gun. To describe John Rourke as a one dimensional stereotype is being flattering to the character.

But so what? The books never set out to be literature. They are fast paced adventure stories much loved by teenagers and others with limited critical faculties. He is the right character for that audience and he drives the books forward. So GMs, never be afraid to revert to stereotypes and cliches if they fit your game. Conan and many other great adventure books have relied on them.

2. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story

The plot holes in the Survivalist series are large enough to drive, well just about anything through. John Rourke himself is no older than his mid-thirties and yet has found time to become an expert surgeon, qualified on various military aircraft, an expert in weapons and has built by himself, from scratch, a massive, luxury survival retreat. Anyone one of those takes a ten plus years of work. But it doesn’t matter. If the story moves fast enough, if it doesn’t allow the reader (or the player) to stop and think too hard about things, then just about anything will be accepted at face value.

3. No loose ends

One of Ahern’s better literary devices is his use of minor characters. Anyone given a name will have their own story wrapped up. Generally this involves dying in some honourable or heroic way, unless they are bad guys in which case they almost always get killed by Rourke. This is exactly the same technique that Shakespeare used and Ahern does it better in places than the Bard (see the end of A Winter’s Tale if you don’t believe me). Though Shakespeare tended to marry some of his characters off rather than kill them all.

The reason for this technique is that it allows the audience (or your players) to go home knowing that everything is finished. On the gaming table you may want loose ends as plot threads for future adventures but that is fine. As long as you know that such-an-such an NPC is a loose end and will reappear. If they won’t, make sure the party sees or learns about the NPCs fate.

4. Brand names and signature moves

Whenever a character is mentioned, their branded equipment is also mentioned. Rouke is always drawing one or both of his twin stainless steel Detonics pistols or his Python or his 2″ Law Master or his CAR-15 with 3x telescopic scope and so on. He never just has a pistol. The more major a character, the more branded their equipment. Everyone with a name in the books has a piece of equipment or fighting move or personality trait that makes them unique. As a GM you can use this technique. Just make sure all your NPCs have something distinctive about them and make sure you keep mentioning them to the players.

5. We all like heroes

Rourke and his party are heroes - they save the good guys and kill the bad guys. There are no moral dilemmas - no one becomes an old and embittered drunk because of being put in a wheelchair during a gun fight. You either win (quickly recovering from your wounds) or you are dead. There is nothing wrong with games that are gritty and realistic but heroic adventures from Conan to Star Wars are the bread and butter of dramatic fiction. So let your players be heroes.

Bad Books, Good Ideas

From a literary point of view these books are bad. Bad writing, bad characterisation, some extremely dodgy politics, in fact there is nothing going for them. Except they are great fun to read when you are a certain age. Even reading them now, 20 years on, I still get some of the old excitement from them because they are simple and direct. As a gamer, my taste have I’ve matured a lot since I last read these books but these books have left me itching to get back to the old school, simple, heroic adventures.