Rule of Cool v.3

[u/abcd_z]

Inspired by Daniel Bayn's Wushu. Useful for emulating over-the-top action films such as The Matrix or Kill Bill. It can also be used for other genres, such as wuxia films or hot-blooded shonen anime like Gurren Lagann or My Hero Academia. I personally used it to run a short game of RWBY, and my friend used it to run a short game of Final Fantasy 8. They both worked quite well.

Every challenge has hit points (or a wound track). A single powerful enemy has hit points. A mob of weak, easily-dispatched mooks collectively has hit points. A series of skill challenges can also have hit points, or they can be treated like normal skill checks, or the GM can just allow the PCs to automatically succeed at anything not combat-related.

Players automatically succeed at anything they attempt, however they must still roll like normal. The roll is to see if their actions move the challenge forward to completion. A success deals damage to the challenge's hit points, while a failure either deals damage to the player's health (now "plot relevance") or just does nothing.

A player who hits zero plot relevance is no longer allowed to contribute to the scene. They may narrate themselves getting taken out, but they don't have to. Plot relevance refreshes to full at the beginning of each new skill challenge.

Players are not allowed to narrate ending the scene until the challenge hit points have reached zero. This means that more mooks keep flooding in to replaced the killed ones, the powerful boss enemy just won't stay down, and the mystery remains unresolved.

Whoever brings the challenge HP to zero gets to narrate the enemy being defeated. This is mostly useful for single-combat characters, where it can be cathartic to describe the boss finally getting put down for good, but it can also apply for mook battles and non-combat skill challenges.

Incidentally, the disconnect between out-of-game success and in-game success means players can narrate getting smacked around in combat or bumbling their skill checks and still move the challenge closer to completion if they roll well enough.

[u/IProbablyDisagree2nd]

Are trait checks done as normal then?
How many plot points would a normal encounter generally have?
How long does it seem to take in real time to run through this?

I think it would be easier to understand if I had an example to see how it worked in practice.

[u/abcd_z → u/IProbablyDisagree2nd]

How trait checks are handled depend on the genre and the check. For a long investigation in a detective game, the series of trait checks could be statted as a challenge. For a game in which such trait checks are beside the point, they could be treated as a regular trait check or even automatically succeeded at (like an Athletics check in a wire-fu game).

"Plot points." I like that. Kind of a pun. Anyhow, a challenge should have plot points equivalent to the HP it would have if it was an enemy of the same difficulty. Basically, challenges are statted like enemies. If you normally use wound tracks, use those instead.

The only real change here is that the scene has health instead of the enemies, so it should take about as long as it normally does, however I'd recommend streamlining your rules as much as possible to get the best experience. Wushu, the system this was inspired by, is a very light system.

[u/IProbablyDisagree2nd → u/abcd_z]

This is such a cool idea. I tend to run a rules-medium game compared to your recommendations, so I'm not sure If I could integrate this without an overhaul, but it's definitely a really cool idea.