Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3455314" data-attributes="member: 2067">No, in the part that you quoted I was specifically mentioning how players could play along with how the game is "supposed" to look, catering to a DM who limits the selection, without limiting their creativity. And you showed how that can happen: just as renaissance artists didn't limit themselves to the subject matter to give them voice, players can "look the part" while saying something unique about it, still. Renaissance artists commented on modern events by how they depicted the past, D&D players can still make players that are new twists on "doughty pirate" while looking the part of a "doughty pirate." I'm not advocating anything, really. I'm just describing what happens in different games. Because in some games, the players are bored of playing "doughty pirates," or have no real interest in playing "doughty pirates," despite what the DM may want. Which is what a player wanting a warforged ninja may be saying: Renaissance art bores me, here's something new! And the creativity of that player is still working within the "doughty pirate" setting, giving a believable story given the constraints of the world. That's still creative, it's not a "flight of fancy," it's just applied in a different direction, pushing the bounds of what a setting can contain into new and interesting directions.A DM who is creative might take that boundary-pushing and run with it, developing his world under the constraints the player has given, just as artists could create their commentary under the constraints society had given. "Okay, here's a character with elements of a a classic story, let's creatively challenge them." Dismissing a warforged ninja in a doughty pirate setting is dismissing some creativity. The DM is telling them: "It can't work in a way that will satisfy me." That's not a failure of creativity on the player's part (trying to make a warforged ninja work in a doughty pirate setting is certainly a very creative exercise), but it might be on the DM's part. Which is fine. DM's don't have to be very creative to be entertaining, and neither do players have to be very creative to be entertained. A lot of creativity can be fun, but it can also fall flat -- there's only so many times you can be a warforged ninja in a doughty pirate game before it becomes the same path re-treaded. People don't usually mind mild limitations on what they can do, because those limitations, while dismissing certain types of creativity, can never silence it entirely and can even give new ideas for it.</blockquote>

Verification