The Rule of SMITE!
The Rule of SMITE! (capitalization and exclamation point mandatory) goes like this: If someone posts some rule that they use at their tabletop to the internet, something that they and their fellow players find cool, and it doesn’t suit your style of play, don’t use it and move on.
That seems like a fairly simple rule, but I’m certain that there are multiple shades of nuance that can be squeezed from it, a veritable carnival could be built around it as half the people that blog about roleplaying games write about it, spin it, bitch about it, declare it the most awesomest thing known to the human race, or decree it to be the utter downfall of not only the hobby and the industry but of all mankind and civilization itself.
Now, it’s totally cool if you dig it and you want to blog about it to pass it on in case someone else might find it useful or interesting (which was likely the intention of the person who first put it on teh intarwebs), and it’s totally cool if you can think of new variations and applications of the rule and add something meaningful to the conversation. It’s even cool to find a hole in the logic of the rule, if it’s constructive criticism intended to fix a problem in the rule. But writing about how stupid it is, or how horrible it is, about about how you’d never use it and your players would hate it, or how the person that thought of it and anyone who likes it is a big fat jerkwad poopyhead idiot, violates the Rule of SMITE! In particular, it violates the part that says “move on”.
You’re probably wondering why this is called the Rule of SMITE! The answer is as simple as the rule itself. Those who violate the rule will find that a squadron of Dire Paladins armed with bowel disruptors have been dispatched to kick in their doors and take their stuff. You may not find this rule cool, but I find the result is wicked sweet and/or awesome. Your threshold may vary.
And remember, if you don’t like the Rule of SMITE!, don’t use it and move on.
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