Falling off the 4ed bandwagon

[Supergyro]

Creativity

The creativity induced by the lack of a tool should not be confused with the creativity allowed by access to a tool. Even when one has access to a tool, one can be just as creative as those who lack it while having all the additional creativity of having it by simply choosing to not use the tool.

Someone who uses creativity when they have the ideal tool at hand is not being 'creative' in the constructive use of the term, they are being foolish and wasting time (and time wasted creatively is still time wasted).

Creativity (the kind that we want to encourange in people) is what you use when you do *not* have the ideal tool at hand. This type of creativity is heartily encouranged when the toolbox is not as flexible.

 

[pawsplay]

Here the point is to eke out the maximum efficiency from limited tools. That takes creativity.

Eking out the maximum efficiency from ANY set of tools takes creativity. With better tools, the maximum efficiency is just higher.

 

[Barastrondo]

I never had any scry/buff/teleporting issues in my games. It worked when it worked for the PCs and didn't work when it didn't. It's a good tactic, but so common that anyone with any ability has thought of countermeasures.

That's an aspect of denial, though, isn't it? "There are common countermeasures to this popular tactic"? Just curious.

I've never found skill challengess that interesting as they're something I think most GMs have been doing for decades. You'd say to your players, "What do you want to do?", ascribe a probability, and then move on to the next what do you want to do and probability.

I've long maintained that one of the reasons combat is usually so detailed in most game systems is that it's one of the few thing you can point to where everyone at the table can be expected to be engaged. It's where "waiting your turn" happens on an action-by-action basis, not on a scene-by-scene basis. You don't frequently see one of the key elements of a game to be looking for ways to engage the entire group in the same fashion out of combat: having preparing for a siege, figuring out a way to rescue a prisoner, or stealing a ship being the kind of situation where everyone goes an action at a time and nobody's really the load.

To simplify, if you want to do something other than damage/condition/push pull in combat, fuggeddiaboutit. The combat rules are designed as one would design a minis wargame and the roleplaying aspect is only icing upon it, IMO, with the flavor text existing only to minimize the brutal directness of the continual push/pull/damage/condition repetitiveness. Although you can do other things, they're almost always less optimal than what is provided via every class's spells, exploits or whichever word they use to skin the power.

Just not my experience, I guess. I've got the kind of group where there's always at least one player who's looking to achieve those extra objectives, and there they are. I see double moves, runs, skill use... all kinds of things crop up in combat. It's probably like the scry/buff/teleport thing; a non-issue for some groups because of the way they're inclined to play anyway, crippling for others.

Perhaps my merely is a bit hyperbolic, but I do think the ritual system probably resulted as something like "Well, we have all this stuff left over that we took out of combat because we want to rigidly control combat actions, options, and balance, so now what do we do with it?" kinda thing.

I don't think that's the case, at least from the impression I've gotten of the designers and their previous work. When ritual magic actually feels like something sword-and-sorcery, and you've seen stabs taken at that in 3e products, it seems like there's more of a foundation than "rigidity."

I'd never say that someone's combat design makes me obscenely jealous. I'm not that interested in combat. To me, combats have absolutely no meaning except in relation to why the combat is occuring. The why is what I find more interesting than the how do we fight question. I prefer games with quick combats and long roleplaying/exploration/looting sequences. Combats are what happens when there's no other choice or when you've done something wrong.

I find "why do we fight" paramount as well — but I also like a system that doesn't treat combat as something to be hurriedly gotten over with as soon as possible. If there's to be combat at all, I like it to be interesting. This is true of anything where there should be die-rolling, to be honest. Lace & Steel's deck of cards for modeling duels and social repartee, for instance. The ultimate display of options and creativity is not to use a system at all, just to roleplay without pad, paper or dice. If I'm going to actually limit my options by using a system in the first place, why not pick one that justifies itself by the way it handles?

Of course, I've said before that I like themed games a lot. Combat as a punishment for not finding other options suits some themes, but there are some source materials where fight scenes are a reward for the viewer, be it a duel in a Dumas or Sabatini work, or an epic set piece in Red Cliff. It seems only appropriate to use games where combats are fun to play through on both a mechanical and visual level for that sort of thing.

