D&D General Creativity?

[pemerton]

Here are just a few of the creative things that happened in my long-running 4e game, 15 to 5 or so years ago.

* A player's character died. I asked him if he wanted to keep playing the character - he did. So I asked why he might be sent back - he answered that there was something Erathis wanted him to do - a mission! I docked a Raise Dead's worth of gp from that level's treasure parcels. The character came back to life, with knowledge of where he could find the Sceptre of Law under a stone in some Nerathi ruins. Over the course f the campaign it turned out the Sceptre of Law was the Rod of 7 Parts.

* When the PCs had killed a great multi-headed red dragon, a different player had the idea of coalescing all the chaotic energy flowing out of the dragon and imbuing it into a horn, turning it into a Fire Horn.

* At much higher levels, the same player had the idea of his PC sealing the Abyss, by using his various magical abilities (a zone of energy that teleports away anyone who enters it; Stretch Spell to make it bigger, etc) amplified by his own Primordial nature.

* When fighting a beholder in a cave, a PC invoker/wizard used one of his forced movement abilities to impale the beholder on a stalactite.

* The same character, in Torog's Soul Abattoir, used his mastery of rituals to divert the flow of souls from Torog to the Raven Queen, betraying Vecna in the process.

* When the PCs were going to confront a purple worm, they took a sack of lime with them to reduce the damage from being swallowed, by partially neutralising the worm's stomach acid.​

4e D&D is not a fragile game. It won't fall over as soon as the players try and play the fiction. It makes that sort of stuff easy to adjudicate. The result is high-gonzo fantasy that's fun for everyone at the table.

 

[Andvari]

4e D&D is not a fragile game. It won't fall over as soon as the players try and play the fiction. It makes that sort of stuff easy to adjudicate. The result is high-gonzo fantasy that's fun for everyone at the table.

Ah, but were the players really having fun or were they simply in a state of near-paralysis for years due to the paranoia created from being required to read your mind and possibly guessing wrong? Those two things can easily be mistaken for one another.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, I did give examples on previous pages. But, sure, how about one more:

Which game did this happen in? Because what you gave on previous pages didn't look to me like an example of something that actually happens in the real world. It looks like something you have invented that you think might happen in a game of a style you don't understand and therefore disagree with. There's a name for that type of arguing; it's called making a strawman.

You have never seen a player freak out, ever? Never seen a player whine, complain or cry? Never seen a player get sad or depressed? Never seen a player give up? Ok, so maybe you have only played with perfectly, well adjusted individuals? Ok, if that is what you say. I can tell you the world is full of people like I described, even if you have never, ever met even one.

This is an example of moving the goalposts. Your original statement was:

"The bigger problem is a great many players really do freak out if they even feel that have lost even a tiny bit of power. If their character even just gets 'stuck' with their back to a wall, they can start to loose it mentally and emotionally. And it's a ton worse when the character is disarmed, tripped and dropped into sewer pool and have several guards point spears at them: right there many players will feel loss and crushing doom, so much they simply can't play the game.​

​

For a lot of players, as soon as the slightest thing goes slightly wrong......they give up at best, and stop playing at worst. And this is the normal 'good' players.​

​

A lot more players are super over sensitive. The charterer fails a check or takes some damage, and they are ready to quit RPGs forever."​

It's those prompts that trigger it that I'm saying I haven't seen.

What I have seen is negative bleed when something specific to that player came up and hit the player's specific insecurity, most recently last month. This was personal and specific however. Not "lost even a tiny bit of power" or "the slightest thing goes slightly wrong". Plenty had gone wrong for her characters before that and plenty will after. It was a specific trigger and one that we are all going to avoid going forward. And rather than dismissing her because "players are super over sensitive" we've all learned that that player can have their character be involuntarily turned into a puffer fish as well as fail checks (and set everything on fire), take damage, be stuck, disarmed, and dropped into the ocean but, like all players, has lines to watch out for.

