"Rule of Cool" Addiction
A solution to a problem that doesn't exist...
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Introduction
The "rule of cool": a guiding principle, particularly in storytelling and role-playing games, that allows for the suspension of disbelief when an action or element is exceptionally "cool" or awesome, even if it defies normal rules or expectations.
Gamemasters/referees spend A LOT of time thinking about their games. For the designer, a considerable amount of that time thinking about the rules of the game we run and how to mechanically support the style of game we want. Widening my horizons with different TTRPG rules sets has become a meaningful practice for me. I’m always looking for new ideas and interesting mechanics to try out and see what they feel like. Always searching for the best version of “the game” for my table.
There is an abundance of discussion and advice on the internet in this regard. I’ve been looking into this long enough that I can usually tell if we’re talking about 5E/modern or something else just based on what the author is putting forth as an interesting idea. The assumptions in place of the idea can tell you a lot. I think there are many out there that still feel like they need the permission to just play the game they want to play. I myself struggled with this for years. I wanted to know what the “real way to play” was before having to make it up for myself. Not that I need the be explicitly told what I like, but it is very difficult to understand the shape of a thing to work off of if that shape is an amorphous “whatever you want”. Finding and absorbing OSR games, older edition clones, has really broken that barrier down for me and I will now zealously beat that drum.
I specifically saw “the rule of cool” brought up in a recent post by
on Substack which was about teaching the players to play and not teach them rules which I 100% agree with. It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time working on and it’s one of those things that is simple but not easy.In this post we’re going to take a ride with the rule of cool, what problems I ended up having from it, and how I learned the rule of cool is the band-aid that is only needed because of the way 5E teaches the game.
The Thing
I have been playing TTRPGs most of my life, but I didn’t jump into the Game Master’s chair until 2018? (I think?). The first time I ever felt comfortable enough to try was playing a Song of Ice and Fire by Green Ronin, because I figured since I already knew the lore backwards and forwards I wouldn’t have any problems. Which I discovered was mostly horse shit and ended up trying to wield game rules that were a hurdle rather than boon to telling a good story.
I then jumped into D&D 5E on the upswing of season 1 of Critical Role when it was still streaming on Geek and Sundry via YouTube. Watching a table of people that you could tell were having a blast playing at the table with a game master that was weaving so much story weight and fantastical environment, it was intoxicating. I wanted to do that - I love doing that. Then I started playing 5E and absorbing all the advice I could and spent many many session feeling like I was pulling everything out of my ass and it wasn’t as good as it could be. My players were champs and rarely had anything bad to say about it, but I was teaching again trying to navigate rules I found prescriptive like a board game. I saw the videos that were out there talking about the “rule of cool”, the GM bending the rules to bring about a more exciting narrative. When to fudge and when not to fudge dice rolls and on and a on, But the lines were obviously to taste and blurry and the 2014 5E DMG did not give any shits about teaching the game to GMs that were new to the game. All of the decent advice seemed to come from players who had been playing the game forever and would reach back to previous understandings of playing the game that were now arcane lore lost to time (in retrospect this seems intentional just to keep people buying WOTC books).
And so many times in my game mastering career, I’ve had an idea for the story that was just not supported by “the rules” and the band-aid would be “the rule of cool”. Now, this worked for quite a while and in many instances, but I realize now after moving on from strictly 5E - that it is a solution for a Modern/Rules-heavy mindset that is created by that same mindset. You could always do what you wanted, as long as the expectations between the players and the game master align.
The times when I had the most trouble was when the balance between the player characters was strained or when what I wanted to happen in the story around the PCs wasn’t easily supported by the ruleset. Some examples:
Player wanted to overcome a drawback as a martial fighter, They wanted something to give them a ranged option like a javelin with a chain on it so they could pull things to them or pull themselves to things (This is a common 5E Barbarian/Paladin idea) and one of the other players felt I was giving away abilities the game had locked behind ASIs (Ability Score Increases) - which when your rules have players doing “builds” of their characters can feel like I’m giving away powers and playing favorites by not making the players choose between things.
