D&D General Creativity?

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't agree.

Okay. How do you prevent it then? When the DM has the latitude to change the fundamental agreement between player and herself at any time, for any reason, without notice or justification, what else is it?

Well, I will always see the rules as suggestions.

So they're flimsy nothings which one should not only not be relied upon, bit which one should expect to be violated? Because literally the only reason to say a rule is only a suggestion is to make explicitly, abundantly clear just how ready one is to violate it at any time and for any reason or no reason at all.

 

[overgeeked]

I found this often too. Even more for younger gamers.

Weird. I've found the exact opposite. It's the older gamers, especially those with a few years of "system mastery" under their belts, who tend to avoid creative shenanigans. It's the younger players and/or the less experienced players who get more creative.

 

[gnarlygninja]

I don't think I've ever been in a group with actual house rules about this, we've always dealt with it case by case and in some cases player by player. I had a few years where I was pretty leery of what the other players labeled creativity, because it almost always involved fast talking assumptions past the new DM and using tenuous logic based off questionable rules/real world physics to get extra damage for free. That came to a head and the group fizzled out when a player tried to argue that Mage Hand should let her have an always active zero cost version of deflect missiles. I've been attempting to get over that though.

 

[Clint_L]

Okay. How do you prevent it then? When the DM has the latitude to change the fundamental agreement between player and herself at any time, for any reason, without notice or justification, what else is it?

So they're flimsy nothings which one should not only not be relied upon, bit which one should expect to be violated? Because literally the only reason to say a rule is only a suggestion is to make explicitly, abundantly clear just how ready one is to violate it at any time and for any reason or no reason at all.

I didn't read his comment as being that extreme. I just read it as reacting to the situation and making the ruling that works best in the story.

Because that's what the game is: a story. The rules are there to facilitate the story, but no set of rules is ever going to perfectly accommodate all the amazing, creative, wacky ideas that players come up with. So sometimes you've just gotta run with it, and I have zero hesitation about overriding RAW if that is what makes sense in the story.

That is not at all the same as "at any time and for any reason or no reason at all." To the contrary, it is always for a very good reason. The best reason. There's nothing arbitrary about it, and my players never take issue, because they are part of the cooperative story too.

 

[pemerton]

The rules are there to facilitate the story, but no set of rules is ever going to perfectly accommodate all the amazing, creative, wacky ideas that players come up with.

I don't agree with this. Good RPG rules can handle that stuff. An RPG that struggles with it is, in my view, at real risk of not being a good one!

That doesn't mean "a rule for everything" - it means a resolution framework which makes it straightforward to input unexpected fiction and generate meaningful consequence both in mechanical and fictional terms.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I didn't read his comment as being that extreme. I just read it as reacting to the situation and making the ruling that works best in the story.

But that's what it means. It's literally identical to the iconic line from Pirates of the Caribbean: "the code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules." (Emphasis in original.)

Because that's what the game is: a story. The rules are there to facilitate the story, but no set of rules is ever going to perfectly accommodate all the amazing, creative, wacky ideas that players come up with. So sometimes you've just gotta run with it, and I have zero hesitation about overriding RAW if that is what makes sense in the story.

Perfection isn't required. Functionality is. Rules that matter.

Again: I have zero problem with going beyond an existing agreement, if all parties are informed and given the opportunity to address any concerns. I said as much earlier. That's not what "the rules are suggestions" means. A suggestion will be ignored whenever one likes, because suggestions have no force whatsoever.

That is not at all the same as "at any time and for any reason or no reason at all." To the contrary, it is always for a very good reason. The best reason. There's nothing arbitrary about it, and my players never take issue, because they are part of the cooperative story too.

Sure it is! Because what YOU think is a good reason may have nothing whatever to do with what anyone else does. The fact that you consider it to be "the best reason" is exactly why it's a problem. As C.S. Lewis put it, "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. [...T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." He was, of course, talking about a significantly more serious topic than this, but the sentiment remains. Those who exploit their authority on the belief that it is good for those they have authority over will do so with zeal and relish. They will be shocked to even consider opposition to their efforts. For do we not want to make things better?!

