How I GM – Rule of Cool (If You Can Convince Me It Should Work)

I don’t GM by the book.

I GM by one rule:

If you can convince me it should work, I’ll probably let you try it.

That does not mean every ridiculous idea automatically succeeds.

Sometimes there is a roll.

Sometimes there is a consequence.

Sometimes I am going to tell you no.

But if I can look at what you are trying to do and think, “Yeah, I can see how that could work,” I would usually rather let you try than stop the game while we search through three books for a rule that may or may not cover it.

Here is a perfect example of a night where I have no idea how many rules we technically broke—and it was one of the best sessions we have had.

The Boulder Incident

We were down to two players.

One was a tanuki… honestly, I don’t even know what he technically was at that point anymore.

The other was an alchemist.

They were fighting an earth elemental and a metal elemental in a tunnel the elementals had been carving out for the BBEG.

Things were already going sideways.

The alchemist got blinded.

Instead of backing off, he decided he was still going to throw a bomb.

He missed.

Hit the tanuki.

I do not remember exactly what effect was on him after that, but it was not good.

So the tanuki says:

“I’m turning into a boulder.”

At this point, I had been letting him change into basically anything, because it made the game more fun. Right or wrong, we were rolling with it.

So he turns into a boulder.

Now I have an elemental with a burrow speed.

So naturally…

I have the elemental burrow straight through the boulder to the other side looking for him.

The alchemist finally recovers from being blinded.

Looks around.

No ally.

No enemy.

Just… a tunnel.

That should have been the weirdest part of the night.

It wasn’t.

The Scouting Mission I Definitely Did Not Plan

Later, they find a goblin encampment and decide to scout it.

The tanuki turns into an arrow.

The alchemist shoots him into the camp.

I roll.

A patrol notices the arrow and goes to investigate.

So the tanuki turns into a piece of silver.

The goblin picks him up…

…and puts him in his coin purse.

Now I have a player stuck in a goblin’s pocket.

So naturally, I invent a solution.

It is goblin tax day.

The goblin reaches into his coin purse to pay.

The tanuki turns into a gold coin.

The goblin looks at it, gets visibly depressed, and hands it over.

Now my player has moved from purse A to purse B.

The tax collector drops him into a cart I just decided exists for the BBEG dragon’s hoard.

If you can’t tell, I was NOT planning on a scouting mission that night.

So the tanuki adapts again.

This time, he turns into a jeweled sheath.

Then proceeds to convince the tax collector:

“I’m magical. I can help you discover your purpose.”

The goblin believes him.

Because of course he does.

At This Point, We Were Fully Committed

I still needed to keep him hidden.

So when the goblin goes to sleep…

I have him stash the “magic sheath” down his pants.

There was no going back now.

The tanuki turns into a feather.

Then proceeds to Magikarp hop his way out of the goblin’s pants, onto the floor, and toward the tent door.

Before exiting, he turns into a tanuki dog…

…and just casually finishes scouting the camp.

Rule of Cool Does Not Mean Automatic Success

This is the part that matters.

I am not saying every strange idea should work just because a player thought of it.

The idea still has to make sense within whatever nonsense we have already established.

If the player wants to try something difficult, there may be a roll.

If the plan is dangerous, there may be consequences.

If it clearly does not work within the world, I can still say no.

But if the idea is reasonable enough that I can see a path from the attempt to a possible outcome, I would rather give the player the chance.

That is what “Rule of Cool” means at my table.

Not:

“You thought of something funny, so it automatically works.”

More like:

“Okay. Convince me.”

And if you do?

Let’s roll some dice and see what happens.

I Was Improvising Too

The player was not the only one making things up as we went.

I did not plan goblin tax day.

I did not plan a tax collector.

I definitely did not plan a cart carrying treasure toward the BBEG dragon’s hoard.

Those things existed because the player kept putting me in situations I had never prepared for, and I had to answer the same question over and over:

“Okay. What happens next?”

That is one of my favorite parts of GMing.

The players create a problem I never expected.

I respond.

They react to my response.

I react to theirs.

Eventually we end up with a magical tanuki sheath trying to escape from a goblin’s pants.

Nobody wrote that encounter.

The table created it.

Why I Run Games This Way

The rules matter.

They give everyone a shared understanding of how the game works.

They create boundaries, risks, abilities, and consequences.

But there are moments where stopping everything to determine the exact interaction between several obscure rules creates a worse game than simply making a reasonable ruling and continuing.

That night was:

• creative

• hilarious

• tense in all the right moments

• completely unpredictable

• and completely memorable

That is what I am after.

The rules exist to support the game.

Sometimes the best way to support the game is to use them exactly as written.

Sometimes it is to make a ruling, roll the dice, and keep moving.

Final Thought

If your players are laughing, panicking, and coming up with ideas you did not plan for—which is pretty much par for the course at my table—you are probably doing something right.

You do not have to say yes to everything.

You do not have to ignore the rules.

But when a player comes up with something strange, creative, and just believable enough to maybe work, sometimes the best response is:

“Convince me.”

Then roll the dice and see where the story goes.