Quote from XXXGammaRay >>

Seems like this is the sort of thing that should have been ironed out in session zero. While the GM could have laid things out more clearly, I think Vince also needs to speak up about his peculiarities. With decades of experience, he should know by now that he should not play with people who do not share his narrow vision of D&D. It just seems like he keeps barging into tables and groups that are clearly not meant for him. Before joining a group and starting a campaign, if he just spends fifteen to twenty minutes showing the GM his Beyond forum posts, it would save him a lot of time and headache as the GM will know right then and there whether Vince will be a good fit for the campaign and group.

 I wonder exactly how accurate of a rendition of what happens at Vince's gaming table we're actually getting.  He reminds me strongly of someone I used to game with, and that person had... let's call it an extremely self-serving memory.

Quote from XXXGammaRay >>

Before joining a group and starting a campaign, if he just spends fifteen to twenty minutes showing the GM his Beyond forum posts, it would save him a lot of time and headache as the GM will know right then and there whether Vince will be a good fit for the campaign and group.

I'm fairly sure most DMs will have some misgivings after reading a few threads like this one, regardless of style. 

To be clear, I don't know if that would be warranted. Online personalities don't always come across the same as real life and if the playstyle is compatible enough problems are unlikely to arise. I'm sure Vince is a great player in the right campaign. But hating others for the way they play and compiling lists of infractions against how-D&D-should-be-played-properly? Big red flags.

Quote from Vince_Snetterton >>

Quote from Zephr1 >>

hey Vince, let me take a different approach since you dont seem to be getting what others are getting at.

Open the Dungeons Masters Guide to page 4 and look towards the bottom of the left hand column, there are 2 very important sentences. In fact I'll save you some time "The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game". In other words, whatever the DM says, goes. Even if it contradicts the written rules of the game. This is a fact, it has been printed in the book and is widely known. What you are arguing is how you feel, and what is you oh so famous signature? I'll quote that as well, to save some time "Facts trump feelings. Facts hurting your feelings is not anyone's problem but your own."

In other words, this isn't our problem, its not the DM's problem, its not the other players problem. It's your problem. The facts stated in the Dungeon Masters Guide solve the issues at hand, if they allow anything, end of, it goes. Sometimes, things are better if the rules are not so strictly enforced, it allows for some great moments. Maybe read the rules, so situations like this do not happen again

:)

 The best analogy:

Those that play "rule of cool" prefer feelings.

Those that play RAW prefer facts.

 

 DM's rules trump RAW. This is clearly stated in the DMG, as I had quoted.

If a DM allows something, its allowed. Does not matter what the table thinks.

Let me just quote the RAW written in the DMG again, but read it this time and take in what it says:

"but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game" -Dungeon Masters Guide, page 4.

The DMG RAW state DM's rules trump everything. So which 'facts' are you looking at? Because I see a DM making calls on what the players do, and the players continuing on with the game. 

You seem to be trying to force everyone to follow your rules, which are not the rules, as using the rules makes you wrong.

Quote from Kotath >

 

In the spellcasting rules describing casting components it clearly says that if it has a somatic component, you need a free hand. 

 Cool. Thanks for the answer. Didn't see that first glance.

 Hey, sounds like the group isn't for you and you should move on to a group that plays the game more as written.

In all honesty though you sound like you don't mix with the rest of the group that well maybe find one more your pace? It's okay not to like how they play, but to then try and force them to play your way is pretty mean spirited.

If someone told you, 8 sessions into a campaign, "Oh, your main ability, it does not work anymore", you would lose your mind. Or if the DM decides that rolling a D20 for attacks and saves was "minutiae" and at his table, everyone rolls 2d10's, I am sure you would be fine with that. There are basic game mechanics that cannot be broken.

Further to this point... wasn't there a thread on here a couple of months back about a player complaining because his GM was randomly making the abilities of clerics and paladins in his party "not work" or making them not get their spell slots back? And it turned out they had done something that the GM judged would displease their deities, and therefore ruled that the deities would withhold some of their power, thus making those powers not work.

