Month: January 2009

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The Rule of Goofy

Actually, I think there is a Rule of Goofy, and it goes something like this:

The ability of an element to shatter the Suspension of Disbelief is directly proportional to how goofy it is. Reality is no excuse for fiction.  If the audience finds something so goofy that they are thrown out of the moment in order to analyze or scoff at it, it doesn’t matter how realistic it actually is or how well-documented it is that such things occur either in the real world or in the genre.  Presenting evidence might get them to move past it, but the damage is done and the momentum is lost.

For RPGs one might add that the element might be a result coughed out by the game system that, while 100% accurate to the rules, is goofy in context.

While Dr. Checkmate is correct that one man’s cool is another man’s goofy, that doesn’t mean that the rules can’t be usefully applied, only that you have to know your audience.

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The Rule of Cool: A Useful Tool

The Geek, at Geek Related, writes:

  • Why the Rule of Cool Is Not Cool

    • I’ve been following the debate about the so-called “Rule of Cool.”  It’s a “TV Tropes” concept extended to RPGs by  the Chatty DM, (original post “The Rule of Cool” here, and clarification “The Rule of Cool Takes Flak” here).  A number of people gave it drive-by disses, but I think the most on topic one is from 6d6 Fireball, with Rule of Cool – Only for Idiots and Of Coolness and Idiocy.

      In short, the Rule of Cool states “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.”

      If you interpret it very loosely as “Hey, toss in some cool stuff to spice up your game” it’s fine.  But the way it’s stated is setting up “cool” as being carte blanche to roll over realism/suspension of disbelief.  “If it’s cool enough, it can be incoherent and it’s all good.”

First off, as a psychological observation, The Rule of Cool is simply true.  This is a form of “Confirmation Bias“: people find it very difficult to notice discrepancies and logical errors in things that they are favorably disposed towards.  Contrariwise, they’ll nitpick to death something that they find disagreeable, boring, or challenging to their preconceptions.  Indeed, I’d say several of the bloggers who strongly object to Chatty DM’s post are displaying that very behavior.

Second, the Rule of Cool is part of the basis of the hobby.  Practically every RPG relies on the Rule of Cool to excuse inconsistencies and absurdities in the setting.  If your players see a dragon and don’t immediately start in on how such a creature violates the square-cube law and should barely be able to walk when not buoyed up in a swamp, let alone fly, and breathing fire is absurd, why the caloric requirements alone…that’s because they think it’s cool and are willing to suspend their disbelief to that extent.  Magic, psionics, Cthulhoid horrors, vampires, sexy secret agents licensed to kill, giant mecha, Wild West zombies, super heroes, intelligent bunnies, faster-than-light travel, net-running deckers, swashbuckling pirates, private detectives solving murders, artificially intelligent robots, aliens…if it’s fodder for RPGs, it requires a large dollop of willing suspension of disbelief, and that disbelief will only be provided by people who think those things are cool enough to be worth pretending to believe.  Geek culture has become so entwined with pop culture in the past few years that fans of fantastic literature (which is most RPGers) can lose sight of the fact that not everybody really thinks this kind of stuff is cool; there are still plenty of people who think it’s all dumb and puerile, absurd escapist crap that doesn’t deserve any suspension of disbelief.  There are people who look at Spider-Man or The Dark Knight with the same visceral revulsion for the CGI and melodrama being offered as “cool” that others do for Michael Bay or Uwe Boll movies.

Third, as a piece of advice Chatty’s take on the Rule of Cool provides a useful approach to what to spend your limited time and effort as a GM to prepare and convey during a session.  You are better served spending your time making sure that your game is going to be enjoyable to your players so that they’ll want to overlook the inevitable holes than trying to make sure there are no holes to be found without regard to whether it satisfies the players.  It’s an RPG, it’s going to have holes–you can’t present an entire world, even a perfectly mundane world, in its entirety, in the form of a game without gaps or errors–if the players are in the mood to, they’re going to be able to quibble over events and raise objections even if you’re doing nothing more than reprising your day at the office in a session of “Papers & Paychecks.”  No matter what you and your players think of as cool, there is a hurdle to overcome in RPGs that isn’t there in more passive consumption of media in getting the players to engage the world…they can’t let it just wash over them and still be playing, so you have to make them want to play.  And to do that, you’re going to have to grapple with what it is that they think is cool enough to be worth it.

