I haven't used co-op baby for getting out of soft-lock situations so I'm fine with ruling either one. "You are not allowed to dupe your inputs via external programs" would be a fine way of distinguishing what is allowed and what isn't in my opinion.

@BrainTM thank you for understanding and accepting my apology. I thought this discussion was about using co-op baby for devil deals and not for full runs. For full runs I would say yes it would be a completely different run then normal and would need a "solo co-op" category for using two players as one person. And using co-op baby mechanics for the normal solo run we can add the extra variable to ask if you used co-op baby or not.

@BrainTM, whether it's the multiplayer mechanic or any other mechanic it's all the same and I feel it shouldn't be treated differently to the point we need more categories. And having a discussion or an argument isn't what I'm calling a joke I'm calling out the fact that some people are "personally insulted" by the discussion we are having. To quote your first post "Elad I think actually pointed out to me the other day that he thinks a speedrun is about using all the mechanics and exploits you can find in order to go as fast as possible, which seems like a perfectly reasonable perspective. " This is what I wanted to defend, not people trying to change what I consider the universal rules of speedrunning (according to every other game that's speedrunned) because they feel personally offended by someone else's view point. I have said multiple times on this thread that the reason I don't like making a full separate category for no co-op baby is because it's one game mechanic and that's not something you make a whole new category over. It's one thing if we made a glitchless category. But, like I said no one would run that either because it would just be another category with three runs and then everyone would come back to 7-13 char. I'm sorry if anything I said sounded like I was trying to belittle anyone that wasn't what I was trying to do. I'm just an introverted speedrunner who is typing a bunch of words into a box. If your still confused about what I'm trying to say just look two posts upward at Hyphen-ated's post for a better explanation then I could ever give.

The game itself doesn't separate the difference between a single and two player run. You get the same plus one in the win streak column whether or not it's a single or two player run. Regardless it doesn't matter what the game thinks is going on I'm the only one doing anything therefor it's a single player run. And it's a meme because it's a joke that people are taking this so seriously. That they want a whole separate category for this one small game mechanic that if they don't like they could just ignore it and do their own strats.

Thank you Hyphen-ated I knew someone would like that

I understand where everyone is coming from and it's apparent I'm the only one that doesn't want this game to be more of a meme than it already is. But, my concern is that if we add miscellaneous categories that only change one thing you open a door for a lot of dumb categories all with one rule change. All of the miscellaneous categories right now with the exception of Jud9s (which is enough of a meme already) only have around 3 to 5 runs submitted and no one is running them right now to change that. And I'm sorry Pibonacci, but complaining in your stream and other peoples streams isn't speaking up against the issue. Someone should of made a forum about it if they felt so strongly about it. Also taking away co-op baby is way different then allowing it. You can run the game without co-op baby with it still being a rule (just like at the current 7 char WR) but taking it away is taking it away for a lot of runners and is making their current runs invalid. If we must do something and if co-op baby is that big of an issue than I have an idea. Add a column in all the multi-character category that asks if you used co-op baby or not. Like asking what character you used in 1 char but a yes or no if you used co-op baby instead. But, like I said before you just open a door for more things like this that could just get out of hand.

@BrainTM, the last sentence I said was for comedic affect I'm not making assumptions or accusations. I was just trying to make the point that we're having a discussion about one small aspect of the game that isn't game braking. The point I was trying to make was that we can't change the current categories to not have co-op baby strats when half of the runs us it. We also can't just make miscellaneous categories for every little thing that someone doesn't like. We can discuss it all we want but in the end not everyone is going to be happy with the end decision. That's why I threw my two cents in. Your last two points have no context and make little sense as to what you mean. But, no we don't make separate categories so that people can do the run they want and that's not how new categories are made. We have a bunch of categories that are all the same with the same rules, but one's longer then the others with different characters and they were all made because we didn't know what else to do.

tl;dr thread, but here's my two cents anyway

1. Co-op baby strats are just abusing two game mechanics of being about to spawn a second player in the middle of a single player run and abusing devil deal mechanics. You aren't doing anything that the game doesn't allow you to do already so I would say that this is completely legal for speedrunning.
2. It's already too late anyway people are doing it anyway and we can't just make a new category for everyone who gets butt hurt because of a stupid game mechanic. For those of you who don't know about other speedrunned games (probably everyone if you still speedrun this game) glitches are apart of a speedrunners route of completing the game if it makes the game go faster which co-op baby does. So make a glitchless category that no one will run since everyone loves black market clip too much along with all our missing huds and item trackers. Or we can just shut up and speedrun a RNG based game like the morons we are.

If Zam's run is actually legit then there is no reason that he should be the only with the tools to do what he did. Therefore I feel that Dea1h is right and the program he used should be open to everyone.

1. Yes
2. No
3. No, too rare to care
4. Yes, I'm all for modifying item pools to make them viable
5. Take out the active items, anything else would probably be taking it too far

Wouldn't closing Isaac to change save files be an external change to the game?

It is my experience that in speedrunning for this game and all games anything that is not an external non-graphical modification to the game is allowed. So although I don't like it co-op babies and overflowing the donation machine should be allowed, but read-only shouldn't be allowed because it is an external change to the game.