And I'm pretty sure the player was absolutely infuriated, and one of his arguments was that if it says he can do something on his character sheet, the GM has to allow it, and not doing so is 'unfair.' How many of the same people saying "It's in the rules the DM can do anything he or she wants!' sided with the player and not the GM in that other thread?

That old line for Jurassic Park comes to mind, said by Ian Malcolm in the dining room just before everything went to hell, about being so concerned trying to figure out if they could do something that they never stopped to ask if they should.

Can the GM make up any rules he or she wants and override what it says in the rulebook any where, any time, and for any reason? Technically, yes. Should the GM do this? Most of the time, no. Any time the GM makes a ruling contrary to the rules, there should be a reason, and a good reason. The rules are the result of long discussions by game designers, multiple hours of play-testing under different options to see what works, and years of experience with the game through multiple editions. I don't necessarily love every rule and yes, I house rule away some of them... but like most DMs, I use most of the rules as written because I don't have a good reason to do otherwise, and I know that the rules, as written, are done that way for a reason, often one that I may not see until years of experience with the game myself.

Now there are things I don't like, sure... and sometimes I houserule those away. But I have like 1-2 pages of house rules that contradict the PHB or DMG in mostly-small ways, and even most of that content is just "we are using this option from the DMG and not that one" rather than something totally contradicting the rules. But otherwise I use most of the rules as written.

And again, the most significant thing in this story to me is the arbitrary nature of the rulings. Although one can certainly have a game in which everything that happens is subject to GM whim, it leads to a very chaotic game and potentially an unfair one, as some players may please the GM's whim more than others. The written rules apply to everyone, and you don't have to "come up with something cool" to employ them, the way you do if you are trying to get the GM to "apply the rule of cool" for you.

Quote from Vince_Snetterton >> 

If someone told you, 8 sessions into a campaign, "Oh, your main ability, it does not work anymore", you would lose your mind. Or if the DM decides that rolling a D20 for attacks and saves was "minutiae" and at his table, everyone rolls 2d10's, I am sure you would be fine with that. There are basic game mechanics that cannot be broken.

Nobody told you your main ability didn't work anymore, and I recall a lengthy thread from a few months ago about replacing the d20 with multiple dice to create more predictable/dependable results - it's really not an outlandish idea.  

Quote from BioWizard >>

House rules MUST be announced beforehand. That is the only thing fair to the players. For my campaign I handed a hard copy to the group, with a soft copy available 24/7.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here, my friend.

Yes, of course, any house rules the DM has going in, must be announced and agreed to beforehand.

However, sometimes things come up in live play that require the DM to make a ruling on the spot, and afterwards the table decides to "house rule" something to avoid having to "make it up on the spot" in the future. Such adjustments mid-stream must be allowed to happen. Of course, once this new House Rule is made, it must be added to the document and a new round of print-outs (or PDFs or whatever they are) distributed.

As an example, I have a player who was itching to take counterspell -- because, I think, he expected it to work the way he has seen it on one of the popular D&D shows. That is, the DM announces the spell being cast and the level at which it is being cast, and the player can then, ex post facto, decide if he wants to counterspell. This is, of course, not what it says in the rules. So I posted a house rule ahead of time, that per RAW, and per XGE, it takes a reaction to ID a spell, and a reaction to counterspell, and thus one can do one, or the other, but not both. Either you counterspell "blind" or you ID the spell but then can't counter. He was very unhappy with this (mostly because he saw it as a 'nerf' to the spell), and we had a long conversation. In it, he succeeded in convincing me that there would be no reason to ID a spell as a reaction, if you can't do anything about it. And I decided he had a point -- why, really, would anyone bother, since the act of IDing it precluded any possible reaction to the spell once you know which one is going off? At the same time I had seen a rule here, I think from Pantagruel, saying if they successfully ID a spell he allows his players to cast CS as part of the reaction. I offered this as a compromise and my player agreed it was reasonable. I then changed the standing house rule, and sent out an email informing all the players of this change and why we made it.