This is why rules that are not merely suggestions, that are in fact actually quite durable and only violated with discussion and consent are so important. You are quite right that many rules are bad rules. This is not an argument against having rules. It is an argument for having rules that have been tested and, within a reasonable bound of statistical precision, found to be good ones, as @pemerton said.

Rules, by definition, exist to serve some purpose. Rules are inherently teleological. Effective rules fulfill the purpose for which they were intended; good rules are effective rules targeted at worthy purposes. Bad rules may be bad either because they are ineffective despite aiming at worthy targets, or because they aim at unworthy ones (regardless of whether they do so effectively.) The former should be reformed until they strike true. The latter should be struck down.

 

[Lanefan]

You know we have been around this bush an infinite number of times, so you know my reply, which is that the notion that players are just mindless self-aggrandizing actors who's only concern is amassing giant loot/xp piles is an EXTREMELY limited position. In fact I would say it is just plain an extreme position!

Other than the 'mindless' piece, which isn't true in the least, my experience would largely beg to differ.

Players are in general out for themselves to some extent at least, as they should be. That said, that 'out for themselves' piece usually includes the maintenance of an enjoyable and playable game, which means their goal is not to break the game, just to win it...or at least to not lose it. In this they are acting in a similar manner to players of any other type of game or sport.

Nonsense. I mean, yes, if you set up a classic dungeon crawl and then have the players take over the GM's role as arbiter of the environment and actions, then that game process will go wonky. Not really because the players CANNOT be trusted to handle adjudications, but simply because Czege won't be satisfied and the games built-in incentives will act in a perverse way. However its perfectly possible to run a dungeon crawl in Dungeon World, in fact it is basically meant for EXACTLY THAT, yet the GM has very constrained options and authority in Dungeon World, and players can most certainly assert what it is that their characters CAN do, for example, as well as making declarations which impose constraints on the fiction the GM is able to put on the table (IE by searching for a secret door in some location and finding it, for example). Now, the GM might be perfectly within her rights to then constrain the utility of said door, making it locked, leading into a very narrow passage, etc. but only in concert with the rules on making GM moves.

As we have many times discussed, all this works perfectly well,

Provided the players are willing to abjure their right to push back against the rules, which pushback is IMO the duty of any player in any type of win-loss game (which RPGs are, when it gets down to hard tacks) where the rules are not crystal clear and hard-coded. There's nothing to push back against in chess, for example; the rules are all hard-coded and there's no ambiguity: you can do it, or you can't. But in basketball there's the built-in ambiguity of the referees' judgment and-or eyesight, which puts the players in a 'do it until they call a foul' position. RPGs have even more ambiguity, 3e D&D and other rules-heavy systems notwithstanding, and IMO it's thus on the players to push the envelope until-unless the GM imposes limits.

and the notion that there has to be some sort of GM who 'rides herd on the players' is merely a reflection of the specific way you trad/neo trad people play! It certainly isn't a design constraint on RPGs, at all!

The GM doesn't have to ride herd on the players any more than does a hockey referee on the ice, but does have to enforce (or in some cases design and encode) the rules against the players' pushback. That's what a referee does, and part of the GM's role is that of referee.

 

[Lanefan]

I didn't read his comment as being that extreme. I just read it as reacting to the situation and making the ruling that works best in the story.

Because that's what the game is: a story. The rules are there to facilitate the story, but no set of rules is ever going to perfectly accommodate all the amazing, creative, wacky ideas that players come up with. So sometimes you've just gotta run with it, and I have zero hesitation about overriding RAW if that is what makes sense in the story.

Which is cool.

My big thing is that if you override the rules in manner XYZ once that sets a precedent such that the rules will be overridden in that same XYZ manner should the same situation arise again in the same campaign. In other words, your rules override just itself became a rule at that table.

Otherwise it is arbitrary, and enough instances of this will give the players good reason to lose trust in how they can expect things to work in the setting or system at any given time.

 

[Lanefan]

But that's what it means. It's literally identical to the iconic line from Pirates of the Caribbean: "the code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules." (Emphasis in original.)

And yet those 'guidelines' saw the otherwise-fractious pirates through and kept them vaguely unified for many a year; while had they ever been made into hard rules it's ironclad half the pirates would have told The Code to sod off and just gone and done their own thing, thus weakening them all.

Perfection isn't required. Functionality is. Rules that matter.

