My players collectively act epic in every mission they are sent on. Consequently, many missions end in our campaign with massive explosions.
A house rule we use is to make sure that "cool guys don't look at explosions.".

It is a simple Willpower check, modifiers added when appropriate such as proximity to the explosion. It's a fun rule and I hope the community gets as much use out of it as my players.

It would be a welcome addition to one house rule we've used occasionally, where after killing a particularly important foe you can make an intelligence test to see if you can come up with a pithy one-liner in time to use it.

Somehow I really don't get the idea of the explosion HR.
Who would be so stupid to look at a close proximity explosion? So why would you force some1 who faild his willpower test to do it?

Thats somehow like looking down the barrel of a supposedly jammed gun and pulling the trigger to see what happens.

But perhaps I just did not get the point.

Umbranus said:

It's meant to be cinematic. Action movies are notorious for having the protagonists/antagonists walk away from an explosion without looking back at it. I told one of my players about this house rule a few days ago and he laughed, saying "You should put that in!"

Its meant to be a fun, narrative rule as explained above. The rule satirizes and honors the staple of the action movie genre were the action heroes never look at explosions.

There is no reward or penalty other than the group of players laughing, bragging or lamenting the result. When all the players roll and no one "looks" we call that an Epic Win.

Personally i find it a bit sad that you have taken a roleplaying opportunity, and turned it into a simple dice-roll....

I'm pretty sure "Doesn't look as explosions" isn't really a character trait. It's high-five material for the players.

I like this its fun. I especialy like the pithy one liner rule. At least a player knows his character said something cool even if he couldnt think up the quote himself. Very entertaining. :-)

Kuruderu said:

Personally, I find it a bit sad that you're so self-righteous about the idea of "dice rolls = bad role-play" that you can't see the value that a house rule like this would add to ANY game.

It is true that sometimes players get so focused on the mechanics that they forget there's actually supposed to be story and character development going on, but it's equally true that the dice are only as restrictive as you make them. Like the OP said, there's no bonus or penalty based on the result of the die roll, just an opportunity for laughter and high-fives. I can easily see a rule like this motivating players to go out of their way to find opportunities to use it, thus developing their character by the actions they take to get there. I can also see it inspiring players to other similar "pointless die rolls" that define character traits by the will of the bones. Once established and clearly defined, these character traits will probably serve to encourage MORE role-playing by virtue of the fact that the players have a more vivid picture of who their characters are.

Besides which, it sounds like this rule makes the game more fun for the OP and his crew, and having fun is the ultimate reason why we play these games, after all. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it at your table, but I would encourage you to consider giving it a try before you reject it outright. This kind of "thinking outside the box" application of house rules is what makes the games they're used in memorable for decades to come. Not just "another RPG campaign."