And no I don't believe "the world is full of people like [you]b described". I believe that the world is full of people, all of whom have issues. And if you actively care about the players at the table you will realise they are narrow and specific to that person. But if you treat people as an undifferentiated mass and trample all over their personal issues, and treat caring about the players at the table as a burden that only the DM should do rather than part of the joy of playing for all the players then you will magnify such issues and drive people away from the hobby.

Well, I do have an amazing effect on people and players. But it's not like I personally am responsible for all the negativity in the world.

I'm responsible for at least some of it. I'm passionate, pedantic, cranky, and probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. But I still don't see remotely the problems with players you apparently regularly do. When I'm the exemplar of sensitivity something has gone badly wrong.

 

[Oofta]

Is it? What genre are we talking about here? I mean, there's a LOT of variability within D&D. Certainly the genre of stories that the Monk class is drawn from (Chinese Gong-Fu tales) contain stuff like that! A 4e Monk turning into a tornado? I can definitely see that! A 3.5 one? Yeah, no doubt there's some sort of crazy item or multi-class shenanigan or something that will let you have that outright as a thing. So, no, I don't think its outright genre-breaking in D&D at all! Beyond that, yeah, maybe at low levels it violates expectations of what sorts of 'powers' are in play, but I did say there could be reasons why it might not be possible. Just not ones associated with "this is too powerful."

Dude, would you like a gander at the character sheet of "Questioner of All Things", a sixteenth level AD&D wizard who can TRIVIALLY do "godlike things" for breakfast? Last I checked AD&D is definitely D&D!

The DM and group establish the boundaries. Standard D&D does not have monks running anywhere near as fast as The Flash. So I completely disagree on the genre breaking. I don't allow broken exploits, Punpun will never make an appearance in any game I DM. I also don't want to play a game with edge case broken characters.

I'm not playing AD&D. There's a separate forum for older versions of the game.

Who established the parameters? I mean, sure, its possible to have a player in a game who insists on trying to go far outside the conventions of that specific game and doesn't take the hint in terms of what kind of tone/genre is being established by the table (and presumably corresponds with one that the game supports). But this is just like saying that D&D is a bad game because you could have a DM who is arbitrary, capricious, and bullies the players. Anything is possible, and no game will entirely withstand enough malfeasance in play (or simple ineptitude perhaps).

The DM typically lays out the general concepts of the campaign and then it's up to the group if it's something that they decide works for them. I'm quite open about what type of game I run before anyone joins the group or picks up a die. If that doesn't work for you, there are other games out there and I have plenty of people who want to play. I can't please everyone.

Oh, and I get so freaking tired of the lame and bully DM trope BS. You know what a bully, arbitrary, capricious DM is called? A lonely DM without a group.

Right, but again see above if you think that somehow makes a given type of game not EVER WORK. They work fine. Players decide how things work all the time. I do it every Wednesday (usually) in our BitD game, along with @Campbell, @kenada, @niklinna, and @Manbearcat. I mean, I literally just say, pretty often, "Takeo is doing X, Y, and Z, and such and such is coming down." Now, a lot of it will trigger some sort of mechanics, a Long Term Project, Acquire an Asset, Information Gathering, a full up Score, or maybe just some fiction being established. Since the thread is primarily about D&D, I am not going to fight with you about the EXPECTATIONS of how fiction and characters work in D&D. Sure, its not usual in most games for the players to just declare things. There isn't really a set of mechanics which handle that, and there's normally an expectation that there's some GM designed content that is supposed to be the focus.

Games have to have some restrictions and guidelines. Otherwise it's just "tall tale story time".

That being said, a LOT of our high level AD&D play looked a heck of a lot like BitD! We would all just start shooting the naughty word on a Saturday afternoon sitting out at the table on my back porch and dream up something. I remember once we all decided that we wanted to find some anti-magic, and that evolved into a famous dungeon that Mike invented on the spot (mostly to screw us, lol) called "Mountain of the Beholders", not just a few beholders, THOUSANDS of the suckers! Needless to say we never were able to get what we were after, even with 5 super high level wizards. We did kill a vast number of beholders though! haha.

