D&D General Creativity?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which, read at a basic level, tells me that it doesn't matter what my character actually does as long as it does something; which means I'd have the same odds of success* if I hang a bright cloth from a tree or pile stones on the beach to spell out HELP or just stand on the shore jumping up and down waving my arms.

That's just not satisfactory for me. I want the in-fiction "what I do" piece to influence the at-table odds of success beyond just the seemingly-binary I did something vs I did nothing divide. For example, piling stones on the beach to spell HELP is only likely to succeed if my potential rescuers are a) flying and b) literate; if I instead think to hang something bright from a high tree my odds of success should improve, and even more so if I do all three things listed above rather than just one.

Otherwise, what's the point of coming up with creative ideas for actions?

* - leaving the fire option aside for the moment so as to equalize the day-night issue.

Indeed, if the resolution mechanism only takes into account the existence of an action rather than that action's substance.

Well, no, not really. Fictional position matters. Attacking a huge dragon with your bare hands, using a signal flag at night simply won't work. Any of your other options might work, but if you spell 'help' on the beach and your buddies own a ship but don't fly, is that a good plan? No!

So DW has a pretty effective system of judging action effectiveness, and that's fictional position coupled with the GM's responsibility to name what the PC's move is. The player describes their intent, but it has to 'follow from the current fiction'.

Ah! This feels significant. I'm rejecting this as a dichotomy.

I would not assign that authority to the GM, nor to the table at large. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about when I keep using the word "objective." The question of whether an ability is useful should be mediated by the mechanics. Taking an action will change the board state, and after a variety of actions have been taken, you can tell if the goal has been achieved, or not. In fact, I'd contend it's basically essential to have a meaningful state of gameplay (a term I'm using here to specifically refer to the process of trying to navigate a complex system of decisions to achieve a desired outcome; the basic play loop of any eurogame, for example), that this not be a decision made by a person (or people), but a process

I categorically reject the notion that such is possible in any consistent way. You cannot possibly write a set of rules that will adjudicate an open list of arbitrary factors and situations. It WILL be devolved down on someone's judgment. Some person(s) at the table will make this call, period. I mean, in a subset of obvious common cases the plausibility of this judgment will not be too controversial, but go back to @Manbearcat's climbing. You (or I) cannot possibly adjudicate climbing in any realistic way. I mean, I've been taught basic "first responder rope handling" and done some moderately technical caving, but I have no substantive ability to judge climbing techniques, gear use, etc. Same with most other things that aren't basic ordinary stuff, including sword fighting and other such things that are quite common in RPGs. I'm going to just judge based mostly on factors of what will work well within the game context, and avoid complete implausibility.

 

[Emoshin]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't disagree? My complaints have mostly been about attempts to categorize specific play structures as intrinsic to RPGs, or as superior for encouraging player creativity. This is sort of orthogonal to that point.

Yeah, I don't know that I would say some designs are 'superior', they are each good for certain things. You can't really run a B/X style classic dungeon crawl in Dungeon World. You can run a fun 'crawl around in a dungeon', but it won't be driven in the same way, Basic and DW are just very different games. I think creativity of a sort is available in both, though it might cover somewhat different things. I think players in DW are likely to be able to operate creatively at a more macro level, beyond just the character to a degree.

 

[pemerton]

Working out the conceptual and logical relations between two spells is participating in the shared imagination!

That's like saying that solving a crossword puzzle with a friend is shared imagination - ie not very plausible.

Here's the AD&D Rope Trick spell description:

When this spell is cast upon a piece of rope from 5' to 30' in length, one end of the rope rises into the air until the whole is hanging perpendicular, as if affixed at the upper end. The upper end is, in fact, fastened in an extra-dimensional space, and the spell caster and up to five others can climb up the rope and disappear into this place of safety where no creature can find them. The rope cannot be taken into the extradimensional space if six persons have climbed it, but otherwise it can be pulled up. Otherwise, the rope simply hangs in air, and will stay there unless removed by some creature. The persons in the extra-dimensional space must climb down the rope prior to the expiration of the spell duration, or else they are dropped from the height to which they originally climbed when the effect of the spell wears out. The rope can be climbed by only one person at a time. Note that the rope trick spell allows climbers to reach a normal place if they do not climb all the way to the rope's upper end, which is in an extra-dimensional space.​

Reading this description, and working out whether or not it permits the rope to be lowered from a "corner" of the space, rather than its centre, is an exercise in reading comprehension and logical extrapolation from what's comprehended. It might be fun, for those into that sort of thing - but it's not reasoning about a shared, collectively imagined fiction.

 

[pemerton]

Light a signal fire on a mountain is almost certainly a smaller part of a larger goal like "assemble a sufficiently large army to take down the incoming demon horde" or "trick a nation into declaring war" or something, and any challenge that can be resolved in a single skill check is probably too small to treat that way.

