As the title says, moderation is key. If the game is just “whatever is the most convincing right now” then I’m going to be annoyed that I sat down to play D&D/fate/gurps/whatever, and we’re mostly playing improv. It’s important to set expectations in or before session 0.
If I was looking to join a game, and the GM was like “We’re all about the rule of cool”, I’d probably ask for some examples. If it’s like “we let the [D&D 5e] wizard cast as many spell as he wants” then I’m not joining, because that’s going to fuck up the game balance. On the other hand if it’s like “we don’t really care about carry weight unless it’s extreme”, that’s fine.
Stuff in the middle, like “one time we let them use create water in the bad guy’s lungs to drown him!” can go either way, but I’m usually not a fan. Mostly if I ask myself “if this works, why doesn’t the whole setting revolve around it?” and don’t have a good answer, I won’t enjoy it. Like, if everyone could do lethal damage with a cantrip, or if the “peasant railgun” worked like the joke, or “we let the real life chemical engineer make napalm and mustard gas as a 1st level rogue for massive damage”, then that probably isn’t for me.
As the title says, moderation is key. If the game is just “whatever is the most convincing right now” then I’m going to be annoyed that I sat down to play D&D/fate/gurps/whatever, and we’re mostly playing improv. It’s important to set expectations in or before session 0.
If I was looking to join a game, and the GM was like “We’re all about the rule of cool”, I’d probably ask for some examples. If it’s like “we let the [D&D 5e] wizard cast as many spell as he wants” then I’m not joining, because that’s going to fuck up the game balance. On the other hand if it’s like “we don’t really care about carry weight unless it’s extreme”, that’s fine.
Stuff in the middle, like “one time we let them use create water in the bad guy’s lungs to drown him!” can go either way, but I’m usually not a fan. Mostly if I ask myself “if this works, why doesn’t the whole setting revolve around it?” and don’t have a good answer, I won’t enjoy it. Like, if everyone could do lethal damage with a cantrip, or if the “peasant railgun” worked like the joke, or “we let the real life chemical engineer make napalm and mustard gas as a 1st level rogue for massive damage”, then that probably isn’t for me.