Is the Rule of Cool a good or bad thing in D&D? At what point does it stop adding to the game’s enjoyment and instead takes you into chaos? As with most things, the reality lies somewhere in between.
I used to be a super uptight Dungeon Master.
Change was hard and anything that deviated from my script took me out of my rhythm. In spite of that, I considered myself to be a fair DM, and I tried to be predictable and consistent in my rulings, but the idea of being flexible felt … uncomfortable.
Recently I began running the Dungeons & Dragons program through my local library. After about a year of running games for adults, we switched to a teens-only format. As anyone who has ever run a D&D game for kids knows, their creativity can be off the chart and what they do and say can come entirely out of left field.
One of the teen players asked if his character could wield a +2 squeegee. You know, those things a window cleaner uses to scrape water off the window?
My first thought was, “No way! There are no squeegees in D&D!”
I realized I’m playing with a group of kids, not adults. This particular kiddo had never played D&D before joining our group. From their perspective, they are playing a game that is make-believe, so why can’t they make something up like a +2 squeegee?
This begs the question, what is the boundary between real life characteristics like the laws of physics, and the make-believe characteristics of fantasy where magic is real and dragons exist? How do you as a DM decide what to include, what to ban, and what to fudge and just roll with it?
As a player, what are the written and unwritten rules and boundaries you must stay within, and what is outside of those boundaries? What are your limits?
I realized in the moment that the player asking if their character can wield a +2 squeegy wasn’t a mechanical thing, it was just a label. I chose in the moment to treat it as a +2 club for damage purposes, but otherwise there was no cost or downside to allowing it, just a +2 increase in the player’s enjoyment of the game.
Of course, now that we’ve played a while with that character bashing skulls with his +2 squeegy, it has made it into that character’s Last Will and Testament. Their character actually died during a recent session and the player made sure their +2 squeegy was bequeethed to their next-of-kin. They were more worried about that off-rules weapon than they were about the character’s death itself.
The Rule of Cool covers this concept well enough — if it’s fun, do it — but I think the biggest benefit was the change of my own perspective as a Dungeon Master.
But is there a problem with the Rule of Cool? Can it go too far?
The rules as written are a common language that everyone at the table implicitly agrees to learn and adhere to, more or less. It helps us all to operate on the same set of basic expectations and assumptions. Without those rules, we’d not have a game, we’d just be sitting around the room making shit up as we go along. But when it comes to these flexibility moments where the situation adds flavor without altering that common language and set of assumptions, I say go for it.
The reason we play D&D is to have fun, so we’re back to the rule of cool again — if it’s fun, do it. But there’s a bit more to consider because the rule of cool isn’t so cut and dried, and it’s certainly not universal.
Hear me out.
Part of what makes D&D a game and not just a group of people sitting around a room making shit up as they go along are the rules. The rules aren’t where we’ll end up, but they are where we start. The rules are a common language we all agree to use so that things are at least somewhat predictable.
I think that word — predictable — is the key here. A +2 squeegee tells us that nobody around a D&D table can accurately predict what will happen in a game, and I think that is one of this hobby’s greatest strengths — and there are a lot of strengths to D&D, so that’s saying something.
What I mean by predictability is that the rules of D&D that we agree to follow provide not just a common language, but a framework that prevents us from having to make up shit as we go along. We know where to start and we have at least a broad sense for our options of what to do next.
If your party is trying to get through a forest and are confronted by a troop of hobgoblins, what do you do? Most people would fight, parley, or flee. But what if the cleric in your group says…
“I pull out my holy symbol and wave it in the air as a way to teach the hobgoblins how to make pancakes using only an empty oil flask and a pine cone.”
That would certainly be a memorable moment but nobody else in the party, and certainly not the DM, would have any clue what to do next.
Even in this example, the group is still following a sliver of agreed-upon framework — they are playing a cleric, which is an established class within the game and we also know what a holy symbol is. So there are two things we don’t have to guess at.
Random for Randomness’ Sake
When I was in grade school, some friends and I came up with our own language. It didn’t have a big vocabulary, with most of our words being nouns for things in our immediate environment, and hardly any verbs and certainly not any adjective, adverbs, or prepositions. Once we got around 15 or 20 words, we started to lose track. It became a real Tower of Babel situation where one of us would make up a word but the others wouldn’t know what it meant.
It got to a point where we were just making up silly sounds on the spot without there being any meaning or definition. We stopped communicating and that lack of understanding became the point of it all.
That lasted about a week, and the only reason it went on that long is because we were ten years old and it was fun. That’s what you do when you’re ten.
Know the Rules…So You Know When To Break Them
Back to the rule of cool, the explicit purpose of it is to have fun but the implied purpose is a bit more subtle. Take the existing framework and language you’ve all agreed to use — the rules of D&D, however they are defined — and when something comes up in the moment that adds spice or flavor or fun to the game without changing the fundamental language you’re all speaking, go for it.
Having said all this, I will be the first to admit that I like structure and predictability. Random and unpredictable behavior causes me a small amount of anxiety. I’m also a Dungeon Master, so I’ve learned that random and unpredictable behavior is a common thing around a D&D table, especially with kids. It’s now something I handle with ease.
When a player asks if their character can wield a +2 squeegee, rather than instantly saying “Rule of cool–I’ll allow it” or instantly saying, “There are no squeegees in D&D. Forbidden!” I stop and think about it. Does this add fun to the game without changing the game?
When the answer to THAT question is yes, then I say, “Rule of cool! I’ll allow it!”