In my view this sort of thing is not only legit but must be done from time to time... as we see in live play how a rule is working, we have to decide if we like it or not, and whether we need to change it or not. One cannot expect a DM to know all the possible house rules we will need from Day 1 -- especially not if the DM has never run 5e before (as I, at the time I wrote my house rule document, had not).

 
You could also use passive Arcana (10 + Arcana score) to be automatic and not need a reaction.  That’s probably the closest to RAW as I’ve seen and I use it in my campaigns.

I’m with you OP.  I’d leave this table if even the base rules are adjusted on the fly and simply hand waved as creativity.  It often is the case with new or inexperienced DMs that will make sweeping changes like “Dim light causes disadvantage on attacks”, “you can form a weird shield wall that grants invulnerability” or “Faerie Fire works continuously”.  I firmly believe these are not the hallmarks of the “rule of cool” and typically arise with a DM that’s either unclear of the rules in general or unwilling to consider the wide-ranging implications of such a rule change on his players. 

While some may like games like this, I certainly wouldn’t.  Sounds like a nightmare.  I think someone called it “shifting sands”, and that’s kind of the way I view it too. 

Vince, these are your words, from a post on March 4:

“the DM is not constrained to play by any rules the players are held to.“

I’ll leave it at that.

Quote from iconarising >>

Vince, these are your words, from a post on March 4:

“the DM is not constrained to play by any rules the players are held to.“

I’ll leave it at that.

 And yet he’s still within his right to voice an opinion on whether he likes it or not, right?

Quote from iconarising >>

Vince, these are your words, from a post on March 4:

“the DM is not constrained to play by any rules the players are held to.“

I’ll leave it at that.

This is different from saying that the DM is not constrained to make the players follow the rules except when the mood strikes him. The Rule of Cool has nothing to do with what the GM is allowed to do behind the screen. It has to do with what the GM allows the player-characters to do in front of the screen, during play, in contradiction of or in complete disregard for, the rules. Allowing a cleric to use his big toe to complete the somatic component of a spell while both hands are full is not about the DM "not having to follow the same rules as the player." That is the DM allowing the player to follow different rules from other players.

And worse, it's inconsistent in that the DM is allowing certain players to ignore the rules or make up their own rules if those players can successfully convince the DM that doing so is cool. This is arbitrary and GMs should not be arbitrary, as I have said above.

GMs are allowed to break the rules, yes, and we do it often for purposes like moving the story along. And I'm not saying it is wrong to make rulings now and then for the coolness factor. But the game should be run in a consistent manner. If you're going to rule that one character can do somatic gestures with his big toe, then everyone, including the monsters, can do so. At this point you probably should just say "there is no somatic component in my game," again, up to the GM, if he/she thinks that would be cooler. But then it is a blanket ruling, not an arbitrary allowance just one time because the cleric, let's face it, wants to be OP (it certainly can't be argued that wiggling your toes at the enemy for a somatic gesture is "cool" by any normal definition).

Speaking personally, as a GM, the only times I violate the rules, are usually to help the party not to harm them. I haven't had to really do that in my current game, but in the old days playing Champions and such, when I GMed permanently for 2 years, yes, there were times when I cheated. The ones I remember, were all in favor of the PCs, not the NPCs. I did this as a GM to reward the PCs, to avoid a KO on someone in the start if a long battle which would leave the player bored, that kind of thing. Yes, GMs are supposed to make these decisions and break these rules for the good of the table. 

But we are not supposed to break the rules or ignore them for the good of one player, and worse, the one player who happens to have most entertained us with the "wow factor" of what he or she is doing. Sorry, that smacks of "playing favorites" to me too much.

Allowing what you think is cool and disallowing what you think isn't, is consistent. It's not predictable, but it is consistent. The DM in question also didn't allow the cure-with-your-foot idea. At least one of the examples given sounds more like a simple mistake than allowing it because it seemed cool. This whole thing is getting overblown.

I didn't read all of it Vince, but I get the gist. While I generally disagree with you on these forums, I'm in agreement with you on this one. I don't like when "rule of cool" or whatever means throwing away the actual rules, and thus buffing characters and nerfing others arbitrarily.