 

[Gimby]

Eking out the maximum efficiency from ANY set of tools takes creativity. With better tools, the maximum efficiency is just higher.

Sure, but if the issue is creativity, then maximum efficiency isn't always desirable. If a character has an at-will (however you manage this, power, wand, feat, whatever) "solve problem" spell then clearly you reach maximum efficiency. It also requires zero creativity to apply.

-edit To expand slightly, if your tools are very powerful, then often you won't need the maximum efficiency you can get out of them, a routine application will often serve your purpose just as well. The more powerful your tools are, the more extreme the problem needs to be to strech your application of them. I can open nuts with a hard work and a needle or a hammer, but the needle can't open coconuts. However, if I only want to open nuts, I don't need to creatively apply the hammer.

Even with less extreme cases, you can run into this.

Taking the drowning Fighter example.

We have a boat with the party and an assortment of adventuring gear in. The fighter falls overboard.

If our Wizard has the "solve problem" spell, he clicks his fingers and the fighter reappears back in the boat.

If the Wizard has the Water Breathing spell and it doesn't require touching the target or line of sight, he clicks his fingers and the Fighter is no longer drowning but you still need a way to come up with a way to get him back onto the boat.

If the Wizard's Water Breathing spell requires touch, now you need to figure out how to get the Wizard down to the Fighter.

If the Wizard's Water Breathing spell needs a 10 minute cast, then its off the table and you need to figure out how to use your adventuring gear to save the Fighter.

Which of these situations requires the most creativity?

But if we have a long range, no line of sight Water Breathing spell, then this opens up a bunch of other options for facing challenges, that a 10 minute cast one doesn't.

So we're back to different sorts of creativity. Some situations *demand* creativity, some situations *allow* creativity. These will vary as to the flexibility and power of tools available. Saying that restrictions *prevent* creativity is, to me, nonsense.

 

[FireLance]

So we're back to different sorts of creativity. Some situations *demand* creativity, some situations *allow* creativity. These will vary as to the flexibility and power of tools available. Saying that restrictions *prevent* creativity is, to me, nonsense.

I think this point needs to be repeated as it goes to the crux of the creativity question.

The poorer the tools, the more creativity will be required.

The better the tools, the more creativity will be possible.

In (for want of a better term) objective-driven games in which the players have specific goals or tasks to complete, restricting the tools provided to the players increases the difficulty of the game and the amount of creativity required to achieve the objective, and is thus not always bad.

In (again, for want of a better term) more "blue sky" games where the creativity of the outcome (however you measure it) is as or more important than achieving specific objectives (if any) in the game, then restricting the tools provided to the players reduces the quality of the outcomes possible and is thus more unambiguously bad.

Hence, depending on what are your objectives of play, "You can't do that" is either acceptable as part and parcel of the challenge, or an unnecessary restriction.

 

[Hairfoot]

Casting enlarge to crush someone to death isn't creative...It's like trying to argue that if a character holds a sword between his teeth, he should be able to make extra attacks (because the books don't say you can't).

If that's an apt analogy for you, we're obviously coming from perspectives so far removed that debating will probably be fruitless.

These two sentences are so incredibly interesting next to one another. Why does the pixie rogue not sound like a dozen kinds of awesome, disappointingly restrained with rules to compensate for DMs who can't handle lateral thinking? Why is crushing someone to death with a 1st-level spell not the sort of demonstration why Exalted needed to be published? Truly, everyone plays D&D in a completely different fashion.

Because one is an exercise of creativity using a spell which is a mainstay of D&D, while the other is a "turn it up to 11" exercise in nullifying the ability score range and creating superhero PCs. The unwilling enlargee still gets a saving throw. If the DM thinks it's a RAW abuse, give the save a big bonus. I'd rather do that for a player than say their imagination and cunning is invalid.

This is really a topic for another thread, but the 3-18 attribute range is designed to indicate the very limits of abilities for humans. A human with an 18 score is at the top of the race's potential. Due to inherent abilities, some races may score a 19 or 20 in an attribute, and they are truly legendary and possibly unique. When you get into mid-20s, those are the attributes of demigods and avatars.

Having a pixie with 30 DEX raises the question of what dexterity is meant to represent and undermines the simulation goal of the 3-18 range. Whether such extraordinary PCs belong in an adventuring party is up to each individual group, but personally I'm bored by that sort of powergaming, and consider it the province of Exalted, not D&D.