Finally, it’s completely irrelevant whether you happen to be tickled by Chatty’s particular examples; if you don’t think that stuff is “cool,” substitute what you do think of as cool.  And you can’t weasel out of it by claiming that cool by definition means CGI explosions and running up streams of bullets to kick somebody in the face…that’s a straw man.  If you and the players actually think that’s cool, then it wouldn’t be an objection; it’s only when you believe that it’s over-the-top and uncool that you re-engage your critical faculties, and the whole point of the Rule of Cool is to provide what the audience/players actually think is cool.  The TV Tropes site that it’s taken from is absolutely explicit:

Note that you only get to invoke the Rule of Cool if the end product is, in fact, cool. Note also that different opinions on what is “cool” create the most arguments over this.

Instead of trying to come up with an uncharitable reading of the Rule of Cool to make it self-evidentally stupid (If you add enough CGI explosions you can hide any ludicrous inconsistency or plot-hole! Not being obsessed with consistency is the same thing as not caring about it at all!), detractors ought to think about what it is they find cool about the settings they enjoy playing…and then try to think about what somebody with a more jaundiced eye would find absurd and disbelief-destroying about that setting.  Then they might begin to apprehend both what the Rule of Cool is really about, and how to use it to improve their games by emphasizing what the setting provides in preference to all other settings (what they really do find cool about it) to help the players enjoy the setting for what it is and ignore the inevitable gaps and debatable points. It’s not carte blanche to roll over suspension of disbelief, it’s an encouragement to analyze what it is that causes people to engage their suspension of disbelief and provide more of whatever that is.

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Tw-0n (key->green): an Elves & Espers Character

Concept: A Hazmat Transport & Disposal Droid

Agility d4
Smarts d4
Spirit d6
Strength d6
Vigor d10

Pace 6, Parry 4, Toughness 7, Charisma -1

Edges: AB: Super, Power Points +5 (x2), Take the Hit (+2 to Soak rolls)
Hindrances: Distinctive Appearance (Waste Disposal Droid), Clueless (-2 to Common Knowledge), Quirk: No Sense of Time
Powers: Ageless(1), Absorption (Magic 4, transference +?), Absorption(Fire/Heat 4), Armor +4 (4), Attack: Wrench (Melee, Heavy Weapon) (4)

Doug’s write-up:

Twonky Green- Hazardous Materials Transport and Disposal droid.

Twonky was a magical residue transport droid deep in the heart of the New Ark City power generation station.  Unfortunately, during the time when Gax was first starting to lose his grip on the city, minor mistakes were beginning to be made, but the aura of infallibility was still being maintained.  One of those mistakes was a change of classification of TW-0N(Key-Green)from automaton to living creature when its transport permit was being renewed at the Department of Moving Vehicles. Normally, this wouldn’t have caused much fuss, except that living creatures aren’t allowed to work inside the power generation area due to the extreme toxicity of the environment, and Twonky was flagged for immediate removal. Repeated visits to the Department of Moving Vehicles to demonstrate his non-living status failed to change their minds, since, as non-security droids, they were forbidden from injuring a living being, which, of course, included changing status from living to not living. The one upside is that living being status has kept him from being “upgraded” and having his idiosyncrasies, errors, bit shifts and buffer overruns put back to normal.

This situation left Twonky without a real purpose.  He was unable to find work in the living being world. Who would hire something that was bathed in ultra-magic for centuries?  So after wandering the arcology for days, months, or years being bored and occasionally making off with full garbage cans, he ended up in the remains of the Broken Spire.  While not nearly as magically charged as his previous job, at least the nice glow reminded him of home.  So he decided that he would make the cleanup of the Broken Spire his new purpose.

It’s been centuries since Twonky started.  The decay of the Spire itself isn’t helping any, but there are a few patches of the Spire that are now almost clean. It’s possibly that he may even finish a whole disk before the tower collapses.

Hey. It’s a job.

I see Twonky as being somewhat irritating to most living beings. Not intentionally, but Twonky tends to take the _long_ view of things.  Time has less meaning to him.  He’s been around thousands of years already. He doesn’t sleep, so there’s no concept of “tomorrow.”  He’s in the middle of his multi-millennia day, and when he eventually turns of, that’s it.

Note

Twonky was generated with Necessary Evil super-powers, which is not generally an option for Elves & Espers characters (except for Trooper’s powered armor).  Doug tried not to be abusive, but the actual stats may be subject to change if it appears to be too much.  Mostly the NE versions of things are helpful for perma powers like Twonky’s Absorbtion…the core version of Super Powers have short durations that make things like immunity to radiation impossible except for brief periods.  I’ll probably be discussing this with Doug some more, but I didn’t want to hold up the game, particularly over something that wasn’t likely to come up during the session.  One thing I’ll probably disallow outright is Twonky’s wrench counting as a Heavy Weapon.

