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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wolff96" data-source="post: 5004253" data-attributes="member: 342">DISCLAIMER:  I'm going to do my best to keep this edition neutral and I urge everyone else to do the same.  Does anyone else find systems with highly defined powers and options to limit creativity?  It could be that it's just the people I game with, but that's why I'm here to ask if anyone else sees the same thing.  When I play 4e, my fellow gamers make good (often brilliant) use of their powers and make excellent tactical decisions.  But it never even occurs to them to do anything else.  When I wanted to temporarily blind a creature with my cloak -- the classic "throw a cloak over it's head to distract it for a few seconds" -- my fellow gamers looked at me as if I had sprouted a new head!It's *not* the system's fault -- The DMG even has notes on players trying things not covered by their powers, advising DMs on how to handle these actions and making suggestions as to how to adjudicate them.  After all, no system will EVER cover every single thing a player can come up with.But simply by strictly defining their powers, it seems like the game put blinders on (at least some) gamers -- they don't think beyond that list.  If they don't have a card for it, the action simply doesn't occur to them.---------------------------------------------It's by no means limited to 4e -- it's just a recent example -- but it seems like the more a system defines options, the less players try to think of anything ELSE.  A player might try to use the environment against a foe, but typically only if the DM highlights an area (pit traps, environmental hazards, that kind of thing).  When's the last time a player threw sand in someone's eyes?  Or carried flour in case of invisible foes?  Used chalk to mark a maze?  Researched a unique spell for a specific circumstance?  (Just to name a few classics.)I've slowly moved more and more towards "freeform" and "rules lite" systems. (In quotes because no two gamers ever completely agree on those terms...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)  I was doing this long before 4e was even announced, so it's not a new phenomenon for me.Is this a factor of the group / gamers I play with?  Or does anyone else find that the better-defined a character's powers, the less the players are willing to experiment outside of those boundaries?</blockquote>

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