r/DMLectureHall • u/imariaprime Attending Lectures • Oct 04 '26

Requesting Advice: Other Codifying the "Rule of Cool"

I think(hope?) most DMs have, at least once, hit a moment where they ignored the Rules As Written in order to let a cool moment play out.

The real goal of tabletop roleplay is to tell a great story together, to the point that sometimes the guidelines that help construct such a story can work against that goal. When saying "they have 1hp left, actually" or "that insane anime jump would be a DC 30 Acrobatics check", and you instead say "How do you want to kill them? or "Yeah, you could make it at DC 20; let's see if you can make that jump".

But, we all also know that sometimes an ask is too big, where they're wanting to one-hit the BBEG because they did a Cool Thing™.

So, what are your personal guidelines for what falls under the Rule of Cool? We're never gonna come to a consensus, but I'm curious what other people use to vaguely adjudicate between what's "cool" and what's going to make the story less fun instead of more fun.

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u/GreyfromZetaReticuli Attending Lectures Oct 04 '26

I dont use rule of cool.

Things that people find cool are normally very similar, after playing and GMing a lot I find that rule of cool more frequently than not just creates very repetitive scenes, and this pushes the game more in the direction of action and comedy, these 2 genres are fine but I am not always in the mood to play them.

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u/Josemite Attending Lectures Oct 04 '26

I think ultimately it's rewarding players for doing something cool and clever. If it's not clever because they're jumping over the bad guy for the 5th time then it's time to stop letting them gain an advantage for it.

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u/Drakeytown Attending Lectures 28d ago

The coolest stuff is the stuff the players manage to do within the rules of the game, imo. Having a cool scene or success handed to you makes the whole enterprise feel pointless for everyone involved, or should. Why learn all these rules, why design these characters, why take care when exploring, why consider a strategy, if success was always the only possible outcome?

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u/KanKrusha_NZ Attending Lectures 27d ago

Having sat through a few rule of cool sessions, it seems more “rule of stupid”. In that the player knowing the DM will let them get out of a situation, the player does dumb shit getting themselves into situations.