V:  I think a possibly more productive social/persuasive politics tact at the table or its side conversations is to show how the "lord of cool" player is actually being a very poor team player in not having a sense or interest in the broader capabilities of the team, instead they and the DM suppressing other players in favor of spotlights that defy mechanics.  This may lead other players to ally with you on a "hey wait a sec!" tact, but then again, they may be more following players than initiative takers and are actually enjoying the ride.  It does sound like their disregard for your concerns makes them an ill fit.  

So in the last effort I think "that's not the rules say" has proven an ineffective approach. But "you know, I feel other players are getting hosed out of opportunities to perform because of the DM indulging one character with the spotlight" may garner more sympathy and a wake up call to a DM who may be anxious about being "cool" or "lame."

I think MP is right about the proper way to make the argument, but I also suspect it may be too late for this particular game group. I guess it's worth giving it a try if you still want to play with them -- it's more liable to work than the straight-up rules logic approach which has clearly failed repeatedly.

But... I have also had this happen in the past with a small group, me and 2 others. The other 2 were "rule of cool"ers, though we wouldn't have named it so at the time, and I have only recently lumped this episode into that category. But they definitely sided with each other, and any attempt I made to bring things back to ground was always rebuffed. Their answer, rather than reigning in their "cool but rule-breaking" characters, would have been to encourage me to break the rules in the name of coolness too.

So even before the whole thread got dragged into an argument over whether this one DM who ran a game for somebody somewhere and who is not present to defend himself or share his side of the tale is literally the worst human being who has ever lived...there was, for a brief moment, something actually worth discussing in a Vince Snetterton thread. Let’s try and get back to it.

The stance evinced in Vince’s original post is something I’ve seen referred to many times as ‘wargamer’-style play, due to it being the norm (and, in fact, the only way to play) amongst tabletop war games. To put it shortly: in wargame-style play, the rules define the world. Furthermore, the rules define the ENTIRE world. There is nothing outside the rules, no extrapolation, no “but the game world should logically let me try this” - nah. The rules do, and allow, precisely what they say they allow and no more, and furthermore anything not precisely and explicitly defined by the rules does not exist.

A character in a wargame-style game can take the actions listed in the “Actions in Combat” section of the PHB – attack, cast, dash, disengage, help, hide, search, use an object, or they can take an action which their feats or class/species features explicitly defines. They can Ready, but only to take one of their already predefined actions. Any other conceivable action is off the table, because those actions are not clearly defined by the rules of the game.

It’s absolutely critical for wargame-style play that the rules are inviolate. They are concrete, unchanging, immovable, and completely and utterly indifferent to the players’ wishes. Not because wargame-style play hates players and creativity (though many bad wargamers or wargame DMs do, in fact, hate both those things), but because a wargamer’s pleasure comes from using their clearly defined tools in an efficient, effective, and masterful manner to pry victory away from situations where defeat seems far more likely.

Wargamers find the mechanical structure and strictures of the game to be vastly more important than the consistency of the narrative world. The mechanics of the game are its laws of physics, and if those physics are bendy then there’s no point in playing the game. Wargamers (as a broad generalization, mind) are usually of the opinion that once the rules bend the entire game is ruined. A ‘victory’ that wouldn’t stand up in court, to borrow a phrase, is no victory at all – it’s just a bunch of players slapping each other on the back and telling the thrilling tale of that time the world twisted itself up to accommodate their wishes. If you can change a rule just by wanting to badly enough, it’s not a rule.

Wargame-style play is where D&D came from. It evolved from war games, which operate this way by default and to the enthusiastic approval of their players. A wargame piece acting outside the extremely narrow list of actions and maneuvers that piece is allowed to take is unthinkable – at that point the game doesn’t even work anymore, and a lot of D&D players who’ve been playing forever, or who came to D&D through the same ingress path, are expecting the same thing.

It’s not the way 5e is played or written anymore, though. Wargamers aren’t really the target audience for D&D 5e. 5E specifically pulled back on the rules and left what rules they did keep fuzzy, asking to the point of demanding that the DM make rulings on the fly at their table, for their table. D&D bills itself as a game of imagination, where you can attempt anything you can think of. You won’t always succeed, and no DM is obligated to let a player attempt dumb outlandish shit for the sake of shits – dragons do not fall for winsome smiles and a softly strummed lute, I don’t care if you rolled a 25 on a twenty-sided dice before bonuses.

