Creativity, where has it gone?

[WayneLigon]

Well, some of us don't buy every new book that comes along The stuff I do buy, I buy because I don't have the time to come up with an entirely new set of rules. My time is spent on setting, plot, NPC's, encounters, theme and tone. I don't feel the need for new rules past the PHB but I do like to see alternates I might like better: that why I have most of the Malhavoc stuff. Most of the stuff I've bought, I've bought because it had something I needed. I don't need stuff about environments, so I don't have any of the new environment books. I did want to see what a rule set for very low magic would look like, so I bought Iron Heroes.

 

[Maliki]

Hah! Thats EXACTLY why they invented Castles and Crusades!

Agreed, I am having a blast tinkering with the C&C system.

 

[fusangite]

OK, as I read about new release after new release and see how many people have dozens of RPG books that create rules for every option and possible facet of the game, I began to wonder, what happened to the good old days?

You're in good company here on ENWorld. Someone always seems to be yearning for the, usually fictional, good ol' days of one kind or another.

We have to have a rule in a published book in order for it to become canon law, it does not matter that there are 100 publishers for the game and there are almost no standards of balance or compatability that have to be met. We just want it written so we can use the rules.

Why not tweak or create the rules to fit your game or vision? What is with the compulsion to own books?

Well, this is just me, of course. But I do develop rules myself. The thing is that math is not my strong suit so, after I develop my own rules, I wait to see if publishers do a better job that I do. And when they do, I buy their stuff. If their stuff isn't any better than mine, I don't.

I call out to you a challenge to put your credit cards down and take out your pencils. Take your game back.

I don't think I'm that different from other GMs. My rule is: if nobody else has done it better, do it yourself. That's just common sense.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Welcome to the real world, life has changed, there is less free time to give to the hobby, your mind is tied up in the day-to-day routine, you are working over 40 hours a week, you have family. We have grown old and let me tell you, creativity as all things human seek the easy way out and that means let someone else do it. Oh, we are still creative but we just don't have the time for it.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Why not tweak or create the rules to fit your game or vision? What is with the compulsion to own books? Poll after poll shows that a vast majority of peole only use a few of the books clogging up their bookshelves.

I call out to you a challenge to put your credit cards down and take out your pencils. Take your game back. No one should be required to take out loans to play a game that resides in your imagination.

How does owning books equate to not writing one's own material? This is a flawed premise. Back in the "old days," the reason we didn't use books is because they simply weren't available. Compared to later years, relatively few were published, and even fewer were available in outlets we had access to - Waldenbooks and the like were often the only link many of us had to gaming products. I can tell you, we jumped on every book we ran across, and thoroughly looted them for ideas.

As for homebrew material...we had reams of that stuff. Most of it was crap. Some of it was good, but it was always good to run across stuff that was written by actual game designers, stuff that may have been playtested a bit more than our stuff (though not always, especially the earlier in RPG history you go).

Besides, what does it matter to you what anyone does in their game? You don't wanna use books, fine. Many of us do. What possible difference does it make to either of us if the other does or does not wanna use books? Normally, I'd figure this was a rhetorical question, but I actually want to see an answer to this.

 

[GrayIguana]

The Good Ole Days weren't that great

I have some great memories of playing in the good ole days, but as for the rules I thought they weren't so good. Now I have more books to read. I don't have totally imbalanced PCs. I don't have THAC0.

I still create my own homebrew, and if someone creates something that I didn't think of, I can tweak it a bit so it fits nicely.

 

[Aeolius]

I've been playing D&D since 1979 and running an undersea campaign online since 1998. As witnessed by the release of Stormwrack, it's taken years for WotC to catch up with me. Granted, I skipped most of 2e, so I haven't felt guilty about purchasing my fair share of 3e materials (minus supplements specifically for Eberron and FR, as I run a GH game).

Anyone familiar with the World of Greyhawk knows how divided the fan base has become. There are 1e purists, pre-Wars holdouts, 2e fans, Living Greyhawk enthusiasts, and 3e aficionados, to name a few. The same can be observed, with 3e D&D in general. There are core rules elitists, anti-WotC rebels, Min/maxers, wargamers using miniatures, and more. Some people won't play a game of D&D unless the game uses information from the core rules only; forget rule zero. Some, feeling most comfortable with "official" D&D, will only play games if the allowed material excludes third party publishers. Some feel the material in the Dragon and Dungeon magazines is unquestionably "canon". Some will acknowledge d20 and homebrew the rest.

Even in the abovementioned categories, there is fractionation, as witnessed by the "half-breeds are icky" thread. Some want only half-elves and half-orcs, some want no half-breeds at all, and then there are those who allow just about anything.

And never mind about the style of play. Some enjoy a healthy dose of "rules-lawyering", others want a rules-light in-character escapade, and others wish their D&D were more like Doom or World of Warcraft.

You can't fault WotC. They release a torrent of supplements in the hopes that some, if not all, of the players above will buy them. Yes, I have my own rules, PrCs, monsters, magic items, spells, treasures, and templates for my undersea campaign. That didn't stop me from purchasing Stormwrack the second it landed in North Carolina.

 

[BryonD]

How does owning books equate to not writing one's own material? This is a flawed premise.

Amen

Back in the "old days," the reason we didn't use books is because they simply weren't available.

Amen

I can tell you, we jumped on every book we ran across, and thoroughly looted them for ideas.

Amen

As for homebrew material...we had reams of that stuff. Most of it was crap. Some of it was good, but it was always good to run across stuff that was written by actual game designers, stuff that may have been playtested a bit more than our stuff (though not always, especially the earlier in RPG history you go).

Besides, what does it matter to you what anyone does in their game? You don't wanna use books, fine. Many of us do. What possible difference does it make to either of us if the other does or does not wanna use books? Normally, I'd figure this was a rhetorical question, but I actually want to see an answer to this.

[speaking in tongues]
feefeefeefeegeeheeeyeeekeeedooohooomooofooogoo
[/speaking in tongues]

 

[johnsemlak]

Welcome to the real world, life has changed, there is less free time to give to the hobby, your mind is tied up in the day-to-day routine, you are working over 40 hours a week, you have family. We have grown old and let me tell you, creativity as all things human seek the easy way out and that means let someone else do it. Oh, we are still creative but we just don't have the time for it.

Yeah, I'm much less creative now than when I was 12 and had loads of free time to draw maps on graph paper full of rooms and fill them with monsters, traps, and goodies from the 'random dungoen' tables. I just don't have those kind of creative juices anymore.

 

[BigTom]

They ended in 1978, with the publication of the AD&D Player's Handbook.

If you read Gygax's words written at that time, it was to provide a basis that everyone would be familiar with, so that people from across the world could play D&D without getting into big arguments as to what the rules were - especially at conventions.

If Gygax's goal was to stop arguments with the new rules set, then by his own standards he was a dismal failure.

The fact that a rules forum exists on enworld stands as testament to that fact.

The rules are not creativity. The rules are a framework in which we can be creative. Adding rules simply changes the framework available in which we can express that creativity.