These are all propositions that only have meaning within a shared fiction. If those are the sorts of goals you're interested, I don't understand how you can deny the centrality of shared, negotiated imagination. Unless the other participants in the game somehow become obliged to imagine (say) that Nation X has declared war, how can you achieve your goal of having X tricked into declaring war?

Players get to declare actions, actions do what they say they do, the fiction is changed by those actions as they specify. Player agency is precisely that, unilateral authority to alter the fiction in some specific, mechanically mediated way.

Until we talk about what power the GM has, and how (if at all) that might be constrained, we can't know anything about the connection between player action declarations and achieving the goals you describe.

The question of whether an ability is useful should be mediated by the mechanics.

<snip>

Taking an action will change the board state, and after a variety of actions have been taken, you can tell if the goal has been achieved, or not.

Will climbing the mountain help with lighting the signal fire? Not if there is a giant at the top who eats all climbers; or if there is a portal to the Plane of Ice which makes lighting fires impossible; or if the character loses all their fuel, tinder etc during the climb.

There are RPGs with mechanics that govern these sorts of things, including DW, Torchbearer, Burning Wheel, and 4e's skill challenges.

But you seem to be talking about RPGs with mechanics more like 3E D&D or RQ or RM, which do not govern the sorts of things I've mentioned. Which means that the mechanics do not mediate the utility of abilities for achieving goals.

As far as telling that the goal has been achieved, in the sort of play you are advocating I understand that only the GM can do that. So the mechanics that govern the GM in this respect seem pretty important. Probably more important than the rules for skill check DCs!

The assumption here, seems to be that a GM, upon creating a fiction world, will necessarily then map out the interaction of player abilities and that world. A GM that presents the players with a castle, will know (and can/should know) what the interaction of every ability the players can bring to bear against that castle will be, and will apparently have designed the castle with that in mind. I just don't think that's true, particularly if you assign players the choice of "what to care about" in the first place, that determines if they're even interested in walking into castles.

I don't know who you're attributing this assumption to. It doesn't apply in any RPG I play. To my mind, the bolded bit is a necessary assumption for skilled play in the Gygaxian mould. To render it unnecessary requires significant departures from Gygax's play procedures.

Consider a classic combat example, like fighting a fire elemental. A player with the option will opt to use their Frostbrand to attack with, over a +2 mace, and will opt not cast burning hands. That is the least interesting possible optimization problem, doesn't offer a ton of room for customization, and will still absolutely the fighter who had two weapons to pick from, because it is satisfying to make a choice that has an impact on the situation. Add some more dimensions to combat and things start to get more interesting from there.

D&D conflict is not task resolution - it's conflict resolution. (With hit points as the "clock".) And it is intent-based resolution: the depletion of hit points does not just represent "Your struck the elemental with your sword" but "You have pushed the elemental this much closer to your goal of its demise".

It's possible to have an analogue to D&D combat for climbing a mountain to light a signal fire. 4e skill challenges are one model. But there are plenty of others too. The only one that I know of, in the space of RPGs that you seem to favour, is Rolemaster with its manoeuvre tables (though it's a bit "proto" in character - it will get you to the top of the mountain, but the GM is still at liberty to have a giant there who eats you!).

 

[Lanefan]

That's like saying that solving a crossword puzzle with a friend is shared imagination - ie not very plausible.

Here's the AD&D Rope Trick spell description:

When this spell is cast upon a piece of rope from 5' to 30' in length, one end of the rope rises into the air until the whole is hanging perpendicular, as if affixed at the upper end. The upper end is, in fact, fastened in an extra-dimensional space, and the spell caster and up to five others can climb up the rope and disappear into this place of safety where no creature can find them. The rope cannot be taken into the extradimensional space if six persons have climbed it, but otherwise it can be pulled up. Otherwise, the rope simply hangs in air, and will stay there unless removed by some creature. The persons in the extra-dimensional space must climb down the rope prior to the expiration of the spell duration, or else they are dropped from the height to which they originally climbed when the effect of the spell wears out. The rope can be climbed by only one person at a time. Note that the rope trick spell allows climbers to reach a normal place if they do not climb all the way to the rope's upper end, which is in an extra-dimensional space.​

Reading this description, and working out whether or not it permits the rope to be lowered from a "corner" of the space, rather than its centre, is an exercise in reading comprehension and logical extrapolation from what's comprehended. It might be fun, for those into that sort of thing - but it's not reasoning about a shared, collectively imagined fiction.

We simply flat-out disagree on the bolded bit.

In my view there's no difference either in the fiction or at the table between characters (i.e. players speaking in character) figuring out creative uses for a spell and figuring out creative uses for a piece of rope, or a sack, or a lantern.

In fact, the player looking at a rulebook to determine the limits of a spell rather nicely mirrors the mage looking at a spellbook to determine the limits of that same spell; with the only difference being the player is doing it right now while the mage did it this morning before getting on the move for the day.

