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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ourph" data-source="post: 1616529" data-attributes="member: 20239">Obviously experiences and viewpoints differ, and some players find it easier to think outside the box than others.  Here's an example from a game I ran about a year ago that illustrates my point:Two players (1/2 orc fighter and human barbarian) were exploring a cave system in bandit country.  The rest of their party was several chambers back examining a strange door and the two were checking along their backtrail to make sure no one was following the party.  They ran into a small group of human bandits.  The bandits won initiative and the bandit leader stepped forward and demanded to know why "Gorlak" had sent them.  The PCs knew "Gorlak" was the leader of a band of humanoid mercenaries working for the local lord (this encounter clued the party in that he was a traitor).  On their initiative, the players said they were attacking.  I pointed out that the bandit leader looked as if he were ready to talk and didn't show any signs of being hostile and asked if they were sure they wanted to engage in combat right away.  The players answers was "Neither of us has any ranks in Bluff, so it won't do any good to try to lie to him."Now, one of these players ran a bard in another campaign and came up with some of the most creative lies, stories and diplomatic speeches I've ever heard, so it wasn't lack of ability on the part of the players that was preventing them from coming up with a better strategy than "ATTACK!".  It was the fact that they had already made up their minds that the rules said they had almost no chance of success if they attempted to lie their way out of the situation, so they weren't even going to try.The PCs attacked, and the bandits (with their superior numbers) killed both characters.When I told the players after the battle that if they had come up with a reasonable lie, I wouldn't even have called for a Bluff check, I would have just allowed it to succeed they were a little perplexed and annoyed.  One suggested that I should have announced something like that as a "house rule" before we started playing.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> Like I said, I'm sure some players find it easier to "think outside the box" and be creative in spite of what the rules tell them is likely to succeed or not succeed.  Playing consistently with a good DM who cares more about rewarding good, creative play rather than adhering slavishly to the rules helps a lot.  But it doesn't take many sessions of playing with a DM whose philosophy is "rules, numbers and dice first; creativity and smart thinking second" to put an otherwise good player in the same mindset.  At least, that has been my experience.</blockquote>

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