Again, I'm not playing AD&D currently. If you want to discuss older versions, that's a separate forum. However, I did play A&D extensively and the style and genre of play in games I run or have been a player in has not changed that much. The rules used to express our character actions have changed, the resulting gameplay and stories? Not much.

Nobody is saying its cool to wreck a game. What I'm saying is, there's no such principle in RPGs as "the players cannot be in charge, they'll just wreck the game." Yet I hear some variation of that constantly in these sorts of threads.

How many times do I have to say "If you want to play a gonzo game, go for it." Different games have different structures and different goals. So?

I prefer D&D games that are relatively grounded no matter which side of the screen I'm on. Because some people? Some people absolutely would wreck the enjoyment of the game for everyone else. I've seen it time and again. Usually they don't realize it, but there are absolutely people who want to make the game all about them at the cost of everyone else.

The players in my games I DM and play in do awesome and incredible things all the time. But part of doing that is figuring out how to achieve their goals within the limits of the game we're playing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Again, I am not talking about any published game. I'm not talking about The Hopping Frog Game(tm) or any other game. I'm talking about a Play Style: the way the meta game is played.

Well, then I would suggest you broaden your gaming horizon, because you seem to have been informed wrongly about what are variously termed 'Indy' or 'Story' etc. games. In all cases which I am aware of they have just as much, if not more, structure around who can say what. However, more deeply, they are not about people 'inventing story', the story is what happens when you play to find out. The players posit certain circumstances, character traits, possibly backstory, etc. and then the GM takes that and develops a scene which reflects those things, inventing elements of setting, etc. as needed (often there is a pretty well-established milieu to draw from, but it depends on the game). Players, in the guise of their characters, then make assertions about what their intentions are and what actions will enact those intentions. Play proceeds from there by reasonably standard processes, but ones which tend to force the action in a forward and increasingly intense/focused direction. The one we have commonly discussed here being the "success with complication", which is a technique used in both PbtA and FitD engines, the most popular ones currently. Torch Bearer uses a slightly different technique, but with similar results (generally fail forward with more serious consequences accruing as the degree of overall failure increases).

Again, I am not talking about any published game. I'm not talking about The Hopping Frog Game(tm) or any other game. I'm talking about a Play Style: the way the meta game is played.

Right, but not of anything that I have ever heard of. Again, I think you are badly informed.

Except your limit is pointless. You think the limit is X. Player two thinks it is Y. Player three thinks it is Z. And so on. This is my point about game styles like this only work if all the players are on the same way. Do you think the limit is X? They answer Yes! Then the two players high five and start a group.

Well, first of all, no groups work which don't have some degree of table consensus about stuff. Secondly, there doesn't actually need to be perfect alignment. I mean, from what I have heard, the possible ways that BitD can play out, and what exactly constitutes valid options in play, can vary wildly from player to player. Yes, generally a group of players will naturally calibrate to a specific 'set point'. As I am informed, the BitD group I am playing with is stark raving off the wall crazy. In other groups the players might be aghast at us taking out gangs 2 tiers above us and murderating ancient vampires. I think however, any random group of reasonable players will find a level of calibration where they all pretty much feel comfortable. The game itself, AFAICT, doesn't really care.

The problem is the cinematic movie vs an RPG. See everyone in the movie, even the villains, know Black Widow will break out and will auto win. You don't normally do that sort of thing in a normal RPG. There is no "ok, on round three you will automatically break the chair and jump up to auto hit goon one for 10 points of non lethal damage ".

