Is D&D stifling your creativity?

[The Shaman]

D&D does not stifle my creativity.

Then again, I don't play D&D, which might explain that.

 

[kitsune9]

Playing a rpg with rules doesn't stifle my creativity, but I need a framework for in which to make it work.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

One of the hardest things in the world to fulfill is "Ready, set, go, be creative!"


It is far easier (for me, and most students in American culture) to be creative within certain boundaries. To be creative without boundaries is mysterious, daunting, and too much to comprehend. In essence, it's not even a real question. "Be creative!" is a fallacy.

"Be creative!" can lead to poop in a bag. It can lead to placentas stapled to chickens. It's new. It's creative, but it has no use or meaning.


In my opinion, meaning is defined by a shared understanding...that shared understanding can be (but doesn't necessarily have to be) rules. It can be any emotional/colorful/paradoxical/philosophic/auditory/gustatory/any-atory? situation and sensation.


But boundaries, in my opinion, serve to further creativity.


"Make an awesome encounter with 1 kobold, 3 gold worth of phb items, and 1 cr 1/2 monster."

That challenge is far more creativity inducing, in my opinion, than "make an awesome encounter".



So it is with D&D or any game, for that matter.

 

[FireLance]

In general, no. Obviously, you can be creative when performing improv theater, but you can also be creative playing chess.

As Aberzanzorax has stated, rules or boundaries can encourage creativity, for example, when you have a goal in mind which cannot be easily accomplished under the rules, and you have to either come up with new ways to apply or combine the rules, or make up new rules. After all, there is a reason for the old saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention".

However, rules can stifle creativity when your goal can be mostly achieved fairly easily under the rules. You don't get 100% of what you want, but the 95% that you can get under the rules is "good enough" that the effort you will need to expend to get "perfection" doesn't seem worth it. Ironically, this tends to happen more often in a good and comprehensive rule set.

 

[Votan]

In general I find RPG rules are more helpful than harmful. They help create a common basis for a creative activity. I see a specific rules set as no more constraining than any literary device that has rules (think about poetry for example). It is true that different editions of D&D tend towards different "flavors" of game, but I see this as a feature and not as a bug.

 

[Remathilis]

This morning, watching my youngest son grab my D&D minis and dungeon tiles, I found myself quite amused as he put together a dungeon, populated it with monsters, and then, purely narrating the story himself, lead a trio of heroes through the dungeon to its climatic with a sahaugin baron.

Of course, he didn't do any of it "right", in any way we players of D&D might normally interprete the rules. But, he was having a blast -and it recalled to me my days when I used to do much the same with my old (lead) minis before I let myself get bogged down in the rules.

So, have you become a slave to the rules? Has limiting youself to to the printed rules, to portraying the creatures (or heroes) "correctly" limiting you from truly bringing wonder to the game?

I think the first thing to do is deferenciate what your son did from what you do as a form of "playing".

Your son was playing "lets pretend" with action figures. I used to do that when I was a kid. I did it with Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, Ninja Turtles, etc. I did it with myself and with friends. He created little scenarios using the "figures" and the "playset" to create a narrative. There was no need for rules, since the decision making point was whatever he wanted. If the fighter could hurl lightning bolts, if the mage came back from the dead, or if the sahuagin baron was going to win, it was up to him.

We do something a bit more complicated. We play a role-playing GAME. Key word. As a game, we create rules to foster fair play, as we would in football, Monopoly, or Super Mario Bros. We play within those rules for fairness. What sets D&D apart from the latter is that it incorporates elements of "lets pretend" in it, but at the end of the day is really no different than any other board game when it comes to rules.

(A good analogy: Give your son a board game with cool parts, like say Fireball Island. He could play the game "all by himself" without rolling the dice to see what his movement is and creating names and personalities for the playing pieces. But he's no more playing that game than he was playing D&D in your post).

Now, the meat of your post is whether Rules get in the way of our "Lets Pretend." On the surface, that is the point. Its so the fighter can't shoot lightning bolts or the mage auto-resurrect because the player "pretends to". We also create a resolution mechanic to decide when things work and don't. But beyond those basics, I think is where the question lies.

So to compare your son's playing with the DTs and DDMs to your D&D game is kinda an unfair comparison. We can (and do) argue often about how much is too much when it comes to rule-density, but unless your willing to toss the rule books and pull out the Star Wars figures (including Death Star playset), you're never going to achieve the simple freedom of what your son does.

Cheer up though, lots of future gamers get their start doing that.

 

[TarionzCousin]

No, but Dungeon Tiles do... or at least they try to.

Lately I've gone back to drawing on giant white grid paper -- or a battlemat when I don't have the time to prep.

 

[Ariosto]

Maybe Stormonu could clarify just what was in mind. Is it just accidental "noise" that the reference was not to rules as a whole phenomenon, but to D&D specifically? Did Stormonu mean to imply what so many posters seem to infer, the abolition of all rules?

There is a big difference between the rules of (for instance) The Hero System and the rules of WotC-D&D. There is another, different, difference between the rules -- not necessarily the formal, textual ones but the conventional, cultural ones -- of WotC-D&D and the rules of TSR-D&D.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

If there's a style of game I want to play that works best outside of D&D, I...don't play D&D.

If there's a style of game I want to play that works best in D&D, I...play D&D.

Ain't no stifling going on here.

 

[nedjer]

This morning, watching my youngest son grab my D&D minis and dungeon tiles, I found myself quite amused as he put together a dungeon, populated it with monsters, and then, purely narrating the story himself, lead a trio of heroes through the dungeon to its climatic with a sahaugin baron.

Of course, he didn't do any of it "right", in any way we players of D&D might normally interprete the rules. But, he was having a blast -and it recalled to me my days when I used to do much the same with my old (lead) minis before I let myself get bogged down in the rules.

So, have you become a slave to the rules? Has limiting youself to to the printed rules, to portraying the creatures (or heroes) "correctly" limiting you from truly bringing wonder to the game?

Please don't ask him to do it 'right'. Get down on the floor with him and share narrating it like he does. There's little genuinely complicated about some arithmetic and swallowing volumes of data whatever the RPG.

'Let's Pretend' is imo considerably more 'complex' and a whole lot more fun at that age. Lets Pretend with parent is even better.