But there are plenty of things a character can do that aren’t covered by the rules but which are nevertheless perfectly valid things for that character to try and do. It’s the DM’s job to figure out how to work that out, and the players’ job to accept it if the DM says “we’ll do it like this for now, and I’ll puzzle over whether there’s a better way to do it when we’re not playing”. Some players thrive on that freedom as much as wargamers thrive on structure. They need it, or there’s no point in playing a TTRPG for them.

If we (surprising no one, I am not a wargamer in D&D by any stretch, though I have actually quite enjoyed some of the leaner, faster tabletop wargames I’ve played in the past) are as tightly bound as the wargamer wants to be, so hedged in we can’t use our imagination at all or make even the most token attempt to resolve a situation unconventionally? We may as well go play a video game. it’s faster, it’s prettier, we don’t need to screw with schedules to get five other people to play with us, and frankly it’s a whole heullva lot cheaper than booking up for a D&D game.

The whole thread is mostly a great example of why Session Zero is a good idea, and why touch-base Sessions-Similar-To-Zero throughout the campaign should probably be a part of more campaigns than they are. There’s nothing wrong with “Not in the book? Not at my table” wargaming, and there’s nothing wrong with “if you can imagine it you can try it” roleplaying, but the two are absolutely incompatible. No ardent fan of one can long survive at a table dominated by the other.

I'm actually not sure that Vince is coming from a strictly "Wargaming" mentality as you define it. I would have some issues with a lot of what the DM in his group allowed (especially using your big toe for somatic gestures -- yes, I know I am exaggerating but it makes the point), but I don't require all rules and only the rules to be followed, nor has anyone in my group ever required that, going all the way back to the supposed wargames of the early 1980s. I think the image you may have of the "strict wargaming" side of D&D is more fiction than fact, as I have never witnessed any such things and, in fact, the original rulebooks going back all the way to 1974 do not support strict wargaming style play. In the back of the first set of books, for example, Gygax specifically says that other races could be allowed by the DM up to and including player-run dragons, if the DM so wishes, but to just be aware of the consequences such a thing would have on the game-play, and if aware, then go to it.

As a matter of fact, elsewhere (not on DDB), I have defined RPGs as requiring 3 elements, and that the game must have all 3 for me to consider it a true RPG. One of those 3 elements is that the players can have their characters do things that are not explicitly covered in the rules. I would argue that if you do not have this, you do not have an RPG, so the "Wargame" mentality you describe would by my lights preclude an RPG. By the way, this is one of the reasons I don' think that any computer "RPG" will ever be able to be a true RPG, because you literally cannot do anything that was not coded by the devs, so you can never try to do something "not covered by the rules." (My fellow gamers and I often RPed things that weren't covered in the rules during social RP, and then while we were doing that, I guess it qualified as an RPG, but not when we weren't doing so.)

However, I mean something very important by "doing things not explicitly covered in the rules," and it's not "doing things the rules expressly say you cannot do." 

No RPG, regardless of how thick the rulebook or how many volumes the rules take up, can cover every possibility, and it is up to the GM to determine, in collaboration with the players, what would happen when you try something not listed in the rules. Or, for example, what happens when 2 rules come into conflict. On this very forum, we have had questions like, can a Wish spell undo the will of a deity? Well, that's not covered one way or the other in the rules -- the rules don't say it can, and they don't say it can't. So that is left up to the GM. Another thread asked, what happens when 2 level 20 clerics of opposite alignment, ask for divine intervention at the same time, requesting opposite outcomes? Again, this is not covered in the rules. A "wargame" answer would perhaps be "you simply can't do that." But that is unsatisfying in D&D, because it is what the characters would try to do, so the GM has to come up with an answer of what would happen.