Perhaps worth noting here, in case it comes up, that I don't expect my players-of-mages to themselves memorize every detail of said mage's spells; even though the mage in the fiction would (one would think!) have those details well in mind due to extensive training and repeated study.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't know that I have fully formed thoughts about this subject. So these are more like musings.

D&D was successful because it invented the key innovation of fusing rules-based creative problem solving with shared storytelling, including the theatrical concept of roleplaying. Imagination is at the heart of the game, but it is working in two kind of distinct ways here: the imagination that goes into sustaining the shared fiction, and the imagination that goes into creating novel ways to use very complex rules to resolve a tactical problem. The former has a lot in common with improv, the latter with playing chess.

At its best, the game offers a strong synergy between the two. At its worst, it can descend into either a story that lacks form and direction, or into argument and rules-lawyering that becomes divorced from the story entirely. So the question is really how to strike an optimal balance between these two aspects of gameplay.

When it comes to mundane tasks, I prefer rules that lean hard into the fiction of the story. Which typically means rules that have a light touch. But when it comes to character advancement, magic and combat, I do think the rules need to be a little more overt.

In the rope trick example above, the players are leaning hard into the rules, but in service of the shared story. They are being creative problem solvers, which is a vital part of D&D - you run into problems and need to figure out how to resolve them using the tools at hand (the rules). I think this is a feature, not a flaw - we like having our brains tickled in this way. But the players are also working with the DM to ensure that the shared fiction is maintained.

I don't think that you can have a complex magic system (i.e. one with a great variety of spells) without a fairly robust rules system, and I don't think that this is a flaw in the game. That doesn't mean that some of the specific rules about magic or about particular spells are ideal, but overall I think the game strikes a good balance between rules and story.

 

[FrozenNorth]

When it comes to mundane tasks, I prefer rules that lean hard into the fiction of the story. Which typically means rules that have a light touch.

I think this is very true. It is very frustrating when detailed rules get in the way of playing the game, and they tend to foster a “but the rules ARE the reality” mentality.

I have this issue more with PF2 than 5e (with its love of detailed rules), but you see it in 5e as well.

 

[pemerton]

D&D was successful because it invented the key innovation of fusing rules-based creative problem solving with shared storytelling, including the theatrical concept of roleplaying. Imagination is at the heart of the game, but it is working in two kind of distinct ways here: the imagination that goes into sustaining the shared fiction, and the imagination that goes into creating novel ways to use very complex rules to resolve a tactical problem. The former has a lot in common with improv, the latter with playing chess.

Sure. Your improv/chess comparison sits in the same place as my novelist/mathematician comparison. It doesn't deny the contrast I'm drawing - I feel it tends to reinforce it.

In the rope trick example above, the players are leaning hard into the rules, but in service of the shared story.

As I read it, "in service of the shared story" means that the outcome of the reasoning about the rules will lead to someone making a decision about the content of the shared fiction, with the other participants will agree with. That seems true.

But that doesn't show that it is engaging with, or reasoning about, the fiction in the sense I've been emphasising. A GM rolling on a random encounter table will likewise lead to new agreements about the content of the fiction. So does resolving a hp-attrition content - when one character is reduced to zero hp everyone will agree they're out of the combat, dead or unconscious depending on the details of the rules being used. But that doesn't mean these things - making dice rolls, noting their results, consulting tables, keeping tallies, etc - is itself any sort of engagement with the fiction.

I don't think that you can have a complex magic system (i.e. one with a great variety of spells) without a fairly robust rules system, and I don't think that this is a flaw in the game.

I think there are RPGs with D&D-style complex magic systems that don't rely on the same approach to focused parsing of detailed rules text. I'm thinking of Rolemaster (most of the time; not every time), T&T (at least that's my impression), 4e D&D, and Burning Wheel/Torchbearer (in my play experience of these systems).

I can't say anything more about T&T. But in the case of the other systems, a couple of differences are that they integrate their spells a bit more tightly into the general resolution framework and rely a bit more on systematised rules concepts (eg keywords in 4e D&D).

 

[pemerton]

When it comes to mundane tasks, I prefer rules that lean hard into the fiction of the story. Which typically means rules that have a light touch. But when it comes to character advancement, magic and combat, I do think the rules need to be a little more overt.

I think this is very true. It is very frustrating when detailed rules get in the way of playing the game

I suspect these preferences are widely shared. This is why D&D - a game whose design reflects widely-held preferences - will inevitably produce discussions about the balance between spell casting PC builds and "mundane" PC builds.

Especially because another common preference, which D&D also reflects, is to give the GM preeminent authority in deciding what is possible given the fiction and the story.

EDIT: I should really be saying "non-4e D&D" - 4e D&D is an exception, and its failure to reflect these widespread preferences one of the reasons it caused controversy.