In a scene where I was trying to amp up the horror, I had an NPC character get instantly killed by a falling “Roper baby” stalactite - but when the same thing hit one of the players the 2D6 Damage didn’t carry the weight.
One of the few fishfolk of an area near the PCs castle keep was in the town constantly talking about its god and the PC’s cleric struck a conversation. This ended up with the cleric following the fisherfolk down into their lair - way down - only to discover the “god” was a massive mutated troll that then tried to kill the cleric. This was great, until I gamified the escape and made it too easy - it lost the gravitas and sense of danger I’m pretty sure. I had backed myself into a narrative corner and gave up on it when I should have made it just about the odds and the dice.
I called for a skill check to cross a room rather than letting the PC just do a thing - this is a classic one that happens all the time in Modern I feel.
I handed out a cool weapon item (at least half were legendary) to the party and then spent the rest of a multi-year campaign playing catchup with that choice. Which made striking a balance and having the story be entertaining very difficult.
These are just a few examples of many things - some which did work out well - where I was gearing a use of the rule of cool to what I thought would be cool in the moment, even if it overshadowed the context that did not need extra spice, it just needed everyone to understand the stakes and to let the PCs choose which risks and let the dice decide. I was putting too much of my own weight on the scales for better or for worse. Upon later reflection, when I give myself as much room as possible to be objective, the players really seem to take that leap with me even when things go horribly wrong for them - and it gives me the plausible deniability to keep the faith. This means I have the space if I ever truly need it, to manipulate something and never tell them what it was, but I try very hard to never do that anymore.
A hilarious take on this kind of topic is on perfect display watching the Aunty Donna folks play D&D - The question comes up: “Why are you bringing dice into this?”
I feel like I got my table and myself addicted to the rule of cool - which becomes an ever escalating ladder of trying to out-do the previously cool things. The more I ended up in situations that didn’t have exact rules in 5E and I experimented with letting the context of the story be my guide, the better I feel my game mastering got. I feel like it is a detriment of some rulesets to lean on a rule of cool, when stripping the rules down to have less strictly determined and just give GUIDANCE that enables the game master to determine is like teaching someone to fish rather than giving them a fish. You don’t need the rule of cool, you just need to have the buy in and built trust of your players to make the rules make sense for the context at your table.
You don’t need the rule of cool, you just need to have the buy in and built trust of your players to make the rules make sense for the context at your table.
The more I read OSR blogs and books and look at how the original players of these kinds of games made simple and genius analog systems to handle just about any situation is very empowering to think about. I love the idea of game masters getting to turn the knobs themselves and become more abstracted or more simulations or more horror or more epic fantasy - on their terms. Games that show you how to do these things and let you extrapolate are so much more valuable than a ruleset that tries to dictate while not being vague in the ways that allow game masters to learn and grow and become designers that can make truly amazing gaming experiences for the people at their tables.
If you are a 5E player and want to see more of what I’m talking about for yourself check out:
IndexcardRPG - by Runehammer
Shadowdark - by the Arcane Library
Knave - by Questing Beast
Knock! Magazine #1 - by Merry Mushman (Planning to put up a review of this soon)
What do you, dear reader, think about the rule of cool vs just a rules-lite approach? Are you a game master who’s been on a similar journey? Comment below!
Till next time!
Thanks for Reading!
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Going after one the most popular heuristics! Hell yeah
Fantastic article Alex. I’ve been a DM for 5ed for about 5 years now. I solo play other game systems. My first DND game was the Phandelver starter set, 1st edition. I had never played DnD let alone being the DM! But no one else wanted to do it. I found that I loved it but was so new that if my PCs went a different path, I panicked because I had nothing prepared. I wanted the game to be perfect. My daughters still tease me about railroading them, to which I remind them that was my first time and I’m much better now. Brats! lol. I still have a hard time though with the Rule of Cool vs the basic rules. If you have more advice on the Rule of Cool, I’d like to hear it! 😊😊😊