Again: I have zero problem with going beyond an existing agreement, if all parties are informed and given the opportunity to address any concerns. I said as much earlier. That's not what "the rules are suggestions" means. A suggestion will be ignored whenever one likes, because suggestions have no force whatsoever.

Sure it is! Because what YOU think is a good reason may have nothing whatever to do with what anyone else does. The fact that you consider it to be "the best reason" is exactly why it's a problem. As C.S. Lewis put it, "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. [...T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." He was, of course, talking about a significantly more serious topic than this, but the sentiment remains. Those who exploit their authority on the belief that it is good for those they have authority over will do so with zeal and relish. They will be shocked to even consider opposition to their efforts. For do we not want to make things better?!

This is why rules that are not merely suggestions, that are in fact actually quite durable and only violated with discussion and consent are so important. You are quite right that many rules are bad rules. This is not an argument against having rules. It is an argument for having rules that have been tested and, within a reasonable bound of statistical precision, found to be good ones, as @pemerton said.

Rules, by definition, exist to serve some purpose. Rules are inherently teleological. Effective rules fulfill the purpose for which they were intended; good rules are effective rules targeted at worthy purposes. Bad rules may be bad either because they are ineffective despite aiming at worthy targets, or because they aim at unworthy ones (regardless of whether they do so effectively.) The former should be reformed until they strike true. The latter should be struck down.

Apropos to the alignment thread currently ongoing elsewhere, this seems a very Lawful Neutral position; as in my eyes it sums up as "if it's not a rule it doesn't matter, and if it is a rule it's the only thing that matters".

Never mind that what appears a good rule to one person or table might be an awful one to another. Hence, they are presented in the books as suggestions, malleable ahead of time to suit any given table's needs or desires while at the same time being locked in once play begins and-or precedent is set.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Apropos to the alignment thread currently ongoing elsewhere, this seems a very Lawful Neutral position; as in my eyes it sums up as "if it's not a rule it doesn't matter, and if it is a rule it's the only thing that matters".

When did I ever say that "it's the only thing that matters," or anything that can even be mistaken for it?

I have explicitly said that negotiation and expanding is fine. It's this attitude of disregard I cannot stand.

Never mind that what appears a good rule to one person or table might be an awful one to another.

I don't understand how that can apply. Does the rule achieve the goal for which it was designed? Then it is an efficacious rule. That is unambiguous; either it does or it does not. There's room, for example, to argue that it achieves the goal partially and another achieves it more fully, but that's still an unambiguous state of affairs, a fact of the matter and not of interpretation.

An efficacious rule is a good rule if the purpose for which it was designed is a worthy purpose. Whether a purpose is worthy depends on two things, one subjective, one objective. The subjective element we cannot control for--appreciation and the like--and thus it is beyond the scope of design proper. (That's the realm of selling someone on your rules, of convincing them that a given purpose is in fact worthy.) The objective element, however, we can address quite well: it arises from the kind of game one intends to design. The same analysis applies to, for example, baking. "Sift flour" is an objectively worthless rule for a recipe which contains no flour. "Sift flour" may be subjectively good or bad for recipes which actually use flour, but it is objectively bad for a recipe which contains no flour--wasted effort, at the very least.

Similar conditions apply to TTRPGs. They are necessarily cooperative, for example, even if they may also be competitive. They are necessarily heavy on abstraction and imagination, both because they predate the technology necessary to depict the game in real time (I'm not even sure we have the tech to do it now) and because they involve extrapolation, adaptation, and spontaneity. They are not, contra some of the above posters, necessarily about story, and thus rules which (directly or indirectly) cause story are not objectively necessary.

There is an awful lot you can do with the mere statement that a game must be a cooperative fantasy tabletop roleplaying game featuring the central gameplay focuses ("pillars") of combat, exploration, and socialization. Few designers actually bother, much to my consternation.

Hence, they are presented in the books as suggestions, malleable ahead of time to suit any given table's needs or desires while at the same time being locked in once play begins and-or precedent is set.

Again: That's not a game. That's "eh, if I feel like it, I'll let you do this. But I might not. But I might! But I might not."

I reject both the cage of absolute immutability (as I have explicitly said, several times, in this very thread) AND the cage of the utterly arbitrary. There is another way.