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Descent into the Fetid Depths

Session Summary for 1/4/2009 Elves & Espers campaign

This session we had a new addition to our gaming group: Andrew, Elyssa’s step-brother, and his girlfriend Sarah (who had never gamed before, but agreed to come along and watch).  Andrew took over playing Tank McSplatter, and Doug switched to a new character he’d come up with since we last played.

Last session our intrepid band of adventurers (Idariel 7, Elven Technomancer; Stan McStan, Dwarven Robomancer; Tank McSplatter, Hobbit Trooper; Bon Go, Human Enforcer; Josepi Vincenti, Human Roguechemist) managed to get paid for clearing the Pigsies out of Batwings & Things despite the subsequent destruction of the entire shop by a group of mercenaries apparently hired to burn the place, possibly to destroy any evidence of trafficking in Zombot dust, by the simple expedient of not mentioning the shop’s destruction when they went to pick up their pay.

This session they decided to take the contract from Barbis Boltbiter, their Adventure Broker, to investigate a possible sighting of Zombots in Poisonville, the sewage-disposal and heavy industrial chemical plant section of town…which is right down on the roof of the arcology below the spire, to keep it out of the way.  They figure that there’s no way the Zombot Dust they found (when it turned the dead Pigsies into Zombots) could be unrelated to possible Zombot activity elsewhere.  Also, the pay (4000 creds for a simple look-see) is nothing to sneeze at, despite the potentially highly unpleasant nature of the surroundings.

Determining that the best (free) way to get down to Poisonville was to take the elevator, they were winched over the side of the disk on an open platform cranked by an Ogre-M.A.G.E (Magically Augumented Genetically Engineered) and lowered into the greenish stinking fog that hung over Poisonville.  Arriving at the bottom after about twenty minutes of swaying and lurching, they found themselves standing in a landscape dominated by industrial-sized pipes, covered in blotchy rust and slime, surrounded by foul fetid greenish fog that made their eyes sting and noses water (Josepi had particular problems, having failed a Vigor roll, and fashioned a makeshift mask out of a handkerchief).  Shapeless things humped and slithered along in the shadows, and a ratipede (a mutant rat with a hundred legs) scuttled across the street as bold as you please in front of them.   The street was dotted with puddles of rainblow (sic) colored ooze.  The contract they had listed as their contact a Dwarf named Carvin Spiker, a supervisor at the SludgeWorks.  They found the plant, where gigantic transparent tubes blorped and gurgled disgusting brown and black sludge, and decided that Idariel and Josepi would go talk to Carvin while the rest of them hung around outside, so as not to spook him with an army of heavily-armed goons.

They climbed the rickety, rusting stairs and entered the plant through a submarine-style hatch; there they found a catwalk high above the tanks and pipes of the works, and a tiny office with windows that might once have been transparent back when the sun was yellow.  But maybe not even then.  In the office, piled high with the bureaucratic detritus of ages, punctuated by the occasional out-of-date Miss Galaxy calendar or “sexy” dwarf pin-up, behind the desk they found an amorphous blob of flesh.  Could this actually be the Dwarf they were looking for?  It opened one rheumy eye and croaked, “Yah?”

They explained they were there to investigate the Zombot sighting, and after some grumbling, Carvin told them that while he filed the report, it was an employee who had actually spotted the Zombot…They asked to speak with him, and Carvin called over Tw-0N (key->green), or as he called him “Twonky”… an ancient robot, from a time back before aesthetics had been invented.  Twonky (Doug’s new character) was a fairly featureless grey, boxy humanoid, with various hazard stickers affixed to him, his call-letters stamped on his back, glowing faintly with magical radiation.  Idariel asked if they could borrow him for a while, and Carvin indicated that he would appreciate if they not only borrowed him, but managed to lose him.  The plant had been trying to decommission him for ages, but been thwarted by red-tape: Twonky had unfortunately at one point, back when Gax had just begun losing its grip, been mis-classified as human and the robot bureaucracy had been unable to correct the mistake since classifying a human being as a robot would have violated the First Law.