But determining what would happen in a situation not explicitly covered by the rules, or perhaps even ruling that what the rules say is not true here, is not the same thing as the "Rule of Cool" as outlined in the original post. The Rule of Cool basically states, "If it's cool to allow it, the GM should allow it." And that is pretty much it. Regardless of whether it is immersion-breaking, rule-breaking, world-breaking, game-breaking, verisimilitude-breaking, Rule of Cool trumps all the rest, and it should be allowed. This is what Vince is describing in the OP.  And it's not the same thing as just "doing things that are not explicitly covered in the rules."

Back to old school style and wargaming... I think there is a false picture that has been painted in the minds of players... that it was "DM vs players," and the "DM was trying to kill the party," and "people used all the rules exactly as written and never deviated from them." I cant' speak for anyone else, but in my town in those days, nobody played any of these ways. Yes, PCs died, but as DMs we always felt bad about it. BTW, sometimes it was our characters dying, because we had characters too (rotating DMs) and someone played our character. The very first AD&D character to ever die was my friend the DM's level 1 druid, who was pricked by a poison needle trap my thief failed to detect, and I rolled his save and he failed it, and it was save-or-die. Anyone who thinks my friend was evil-DM-cackling-with-glee to kill off his own character has a particularly sick view of old school D&D, but I assure you he was not, and to this day (39 years later) I still feel bad about it. BTW, he'd forgotten all about it until I reminded him of it a few months ago. I feel worse than he did. But my point is, nobody cheered character deaths. In fact that same friend gave us a ring of 3 wishes and two Resurrection scrolls in that level 1-4 adventures because PCs kept dying and he wasn't trying to kill them off. He just was a new DM and did not realize how deadly what he was throwing at us actually was.

At any rate, I've never played D&D with anyone who wouldn't alter, bend, or modify the rules-as-written when appropriate. I just don't think that the Rule of Cool style is remotely like that.

Others have done a great job responding to Vince, but most of them have giant posts that most people may feel intimidating/difficult to read (especially those, like me, with ADHD). To help these people, I will do a shorter summary here. 

Vince, honest to god, I want you and everyone else that plays D&D to have a good time playing the game. You didn't have fun at this group. As the saying goes, "No D&D is better than Bad D&D". This session was bad D&D for you (I don't know how the other players felt, if they had fun it was not "wrong", "bad", or deserving of hate), so I would recommend to you to spare yourself the trauma of participating in other games that feel like absolutely abhorrent abominations to you. The answer to this issue is really simple, only five words; Stop Playing With That Group. 

If you play D&D and don't have fun, and you get angry because of how your group is playing, plain and simple; leave that group and stop playing with them. Your playstyles are likely incompatible and it's much easier for all of us if you stop trying to squeeze a square peg through a circular hole and just stop playing with them. Leave that group, apologize that your playstyle doesn't work with theirs, and go join another group that caters more towards your playstyle. Spare yourself (and us) of your rage that your group is selfish for not trying to make the game fun for you, while they were likely having fun themselves, and just stop playing with them and find a better group for you.

It's better for you, your table, and everyone who otherwise would have to see a huge post about your itemized list of 30 years of disagreements with them. 

If you can't find a new group, I'm sincerely sorry, but you're going to have to compromise. Try to see if both you and your group can find some middle ground that is enjoyable to all of you. If it's still not fun and enjoyable after a few sessions of compromising between your playstyles, stop playing. Again, no D&D is better than bad D&D. If your playstyles are so fundamentally different that trying to compromise results in an overall loss of fun for your group, and you're the one that's playstyle is causing this discrepancy, it is your responsibility to stop playing with them and let them have fun until you can find a group that works better for you. 

Got it? It's really simple. Again, I do apologize, but as your signature says, "facts trump feelings". It is a widely accepted fact that square pegs don't fit through round holes and that no D&D is better than bad D&D. If you feel like they have to cater to you, and you don't have to do any work at all because you "hate creative players, Rules as Cool, and DMs that cater towards them", you are in the wrong. Compromise means that both sides have to give up some ground. 

I wish you the best and hope you can get over your misdirected anger towards people that are doing you no harm. It's just a matter of different playstyles. Good luck in your endeavor to make future D&D sessions more fun for you.