Indiana Jones lashing his bullwhip onto a beam and swinging across a room to catch the princess because he's a skilled, heroic mortal isn't the same as Superman idly drifting across to do it because he's an invincible flying alien.

I don't agree with the premise that restricted options restrain creativity. Take a basic limitation: encumbrance. When equipping a character, I enjoy figuring out how much stuff my PC can lug about and still be effective in an adventure. That limitation presents a planning challenge and I enjoy seeing how my choice of gear pans out. I see planning spell selections in the same way.

A lot of the criticism of Vancian casting seems predicated on an assumption that a caster will know exactly which spells they'll need to get out of hock on an adventure. If water breathing saves a PC from drowning, then that's either pure luck or clever reconnaissance. I don't see how it becomes a cheesy get-out-of-jail-free card in any circumstance. It's equally possible that water breathing won't get used, and to have it the caster gave up a spell that may have saved the day.

Then there's the fact that magic is special. Why shouldn't it cause extraordinary circumstances occasionally? I've never witnessed this apparently common setup of the mage dominating every situation with spells, because a role of the DM is to balance that stuff out. If an adventuring mage is becoming the sine qua non in a campaign, he's also going to become the target of fear and assassination. With great power comes great threat.

The comparison between old game computers and roleplaying limitations is very interesting. I had a Commodore64, then upgraded to an Amiga. At that age I was also a slavish follower of game magazines, and read every review of every game. And do you know what the most common criticism of early Amiga games was? That they were nice to look at, but often boring to play, because the limitations of the C64 forced developers to make the gameplay complex and engaging, rather than churn out bland, one-dimensional games with 30 DEX...I mean pretty graphics.

 

[pawsplay]

Sure, but if the issue is creativity, then maximum efficiency isn't always desirable.

But again, that is not the same thing as creativity being possible.

If a character has an at-will (however you manage this, power, wand, feat, whatever) "solve problem" spell then clearly you reach maximum efficiency. It also requires zero creativity to apply.

True. However, I can not think of too many examples of such things.

Saying that restrictions *prevent* creativity is, to me, nonsense.

I will hazard a guess you have little experience with bureaucracies.

 

[Gimby]

But again, that is not the same thing as creativity being possible.

Its not, no. It does however read somewhat as to how likely you are going to see a truly creative solution to a problem in play.

In any case, my main thrust is that for any edition of D&D, creativity *is* always possible, just that it manifests in different fashions.

True. However, I can not think of too many examples of such things.

Scry-and-die comes close in 3e, as an example. There are countermeasures but they tend to be non-core and require that any serious opposition has significant magical backup. I'll not argue that it's perfect, just that it's an incredibly versatile and powerful tactic.

I will hazard a guess you have little experience with bureaucracies.

Hah! I will admit to a certain amount of creative bypassing of bureaucracies however

 

[Ourph]

Eking out the maximum efficiency from ANY set of tools takes creativity. With better tools, the maximum efficiency is just higher.

Exactly correct. It seems to me the question is where you want "maximum efficiency" to fall on the power scale.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think this point needs to be repeated as it goes to the crux of the creativity question.

The poorer the tools, the more creativity will be required.

The better the tools, the more creativity will be possible.

In (for want of a better term) objective-driven games in which the players have specific goals or tasks to complete, restricting the tools provided to the players increases the difficulty of the game and the amount of creativity required to achieve the objective, and is thus not always bad.

In (again, for want of a better term) more "blue sky" games where the creativity of the outcome (however you measure it) is as or more important than achieving specific objectives (if any) in the game, then restricting the tools provided to the players reduces the quality of the outcomes possible and is thus more unambiguously bad.

Hence, depending on what are your objectives of play, "You can't do that" is either acceptable as part and parcel of the challenge, or an unnecessary restriction.

That is a pretty accurate summation.

Sometimes the limitations make sense (the slavers have taken all of your belongings, you will have to make due with what you can scavenge) sometimes they don't (sorry, even though you have climbed up the pile of rubble you discover that an invisible wall blocks you from going that way - you will have to go the long way around, if you can find it (Fallout 3, I am looking at you!))

The Auld Grump