“Yer doin it wrong”

Everyone is free to game how they like. The beauty of RPGs is that they allow everyone to develop their own style of play.

However, when you offer advice to gamers, you are implicitly saying that their game is not as good as it could be. This is as true for people advising “Use the RoC” and it is for people saying “Don’t Use the RoC”.

My problem with Chatty’s original approach is that he was advocating swamping players with a particular gaming style. I think that is very bad advice because too much of any style will ultimately ruin any game. Chatty has since clarified his remarks to indicate that he to things ‘cool’ should be an occasional aspect of the game.

I looked at the Matrix on Wiki before writing my article (I like to get my facts straight) and I was surprised how much money they made. What I felt was more relevant to the ‘coolness’ of the film was reviews that consistently panned the second and third films.

Also on the box office takings, the second film did a lot better than the first, presumably because ever one was eager to see it after the amazing first film. But the third film did worse than the first, presumably because everyone was so disappointed by the second.

Chris

Who is anybody to say that the eagles scene wasn’t better than a bunch of people stabbing each other…those crappy, overly long books had a TON of that, and yet it is “cooler” than something that is, I daresay, original.

Not to talk smack :) I am just SOOOOOOOOO tired of all the various flavors of “Yer doin it wrong” that has become so prevalent these days.

If I want a game with zombie ninjas vs. Robodinosaurs both armed with 20mm Gauss rifles…why am I suddenly an idiot, or a bad gamer?

Besides, even fail is a matter of opinion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(series)#Box_office

1.5 billion worldwide is a pretty far cry from fail, even with such cultural powerhouses as rotten tomatoes calling the shots :)

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Death can be cool and fun. Chatty, I think in the comment section of his post on this, described how character jumped on the back of the dragon and subsequently died. The rule of cool part came into it because he died by being thrown from dragon back and crashing through the roof of building. Player said he knew he was gonna die but did it anyway cause it’s what his character would do and (I’m guessing here) cause he knew even death would be fun cause of RoC.

You seem to be trying to disingenuously link (or have conflated in your own mind) the rule of cool with rule of “wuss DM that doesn’t let bad/hard stuff happen” with “if the GM had handed it to them on a plate”.

I and I believe most agree with you that the rule of cool should be infrequent.

“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.”

The Rule of Cool is all about the 2nd sentence. It helps explain when/why (and by exclusion when/why not to) to use coolness. From this post it really sounds like you support and use the Rule of Cool.

The anti’ists I think are stuck on “The limit of the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its degree of coolness” which I understood to just be a bit of artistic license to make the RoC rule sound cool. Rather than a commandment that you must make every second of your game ridiculously suspension destroying but with lots of explosions.

Thank you for demonstrating why doing something that is ‘cool’ is bad advice.

What one person find cool is another person’s boring bit.

A GM who follows the rule of cool, rather than the rule of doing what is appropriate for his party to optimize everyone’s enjoyment, runs the risk of alienating players.

Chris

I think you and I are using the word ‘cool’ very differently. Cool is not the same as good.

The Nazis wore lots of cool leather trench-coats but I wouldn’t describe them as good.

Agatha Christie book are good but I wouldn’t describe them as cool.

I think this is a source of a lot the dispute over the RoC, and I’m as guilty of that as anyone.

If “The Rule of Cool” isn’t a rule bit a guideline, why isn’t it called “The Guideline of Cool”? Because that is something I would support.

I also have to disagree with the idea the Rule of Cool covers absolutely any minor illogical plot point or inconsistency. That is the suspension of disbelief, an essential part of all fiction in all mediums. It what allows us to ignore the fact that characters don’t go the toilet or mumble or mix-up the words like real people doing real things would.

Combining those last two ideas, I suggest the following replacement for the Rule of Cool

The No Toilets Guideline
If your players ever wonder where the toilets are in the dungeon then it is time to remind them that it’s only a frakking game by having a herd of wildebeast to stampdede out the nearest room. To put it another way, if the players have time to pick holes in your plot, you need to liven things up a bit.

Chris

One of the reasons for avoiding game table experiences is because they only have real meaning for the half-dozen or so people around the table. Film references are something we have in common.

