If you make a RPG and don't force a specific lore to it (like Star Wars, Middle Earth, Hyborian Age, Thedas, Westeros), you allow players to create their own worlds and ways to play. Then you choice is to embrace their imagination, ignore them, or throw them bones.
D&D has for 40 years picked a favorite style with an edition and threw bones to some of the rest, hoping DMs to pick up the slack.
It seemed that with 4e's "Points of Light" approach, they tried making a D&D without a specific setting, although there still was a "lore" in terms of cosmology, Nentir Vale stuff, etc.
I see the optimal approach as being both: give guidelines to help players create their own worlds, but also provide examples of how it can be done.
Wait, isn't that what they've always done? I think they've always
tried to do what you're talking about, but end up becoming overly enamored with their own creations.
I think this is why some among the OSR don't like Dragonlance - it wasn't modular, it wasn't something you could drop into your own campaign world (or at least not easily) and "make your own." I don't think Dragonlance itself was a problem, but that the increased emphasis on this style of play and feeling that the old school approach was largely neglected...at least until more recently.
Well, we've certainly been round and round on these forums about whether or not rules and mechanics can truly enable or stymie imagination. I will say that for me, the hexcrawl, battlemat, etc, have nothing to do with it. For me, and mostly from a player's perspective, it's about how deeply the players can be immersed in their own characters.
This is a good point, but don't you think that this is immersion is facilitated more or less depending upon the specific rules used? I actually think that excessive use of a battlemat reduces character immersion, makes it easier to say "My paladin does this" rather than "I do this" simply by virtue of having a little metal dude in front of you on the table, that is your character. It takes it out of the mind and onto the battlemat.
Actually, you go on to say something similar...
Consider that in 1E, characters can be made in 5 minutes and are mostly a blank canvas upon which imaginative stories can be drawn. Back story and character development have as much rules effect as the DM allows, and a good DM is generous in this area. Then we added NWP, and I think the whole thing just went to hell. Now you had to implement your imagination mechanically, or you couldn't do it. In 3E we had skill lists that pretty much enforced the you-are-your-class paradigm that produced cookie-cutter characters unless you sprang for some crunch bloat to justify the character in your head, or at the exorbitant cross-class skill cost. 4E let you loosen the strait-jacket a little more, but it usually cost you a feat to do it.
You seem to be advocating for a "less is more" approach for deeper immersion. Yeah or nay?
In this respect, I think the way is forward, not backward, though. There was a Forge-inspired game called "The Pool" where your character was a short paragraph on loose-leaf. Now that's a game facilitative to imagination. If you can imagine it, you can play it. This philosophy is present in varying degrees in FATE, 13th Age, and Numenara. By far I think 13th Age's Background mechanic best exemplifies how this philosophy can be integrated into D&D without disrupting the core of what D&D is.
I added bold-face, because I would never want to play a version of D&D in which the character sheet was a short paragraph. D&D is not a purely "story game." Part of its charm is that it is a
role and
roll playing game. I would guess that absolutely no, or at least very few, D&D players want to do away with crunch - all of us like crunch to some extent, and if some don't they are either fooling themselves, or they'll soon move on to the Indie world.
I agree with this and would suggest that the 4 page character sheet, and the half-page monster stat-block, and the 300 pages of rules are part and parcel of this. We have been replacing imagination with rules and mechanics.
Yes, exactly. To be honest, I feel like in your post you've agreed and disagree with this very point.
I personally prefer a middle ground - maybe a two-page character sheet? A front with stats and a back with equipment and notes. Something like that. But I can see a place for a 1-4+ page character sheet, depending upon individual styles, and I hope that Next facilitates that. Less than a page and you start veering out of what D&D is (or has historically been, at least); more than 2-3 pages is fine, but not really my cup of tea.
I see this surmise floated about a lot on here as if it is fundamental, self-evident, indisputable:
Lack of structure leads to broader or richer imaginative experience and creation for many/most people.
I can see how that might be intuitive for a lot of people, specifically for those people for which it truly is fundamental (those with that cognitive style).
However, there is growing research in the area of cognitive style analysis right now that pushes against that presupposition. Effectively that:
Many people approach tasks of creation by retrieving exemplars from a known group, and that instructions and task constraints can lead to greater use of broader knowledge frameworks.
Rules, boundaries, exemplars and task constraints serve as animating factors for the creative reservoir for a cross-section of the populace (with a certain cognitive style) just as they might serve as paralyzing factors for another cross-section of the populace (with a different cognitive style).
Interesting point here. I agree with the gist of it, that a lot depends upon individual cognitive styles. But let me be clear about one thing: I wasn't as much saying that "lack of structure leads to a broader or richer imaginative experience..," but more along the lines of this:
Lack of specific content leads to a more richly active imaginative experience...
Here's a (hopefully) very clear example of what I'm getting at. Two statements:
A: "The cowled warrior drew a curved blade, which shimmered with an indigo hue, silver runic forms along the blade caressed by the light of the moon."
B: "The warrior, wearing a long black and grey robe with a sash around his face, covering all but his eyes, which were dark brown or black, pulled a weapon from a scabbard - a scimitar of approximately three feet in length, with a slight to moderate curve, more like a katana than a sickle - but with a smoother sweep than a katana, like a crescent moon. The scimitar was dark blue-black in color and glowed faintly. Along the length of the blade, from about six inches from the hilt--which was curved liked a stylized and angular S--were symbols of some unknown language; the runes extended to about three inches from the tip. Each symbol was about half the width of the blade. The moon was very bright, so the runes - which were probably made of some kind of silver or white metal or stone - glowed slightly."
I may be completely wrong, but I'm guessing that for most people, A is much more richly imaginative - it inspire more vivid imagery and, most importantly of all, it allows you, the reader, to generate your own imagery. The second paragraph, aside from being poorly and awkwardly written, gives so much detail that it leaves little to the imagination. Now you could say that for some people, they prefer (or need) those guides to create an image. Maybe that is so, but my point is that in the former you have more freedom, more opportunity, to activate your own imagination, wherein the latter I'm telling you what to imagine.
In other words, the purpose of sentence A above is to inspire
your imaginative to activate, whereas B lets you remain passive, so your attention is more drawn to deciphering the words and putting them together than to allowing your imagination to fly
I tend to agree with something Ursula Le Guin said, that a writer should use as many words as are needed to tell a story - no more or less. This is individual and varies greatly by writer, and of course trends oscillate back and forth. I do think, however, that the general trend in various contexts - fantasy and science fiction literature, cinema, and RPGs, for instance - is towards more filler, more details, more words. This, I think, is at least partially reflective of our technology use - smartphones, internet, etc - all the stuff that "fills the void" of our consciousness and, I think, inhibits our own imaginative activity.
In other words, the trend has been away from self-generated imagination and towards externally manufactured simulation, yet I feel that we all want a more imaginative experience because it comes from us. Its like the difference in satisfaction between reading a good book and writing your own good book. The former is a lot of fun and can be very inspiring, but it isn't nearly as richly satisfying as the latter.
If you're a writer, of course! But that's just an analogy .The experience of imagination and creativity is more universal, because we're all "imaginers," all creators.
).