The bigger problem is a great many players really do freak out if they even feel that have lost even a tiny bit of power. If their character even just gets 'stuck' with their back to a wall, they can start to loose it mentally and emotionally. And it's a ton worse when the character is disarmed, tripped and dropped into sewer pool and have several guards point spears at them: right there many players will feel loss and crushing doom, so much they simply can't play the game.

For a lot of players, as soon as the slightest thing goes slightly wrong......they give up at best, and stop playing at worst. And this is the normal 'good' players.

A lot more players are super over sensitive. The charterer fails a check or takes some damage, and they are ready to quit RPGs forever.

Oye, or maybe you all coddle them too much! Or give them so little scope to be in control of what the value of the fiction is that all they have is basic character advocacy.

Different rolls for different dice?

Sure if your a luke warm middle of the road type you can mostly get along with everyone.

LOL! I see. OK, well, I have no shortage of people I can play games with, and they all enjoy it. I mean it all seems pretty darn successful to me. I never understood why people stress themselves out so much....

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Again, I am not talking about any published game. I'm not talking about The Hopping Frog Game(tm) or any other game. I'm talking about a Play Style: the way the meta game is played.

But the rules for these games explicitly reject playing them that way. They make extremely clear you should never do that, and that doing it that way is going to lead to boring, frustrating, unpleasant experiences. How can it be a "Play Style" of these games if these games explicitly tell players and GMs not to do that, repeatedly and consistently?

Except your limit is pointless. You think the limit is X. Player two thinks it is Y. Player three thinks it is Z. And so on. This is my point about game styles like this only work if all the players are on the same way. Do you think the limit is X? They answer Yes! Then the two players high five and start a group.

But...why can't you just talk about it? Figure out what limits you each have. You don't need people to think the same way--you just need people willing to talk about what they think makes sense. My players and I frequently don't completely agree on what makes sense, but my response to that is to ask them to sell me on whatever they're doing.

The problem is the cinematic movie vs an RPG. See everyone in the movie, even the villains, know Black Widow will break out and will auto win. You don't normally do that sort of thing in a normal RPG. There is no "ok, on round three you will automatically break the chair and jump up to auto hit goon one for 10 points of non lethal damage ".

No "story" game I've ever heard of does anything like this, not even as a playstyle. You are describing something that is unrelated to playing "story" games.

The bigger problem is a great many players really do freak out if they even feel that have lost even a tiny bit of power. If their character even just gets 'stuck' with their back to a wall, they can start to loose it mentally and emotionally. And it's a ton worse when the character is disarmed, tripped and dropped into sewer pool and have several guards point spears at them: right there many players will feel loss and crushing doom, so much they simply can't play the game.

Not only have I not seen this, I have seen exactly the reverse. Players embracing a loss of power because it's what made sense. Yes, some players are sensitive, but my experience has not shown anywhere near the degree or severity of which you speak. For goodness' sake, you're talking about table-flipping simply because a round of combat happened. If most TTRPG players were like that, the games would never have existed!

For a lot of players, as soon as the slightest thing goes slightly wrong......they give up at best, and stop playing at worst. And this is the normal 'good' players.

No. This is simply not true. There may be a rare few who are like this, but they are not anything like a large proportion of players overall.

A lot more players are super over sensitive. The charterer fails a check or takes some damage, and they are ready to quit RPGs forever.

Absolutely not. You act like these are a plurality or even majority of players. I've never met one in 20 years of gaming.

Sure if your a luke warm middle of the road type you can mostly get along with everyone.

Uh...no. I certainly do and say things that upset others and I regret most of that. But I am quite capable of being a congenial and amiable person. Most folks, I can find something to talk about or to listen about, it's just a matter of overcoming my intense shyness and social anxiety.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Except your limit is pointless. You think the limit is X. Player two thinks it is Y. Player three thinks it is Z. And so on. This is my point about game styles like this only work if all the players are on the same way. Do you think the limit is X? They answer Yes! Then the two players high five and start a group.