But as you ask.

I’ve played with GMs (and some players) who have been driven by the rule of cool. People who would see something ‘cool’ in a film and then apply to whatever game we were playing at the time.

The result was always the same. A promising campaign would break down because in doing something ‘cool’, the party would become unbalanced. A too powerful magic item would be given out or more likely a character would be given a special ability that put them head & shoulders above the rest of the characters.

Either those left out would leave the group (causing it to collapse and depriving everyone of a game) or the GM would recognize their mistake and have to hand out powers or items to the rest of the group.

It is also notable that GMs who favour adding ‘cool’ things to favour players who share the same ideas of what is cool. Players with different playing styles would be disadvantage or ignored, damaging the groups dynamics and everyone’s fun.

As I note elsewhere, this doesn’t matter if you are doing a one-off adventure but if you are trying to build a campaign with a steady group of players it is, in my experience, bad news.

None of this is against making games exciting or playing the games how you like but there is a lot more to good GM than doing whatever is cool.

Chris

In my personal approach to Return of the King, I skip reading the boring slog across Mordor. The cool parts are just as cool without it.

Gripping plot, one of the best detectives after Sherlock Holmes, clichéd reveals – Christie is fricken awesomely cool!
Not as cool as Arthur Conan-Doyle’s books but then being as cool as a morphine-addicted polymath genius is very hard.

On topic, I did disagree with your previous post as well.

The Rule of Cool isn’t a rule, it’s a guideline. It’s there to remind you that your players want to be traipsing through somewhere that isn’t the real world – it might be just subtle changes in World of Darkness, or it might be something fantastic like Forgotten Realms, but a forest will always be more then just a forest.

We also have to remember, quite simply no plot is perfect, no explantion for magic, or vampires or mutants or whatever else is without it’s holes. And these are nearly always covered by the rule of cool – even in Tolkien ;)

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Futhermore you haven’t really validated why it is a stupid thing to promote, as Chatty is demonstrating how his is using the Rule of Cool, and demonstrating that it works. You’re just stating that it don’t. Care to back up your claims with examples that are derived from play (examples from Hollywood doesn’t have much to do with actual play), or are you just complaining that people are doing things differently from you?

Or should this debacle just end with namecalling, as you seem to want a strident response, since you’ve posted twice about the subject?

Deus ex machina = The Rule of Cool

I think not.

Deus ex Machina is a contrived device that resolves an element of the plot, generally a element that cannot be resolved by anything except by something external to the plot, e.g. the god from the machine.

The Rule of Cool is that the audience will put with something as long as it is cool enough. With cool being a subjective judgment based on aesthetics. This may be a major plot device or it may be something really minor like the type of car the hero is driving

There certain is a overlap in a venn diagram of the two but they are not the same.

The eagles, by the why, turned up to join help Gandulf to fight in the big final battle but once Mount Doom erupted, Gandulf sent them to find Frodo & Sam. Eagles, having great eye sight, had no trouble finding the Hobbits. It is all in the film and yes it is a bit contrived but it is no Deus ex Machina.

For real Deus ex Machina see the end of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale where a character you thought had been dead for 20 years suddenly turns up alive having been living next door pretending to be a statue (no I’m not making this up).

One of the problems with discussing the RoC is that people try and make it fit anything they want. To read some of the comments on the subject it covers everything from rewarding players with interesting gadgets to occasionally trying to make your adventures exciting and all the way doing what you like via Deus ex machina.

These opinions may be valid but it makes it impossible to argue against.

This is why I picked on Chatty.

He stated exactly how he was going to use it. He also described it as “a cornerstone of what i stand for in terms of tabletop roleplaying.” I disagree strongly with him so my post was about how he interpreted the rule. How other people interpreted it was not the issue.

Admittedly the term ‘idiot’ might of been a bit strong and unfair on Chatty but this was a repost, a post he highlighted as being significant to his blog and he then posted a follow-up article.

This wasn’t an off-hand remark by Chatty, this was something he was shouting from the roof tops. Consequently he has to expect an equally strident response. As I thinking that ’swamping his players with coolness’ is a stupid thing to promote I described it accordingly.

Chris