Twonky led the entire party towards Sludge Vat #7, where he had seen the potential Zombot.  The Zombot had been in the form of a Ratipede, but it shambled rather than scuttled, and had metal jaws and (organic) eyes protruding on metallic eye-stalks, so Twonky had steered clear and simply reported it as per plant procedures.  Climbing and descending metal ladders and crossing swaying catwalks over glowing green radioactive goo, they headed towards Vat #7.  At one point, they found themselves in the middle of a swarm of giant, glowing albino moths with ectoplasmic wings, that settled on their clothing and hair.  Idariel (with an amazingly good Arcane Knowledge roll) managed to identify them as a giant, mutant version of a rare thaumivorous (magic-eating) moth.  After a brief panic that the moths were after their goods, they decided that they were just feeding on the magical soot that was coating them from the fog that permeated Poisonville.  Idariel decided to gather a bunch of the moths in a handy sack, for further study, and after accomplishing this, they made the rest of the way to Vat #7 without incident.

There, they found places in the metallic wall where something had chewed new rat holes, annoying Twonky, who had cleaned the area just a few weeks ago.  Stan snapped together a mini robot with a camera, and sent it down the hole to take a look, telling it to sound an alarm and run away if anything started chewing on it.  It didn’t take long before they heard the whoop-whoop of the robot’s alarm, and it came scuttling back, trailing one damaged leg.  Idariel began scanning the hole with his Pentacorder, looking for what did it, while Stan replayed the robot’s memory; they both came to the same conclusion: the robot had been attacked by a Zombot Ratipede that was even now shambling through the tunnels in the wall towards them to feast on their flesh.  The video from the robot was technically all they needed to fulfill their contract (and this group was nothing if not technical about fulfilling their contracts), but they decided to fight the Zombot anyway, if only so it wouldn’t be following them.

As soon as the Zombot Ratipede poked its nose (and eyestalks) out of the hole, Tank opened fire with his Multi-Gun, and blew big gobbets of flesh off it, revealing the glistening tubes and wires that animated it.  It twitched and lay still.  Stan, as an expert on robots, recalled that Zombots would regenerate after “death” unless they were burned.  At this point, Idariel 7 had a brilliant idea.  They would unleash the thaumivorous moths on the corpse, and see if that would prevent it from regenerating.  Stan and Josepi were dubious that it wouldn’t just result in Zombot moths that would destroy the entire arcology, but Idariel was insistent that since the Zombot dust could only infect you through a wound and the moths weren’t wounded, there was nothing to worry about.  Besides, the party was overdue for unleashing a setting-destroying horror.

To everybody’s surprise but Idariel’s, the plan worked, and the Zombot Ratipede failed to revive.  Further scans of the area revealed no more Zombots (itself somewhat puzzling), but evidence that the other Ratipedes had been giving the infected one wide berth, and the party decided that some combination of the lack of any life-forms to infect besides the wary and swift Ratipedes and the presence of the thaumivorous moths in and about the area had contained the Zombot infestation.  At this point, Idariel realized that this might be the big score he had been looking for… the ticket back to getting the 100,000 creds he needed to reinstate his license.

They took the Zombot corpse with them, contained in a metal box along with some of the moths (with holes in the lid, of course), and hurried back to Carvin’s office to use the phone, both to tell Barbis about the Zombot they had found and potentially negotiate with him over the discovery of the mutant moths.  The conversation didn’t begin well, with Barbis having just found out from the very unhappy Grismerelda that the shop had burned to the ground–Idariel attempted to persuade him that it wasn’t any of their doing (true enough) even though they hadn’t somehow seen fit to mention the incident to Grismerelda when collecting their pay.  The conversation wasn’t going well, even with Idariel coming clean over exactly what had happened at the shop, including the Pigsie that reanimated as a Zombot, until he happened to mention his potentially lucrative discovery and willingness to cut Barbis in on the action.  “Cha-ching!”   They agreed to meet and talk in person, rather than over an unsecured line in somebody else’s office. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was engaging Carvin in conversation, attempting to keep him completely distracted once they realized that Idariel was discussing this potentially immensely valuable find in the presence of a third party, one moreover with interests and responsibilities to his employer that ran counter to the party’s scheme to make themselves rich with something found in that employer’s factory….this seemed to be successful, particularly once they got Carvin–secretly something of a civic booster–started on the topic of how Poisonville’s reputation for pollution and ill-health was really undeserved, why, look at him, he’d been working at the plant for hundreds of years now and he was still a fine figure of a Dwarf, if he said so himself…

And there we broke for the evening.