I just thought I'd pick up on this in passing because it's one of D&D's genuine strengths and one of the things 4e was actually lacking*. The advantage of a good class based game (or even a bad one like All-Splat-World-of-Darkness) is that the players at the table do not have to agree on what they want to do. They just have to respect each other and what they want to do. In D&D the experience of playing a wizard with spell book and prep is very different from playing a raging barbarian, in WoD the experience of playing a raging werewolf is very different from playing a more cerebral and coincidental mage, and in Apocalypse World the experience of playing the Maitre d', the owner/hiost of the local scene with their staff and entertainment to manage and people to manipulate and calm down is very different to playing the combat monster gunlugger.

Or to sum up you do not have to agree on what is fun in a well designed class-based game with strong and distinct classes. You just have to agree that what the rest of the group finds fun is cool for them to do.

* Everyone was a mid-high complexity tactician; there was no serious equivalent (pre Essentials) to the almost-no-tactics barbarian or the preparation-focused wizard who rechose their abilities each day and only hit big buttons.

 

[Lanefan]

Here are just a few of the creative things that happened in my long-running 4e game, 15 to 5 or so years ago.

* A player's character died. I asked him if he wanted to keep playing the character - he did. So I asked why he might be sent back - he answered that there was something Erathis wanted him to do - a mission! I docked a Raise Dead's worth of gp from that level's treasure parcels. The character came back to life, with knowledge of where he could find the Sceptre of Law under a stone in some Nerathi ruins. Over the course f the campaign it turned out the Sceptre of Law was the Rod of 7 Parts.​

Question: when you docked a Raise Dead's worth of treasure from the treasure parcels, was that before or after the characters had found said parcels? Put another way, did the rest of the characters have any say in what was happening to their treasure?

​

* When the PCs had killed a great multi-headed red dragon, a different player had the idea of coalescing all the chaotic energy flowing out of the dragon and imbuing it into a horn, turning it into a Fire Horn.​

​

* When the PCs were going to confront a purple worm, they took a sack of lime with them to reduce the damage from being swallowed, by partially neutralising the worm's stomach acid.​

These two are brilliant! The others are probably a bit over the top for what I'd be comfortable allowing.

 

[bloodtide]

But the rules for these games explicitly reject playing them that way. They make extremely clear you should never do that, and that doing it that way is going to lead to boring, frustrating, unpleasant experiences. How can it be a "Play Style" of these games if these games explicitly tell players and GMs not to do that, repeatedly and consistently?

So not know "the offical rules" your talking about, I very much doubt the rules say anything like that...simply because it is impossible. If you could maybe post the amazing rules? I doubt they are even close to what you suggest. After all, at minimum the wordy legalese would need to be at least several pages. And I doubt they exist. I think it's much more likely your talking about some vague useless rule that says "have fun and don't be a jerk". Ok, but see with out 100,000 words to define both "fun" and "jerk", such typed rules are useless.

Again, this goes back to the game only working when all the players think alike and agree on nearly everything.

But...why can't you just talk about it? Figure out what limits you each have. You don't need people to think the same way--you just need people willing to talk about what they think makes sense. My players and I frequently don't completely agree on what makes sense, but my response to that is to ask them to sell me on whatever they're doing.

But to what end? A great many players will abuse any system of rules, there is no "talking to them". And plenty of players will try to sneak stuff around the edges of rules, or demand RAW. Again, you can't "talk" to such players. And why would I ever 'buy' most anything a player sells?

No "story" game I've ever heard of does anything like this, not even as a playstyle. You are describing something that is unrelated to playing "story" games.

Again, I am not talking about <insert your favorite game here>. If I was, I would name names.

Not only have I not seen this, I have seen exactly the reverse. Players embracing a loss of power because it's what made sense. Yes, some players are sensitive, but my experience has not shown anywhere near the degree or severity of which you speak. For goodness' sake, you're talking about table-flipping simply because a round of combat happened. If most TTRPG players were like that, the games would never have existed!

Well, it's way more common then you think. And Really, it goes for most games and activities. There are people that should they get even three letters in the basketball game "horse" will just throw away the ball and say "they don't want to play anymore".

No. This is simply not true. There may be a rare few who are like this, but they are not anything like a large proportion of players overall.
Absolutely not. You act like these are a plurality or even majority of players. I've never met one in 20 years of gaming.

Odd, I've met hundreds. Different social circles, I guess?

Well, then I would suggest you broaden your gaming horizon, because you seem to have been informed wrongly about what are variously termed 'Indy' or 'Story' etc. games.

Again, I'm not talking about <insert your favorite game here> .

Which game did this happen in?

Does me saying it was in a D&D 5E game I was Watching at The Keep last year help you understand it better?

This is an example of moving the goalposts. Your original statement was:

"The bigger problem is a great many players really do freak out if they even feel that have lost even a tiny bit of power. If their character even just gets 'stuck' with their back to a wall, they can start to loose it mentally and emotionally. And it's a ton worse when the character is disarmed, tripped and dropped into sewer pool and have several guards point spears at them: right there many players will feel loss and crushing doom, so much they simply can't play the game.​

​

For a lot of players, as soon as the slightest thing goes slightly wrong......they give up at best, and stop playing at worst. And this is the normal 'good' players.​

​

A lot more players are super over sensitive. The charterer fails a check or takes some damage, and they are ready to quit RPGs forever."​

It's those prompts that trigger it that I'm saying I haven't seen.

So where do you see "moving goal posts" in my list of negative things players don't like and often react badly to?

And no I don't believe "the world is full of people like [you]b described". I believe that the world is full of people, all of whom have issues. And if you actively care about the players at the table you will realise they are narrow and specific to that person. But if you treat people as an undifferentiated mass and trample all over their personal issues, and treat caring about the players at the table as a burden that only the DM should do rather than part of the joy of playing for all the players then you will magnify such issues and drive people away from the hobby.

I don't get the push back. Ok, lets say that you personally have never, ever seen such a player. Why are you so opposed to the idea that the players exist? Why do you care if something exists or not, if it does not exist for you anyway.

Like if I was to say there are people who watch very little 'screen shows/movies' and read books. Would you say you have never met a person that reads books, just because no one you know reads books?

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't get the push back. Ok, lets say that you personally have never, ever seen such a player. Why are you so opposed to the idea that the players exist? Why do you care if something exists or not, if it does not exist for you anyway.

Like if I was to say there are people who watch very little 'screen shows/movies' and read books. Would you say you have never met a person that reads books, just because no one you know reads books?

I believe that a few players exist who are the way you describe in response to minimal provocation. Multiple posters have posted to say we've all DM'd for a wide range of people and almost never seen the behaviour you describe in response to the way we DM, and I don't think anyone who's posted exactly goes soft or avoids going so far even as to kill PCs. But, as I posted earlier, you are a common link between the "hundreds" of players who you claim to have seen have serious negative reactions when it does not appear to be something that happens in most groups even with open tables and I know that I at least delve into body horror at an open table and have taught numerous newbies. There are therefore two basic possibilities

• The group you have experience with and seemingly DM for is a massive outlier based on the experience of multiple DMs with significant and wide ranging experience
• The responses you are seeing are not a response to simple setbacks but a response to the way you (and possibly whoever you learned from) handle things when you are the DM.

And for a whole lot of reasons one person doing something that is within my range of experience is a lot easier to believe than an entire population of outliers.

And when you, as a DM, post that, in your own words, "they give up at best, and stop playing at worst. And this is the normal 'good' players." then what you appear to be saying is that people are stopping playing as a consequence of your DMing. Your DMing appears to be literally driving people out of the hobby.

And I (and I believe almost every poster on this board or we wouldn't be posting here) cares about the hobby and like sharing it with others. I, and I believe most others, don't want to see people driven out of the hobby by bad DMing.